Mark's Daily Apple

A Quick Guide to Edible Seeds

Seeds get a whole lot of superficial love around here, but not much specificity. A quick review of our archives reveals that we have yet to really delve into what we include as one of the five basic Primal staples. Meat, vegetables, fruit, and nuts have all been discussed ad nauseum (with more to come, no doubt), but seeds? Barely a peep. Oh, sure, while I constantly rail against the non-edible seeds (well, technically they can be eaten, but never in the raw state) – cereal grains and legumes – and question whether we should be eating certain seeds at all, I think I’m overdue for a celebration of (or a critical look at) all the other edible seeds to which I allude so often.

Posted By: Mark Sisson

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Dear Mark: Phenylketonurics and Chewing Gum

Dear Mark,

I’ve gone Primal and am loving it! But now you’ve got me questioning everything – even my beloved gum. I’m an avid chewer of the stuff and had never thought twice about. I took a closer look recently and saw all kinds of things I didn’t recognize including a warning about phenylketonurics. What are they and what about all the artificial sweeteners? Would Grok chew gum? If so, what are the healthiest options?

Posted By: Mark Sisson

26

The Primal Blueprint Guide to Dining Out

Primal living in a decidedly modern world is mostly awesome, but there are difficult moments we’ve all faced. Things like having to explain the jar of coconut oil and greasy spoon we keep at our office desks, or facing the strange looks we get when doing lunges down the street, pull-ups on tree branches, box jumps on park benches, and overhead presses with our pre-adolescent children – those little moments where you and everyone around you suddenly realize that maybe you’re just slightly different from the “norm.” A bit off, as it were. Of course, we often pride ourselves on our individualism, on our constant skepticism of Conventional Wisdom (especially diet- and fitness-related). If I wasn’t different (or at least willing to consider alternative viewpoints), I might never have questioned the bread-and-ice-cream-fueled chronic cardio way of life that was killing me. If you guys weren’t inherent skeptics, you probably never would have found your way to my blog. If a guy like Sterling scoffed at the supposed preposterousness of eating fat to lose fat, he’d probably still be unhealthy.

Posted By: Mark Sisson

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How to Render Beef Tallow

As I wrote yesterday’s post, I realized that I’d never actually made my own beef tallow from scratch. I’ve collected plenty of bacon grease in my day, and I’ve made schmaltz and used beef drippings from roasts as cooking fats, but never beef tallow. In fact, I almost never hear about it, even in Primal circles. It’s either lard, duck fat, or ghee getting all the attention. Hey, those are all great, delicious fats, and they deserve their prestige, but I like sticking up for the little guy. I like an underdog. In this case, of course, the little guy comes courtesy of a big cloven-hoofed ungulate.

To render beef tallow, you need to get your hands on some raw beef fat.

Posted By: Mark Sisson

18

A Primal Primer: Animal Fats

Animal fats have recently been implicated as the cause of heart disease, obesity and, in a roundabout convoluted stretch of logic, global warming. If you let health officials tell it, they’re pure evil. Reviled, shunned, and lambasted by the general public (thanks to less-then-sterling endorsements by health officials), animal fats have really gotten a bad rap.

It wasn’t always this way.

Posted By: Mark Sisson

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