
For today’s edition of Dear Mark, I’m answering 14 questions. The first concerns the effect of alcohol intake on LDL. Does it increase it or lower it (or both)? Next, what’s the best liverwurst to eat? After that, I discuss whether drinking coffee with milk makes the coffee antioxidants useless, followed by a quick list of good snacks for kids. The last ten questions concern cycling high-carb feeds on low-carb diets. They all come from one reader, and they’re very specific and well-constructed.
Let’s go:
Mark, I truly appreciate the blog. I’d like to know your thoughts on the correlation, if any, between alcohol consumption and high cholesterol (particularly LDL). I’ve been following an 80-20 Primal lifestyle for about 4 years, but have had stubbornly high cholesterol levels to the point where my PCP wants to put me on a statin. Thanks again for all you do!
Full-on alcoholics tend to have shockingly low LDL levels. This isn’t good; LDL particles, remember, serve important immune functions. But the relationship seems to hold at more moderate levels of intake, too. In middle-aged Japanese men, for example, alcohol intake predicted lower LDL levels.
Alcohol also increases HDL levels, even acutely—just a single dose of alcohol increases it.
This jibes with the usually protective association between alcohol intake and heart disease, whether it’s postmenopausal women, Spanish men, or German adults.
Of course, there’s evidence that your genetics determine the effect of alcohol on LDL. In folks with the ApoE2 gene, alcohol lowers LDL. In those with the ApoE4 gene, alcohol increases it.
Mark, I would like to know if liverwurst is an ok way to get some organ meat, is it primal? My wife and I can’t stand organs by themselves, so I thought this may be a way to get some and we like it. I would guess that there are varying qualities and types, so guidance on how to pick would be great. I also enjoy scrapple, same question, is it primal and how to choose the best.
Best liverwurst I’ve ever had comes from US Wellness. It’s 50% beef trim, 20% liver, 15% heart, 15% kidney. All grass-fed. They also have a braunschweiger that’s 60% trim and 40% liver.
Traditional scrapple was great: pig parts, buckwheat (not a grain, not wheat), and bone broth cooked down into sort of a pork polenta that’s chilled and pan-fried. These days, scrapple is more of a mixed bag, since you get it in restaurants and they’ve started using wheat flour and cornmeal instead of buckwheat. If you’re trying to avoid wheat flour—as you probably should—the trick is finding a place that makes scrapple with buckwheat and/or cornmeal.
Or just make your own.
Hi Mark, almost every month I hear new conflicting information about whether coffee is healthy or not. What are your current thoughts on coffee and is it true that the antioxidants in coffee lose their power when consumed with milk?
My stance on coffee is resolute: It is a public good. It’s fueled revolutions and scientific discoveries. Just imagine the wondrous developments that’d result if the ancient Greeks, Romans, and Egyptians had used coffee. Or what if the Mongols had adopted coffee drinking after sacking Baghdad—would we all be drinking fermented mare milk, eating saddle meat (or not), and getting around on horseback? Fun to think about.
As to milk binding the antioxidants and rendering them useless, I wouldn’t worry. A 2010 study found that only non-dairy creamer slowed the absorption of coffee polyphenols. Real milk added to coffee had no effect. Even then, the non-dairy creamer only delayed the appearance of the polyphenols in the blood. They still got there. It just took them awhile.
I would like to see more recipes for primal snacks for my kids…and me too!. It breaks my heart to see them devour a bag of Oreos and then deal with the resulting poor behaviour.
I can do a comprehensive post in the future, but for now, some easy grab-and-go options you might not have considered.
Jerky. A classic.
Epic Bars are pretty good. Great ingredients, almost exclusively grass-fed/pastured animals. They don’t shy away from fat. A mix of sweet-savory and savory flavors.
Aforementioned US Wellness liverwurst and braunschweiger. Get those kids to eat liver.
Hard boiled eggs.
Cheese. Hard, aged ones travel well.
Pork rinds. Make sure you get the ones cooked in their own fat. Beware vegetable oils in the ingredients list.
Apples.
Carrots.
Also, just trust your kids. They’re usually more adventurous than we assume. You’d be surprised what happens when you plop a cross section of a cow femur loaded with roasted marrow in front of a 5 year old.
Hey Mark, I would like to know know more about how to properly utilize carb-cycling (CC) while integrating intermittent fasting (IF).
1. With CC how do you determine which days to crank up carbs? Every day you lift? Only on Heavy lift days?
2. Do you lose the carb-feed benefits window if you lift in the morning, then fast until noon?
3. Carbs at night when training only in the mornings? Are they effective?
4. What about carb sources with high fat with carb cycling?
5. How many grams of fat allowed on a high carb day?
6. Are there better fat sources than other on high carb days?
7. Is there a specific time of day to eat the limited fat on high carb days?
8. How to determine which carbs are right for you? Sweet potatoes, white potatoes? Rice? Any experiments?
9. Should you have carbs on rest days while Carb Cycling? If so, how many grams?
10. Should fat ever be mixed with carbs? Why or Why not?
That was quite a series of questions. I’ll do a quick run through and maybe expand in the future.
That’s it for this week, folks. Thanks for reading and be sure to help out with your own input down below.
If you'd like to add an avatar to all of your comments click here!
Thanks for the liverwurst recommendation! I love chicken livers but have a hard time with beef liver. Liverwurst from the grocery store deli usually has questionable ingredients, if it’s available at all. I’ll have to try the U.S. Wellness liverwurst…have been thinking about checking them out anyway. Another way to get more organ meats is to buy ground beef with organ meat. I buy from some local farmers that offer pastured ground beef with 20% organ meat. I personally think it tastes delicious made into a burger…very flavorful, but you don’t know it’s organ meat. And it you season it to make taco meat, or meatballs, no one can tell. And come to think of it, little meatballs could be a great kid snack!
I agree about the beef liver. I don’t really like chicken liver on its own either, but I do like liverwurst, braunschweiger, pate, etc. The additional seasonings make all the difference in palatability.
Wonderful line-up of questions – and replies. I especially appreciate the concise run-through on carb cycling!
Regarding kids scarfing a bag of Oreos, with younger kids the secret is just don’t buy that sort of thing in the first place. With older kids you have to cross your fingers and hope the earlier training “took.” We’ve never kept soda on hand, for instance, and to this day neither of my kids (now adults) are soda drinkers. The best time to form positive and hopefully lasting food habits is while you control what your kids eat and drink.
I totally agree Shary, we lived out on a farm until the kids were mid-teens and we never had soda, chips, candy or anything like that in the house and I notice now that they are in their 20’s and home owners, they don’t eat or keep that stuff in their homes either.
Love liverwurst! You can also saute up some finely chopped onion and mushroom then sear up a nice steak. Toss the liverwurst on the steak and then the mushroom onion mix on that. It’s delicious!
Mmmmmmmmm. Mashed potatoes with butter and cream… Mmmmmmmm….
The biggest reason to be careful with alcohol? Mark Twain said it best:
Willpower lasts about two weeks, and is soluble in alcohol.
I had been a heavy drinker until Jan 2017. I read that this can elevate HDLs. My HDLs were super high – 100-125mg/dl so while my LDLs were also high, 139, and total cholesterol was 252, the ratio of HDL to LDL was normal. I’ve cut way back to see if I can get everything down.
Do you know your APOE genotype? I’m APOE 3/4 and have found through experimentation that I’m more sensitive to saturated fat, especially in the presence of low carb intake. It’s not exactly black and white for APOE4s, but there isn’t really all that much compelling research or evidence that alcohol moves the needle dramatically one way or the other. I’m much happier shaving a bit of saturated fat and enjoying my half glass of red wine every night 🙂
I love the liverwurst from US Wellness! I ate it pretty regularly until I had my ferritin level tested and it was super high. I remember Chris Kresser saying iron overload is surprisingly common in his practice and I wonder if it’s because his patients tend to be traditional diet enthusiasts who eat a lot of liver. I had to cut out high iron foods, at least for now, until I can get my ferritin levels down.
Our four-year-old loves hard-boiled eggs. He loves watching me boil them, he loves dyeing them, he loves hunting for them (I know it’s the week after Easter, but he demands this year round) and he loves eating the whites. He always gives me the yolk. Still, he gets a lot of pleasure from denying things to me, so he’ll probably start eating the yolks soon enough.
Just curious if the benefits of coconut milk in coffee out weigh the fact that it’s not dairy?
You’ve just gained a new reader. Really enjoying your writing style. I found it very interesting that no-dairy creamer just slow down the absorption of coffee polyphenols. Looking forward reading your other blog posts.
Awesome, Shaun. Thanks, and welcome to the Primal community!
Really useful advice. I’m a realistic enough to know I will never stop drinking but have hopefully, with age, developed the ability to recognize that critical tipping point during a night out where a strategic exit is going to make your life 200% easier the next day. To give a few examples:
• Saturday night at the pub, five pints in and you bought the last round. It’s 10.15 and if you leave now you can still catch the Football highlights
• Work Christmas meal, as you leave the restaurant someone shouts “Right who’s clubbing!”
• Meal at friends and having already poured you one generously-large dram you’re host weaves over Glenfiddich in hand.. ….”Top up sir??”
Hey, great blog. Can you help me abit? I have heard that coffee decreases calcium in body. Is that true..?