Mark's Daily Apple

The Many Uses of Junk Food

A comment on my recent Coca-Cola post mentioned something I’d never previously considered: what if there were legitimate uses for un-Primal “food” items, things like bread, rice, peanut butter, or corn, that didn’t involve putting them in our mouths, chewing, and swallowing? In a previous post on pantry Primalizing, I suggested newcomers donate their off-limits food to those in need. That remains a viable option, but maybe, just maybe, it makes sense to keep a few select items on hand – not to eat, though.

The commenter suggested using cola to clean rust off weights, which I loved for its utter practicality and for being a direct refutation of what soda stands for. Here was a reader co-opting an egregious, offensive, fructosey dietary force to enable a healthy lifestyle, literally using soda to combat soda-induced health problems. Just as the fructose in cola accumulates in the liver and triggers insulin resistance, intense weight training (with shiny, rust-free weights!) improves insulin sensitivity. Pretty perfect, I’d say.

The following ideas and examples may not be so perfectly Primal, but they do represent good ways to extract non-culinary uses out of supposedly culinary items. If you’ve got any of these Neolithic foods laying around, don’t toss them out – yet! You may learn something useful.

Posted By: Mark Sisson

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Dear Mark: Contest Questions

For this week’s post I’m dipping into the hundreds of comments-questions I received for the Contest last month. Although I could highlight only a few for the winning set, I appreciated all your responses and will try to cover as many as possible in upcoming posts. Thanks, everybody!

Mark,

As part of my more primal lifestyle I’m trying to cut out carbs and eating more vegetables. I’m currently eating 5 cups of broccoli with 3oz of shrimp and olive oil with a pinch of salt as a meal. Here’s a link to the “recipe”. That’s a whopping 56 grams of carbs a meal. Is that too much carbs even if it’s coming from vegetables? I am fairly lean but am trying to burn a bit more fat.

Posted By: Mark Sisson

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Is Conventional Wisdom Set in Stone?

In previous posts and with offhand comments, I’ve mentioned our (mostly) diametric opposition to Conventional Wisdom. I say “mostly” because when it comes to diet, there are bound to be a few areas that everyone agrees with. Real food that doesn’t come in a box is best – I can’t think of any diet book or nutritional “expert,” vegan or carnivore alike, that would say differently. Vegetables can and should be enjoyed freely – I’d even wager that most Primal eaters consume far more vegetables than your average pasta vegetarian. And, while we’re not fruitarians (you’d probably have to go back three or four million years to find a frugivorous hominoid that may be a common ancestor), we modern Primals do eat reasonable amounts of certain fruits. The areas where we virulently disagree – on saturated fat (and dietary fat in general), on red meat, on grains and legumes – are incredibly divisive. You can shun processed foods and eat organic and no one will argue against it, but once you bust out the jar of freshly rendered lard, the bacon, and the eight egg omelets while failing to produce a single cereal grain-based item, everyone becomes a nutritionist/cardiologist/dietitian.

Posted By: Mark Sisson

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Pictures Don’t Tell the Whole Story

Mark, I just got back from my endocrinology appointment when I saw the latest contest.

I’m no picture of health yet but things are looking a heck of a lot better than they did before I started on Primal Blueprint.

I’ll start at the beginning. Six months ago my type II Diabetes was completely out of control, I’ll admit I wasn’t taking the best care of myself -moving, starting up a new research lab, you know “life” had gotten in the way of finding time to eat right and exercise. On top of that I was taking medication for high blood pressure and a birth control pill that made me even more insulin resistant and making it so that none of my oral medications for the diabetes worked anymore. In short, I felt like crap and looked it too.

Posted By: Mark Sisson

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Smart Fuel: Palm Oil

Of the tropical oils, coconut gets the most attention, while palm oil gets mostly ignored. The virgin coconut oil has a fairly distinct flavor, but it’s one most people are familiar with, and it lends itself well to both sweet and savory dishes. Palm oil, especially the virgin red variety that gets all the attention for its positive health effects, also has a distinct flavor, but it’s one many people seem to dislike, probably because it’s so unfamiliar (in the US, at least; worldwide, palm oil is the most widely used cooking oil) to our palates. Scott Kustes had a guest post awhile back discussing the tropical oils, but I thought it would be good to give a short, comprehensive primer on the multiple varieties of palm oil.

Posted By: Mark Sisson

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