Older Bolder Life

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ancestral foods

Ancestral Nutrition (Esp. Low Carb) in the Crosshairs: Two Fascinating Examples

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Like many of you, I find it most interesting when critics sling their arrows at the revolution happening in the human nutrition world these days.

I’m specifically referring to the tidal wave of evidence suggesting that consumption of overly processed, carbohydrate-centric, and fat-phobic diets has led to an unparalleled decline in overall health and disease markers over the last 40 years or so, and the rather stunning results that people from all walks of life have had when reverting back to more “ancestral” eating patterns.

And for the sake of discussion, let’s stipulate that these ancestrally-aligned food plans, when compared to the standard American (or Western) diet, are lower carb, feature moderate protein intake, and high amounts of healthy fats. There are a lot of different ways to skin this dietary cat if you will, but for discussion today we’ll focus on a LCMPHF approach.

Like many of you, I read different versions of what are often very repetitive talking points hammering ancestrally-oriented nutrition plans; many of the criticisms are based upon myths, hearsay, and some even overt misrepresentation.

Here are two that particularly caught my eye of late, in part, due to their sources.

An Interesting Perspective From the Foodie World

Late last month, Bon Appetite’s healthyish published this article – Before You Go Paleo, Keto, or Whole30, Think About These Side Effects. The thrust of the piece was that rigid food rules can have unintended consequences, with the author focusing on food obsession and a sense of loss and deprivation, which led to her personal failure when attempting to use Whole 30 to revamp her nutritional paradigm.

The author shared –

…Through my work as an eating psychology coach, I’ve seen that we can’t undo the cycle of dieting and weight gain until we understand what’s underlying our constant desire to drop pounds. At its core, dieting is a coping mechanism, and not a healthy one. We’re not born wanting to change our bodies, but billions of dollars are spent telling us that we should.

I’ve come to believe that, to end the diet-binge cycle, there has to be an inherent acceptance of the bodies we’re in. We don’t have to love it, but we can start with accepting it…

Bottom line – she missed the entire focus, and point, of eating a more ancestrally-aligned food plan. The game is not about deprivation, and it’s not about weight loss. The game is all about optimizing your health and function.

Is weight loss part of that process? It sure as hell can be (or should be) for some of us (obesity rates remain impressively high, just look around at the grocery store today…). But that’s not in any way, shape, or form the primary objective of eating ancestrally. The goal is optimizing health.

An Angry Perspective from Conventional Medicine

Early last month, MedScape, a physician and health provider news aggregator and CME site, published an interesting online piece titled The Low Carb Community is Its Own Worst Enemy.

You’ll need a free account to read the piece in full, and I heartily recommend that you do so when you have 20 minutes to spare. You’ll need that much time to read through the comment section as well; it’s packed with fascinating perspectives and as much vitriol as I’ve seen in some time directed toward the ancestrally-oriented community.

In part, the author’s premise (of note, he’s a family physician working in a bariatric clinic in Canada) is that physicians and leaders of the “low carb community” manifest all sorts of unprofessional and unbecoming behaviors. To wit, from the article –

Of interest – the author calls out what he classifies as vitriol and misrepresentation with, ironically, vitriol and misrepresentation. The comment section is similarly filled with all sorts of fascinating opinions…

I agree wholeheartedly with those who suggest that the increased attacks flowing toward the ancestral or non-standard American / Western diet folks these days are most likely evidence that we’re honing in on significant issues, issues that have been sadly mismanaged by the bulk of conventional medicine and nutrition gurus for several decades now. Why use the term mismanaged? Simply looking at obesity rates and incidence of T2DM is enough to prove the point.

Two quick additional points. The vital key is using the best food and nutrition plan you can find to best suit your personal physiology today – as your system adapts and changes, your nutrition plan very likely will need to as well. Customize, customize, customize.

Second, not all those good folks practicing conventional medicine are out to persecute you as a Paleo guy or keto gal; modern medicine offers so much in terms of potential contribution to your overall health, it’s frankly insane to throw the proverbial baby out with the bathwater here. A thoughtful, skillful, listening primary care doc deserves a seat on your health and wellness team, and they’re out there – you might have to do a bit of prospecting to find one, but they’re out there.

Question of the Week: Modifying Recipes

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Now and again the same question will pop up over and over again as I interact with clients, friends, and family; over the past ten days or so the question de jour has focused on modifying recipes.

Of note, I’m not a formally trained chef (though at times I wish I’d followed that path), though I do spend a fair amount of time in the kitchen cooking good food, and invest a fair amount of time thinking about food through the lenses of health impact, nutrition, affordability, and availability.

Playing the Recipe Modification Game: The Easy Part

In a nutshell, my pitch to anyone striving to cook (or learn to cook) great tasting, healthy and nutritious food at home is simple when it comes to recipes. Gravitate toward foods and recipes that you know you (and your family) enjoy, dig in and do a bit of research, roll up your sleeves and start cooking.

When my wife and I approach a new recipe that’s caught our eye for whatever reason, we’ll typically cook it through at least once pretty much as written. If we make any substitutions on a first run, it’s typically subbing in a healthier fat or oil, which is almost always a safe bet from a cooking science and flavor standpoint.

Once that first run is done, and if we find the dish tasty and satisfying, for almost all (see below) recipes I like to dial in spices and flavors we enjoy, which typically in our kitchen means big flavors and more spice, often skewed to a Southwestern or Asian-fusion array of flavors.

Most importantly, we come from the school that insists cooking should be fun, intuitive, and yield healthy foods that taste great. Is every dish a home run? Hell no, but you’ll get better over time, and I can almost guarantee you that when shifting toward a more ancestral nutrition plan, you’ll find that flavors are deeper, richer, and more interesting the further along that path you wander.

I’d challenged you to consider most recipes starting points to work from as you develop your own skills, likes, and dislikes; it’s also key to remember what a chef friend reminds me every month or so – overly complex recipes aren’t always better, most often simply prepared, quality foods win the day.

Here’s a great example – a couple of weeks ago I posted this Grilled Sweet Potato, Onion, and Chile Salad recipe, and it’s delicious as written. Talking about that recipe a week or so later (in the context of the week’s menu plan), my wife comment she found the anise flavor notes of the basil a bit overwhelming, so I swapped it out for cilantro the next time around, and we both thought the recipe was exponentially better. Easy peasy, and we’ve now dialed in a great salad that resonates well with our family palate.

Modify away, customize to your hearts content, and share with the rest of us when your recipe tweaks produce a masterpiece. Your changes won’t all produce home runs, but you’ll score big most of the time…

The Exception to the Recipe Modification Game

As with most things in life, there are exceptions to the recipe modification game – that exception deals with baking.

In a nutshell, baking is much more of a science, historically requiring much more careful measurements of key ingredients to achieve the desired result. The centuries of baking history that have accumulated thus far are of course skewed to using traditional grain-based flours that most following an ancestral eating plan eschew today.

Baking using non-traditional, largely gluten-free components is a relative new game compared to the traditional baking world, and let’s face it, the alternative flours simply don’t behave the same way.

Bottom line, the baking game is one where recipes should be followed to the letter; if you’re going to change one up – do it in baby steps (change one component at a time and see how things turn out), and work from there.

the Older Bolder Life Salsa Sunday 27 May: South Fork Salsa No. 2

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This being a holiday weekend and all, and with great fresh produce beginning to come in now, here’s a truly delectable, quick, and easy table salsa to whip up for your shindig tomorrow.

My wife and I are part of the generation (and geography) that came of age watching Pace Picante Sauce ads on the TV (“get a rope”), seeing salsa offerings multiply like a prairie wildfire at the local grocery during the past decade, and learning to savor local salsa treasures at every hole in the wall taco stand and Tex Mex joint we’ve wandered into over the years.

We still eat a lot of salsa around our camp, and while up until a few years ago during the past thirty years (give or take a few) there’s always been a partially-consumed jar of commercially-prepared salsa in our fridge, now we stir one of our favorites up every week or so (they never really last that long…).

We’ve come to call this one – a perennial favorite – our South Fork Salsa No. 2 given its utility a few years back getting us out of a little scrape with a campground operator on the South Fork of the Snake (Idaho) during a family fly fishing, river run, and camping trip.

There are probably a billion (really) versions of commercially-prepared salsa out there, and yet, we’ve never tasted one that could come close to any number that we cobble together at home (with relative ease, too).

During the winter when decent tomatoes are hard to come by, a 28-ounce can of good tomatoes will suffice here (drain most of the liquid), though vine-ripened, garden-fresh (or farmers’ market) tomatoes make this very nearly a religious experience. The spices, lime juice, and those tender inner celery stalks (and leaves!) really make this one sing.

Salsas are really all about using what produce is fresh, vibrant, and handy – but try this one as written before venturing too far afield…

1 lb fresh roma tomatoes, roughly chopped
1 cup cilantro leaves and tender stems
2-4 serrano peppers, stemmed, roughly chopped, seeds in for more heat
3 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 to 1 medium sweet onion, roughly chopped
2-3 of the small, tender inner stalks of a celery bunch, with leaves, trimmed
2-4 tbsp chile powder (use the good stuff)
1 tsp ground cumin, more to taste
1 tsp kosher salt, more to taste
Juice from 1/2 lime, more to taste

Toss everything into your trusty food processor (large blender in a pinch) and process to your desired consistency, my lovely wife likes it better with some texture.

Taste for salt, chile powder, cumin and lime; adjust to suit.

Serve it up chilled or room temperature; will keep (sealed tightly) in the fridge for up 2-3 weeks, but it’ll never last that long.

Enjoy.