CRN Interview

default image

I got up early this morning, poured myself a cup of tea, and sat by the phone waiting to talk to Mike and Paul on the What’s Cooking Show on CRN digital talk radio. When I tuned in, an interview with chef Rocco DiSpirito was underway. He was scheduled to be the “challenge” on The Biggest Loser: Couples show tonight. The hosts asked about the food he prepared for the contestants on the show. He explained that the trainer had given him a big challenge…

Continue reading

And Bon Appétit to you too!

default image

One of the perks of belonging to the International Association of Culinary Professionals is that people give you things. I’ve had an expensive skillet, a top-of-the-line chef’s knife, magazines, and lots of other goodies show up, gratis. Bon Appétit, one magazine I often buy (don’t tell them), now materializes unbidden in my mailbox. Don’t let that stack of syrupy pancakes on the cover fool you; the February issue of Bon Appétit magazine got it mostly right. The cover says “The Green Issue / Feel Good…

Continue reading

The Biggest Loser

default image

Last Tuesday night I watched the Biggest Loser. It was the first time I have ever made it through a whole episode from start to finish. Although I know that most television shows, even the reality shows, are carefully scripted, I found it appalling. It looked like a reenactment of the Bataan death march from World War II. Suffering, pain, emotion, triumph, and despair may make compelling entertainment, but at what price? And I’m not just referring to the unlucky contestants who were bullied, ridiculed,…

Continue reading

Minding Your Brain

default image

If you haven’t already found Dr. McCleary’s Website, http://www.drmccleary.com/, don’t waste another minute. The brilliant author of The Brain Trust Program has already posted eight not-to-be-missed articles about the care and feeding of your brain. His latest, explains the chicken or the egg conundrum of how we could have developed the kind of intelligence necessary to provide our brains with a nutrient dense diet before we actually had brains capable of the skill and cunning needed to procure such a diet. Living along the shoreline,…

Continue reading

The Best Anti-wrinkle Treatment Money Can’t Buy.

default image

I came across an article in Harper’s Bazaar Magazine about some of the latest anti-aging beauty treatments that included this description of a very expensive product developed by Dr. Fredric Brandt to prevent wrinkles: “A new category of antiaging treatments is aimed at preventing sugar from damaging skin. When we consume sweets, excess sugar attaches to elastin fibers, causing them to harden. This process, called glycation, makes skin lose elasticity and wrinkle more easily. ‘Products containing anti-inflammatory alistin prevent glycation,’ says Brandt, who recently introduced…

Continue reading

Gary Taubes at UC Berekey

default image

Gary Taubes gave a presentation at UC Berkeley called “The Quality of Calories; What Makes Us Fat and Why Nobody Seems to Care.” If you have read Gary’s book, Good Calories, Bad Calories, it gives a bit more detail about the subject. If you have not, you’ll see why you should. It is 1 hour and 45 minutes long, but well worth the time: http://webcast.berkeley.edu/event_details.php?webcastid=21216 One quote from the lecture shows very clearly how things went so terribly wrong and why it is so hard…

Continue reading

Low-Carb news is looking up

default image

Dr. Eades, http://www.proteinpower.com/, posted today and yesterday (26th and 27th) about a documentary film, by Tom Naughton, that is due out soon. He has a lot of clips from the movie that you can watch on his site. It is an answer to the “Supersize Me” movie by Morgan Spurlock. Spurlock blamed the fat in his McDonald’s diet for causing him to gain 25 pounds and develop fatty liver disease in one month. This guy ate at McDonald’s for a month only without the buns…

Continue reading

Rating Consumers Report

default image

The June, 2007 issue of Consumers Report again disses low carb diets. They point out that the diets were not tested (Isn’t that the whole point of Consumers Report? To actually test things?), but rated by a panel of nutritionists as to how they compare to the U.S. Dietary Guidelines for Americans. As long as diet plans continue to be ranked based on the U.S. Guidelines, we will get bad advice and will likely continue to get fatter and sicker. Just look at the food…

Continue reading

Low Carb Diet Beats the Others

default image

On March 7, 2007 – Just as my book was rolling off the press, a new study comparing four different diets was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA 2007; 297: 969-977). All the major news sources featured headlines reflecting their own particular bias: “This Proves Atkins is Best Diet” said the London Times; the Seattle Times reported “Study: Women lost a bit more with Atkins.”  The scientists who designed the study expressed surprise that the Atkins diet came out on top…

Continue reading