Marks Daily Apple
Serving up health and fitness insights (daily, of course) with a side of irreverence.

Archive for October, 2009

16 Oct

Contest Video: Bodyweight Basics

As part of our ongoing Primal Blueprint Fitness Video Contest reader Peter Nathan submitted his interpretation of Primal Blueprint bodyweight exercises (the current theme). He is in the running for a cash and prize package worth $400 and has a one in four shot of winning. If you’d like to be featured on Mark’s Daily Apple for a chance to win Primal gear read the Primal Blueprint contest details and submit your video (fitness or recipe), real life Primal story or Primal recipe soon!

Check back tomorrow for a Worker Bee culinary creation of a reader’s Primal recipe submitted as part of the Primal Blueprint Cookbook Contest (current theme: A Primal Breakfast).

Grok on!

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16 Oct

Announcement: New Recipe Theme for the Cookbook Contest

grok recipe book 1

Enter your best Primal Blueprint recipes for your chance to win prizes and be featured in the Reader-Created Cookbook

The new theme: A Primal Breakfast

We’ve received some delicious Primal beef recipes from readers:

Korean-Style Short Ribs

Carne Asada

And we have a few more reader-submitted beef recipes in the pipeline, including one that will be published tomorrow.

All of these recipes will be featured in the Reader-Created Primal Blueprint Cookbook and the entrants have a chance to win an über cool Primal prize package.

If you’d like to participate in this contest send in your own favorite Primal recipes that relate to the current theme – A Primal Breakfast. Click here for all the details.

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15 Oct

How to Improve Your Posture

spineJust because Conventional Wisdom seems to get almost everything wrong when it comes to effective fitness, proper human nutrition, and preventing degenerative diseases, it doesn’t necessarily follow that all official recommendations and prescriptions are faulty. Cigarettes are bad for your health, for example, and drinking and driving actually do not mix. Those are two obvious examples of CW getting it right, and there are definitely a few others, but today, I’m mostly interested in the popular concept of good posture. What is posture? Is “good posture,” as defined by chiropractors, teachers, office ergonomic consultants, drill sergeants, and Grandma (“straighten up, sonny!”), actually good for us? Or have the experts gotten it wrong, once again? Looking around me, if people are listening to the professional advice, it’s bad advice. Slumping, slouching – I see it everywhere, every day, and not just when people are sitting. Can we apply the Primal Blueprint approach to posture and toss it all out?

14 Oct

Cooking As a Spectator Sport

bedpotatoUnless you live in a cave (not that I would frown upon that), you’re at least somewhat familiar with the phenomenon of Food Network and other offshoot culinary-focused programming. Since the advent of cable television every hobby, interest, niche and daily pastime has been assigned its own channel with round the clock exposition of every conceivable detail. Cooking has been no exception. In fact, the kitchen genre has caught on so much that it’s graduated to network day and evening as well. We’re apparently entranced by watching other people make food – and likely by the images of the food itself. (I’ve heard these shows referred to as “food porn” for their attractive but gratuitous displays.) I’m not much of a T.V. follower, but for years the craze has somewhat confounded me.

13 Oct

Meat Lover’s Guide to Marinating Meat (plus 10 Primal Marinades)

steakmarinadeA Primal commitment to regular consumption of pastured, organic (expensive/hard-to-find) meats often means buying in bulk when a good price presents itself. Grass-fed steak runs rather pricey, so the average Grok on a budget can’t survive buying a juicy ribeye from Whole Foods every night; he’s got to pick his spots and stock up when he can. If that means buying fifteen pounds of New Zealand lamb leg steaks in a single go just because they dropped to four bucks a pound, so be it. Thus, we’re left with freezers full of identical cuts of steak, roasts, and slabs of meat, along with a serious conundrum: what the heck do we do with all that meat? Maybe good meat can stand on its own merit (along with a bit of salt and pepper), but even the purest of carnivores will eventually tire of eating the same cut prepared the same way, day after day. And if you’ve got picky kids or spouses, forget about serving the same roast or the same chicken thigh over and over. You’ve got to switch flavors up or risk burn out – and possible regression to fast food and frozen dinners.

Enter Primal marinades.

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