Product Review: Trader Joe's Uncured Corned Beef

Just in time for St. Patty's Day, they featured this product in the Fearless Flyer.  I tried it in a salad and cooked with eggs.  Do not recommend.  It was not yummy.

Trader Joe's Grass Fed Angus (review)

The price of good meat seems to be going up nowadays, but if that's what it takes not to eat a giant mouthful of agribusiness corn...

The meat has a decent taste and texture for previously frozen stuff, even though I quick-defrosted it using cold water in the sink.  The bottom picture shows my plate, with sauteed onions, garlic and jalapenos and sliced Cambazola.

Book Review - Atkins for Life Low-Carb Cookbook

I got Atkins for Life Low-Carb Cookbook (Atkins et al, 2004) on half.com for less than six bucks. It is a large hardcover book with lots of pictures and recipes, good sidebars on techniques and lots of cool recipes with variations. It definitely falls short in that it offers plenty of recipes made with low-carb mixes (Frankenfoods), but I've tried three recipes and been inspired.

The Instinct Diet - Book Review

The Instinct Diet by Susan B. Roberts, Ph.D. and Betty Kelly Sargent started off auspiciously. The author has a distinguished academic pedigree and tries to base her discussion of five chosen "food instincts" on research.
The instincts are hunger, availability, the craving for calorie density, familiarity and variety. There is an intelligent concise discussion of each of these instincts and how to cope with them in our world. So far, very interesting.
I could almost recommend the book based on that discussion, but it falls very very short when it come to the diet itself. The good doctor advocates plenty of cereal grains, including refined ones, although we know for certain that grain foods do not satisfy and do qualify as healthy foods that will help us lose fat. Unfortunately her plan also includes artificial sweeteners.

The Gourmet Prescription by Deborah Friedson Chud, M.D.

The Gourmet Prescription by Deborah Friedson Chud, M.D. is an absolutely lovely cookbook for an insulin-controlled diet. It is meant to be a gourmet addition to the glut of cookbooks on this topic, and it is certainly geared towards a certain audience in that many of the recipes use a stovetop smoker. They're not cheap and they're not small.
The author is very excited about using pre-made sauces and marinades, and her favorites use the smoker. I thought it was an interesting idea, but since I don't have a smoker, I roasted some of the ingredients she calls for and made an onion and garlic sauce that came out very nicely.
It is a pretty book with nice photos of some of the ingredients and recipes, but for once it seems that the pictures are actually of the recipes, which are a little too low in fat for my liking. Some of the pictures look dry and forlorn to me.

Dr. Gundry's Diet Evolution - Review

This book was recommended by my client Megan A.

Dr. Gundry's plan has three phases. Phase 1 is similar to Atkins Induction, but allows a glass of red wine for women and two for men every day. I think that is excessive for people wanting to lose fat, especially women. Phase 2 cuts the meat and nuts/seeds portions in half and adds in a ton more veggies. Dr. Gundry says his plan is the bridge between Atkins and Ornish, but that just sounds like marketing. Phase 3 is almost all raw vegan. He says to eat raw green vegetables until you're not hungry. I can get behind that. It is the best way to stop a binge - IF you're disciplined enough.

His explanation for these phases is that each one mirrors the eating of ancient humans, going back further and further, and doing so will turn off the genes that would have killed you off if you followed your instincts to eat calorie-dense sweet foods and sit around. I don't know if that's true either, as I'm always trying to read about exactly how much we know of diets in any ancient time. For instance, Atkins Induction and Dr. Gundry's Phase 1 are supposed to be something like the hunter-gatherer diets. I read somewhere recently that most of our knowledge of hunter-gatherer diets comes from studies of surviving modern h-g cultures, not necessarily a record in the fossils or something like that. This author pointed out that men were the researchers, and were only allowed to speak with the men of the h-g tribes, which could have led to underreporting of the food contributions of women. They were likely to be fruits and grains. A lot to think about, even if I have seen a lot of people lose fat on the "caveman diet" or similar, including myself.

There are a few other points that I'm going to look around and read more about. Dr. Gundry says that you should go exercise before breakfast because our ancestors would have done so in order to find food.

Unfortunately for this almost-interesting book, the good doctor's style seems tailored to piss off any smart people and condescend to any of those just below average people.

If you're a diet book lover like me, check it out of the library. But don't go using any of the recipes with protein powders and artificial sweeteners.

Magazine Review - Fitness RX for Women August 2009

I loved this magazine because it reported on current research and tried to structure diets and exercise programs around research. I let my subscription lapse because the magazine was reprinting so much of its content.

I picked up this month's issue because Jackie Warner was on the cover and she's a lot of fun, but the no-nonsense type. Well, it turns out that the article about her reused some of the content from their last article about her, which has to be less than six months old. Several of the blurbs on research were reprints again.

To be fair, they used some pictures and exercise descriptions from old workouts and reorganized them in a different way for a new butt workout. I didn't think that was a big deal, but overall I was disappointed and won't be buying the magazine again unless I flip through it and see new content.

On the other hand, their website is kinda cool.

Organic Chicken at Whole Foods - Rosie vs. Mary

Normally I buy Mary's Air Chilled Organic jumbo packs of chicken pieces. This time, I grabbed Rosie's Organic chicken leg packs, and unfortunately I was disappointed. The texture of the Rosie's was rubbery, even though I baked it using the same oil, the same tempurature. The taste was also slightly less "chicken-y" than Mary's.

Reading: Foods that Fight Pain

by Neal Barnard, M.D. It looks like Dr. Barnard is a Dr. Dean Ornish disciple because he mentions him over and over again, has an endorsement from him above the title, and advocates an extremely low fat vegetarian diet for pain. I find it crazy that he speaks against fish and olive oil. He's extremely angry at the dairy industry, which is probably justified, but he focuses on the supposed evils of animal protein and fat instead of animal abuse and antibiotics.
I can get behind Dr. Barnard when he recommends proper sleep and exercise.

OVERALL VERDICT: skip it.

Link to Mark Bittman's salads - wow

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/22/dining/22mlist.html?_r=1&emc=eta1

I really love this guy's fun easy recipes. I made number 18 and it was fabulous.