Support more Paleo in restaurants

We're slowly starting to see more restaurants understanding and embracing that people care about what they put in their bodies. You can see this with the slow increase in gluten-free options available at more and more restaurants. While it's a good start, it's not that hard to offer even just a few Paleo options, since most of them already have fresh and whole foods; dairy, grains and legumes are easily left out.

We Want Paleo!

DNA music by Jonathan Coulton

"Liberated carbon, it will spin your wheels."

"Liberated Carbon" video by Andrew C. Revkin.

This Mother’s Day give the gift of brain health

University of British researcher Teresa Liu-Ambrose, PhD, P.T. and her associates published a study in the April 23 Archives of Internal Medicine that revealed older women improved mild problems in thinking and memory by performing resistance exercises. Megan Brooks, writing for Medscape Medical News, summarized the study:

Six months of twice-weekly resistance training (RT) improved executive function, associative memory, and regional patterns of functional brain plasticity in a group of older women with probable mild cognitive impairment (MCI).

In previous work, Liu-Ambrose had reported “improved executive function in cognitively healthy older women” who performed resistance exercises twice a week for one year. The current study suggests an even more powerful effect of resistance training: it can improve mild cognitive dysfunction in just six months.

Maybe this Mother’s Day, consider taking mom to the sporting goods store for some barbells.

Even more good news for mom (and dad)

Image: istockphotoIn addition to resistance training, daily activity is also important for maintaining brain health. A recent study published in the April 24 issue of Neurology found daily physical activity reduces the risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease. Nicholas Bakalar, writing for The New York Times, notes the study:

….included 716 people, average age 82, without cognitive impairment. Each wore a wrist actigraph, a device that measures movement, for about 10 days to establish his or her usual level of daily physical activity. Over the next four years, 71 of them developed Alzheimer’s.

The research found those performing the highest level of physical activity reduced their risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease by half compared to those that were the least active.         

Maybe it’s is time to put the computer down and take mom and dad for a walk. If they have passed on as my parents have, walk in their memory.

Health and happiness often go together

I learned very early how to disguise my weight and how I felt about myself. It was no accident that I found a career in fashion, as I was an expert at styling-using clothing to disguise any and all perceived or imagined flaws. I never wore any fitted clothing, and if I did, it was during the few times that my weight had gone down to where I felt happy. That never lasted. Soon I would be right back to where I had started, plus a few more pounds on top of that. 

Mark's Daily Apple 

The Anthropocene: The beauty & the beast

Humankind is now the most powerful force on the planet. Although when it began is debated , many geologists believe we are in a new geological epoch: the Anthropocene – the age of humankind.

The recent Planet Under Pressure conference commisioned a video of the Anthropocene over the past 250 years. The video comes in two versions. The version above, described as "mesmerizing," can be viewed as illustrating some of the beauty of our time.

However, the narrated version below shows the beast. Keep in mind, there are solutions.

Related Posts

• Welcome to the Anthropocene: Humankind's layer on the Earth
• The Stockholm Memorandum and the strain of the Anthropocene
• The Great Acceleration
• First "State of the Planet Declaration"

Nell Stephenson, Paleo Nutritional Counselor, joins Primal Docs

My passion for teaching everyone to eat the way humans were meant to eat is immeasurable. I found Paleo myself after learning of a latent gluten allergy and it changed my life. I exclusively counsel clients on how to become and stay Paleo in the modern world.

Primal Docs

Learn more about Nell and her work at Paleoista.com. Also, check out her blog and PALEOISTA book.  

When did Paleo-Indians arrive in North America?

The first Paleo-Indians (AKA Paleo-Americans) are believed to have reached the western hemisphere around 14,000 years ago by crossing Beringia, the landmass then connecting Asia to Alaska. (A recent, though controversial analysis, suggests humans reached North America earlier by crossing the north Atlantic ice.)

Now, new findings at an ice age fossil site near Snowmass Village, Colorado hint at possible human migration to North America many thousands of years earlier. Following the sites discovery by a construction worker in October 2010, researchers have recovered 4,800 fossils including a Columbian mammoth. Interestingly, the most curious findings were “soccer ball-sized stones.” According to aspendailynewsonline:

The possible presence of Paleo-Indians arose when Drs. Kirk Johnson and Ian Miller, co-leaders of the dig, and others noticed small boulders where they shouldn’t have been. Several soccer ball-sized stones were found in what was once the middle of the ancient lake. The rocks were next to, above and below a partial mammoth skeleton, Johnson said Wednesday.

The stones may be evidence of mammoth hunting by Paleolithic humans. However, there is one problem: as far as we know, humankind was not in the western hemisphere at that time! The ice-age fossils are “estimated to be between 40,000 and 150,000 years old.” This would put humans in North America 26,000 years earlier than current evidence indicates.

Currently at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science, the animal fossils will be studied extensively including searching for marks that would indicate butchering by humans. If they are found, it will dramatically rewrite the history of human migration during the Middle Paleolithic.

Related Post

Rare look at Paleoindian burial, housing, and nutrition

What will the New Agriculture look like?

Kale field. Image: istockphotoIn the recent article published in Scientific American, Will Organic Food Fail to Feed the World?, David Biello begins by describing the impact of modern agriculture on global ecosystems:

Food for hungry mouths, feed for animals headed to the slaughterhouse, fiber for clothing and even, in some cases, fuel for vehicles—all derive from global agriculture. As a result, in the world's temperate climes human agriculture has supplanted 70 percent of grasslands, 50 percent of savannas and 45 percent of temperate forests. (emphasis added)

To determine if organic agriculture alone could feed the world, Verena Seufert of McGill University in Montreal and her colleagues “performed and analysis of 66 studies comparing conventional and organic methods across 34 different crop species.” From the study, Comparing the yields of organic and conventional agriculture, published last month in Nature:

Our analysis of available data shows that, overall, organic yields are typically lower than conventional yields. But these yield differences are highly contextual, depending on system and site characteristics, and range from 5% lower organic yields (rain-fed legumes and perennials on weak-acidic to weak-alkaline soils), 13% lower yields (when best organic practices are used), to 34% lower yields (when the conventional and organic systems are most comparable). Under certain conditions—that is, with good management practices, particular crop types and growing conditions—organic systems can thus nearly match conventional yields, whereas under others it at present cannot. (emphasis added)

At the end of the Scientific American article, Seufert concludes:

Current conventional agriculture is one of the major threats to the environment and degrades the very natural resources it depends on. We thus need to change the way we produce our food. … Given the current precarious situation of agriculture, we should assess many alternative management systems, including conventional, organic, other agro-ecological and possibly hybrid systems to identify the best options to improve the way we produce our food. (emphasis added)

Solar Dynamics Observatory's revealing false color image of the sun

A full-disk multiwavelength extreme ultraviolet image of the sun taken by SDO on March 30, 2010. False colors trace different gas temperatures. Reds are relatively cool (about 60,000 Kelvin, or 107,540 F); blues and greens are hotter (greater than 1 million Kelvin, or 1,799,540 F). Credit: NASA/Goddard/SDO AIA Team

In February 2010, NASA launched the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO), “the most advanced spacecraft ever designed to study the sun.” NASA’s mission for SDO:

During its five-year mission, it will examine the sun's magnetic field and also provide a better understanding of the role the sun plays in Earth's atmospheric chemistry and climate. Since launch, engineers have been conducting testing and verification of the spacecraft’s components. Now fully operational, SDO will provide images with clarity 10 times better than high-definition television and will return more comprehensive science data faster than any other solar observing spacecraft.

SDO will provide critical data that will improve the ability to predict these space weather events. NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., built, operates and manages the SDO spacecraft for the agency’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington.

Of tissue products and trees

We make decisions that impact our world on a daily basis, even when we buy tissue. The Natural Resources Defense Council recently analyzed tissue products produced by various companies. The following factors where considered: percent recycled, percent post-consumer, and the bleaching process used.

Percent post-consumer refers to the percentage of fibers “recovered from paper that was previously used by consumers and would otherwise have been dumped into a landfill or an incinerator.” The bleaching process involved in creating of the tissue product varies by the amount of chlorine used: processed chlorine-free (PCF) and elemental chlorine-free (ECF). Interestingly, none of the products were totally chlorine-free.

From this analysis, NRDC developed a Shopper’s Guide to Home Tissue Products, which recommends the tissue products to buy and the ones to AVOID.

The bottom line:

• AVOID Kleenex, Puffs facial tissue
• AVOID Charmin, Cottonelle toilet paper
• AVOID Bounty, Viva paper towels
• AVOID Bounty, Kleenex napkins

To learn which tissue products NRDC found acceptable, visit the Shopper’s Guide. Is it worth it? According to NRDC:

If every household in the United States replaced just one box of virgin fiber facial tissues … one roll of virgin fiber toilet paper .... one roll of virgin fiber paper towels …. one package of virgin fiber napkins … 

We could save a total of 2,130,900 trees. That’s a lot of trees.

Another great Primal success story

For years I repeatedly followed the conventional ritual of low-fat, low-calorie dieting paired with exercise to lose weight. With each attempt I would lose weight, sometimes as much as a few dozen pounds at a time. However, constant hunger eventually won out over my best efforts to eat less while exercising more (as prescribed by the “calories in, calories out” mindset). I would regain the lost weight and then some. When New Year’s came along, I would resolve myself to try harder than the previous attempt. The sad part is that each time I expected different results doing roughly the same thing. Unfortunately, after losing and regaining the weight three times, I quit caring about my own health, even despite my wife’s concerns.

Read the rest at Mark's Daily Apple