Dave Asprey is right

Dave wasn't my favorite speaker on the Low Carb Cruise.  I thought he was a bit in love with himself, though I suppose he has good reasons to be pleased with his own performance.  He's a successful businessman who managed to lose and keep off 100 excess pounds, not a bad-looking fellow, and nor was he rude or unapproachable -- just not my FAVORITE.

But one thing he's proven to me -- he's absolutely right about coffee!

Since Hurricane Histamine knocked me off my feet, I've kept track of my energy levels; when they've been particularly good or bad, I've done a careful review of everything I've eaten and drunk, and made note of what seems safe and what looks problematic.  When I awaken feeling pretty decent and then the energy (physical or mental) takes a nosedive, and I haven't broken my fast with solids yet, the only things possible to blame are environmental conditions and which coffee I've started the day with.  I've experienced significant trouble with two kinds so far.

And they're not bad or cheap coffees, though obviously "mass-produced."  Both have been in K-cups, that premeasured, fresh-brewed method that's stolen my heart for ease of preparation.  The first time I noticed -- J had made us a quart of bulletproof decaf using ordinary grocery-store coffee in the French press and I was fine, but a little later I wanted a cup of the high-octane kind, and as I sipped down that serving I felt my energy going lower and lower, and I started feeling colder and colder, till at the end of the cup I was huddled under my favorite blankie feeling like i'd just given two or three pints of blood.  This morning, we didn't have the butter-and-MCT-augmented kind first so I didn't have as good a start; I went straight to the ordinary stuff and though the effect wasn't as strong with this other brand, it was still there.

Over a week had elapsed between the two experiences, while I drank my shipment of a more favored kind of K-cup, and there's NO COMPARISON between the excellent Kenya AA and the [ahem] questionable brand.

Dave says it's the care that's taken in the processing of the beans, and I believe him.  He states outright, there ARE other brands besides his that are wholesome, but that some coffee (and cocoa beans, AND vanilla) gets a touch of mold along the way which turns a great commodity to a problem-creating one.  My beloved Coffee Fool products are "clean" too -- I can tell.  They're more invigorating than ordinary coffees, outstandingly well-roasted and fresh, just like his.  The Green Mountain and Diedrich coffees I like best are not QUITE as perfect, but they're very good indeed.

His coffee IS expensive.  He suggests, if you want to find another that's less expensive but also less likely to be mold infested, single-estate coffees are a better choice than blended ones.  Single-region coffees like Kenya AA and Sumatran Reserve seem to be pretty good.  Rio Blend is one of my favorites, too (I tend to like medium, Italian-style roasts better than American lights and the French-roast end of the spectrum).

So YES -- though sugar is sugar, coffee ISN'T coffee.  You may be able to fool my tastebuds sometimes, but you can't fool my mold-detector.  I'll bet Dave is right about chocolate and vanilla, too.

"authoritative" writers owe their readers good reasons for their recommendations

This was a note i made to myself on the Low-Carb Cruise, and i meant to write on the subject when i became inspired.  The inspiration came yesterday, from the person who originally prompted the note.  She did it again!

This was the woman whose talk actually "put off" my husband during the seminars.  Her husband, a physician, came across very well both on the stage and off -- he gave me a piece of advice which impressed me with his insight and experience.  Apparently, before the two of them married she was in publicity ... and it shows.  She's probably been an asset to their professional success, but as the front-woman for nutritional educators, she leaves a good deal to be desired.

I read an article which she wrote -- one of those "x# foods you should never eat" kind of things.  I confess, that kind of article tends to annoy me in the first place because the style is so "cheap media hook-ish."  But when she was discussing the objectionable ingredient in the product being targeted, she threw in the logic-dismissing comment that this ingredient was also used in an industrial application -- after all, if they use THAT  to do this icky thing, you certainly won't want to EAT it!

Sorry, chickie, you just lost all the engineers in the audience, and probably a good chunk of the chemists, biologists, lab-techs, mathematicians, and other technical folks too.  You may win over the kind of people who think liver is "gross" with your kind of logic, but they're about all.

Anyone who makes recommendations to their fellow creatures from a position of "authority" SHOULD feel a responsibility to provide a sound and cogent reason for their point of view.  "Because they use ingredient X to do nasty-job Y" is not a sound and cogent reason.  Should i never cook with baking soda because it can also be used to clean toilets?  Should vinegar be off the menu because it will kill weeds in the cracks of my garden path?

Granted that a wax made from petroleum is probably not as good a choice for food use as one made by bees, that does not mean paraffin in certain applications is unwholesome.  There are an awful lot of neutral substances in this world, which are perfectly safe and reasonable to use in food applications.  The nutritional -- and chemical -- realms are NOT properly illustrated in black-and-white....

The same emotional illogic is used in the condemnation of sucralose and a lot of other products, the utilization of which may not be IDEAL, but is minimally problematic for most people.  This kind of thinking is behind why i had to buy my mother a special little soft brush for cleaning mushrooms -- "they're grown on COW MANURE!"  Uh -- no.  They're grown on COMPOSTED cow manure which is an entirely different substance.  Uncomposted manure has too high a nitrogen content to grow ANYTHING.

I hope this lady will learn that dropping buzzwords (natural! organic!) and scare/gross-out tactics (bugs! petroleum!) is not doing their nutrition-and-supplement business any good amongst thinking people.  At the end of her talk, as we were trotting off to the Red Frog Pub to get a drink during the break, J snorted, "we shouldn't eat THAT because it's used to de-ice airplane wings?  They spray beet-juice on roads to help de-ice them -- does that mean we can never eat beets again?"

induction challenge

Since we returned from the cruise, my husband has been enthusiastic about buckling down and losing weight.  Suits me!  In solidarity, i started doing the original 1972 version of Dr. Atkins' induction with him.  Of course, we do a cleaned-up version with minimized omega-6 fats, coconut milk/cream favored over dairy cream, and other tweaks of the like nature.  We're both nixing alcohol this week.  That's the hardest part!  :-)

Although he's dropped 8 pounds since we got home on the 19th of May, he's disappointed it hasn't been going as fast as it did the first time.  Every time his ketosticks are less than dark purple he feels a bit discouraged -- telling him that mine NEVER get that dark is no consolation.

I'm pleased to find that his blood glucose is in a healthy range!  J has been so prone to growing skin-tags, and i understood that they're a sign of excessive insulin levels (but have no source for the idea)....  He's been regularly checking BG in the mornings as well as using the ketosticks; both are good.

But of all the interesting things that Jackie Eberstein (Atkins' long-time nurse-assistant) said on the Low Carb Cruise, one thing sticks in my memory -- DO NOT expect your body to perform "the way it used to."  This mind-trap may affect men in our age-bracket more than women, because women tend to see the changes very clearly, and men have fewer reminders.  Age changes a lot of things in all of us, and the way we respond to dietary and nutritional input changes over time just like our responses to exercise do.  Older people don't absorb nutrients as well, for one thing.  We have to do more and try harder all the time, as our bodies actually resist our efforts at an increasing rate.

Before you say "upper 50s isn't OLD" remember that until comparatively recently it WAS considered reasonably advanced.  Hell, 35 was "middle-aged" (half of that threescore-years-and-ten, you know).  Just because 40 is the new 20 doesn't REALLY make us "young"....

We have to be more patient with ourselves, because we can't drop fat or put on muscle as well as we used to.  We haven't escaped unscathed from the passing decades.  We have to be more careful and less indulgent if we want to enjoy our retirement the way we want.  Thank the gods for the benefits of low-carbing!

So we're chugging along with our diets as we also are with our house rehab.  It's 117 years old -- no wonder it takes so long for it to start looking better!  :-)