http://www.thekitchn.com/feedburnermain
Drinking herbal, caffeine-free teas, also known as tisanes, is a wonderful way to wind down at the end of a long day. And while it’s convenient to pick up a box of herbal tea bags or a relaxing loose-leaf blend, it’s a whole lot more fun to create your own custom mix. It also happens to be quite easy to do.
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The other day my mom asked me where I learned to cook (because we both know it certainly wasn’t from her). I didn’t have to think too long for an answer: “From PBS and cookbooks,” I said. One of my favorite PBS shows, which I later had the chance to work on, was Ming Tsai’s Simply Ming. That’s where I learned how to tea-smoke fish, braise short ribs, and make Ming’s house 50-50 rice.
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My dog, Goblin, is what dog trainers like to call “food-motivated.” She will do anything for a morsel of something good and always tries out her most plaintive puppy dog eyes on every friend who comes to visit for dinner. It’s kind of pathetic — especially since begging for food off our plates has never, ever worked. But the endearing-slash-annoying thing about dogs that every dog lover knows is that they never stop hoping.
If I could listen in on Goblin’s most misguided inner monologue, I think it would sound a little something like this.
http://www.thekitchn.com/feedburnermain
We love the Oscars as much as anyone else, and with less than two weeks to go until we find out this year’s winners, we’re getting in the mood by reviewing some of our favorite flicks. Of course, we wanted to put our own unique spin on the nominees — starting with The Martian.
Starring Matt Damon as Mark Watney, a NASA crew member left for dead during an aborted mission to Mars, the film is up for six awards, including Best Picture. The central struggle of the movie, which based on the novel by Andy Weir, a computer programmer who originally self-published the book online, is how Watney will keep himself alive. The answer (spoiler alert!) is potatoes, which Watney grows himself using some, er, creative methods. He mostly eats the potatoes microwaved, with whatever condiments he has available — but we’ve got a few better ideas for how to cook your taters.
http://chriskresser.com/
Over the last several years I’ve written extensively about the importance of nutrition, physical activity, sleep, stress management, social support, play, and a sense of purpose to our health and well-being.
Why are these factors so important? Because they are the primary drivers of chronic disease, which is by far the leading cause of death in the industrialized world. If you’re interested in prolonging your lifespan, the name of the game is, quite simply, avoiding chronic disease for as long as possible.
There’s another major factor that contributes to chronic disease that I haven’t written as much about yet I’ve come to believe is every bit as important (if not more so, in some cases) than those I just mentioned above: environmental toxins.
In a recent article in The New York Times, Nicholas Kristof points out that we’re exposed to hundreds of these toxins on a daily basis, most of which are completely invisible—and either ignored or underappreciated by the conventional media and medical establishment:
Scientists have identified more than 200 industrial chemicals—from pesticides, flame retardants, jet fuel—as well as neurotoxins like lead in the blood or breast milk of Americans, indeed, in people all over our planet.
These have been linked to cancer, genital deformities, lower sperm count, obesity, and diminished I.Q. Medical organizations from the President’s Cancer Panel to the International Federation of Gynecology and Obstetrics have demanded tougher regulations or warned people to avoid them, and the cancer panel has warned that “to a disturbing extent, babies are born ‘pre-polluted.’”
They have all been drowned out by chemical industry lobbyists.
These lobbyists have been so effective over the years that our current laws permit companies to introduce new chemicals into our environment (which inevitably end up in our food, air, and water) without any testing to show that they are safe.
In other words, chemicals are “innocent until proven guilty.”
That’s bad enough. But even when the chemicals are proven guilty, or at least strong concern about their effect on our health is raised, nothing happens.
Americans have over 200 toxic chemicals in their blood. Learn 3 ways to protect yourself and your family.
The chemicals Kristof mentions above are perfect examples. BPA, pesticides, flame retardants, and other chemicals that are commonly found in our food, food packaging, clothing, furniture, and household materials have been linked to numerous diseases in adults, and most disturbingly, lifelong developmental changes in children.
Yet these chemicals continue to be used, and the media gives very little attention to the problem. From the same article:
Americans are panicking about the mosquito-borne Zika virus and the prospect that widespread infection may reach the United States. That’s a legitimate concern, but public health experts say that toxic substances around us seem to pose an even greater threat.
“I cannot imagine that Zika virus will damage any more than a small fraction of the total number of children who are damaged by lead in deteriorated, poor housing in the United States,” says Dr. Philip Landrigan, a prominent pediatrician and the dean for global health at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.
“Lead, mercury, PCBs, flame retardants and pesticides cause prenatal brain damage to tens of thousands of children in this country every year,” he noted.
Kristof argues that we need a new public health revolution with the goal of protecting babies and children from the harmful effects of these toxic chemicals.
I couldn’t agree more.
As a parent and a clinician, I’m deeply concerned about the effect of toxins on our children’s health. We need laws that protect our kids, not corporations. Companies should be forced to prove that a chemical is safe before introducing it—instead of using our children as unwitting test subjects in an uncontrolled, society-wide scientific experiment.
In the meantime, what can we do as parents to protect our kids (and ourselves) from exposure to these chemicals? Here are the three most important places to start:
I’ll be writing more on this subject in the future because I’ve become increasingly convinced that it’s a significant—and underrated—cause of chronic disease, and a threat to our children’s future.
Now I’d like to hear from you. What steps have you taken to reduce your exposure to toxins? Have you noticed an improvement in your health or the health of your family? Let us know in the comments section.
http://www.marksdailyapple.com/
No, you yourself can’t save the world. You personally won’t make a dent in the climate, or the amount of plastic in the ocean, or the number of cute baby seals that are bludgeoned to death. But collectively, we can. The choices we make, the things we value, the food we eat, the way our food is raised, who we buy our food from, and how we conduct our day-to-day lives in attempted harmony with our Primal natures really does seem to mesh well with the environment. Multiply those small personal choices by millions of readers (and their dollars) and you get real change.
I’m not putting any extra pressure on you. These are things you’re already doing, by and large. These are the ways going Primal can actually help, not harm, the environment.
The popular arguments against the environmental merits of grass-fed beef are that it’s too inefficient. You simply can’t support enough animals on open grassland, certainly not enough to “feed the world.” Rotational grazing renders those arguments null and void. Here’s how it works:
You pack the animals close together on single paddocks. They graze intensively, not extensively. They eat everything on the paddock to which they’re confined, even the unpalatable but aggressive weeds, rather than range around nibbling their favorite foods all over.
After the paddock is clear, the animals move to the next one. They leave behind a wealth of nutrient-dense fertilizer that’s been stamped into the soil. Since the grass has been eaten, the roots die, decompose, and further enrich the soil.
By the time they circle back around to the original paddock, the grass has regrown and the soil is fully fertilized.
This isn’t a new way to feed herbivores. It’s how wild herbivores behave in natural settings. In the African savannah, zebras stick together to avoid big cats. In the Arctic, caribou gather in herds to avoid wolves. And the recent reintroduction of wolves into Yellowstone actually restored the environment by promoting a kind of “forced rotational grazing” in elk.
Holistic management of livestock through rotational grazing has a ton of evidence in its favor, and more and more of your favorite farmers are adopting it. There’s a decent chance the local grass-fed beef you buy at the farmer’s market was raised using rotational grazing. If so, you’re helping.
There’s a massive island of plastic out in the ocean. It may not be a literal island—a solid floating mass of congealed candy wrappers, ziploc bags, and milk cartons—but it’s arguably worse than that. It’s closer to an amorphous swirling vortex of microplastics slowly breaking down and showing up in the seafood you eat. Now, I’m all for the rise of a plastic-based marine society, sort of a Tupperware Atlantis with bitter sectarian violence between rival BPA and BPA-free factions. The sci-fi nerd in me would love that. But I’m also a seafood nerd. I want to standup paddle along the Malibu coast through clear clean seawater, not plastic saline syrup.
Luckily, you’re avoiding most of the packaged food responsible for polluting the oceans. Except if you buy produce from Trader Joe’s; I love the store but man, do they use a lot of plastic.
Local food doesn’t actually have much of a smaller carbon footprint. Not as a rule, anyway. Sure, your neighbor’s spinach was quite low input. The blood oranges you grab over the guy on the corner’s fence every time you walk the dog are very local and very good for the environment. The vast majority of produce’s carbon footprint takes place on the farm during production. The energy spent on seeding, growing, and harvesting. The application of pesticides. The day-to-day input that happens over the course of a growing season. The transportation from the farm to your hands accounts for less than 20% of the total carbon footprint.
However, organic food (particularly from smaller farms—the kind you usually get from the farmer’s market) can be more friendly to the environment. Organic farmers aren’t applying synthetic pesticides that run off and endanger wildlife. They’re producing fewer greenhouse gases. And if you wait for a few years for soil nutrition to recover, organic yield matches and sometimes even surpasses that of conventionally-grown crops.
The heavier you are, the more food you eat to maintain your bodyweight. The heavier you are, the more immobile you are and the more you need the car to get around. The larger you are, the larger your carbon footprint. Even attempting to be leaner means you use fewer resources because you’re increasing nutrient density and reducing caloric density, moving more, taking a walk instead of a drive, and generally taking less from the world.
Despite directly eating plenty of animals, folks on a Primal eating plan who eschew grains actually cause fewer animal deaths than grain-eaters. To get a few hundred pounds of cow meat, you kill one cow. It’s sad for the cow but actually saves more lives than you think. To get a few hundred pounds of wheat, you clear cut and plough the land to make room for the crop and destroy the habitats of resident wild animals, apply pesticides which poison surrounding wildlife, run a harvest combine that churns through dozens of rodents, rabbits, and reptiles unlucky-enough to be there that day, and set traps and use poison to keep rats and mice out of granaries. It’s estimated that grain agriculture kills 25 more sentient animals per kilogram of useable protein than beef agriculture in Australia, where beef is mostly range-grown.
Now, meat from industrially-raised livestock is not sustainable. I’m not arguing that.
This isn’t a staple of the Primal lifestyle. Not everyone does this. But I’d say, on the whole, that folks engaged with the movement are more likely to accept temperature extremes and use them as a “training” tool. Instead of blasting the heat once it hits 55 degrees (hey, I’m in Malibu here), they’re bearing the chill and calling it “cold exposure.” Instead of hunkering down inside with the AC blasting in summer, they head out for a picnic at the park under shade. To be short, you guys have grit, you’re willing to be a little chilly or sweaty, and the environment thanks you for it.
A growing aspect of the Primal lifestyle is honoring your circadian rhythm. That means more natural light during the day and less light at night. In an ideal world, it means spending more time outside during the day—thus using fewer lights–and turning off the electronics after dark. That’s not what always happens, of course. I get plenty of emails time stamped at 10 PM. But at least we’re aware of the problem and are taking baby steps to solve it.
It’s hard not to love and protect a thing you fervently believe is essential for your health and happiness. I strongly believe that love makes a difference.
Simply going out into nature, buying annual passes to national parks, paying camping fees, and otherwise supporting the preservation of natural spaces with money and energy is good for the environment. It used to be that I’d go out to Yosemite or Joshua Tree or Zion and it’d be mostly Europeans on vacation with maybe the odd dread-locked trustafarian hitchiker. Now—and I mean in the last five years—I’m seeing way more Americans getting out and enjoying the incredible natural beauty our country has to offer. I’m not even rankled by the larger crowds in my favorite hiking spots because it means more people are taking advantage of this precious gift.
I don’t intend to make concrete connections between how much you weigh and your burden on the environment. But it’s clear that many of the things we hold dear contribute to a better world. And that’s the beauty of this Primal stuff: we’re not necessarily setting out to change the world. We’re eating holistically-grazed grass-fed beef because it’s more nutritious, tastes better, and gives animals a better life. We’re eating better and moving more to be healthier and happier, not because Al Gore told us to. We’re avoiding electronics after dark to preserve our circadian rhythm and improve our sleep, not cut back on electricity usage. We’re giving money to the parks because we love spending time in nature. In many respects, ours is a selfish devotion to preserving the beauty of the world. And that’s why it works so well, why it’s often more sustainable than people who do it to “be a good person” or “save the environment.”
Also, [joke about legume restriction and rectal methane production].
Thanks for reading, everyone. Take care and drop a comment below if you have any further additions to the list!
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We’re still battling the chill of winter, which is why were consoling ourselves with one of the best things about the season: hot cocktails. Most toddies, Irish coffees, and warm punches feature liquors of the whisky variety, but we have options for the wine, tequila, and gin drinkers as well. So raise a mug, and stay warm until spring.
http://www.thekitchn.com/feedburnermain
This deep-dish quiche is a hearty, flavor-packed meal in a pan. There are a few culinary tricks built into the recipe, like making a very stable cream cheese dough that — in an unusual twist — has eggs in it, and plenty of chilling and pre-baking. The result is a showy, lightly eggy, deeply satisfying meal that’s worth every moment of effort.
Originally Posted At: https://breakingmuscle.com/feed/rss
Originally Posted At: https://breakingmuscle.com/feed/rss
Back development (or lack thereof) can tell you a lot about a lifter. Regardless of the sport, a strong back is fundamental to peak performance. Without full development of the lats, erectors, traps, and rhomboids, your lifts will falter, performance will plateau, and injury will ensue.
For now classes are 6pm and 640pm at 2840 Wildwood st in the Boise Cloggers studio.
Book your class NOW!
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