I have never hosted a dinner party. But if I did, Gather is the book I would use to lay out a memorable meal for my guests. And you certainly don’t have to be hosting a party to take advantage of all these great recipes.

The Food Lovers’ first book, Make it Paleo, is my default recipe book when I’m trying something new (and some recipes, like their Baked Chicken Thighs are in permanent rotation), and I’m glad that Gather is further expanding on that high-level of quality recipes by taking the guesswork out of planning a multi-course meal.

Each menu consists of 4-8 recipes, and line up with important holidays and seasonal events. For the purpose of this review, I chose to make the General Tso’s Chicken from the Takeout Fake-out menu, since I frequently only entertain for one.

The following events occurred in real time.

18:00 Take out the chicken thighs are start de-boning them and removing the skin(since bone-in chicken thighs are half the price of boneless, skinless).

18:10 Begin to make batter, come to realize I only have duck eggs in my fridge, proceed to use a duck egg like a BOSS.

18:11 Arrowroot flour explosion all over my kitchen, and my laptop on which I’m watching The Daily Show. I think I got some on the cat too. She is displeased.

18:15 Batter the chicken. Taste the batter, forgetting that it has raw egg in it. Slap palm to forehead, forgetting that I just tasted the batter with that hand. This is why I don’t work in a restaurant.

18:20 Start making the sauce. Add way too much vinegar. Try to correct by adding more arrowroot and maple syrup. Second arrowroot explosion of the night. Realize I don’t have duck fat, substitute with beef tallow and prayer.

18:30 Fry the beaten and battered chicken in more beef tallow in a skillet. So far, it looks nothing like what’s in the book.

18:40 Finish frying and toss everything with the sauce and dump it into one of the blue bowls I’ve had since college.

18:45 Try to take fancy pictures, then remember that I have no idea what I’m doing, so I decide to eat instead.

18:46 Holy crap, that turned out delicious despite my every attempt to screw it up.

19:00 Try to put away the arrowroot flour. It explodes again.

Just go buy this book already, it’s delicious, the photography is stunning, and if you decide to throw a Paleo dinner party, just be sure to send me an invite!

Hi all! I’m back from my hiatus, and in the meantime, there have been a ton of new great books showcasing the Paleo lifestyle. If you haven’t seen them yet, check out these quick reviews, and let me know which ones are your favorites!

Paleo Indulgences

I’ll admit, when I first received a copy of this book, I was skeptical. And that’s because I’m not a big fan of “Paleo desserts” and “Paleo-fying” the foods that got folks in trouble in the first place (don’t get me wrong, I love to eat them too, but I don’t think they help establish a healthy relationship with food). But I was instead really pleased to see that Tammy does a great job of balancing occasional baked Paleo “treats” with chilies, egg breakfasts, and Asian inspired stir-frys. But don’t get me wrong, there are some seriously dangerously good looking recipes in here for those of us with a serious sweet tooth; I’m glad I don’t bake regularly! So, if you’re looking for a good book full of treats to bring to parties and the like, pick up a copy!

Everyday Paleo Family Cookbook

Getting your family on board with healthy eating is not a new challenge. Thankfully, Sarah Fragoso has extensive experience with picky kids and putting meals together quickly and on a budget. The Family Cookbook is the companion to her previous book Everyday Paleo, and focuses more on some really tasty recipes. One of my favorites is the Tomato Soup with Chicken, which substitutes coconut milk for the heavy cream you usually find in tomato soup. But perhaps even more useful than the recipes are the extensive weekly meal plans, budget tips, and set of quick recipes, that anyone who has tried to put together a meal for family or friends will appreciate.

Practical Paleo

Diane’s herculean effort with this book is paying off in spades. It’s a gorgeous tome full of much of the information you don’t see in many of the traditional Paleo books (discussions of poop, protocols with specific supplement recommendations, in-depth graphics).

Diane makes the biology and chemistry very accessible for an uninitiated audience, and there’s even plenty for the advanced students of health among us.

And of course, the meal plans and recipes are great (I’ve been using her bone broth recipe for quite a while, yummy!) and the pictures are beautiful (thanks to Bill and Haley of the Primal Palate). I’m confident you’ll enjoy this purchase, and will gain significant improvement in your health through it. It’s quickly become one of my favorite reference tools.

Chrissy Gower is the author over at Growing Up Paleo and the co-host of the PaleoTalk Podcast. She’s been documenting raising two kids on a completely Paleo diet.

As a lazy caveman myself, I enjoy using my slow cooker because I can quickly prep a meal the night before or in the morning before work, and come home to a tasty meal. Additionally, slow cooking is one of the original early cooking methods, and remains an ideal method because it’s low temperature, and greatly increases the digestibility of the meal.

Some of the recipes are pretty solid and straightforward, like the stews and curries. There are also some unusual recipes in this book, where you could use a slow cooker, but probably shouldn’t if you want your meal to taste its best (like chicken wings for example. I’d rather use the technique outlined here). I did appreciate the selection guide on which meats and veggies cook best in the slow cooker; some of the worst meals I’ve made have been because I tried to use the wrong cut, or cooked too long, or didn’t use enough liquid. I would’ve appreciated some more tips from Chrissy on how to avoid or rescue slow cooking mishaps. All in all, it’s a decent book if you’re new to Paleo cooking and have been looking for some new recipes to work into your rotations.

The Paleo Answer

I’ll start by saying that I have a ton of respect for Dr. Cordain, and his book The Paleo Diet gave me the momentum to start making serious changes to improve my health. Yes, there were some issues with the original book that Cordain has since revised his stance on, namely the promotion of canola oil and the demonizing of saturated fat. And The Paleo Answer was purported to be the culmination of Cordain’s new stance on Paleo (2.0). Sadly, this book falls quite short.

Cordain does spend a bit of time on saturated fat and its benefits, based on some of the latest (2010) research, which is quite a departure from his original stance. But then you look at the meal plans in the back of the book, and they still emphasize lean meats steamed veggies, instead of using ghee, coconut oil, and lard and tallow from grass-fed/pastured animals. That fat-phobic dissonance  really hurts the credibility of the book in my nitpicky eyes.

The second problem I had with this book was the severe amount of vegetarian/vegan bashing that Cordain does. Rather than be inclusive and understanding with our vegetarian/vegan friends, like Denise Minger is, he uses study after study to tell you why vegetarianism/veganism is wrong and how many ways you or your friends are killing yourselves if you don’t eat meat. It’s divisive and I didn’t care for it.

The original Paleo Diet book is still a good one, but for people new to Paleo, I’d recommend Practical Paleo, It Starts With Food or The Paleo Solution.

I like farmers’ markets. They’re a great opportunity to put a face to the food you’re getting, and you usually end up with a pretty decent haul for a reasonable price. But what I don’t like about farmer’s markets are their transience; I travel often and I don’t like that my local farmers’ market is only open for 4 hours on Sunday morning. Getting fresh ingredients is hard enough, it sucks to be out of town for a weekend and not have good veggies for the week. Fortunately, there is such a thing as a permanent farmers’ market, and I had the opportunity to interview the one of the founders of my favorite place to shop for local, fresh, seasonal groceries. They also have a great selection of grass-fed meats, pastured eggs, and wild, line-caught fish.

Sigona’s is a year-round farmer’s market open seven days a week, with two locations in the Bay Area, in Redwood City and Palo Alto. Carmelo Sigona and his brothers have created an incredible environment in which they spread the idea that good food should be fresh and not cost you an arm and a leg. It’s a bit of a long interview, but I had a blast speaking with Carmelo, and you can really see his passion for food.

Tell me a bit about Sigona’s Market, its history and how you got started.

There were four brothers originally that started the business and we had always worked in produce. I started working in produce when I was 13, back in the day when it was unbelievably seasonal. Back in the 50s the berries would come in for 3 or 4 months and that’s it and every season would have its own scents and the feeling that this was truly delicious and you have to get it now. Refrigeration and precooling wasn’t too good back in those days but that’s when we all started. My mother’s father was in the produce business, so we had uncles who gave us jobs in the business. We all went our separate ways to go to school and work but then came back when my youngest brother bought a little retail place when he was about 18 and he asked me to help him run this place with him. We were distributing from farmers in the Morgan Hill and Gilroy areas at a very young age. We would take their product and bring it up to supermarkets, wholesale houses, and have outlets for them. We took it to our uncles and cousins and people who we knew at the markets and gave them a good return on their money so they kept doing business with us. That was our beginnings. That’s how started. We kind of grew from there. There is a 101 bypass where our three retail places went in and put us out retail-wise. We came up to Redwood City about 26 years ago. We started over here and there was really no farmer’s market and we were getting everything direct from the farm in season. It was a big hit, people really liked it. To us, that was the only way to do it; the supermarkets buy this other stuff out there and we saw the hydro-cooled peaches, and nectarines and plums and we thought “this is a slam dunk.” They’re off in their world being worried about shrink and having the farmers worried about retooling everything in the industry. You see they grow it naturally, but they pick it green and firm, put it in freezing water, hydro-cooling it, and then put in huge bins and pack it with machinery. Their big idea was to not have the shrink; they weren’t so concerned with how customers don’t like to see their produce shrivel up on the windowsill rather than get ripe, but it cut their shrink way back so the whole industry moved in that direction. The small farmers, who didn’t have the big bucks to do the retooling were left out in the cold, but they kept their sense of integrity. When we came up here, we had this extreme edge over the supermarkets that we didn’t realize. Picking everything fresh that day and bringing it up was such an advantage, but that’s the only way we knew to do it. My father had a little farm that he took care of and it was a model of how we grew up. We always ate fresh-picked from his 7 acres. He grew grains, typical Italian stuff: swiss chard, big long squashes, tomatoes, fava beans, basil, oregano and other herbs and some tree crops. He also had chickens and we had fresh eggs. Now they call them “Pastured Eggs”, to me they were just eggs! You crack them open and they were a deep, deep orange. And you go away to school and you buy some eggs at the super market and they spread out and splatter with this pale yellow yolk that tastes like I don’t know what! And the chickens were the same thing, “pastured” and are out there eating whatever they eat in the 7 acres they’re roaming on. The meat is so different, it’s got no fat, strong chicken flavor. So we were used to those kinds of things and then people’s buying habits really changed to this phase where people expected things to last forever. And we’re kind of caught in a dilemma of how do you give someone a product that isn’t precooled and get them to use it as quickly as they need to use it, versus giving them things that will last a week or two. Most of our greens are coming in from Salinas, so if we get it picked that day, we put it in water, clean it and refrigerate it, it lasts a long time. We like to work with the public to educate them on what these different things are. Like heirloom tomatoes. You know they may not look like the ones you’re used to looking at, but the complexity you taste, that’s the nutrients. We try to find farmers who aren’t overwatering and try to have them pull the water early a few days.

You mentioned that you’re trying to educate the public on what produce should look and taste like. Has the public been receptive? Have you seen them change their opinions with their wallets?

It’s really shifted back to where it was in the 50′s when people really had an appreciation for food and for cooking at home. Everybody wanted to get the very best and people are now shifting back. There’s a lot of knowledge that’s been lost, like how do you cook escarole or other greens? The public is now coming into this arena where they now want to know about these things because they’ve lost the knowledge. But it’s not lost forever they really want to understand what they’re getting, how to use it, what else is out there, what else is good for me and what else do I not know about that we carry in our store.
Our olive oil is really typical of this. Most people figure “I’m buying cold-pressed extra virgin olive oil, that is great! I hear Spain is the best, I head Italy is the best, I hear local California is the best.” And then we go, we’ll it’s all good, but here’s the real deal.

So anyone who walks into the store sees the olive oil and all the fresh olives, and they say “Oh my goodness, what is all this?” Where did that love of olives and olive oil originate?

Well we started purchasing from an olive grove Picholine olives and pressing our own oil. The Picholine olives we had were really buttery and you let them stay on the tree and they’re even more buttery. There was an old-timer doing this who was organic but didn’t want to get certified. So we had to call it pesticide-free. So we got pressed his olives and bottle it and every year we have this delicious Picholine olive oil, this one cultivar that people loved. We went from that to tasting it 6-8 months into and something didn’t taste good. We realized that the olive oil was going rancid in the bottles. We started looking for sources that had fresh olive oil. We found this guy that educated us, and this was 5-6 years back, and he taught us that the polyphenols and the oleic acid are what keeps the olives fresh. Pick them green, press them green, and press them within 3-5 hours. That whole process preserves the olive oil. On top of that, when you get a strong cultivar, like a Picual, that thing will last a good year. The weaker cultivars, the ones that are more mild in their polyphenols won’t last as long, but they’ll still last a good 8-9 months if they’re processed right away. So we found these things not only taste fantastic, they’re super healthy for you. Within 6 months, when the local stuff is finished, when Europe is finished, the Southern Hemisphere was just pressing, Australia, New Zealand, Chile. Now you get olive oil that’s fresh pressed again; you get this rotation going. So that’s what drove us to olive oil; it’s not labels like “cold-pressed” or “extra-virgin”, those are all labels that the government lets you put on. The definition of extra virgin is .8PPM or less and you can call it extra virgin, so you can put whatever in there, a really super oil and put it with one that’s low quality and meet that criteria. Most of ours are .1-.3 PPM. We have chemists measure it on a regular basis. And the more I use it, the more crazy I am about it! And new ones come in and we’ll taste 4 or 5 and pick two. And this one guy that’s going around the world picking these olives for us, Mike Bradley, is doing a fantastic job.

In the topic of organic, you work hand-in-hand with a lot of these local farmers, have you seen a change in how they deal with an increased demand for governmental regulation?

They’re really moving into it. The grandfathers who were dealing with are kind of gone, and the sons and the grandsons are taking over. It doesn’t cost a lot and there isn’t much to do, it was just some of the old timers just didn’t want anyone on their property. All the new guys are in favor of getting everything certified because they want to move more and more land into that direction. It takes quite a while for them to get their land the way they want it to move into organic. Most of them that we deal with even if they’re not organic, don’t want to use sprays, organic or synthetic. They’re working toward getting their crop rotations. Timmy Callow is meshing four or five different crops of berries right now. Once you spray either organic or synthetic [pesticide], you kill all the bugs and then you have to support that all the time by spraying. It’s a purely economic factor; they don’t want to keep doing that. If you look at the environment, a lot of these farmers are living on the land with their families, and they don’t want to put stuff on there that’s going to last forever and hurt their family. Clean growers are the ultimate in caring for the land. We deal with Daylight farms in Half Moon Bay, and they don’t use any sprays. But if we were able to have her certify herself with the government, it would still help us sell product.

From the food quality perspective that I try to represent, a lot of people aren’t even aware of the difference in food labels. For example, most people don’t know what organic means or what the difference is between cage free and free-range eggs. Do you still see those kinds of misconceptions in the public?

It’s very frustrating for me to delve into the labeling and what the government will allow. You can have a small amount of trans fat for example and still not have to put it on your label. The whole idea of cage free and then free range, and now the new term “pastured” is just confusing to the consumer. We’re used to thinking that free range is what they’re calling pastured now. And you read Ominivore’s Dilemma and you learn how they move their chickens from place to place and that’s kind of a way that farmers are doing things to work for them in the food model. On a real farm if you have pastured eggs like my father did, it’s a completely different egg and a completely different chicken. But the labeling is designed to make exceptions. Like with cage-free, we have this mental image of chickens running around free, but really, they just kind of run together with very little space. It’d be nice if they were out there if they were out there foraging and doing what chickens do. We’ve just hooked up with this lady who has pastured eggs out of Pescadero. She bought the eggs, hatched the chicks, and she has about 200 chickens now. You have to find the sources, the people who are into this stuff. A lot of the sources we have want to make the food right, so you don’t have to fight with them to leave it on the trees a few days longer. Or we have them pick them a day early if we notice they’re coming in bruised. And I think because the public is screaming for organic items, they want the taste, they want the health, they aren’t buying so much with their eyes anymore. You look at the Kent mangos and compare it to Tommy Atkins, which is a high color, thick-shell mango. And then you look at the Kent mango, and it’s all green. No one’s going to buy that. But you educate the public, this is the best tasting mango. And if you base it just on looks, people go for the Tommy Atkins. But the Kent mango is far more flavorful. It’s the same thing with heirloom peaches or nectarines or plums. Some of them don’t have as much blush you’re used to, and maybe they’re a little soft, but we have to educate the public that this is what real fruit looks like. The deal is, if they’re purchasing stuff and you don’t have a ton of loss on our end, right now we have 22% shrink that we have to take off to counter-reduce or it goes to donation or whatever. It’s hard to survive with that much shrink. It’s hard not to bring in the stuff and have that kind of shrink. It’s nice for the public to understand, “well, this tomato is a little bit soft but it’s super juicy. It’s not mushy, this is the way you want it.” Or the peach might have a little tiny bruise on it, that’s just because it’s sitting on another peach on top. It’s not a bruise that goes through, really. It’s good for the public to understand that.

What do you wish the average consumer knew about food quality?

I think it’s the importance of supporting some of these smaller farmers who don’t have the high-tech pre-coolers that cut cost. I’d love it if customers pay a dime more for a bunch of something, because it is well worth it to keep that quality going. It’s a give and take situation, you want your consumer to understand what they’re getting and you want do the very best for them and still have them pay you a fair price.
Also, I really like the heirloom stuff that we have. They don’t look the best, and to be honest, the biggest draw on tomatoes is that traditional hot house tomato on the vine that looks so beautiful. I can’t tell my customers not to buy that hot house because that’s what they’re asking for, but I do try to tell them how good these heirlooms are and to give them a shot. We’re just starting to introduce heirloom spinach and it looks gnarly! It’s not the overbred, smooth leaves you see today, but the kind I grew up with that’s really healthy stuff.
I would also like people to be turned onto the healthiness of greens. I’m surprised that they don’t fly off the shelf, and I think it’s just because people don’t know enough about it. They’re all really easy to cook if you take the time to learn. Five or six minutes of sautéing and you’ve got a great meal. As a society, we’ve shrunk the choices that we have because people aren’t buying the same things they used to. We have a hard time getting in escarole, which is an old Italian favorite, because people aren’t interested in it even though it’s so versatile.

Speaking of cooking, you’re an avid chef as featured on the “Cooking With Carmelo” section of the website and the YouTube channel. What are some of your favorite things to make?

Definitely greens because they’re so quick and easy. I also love to do whole grains like farrow, wild and heirloom rice with some onions and peppers. Broccoli rabe, kale, mustard greens, collard greens, any of them are good sautéed with a little bit of olive oil and some onions and garlic. You can do anything with them from a Hispanic dish to an Italian dish to an American dish. I’m doing this thing now with our Arbequina olive oil with some quinoa and escarole sautéed with some onions and a poached egg on top. And the whole deal takes 10 minutes. The greens take 5 minutes, poach the eggs while the greens are going. In 6 minutes, you have a gourmet meal that’s really healthy. I like the really healthy things. I like the greens. That’s where I lean to when I’m cooking. Recently, our friend, Dave Quiboa, who I get mushrooms from, and still do, he gave the factory from Morgan Hill to his daughter and got into commercial fishing. He’s doing the salmon. That salmon’s eating krill. It’s so full of fat, omega 3. You research it and you find that it’s really good for you. So cooking a piece of fish like that, and cooking the grass-fed beef, and figuring out how to cook it right, which is for me, it’s getting a cast-iron skillet, and searing it on both sides, popping it in the oven for a few minutes, let it come out and rest. And then the grass-fed beef, which is another super healthy thing, it tastes great, just rub in some salt and pepper– it tastes great. I can put a coriander crust on the salmon, sear that on both sides, put it in the oven, and in 5-6 minutes, you’ve got a succulent and moist salmon. You compliment that with salad and greens. Salads are so easy. Everyone’s in a hurry. Baby mustard greens, baby kale, baby spinach, all these super powerful vitanutrients in these greens and then add dressing and toss it up, how easy is that. And then you got your proteins, and your grains, then you’re done. I love cooking easy simple meals that are super healthy. It’s hard to miss.
Interviewer: That’s very much in line with the way that I do things. We really emphasize food quality above all else, so this is very much in line with your philosophy. Like you said, it reminds you a bit of the way you grew up. The only big difference is we do very little, if any, with grains just because they’re highly processed foods and have some gnarly digestive implications sometimes.
I was reading your article, I remember, we grew up in SF. My parents moved back to the farms when I was 15. I stayed but I visited. There was a park there. My older brother and I would just run through things. Back in that day, TV was just getting going, Walt Disney, Daniel Boone, Davy Crocket. As a kid, I remember just wanting to live off the land. We didn’t know what was in the water but we were just drinking whatever water was there and running the hills all day.

How has social media, like Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube, influenced the way you do business?

I think we were always doing this type of thing where we felt like we wanted to put our heart into getting a really good product. We always wanted high-quality. That has continued and it hasn’t changed. We just kind of woke up and realized that not enough people know what we’re doing and not enough know what we have. We need to start shouting it out. At one point, 3-4 years ago, business started going down more and more. Then, social media started coming in but we couldn’t afford the full page ads, TV or radio commercials, but we could do e-news. We can hire a full time marketing person and talk about what we do. We shifted towards having a marketing strategy. We continue to look for products that are healthy and good for you. We love supporting small vendors. There’s a ton of people that come in. So, if they have a farm product or something that they’re creating, we’ll look at it and examine it. We’ll try to support what they’re doing if we feel that it’s a good-tasting product and good for you. We’ll also go for desserts and sweets. Like, we have some angel fruit cakes these ladies are bringing in. These guys from Hungary are doing chimney cakes. Those are really good. The gelato thing, Massimo Gelato, over in Watsonville are supporting him. Mary Anne’s ice cream as well. We’re giving them our cantaloupes. We make different things with our farm products and their products. We support the small people and really get involved with them. With Massimo, he’ll have his boysenberries, which he’ll pick very ripe. In the industry, when the boysenberries are bleeding, that’s when it’s good. We take his bleeding boysenberries and mix it with ours, and then we’ll have bleeding boysenberry gelato. We also take heirloom apricots from a small farmer, and make our blenheim apricot thing. We also make heirloom apple pie by taking heirloom apples and spend all day creating this. We’re doing that kind of thing. With Mary Anne’s ice cream, every year we do a batch of cantaloupes and people love the cantaloupe ice cream.

So, I think what was really intriguing to me is the experience we had with the Red Boat fish sauce. I tweeted about this great fish sauce. Can you tell me what happened from there?

So, I have two people that buy. John is our main buyer for non-produce items. Another person does a lot of ordering. If it’s a small item, like the fish sauce, we won’t sell 100 cases a week. Sometimes we get 20 requests for stuff a week or sometimes we’ll think it’s okay to bring in or maybe not, based on if it’s not going to move, it’s not that healthy, or it has ingredients we don’t like. But when I heard about this fish sauce, I told Alex to get on this! Alex calls the guy who’s doing this fish sauce. He came out to meet us personally and shows us how he makes it, why his sauce is so different and why it’s so different. I’m actually allergic to unclean foods, so eating at restaurants or eating bottled stuff that doesn’t have all-natural ingredients, I would break out in hives or bumps or reactions to it. When I heard about the fish sauce, I really wanted to get in on it

What are some of your food secrets in general? Your own personal food secrets that you wish people knew.

The olive oil comes to mind. I can talk about it for hours. When I start talking about olive oil to people who are friends or acquaintances, I’m very passionate about it but I have to hold myself back. I’m just crazy about it. it has so many health benefits, and it tastes so good. For us, it’s only been 5-6 years that we got into this fresh-press olive oil. There are so many perceptions about what good olive oil is. When they taste this stuff, it’s crazy good and I think that it’s incorporated into so much of your food to get healthy and also to get great flavor, too. I made a pesto the other night at some party I was invited to. I used the Portuguese Arbequina and everyone went nuts. I used a different recipe where I’m using the l locatelli and romano one part and three parts of the reggiano. There’s a lot of basil in that pesto and I shrink it down with olive oil. As for secrets, I make a vegetable frittata with that pesto. I will use zucchini and broccoli. This last weekend, I used a batch of broccoli and caramelized onions, which goes in the bottom layer, and I put the broccoli and pesto over that. Then I put all the egg whites and a couple of yolks over it. Touched it with cheese on the top, and baked it. I used olive oil for the flavor. That’s one of my secrets.

[Editor's note: don't worry, I'll get Carmelo to read It Starts With Food soon!]

Dallas and Melissa Hartwig from Whole9 are two of my favorite people in the real-food community. In addition to being knowledgeable, kind, and crazy attractive, they absolutely love helping people improve their lives by changing their relationship with food. Besides Robb Wolf and Loren Cordain, Whole9 was one of the first resources I used on my own health improvement journey. I did my first Whole30 in January of 2010, which really opened my eyes to what foods were truly optimal for me and what wasn’t.

For years, Whole9 has had a strong blog following and has taught workshops all around the country, individually touching the lives of readers and attendees. But It Starts With Food is a new beast entirely; it is the most effective tool for conveying the science of nutrition in an easy-to-understand, digestible manner.

I had a chance to read a pre-release version of the book, and thought the information was all fantastic. But when I received my copy of the book, I was simply blown away by the quality of the layout and ease of navigation. It really is laid out to make sure your absorb the maximum amount of information in a single pass (kind of analogous to optimal digestion, right?)

Some of my favorite highlights:
- A beautifully written chapter tying together the hormones insulin, cortisol, glucagon, and leptin
- A deep look at the psychology of food reward, and how people get unhealthy in the first place.
- Strategies for convincing others to clean up their dirty food.
- How to transition from a Whole30 to a Whole Life in a safe, scientific manner.
- Mocha Steak
- An epic list of references and tools for learning more (hint, they’re at the end).

It Starts With Food is an outstanding read for anyone, no matter what their background, their stage in life, or what they’re eating right now.

Congrats to Dallas and Melissa for creating an amazing tool for spreading the Good Food Word.

Don’t miss out on the free downloads!

“Paleo is not a panacea, but a blunt instrument”

– paraphrase of Mat LaLonde

I forget where I heard this quote from Mat (probably on Robb’s podcast), but it really struck true to me. In my own journey with Paleo, and through teaching others to adopt this lifestyle, I’ve grown to see its triumphs, and its limitations.

The Shotgun Approach

Ashley Tudor taught me how to shoot one of these

If you are transitioning from a standard diet, defined as one with reliance on processed, fake food, any whole-food based diet is going to be a big improvement. Food has the remarkable ability to replace medicine when combined with the body’s innate ability to heal itself. But if you’re trying to undo years of metabolic, hormone, and organ damage, simply removing toxins may not be enough. Let’s take a look at some of the areas where you may need more of an intervention than diet alone.

Digestion

It’s not uncommon for folks to experience an improvement in digestion when first switching to a low-toxin diet. However, that improvement doesn’t always stay, and digestion seemingly worsens. The gut comprises nearly 70% of our immune system, and needs to be taken care of appropriately. When things aren’t working right, we’re in a much more compromised state than we truly realize.

Here are some obvious common symptoms:
- Diarrhea
- Frequent bowel movements
- Constipation
- Bloating
- Excessive gas
- Foul gas
- Incomplete elimination
- Water retention
- Long/Short transit time (16-24 hours is ideal)
- Burping after eating
- Heartburn/Acid Reflux/GERD
- Fatigue
- Weight gain/difficulty losing weight
- Unexplained weight loss
- Odd stool coloring
- Hemorrhoids

Quite the list, eh? So after looking at your symptoms, you may be able to glean a self-diagnosis of a specific condition (though working with a practitioner who uses testing is often easier, though more expensive). Some possible conditions to consider:

Labels

- IBS
- Low HCL production
- Diverticulitis
- Ulcerative Colitis
- Cortisol Dysregulation/Adrenal Fatigue
- Leaky gut
- Gut dysbiosis
- Insufficient beneficial bacteria populations
- Small Intestinal Bacterial Overgrowth (SIBO)
- Hyper/hypothyroidism
- Neurotransmitter conversion inhibition
- Metabolic pathway impairment
- FODMAP Intolerance
- Fructose Malabsorption
- Organ damage (liver especially)
- Crohn’s disease
- And the list goes on and on…

Well great, so I’ve given you a bunch of stuff to worry about now, right? Well, before you go off trying to figure out how to label your symptoms, it’s important to realize that many of these conditions share root causes, and by mitigating those causes, you can avoid a lot of headache in the trial-and-error phase of getting yourself better.

Causes

- Chronic toxin exposure (food or environmental)
- Stress
- Poor sleep
- Micronutrient deficiency
- Insufficient intestinal bacteria
- Intestinal pathogen
- Unmanaged autoimmune condition
- Repeated use of NSAIDS or antibiotics
- Too little vegetable matter/starch (before you try to use the Inuits in an argument, please read this)

Solutions

Well the first solution is to obviously adopt a low-toxin, real food diet. And do it for at least 30 days. The Whole30 is a good way to go. If your symptoms are even more severe than that, you may want to look into the Specific Carbohydrate Diet and/or the GAPS protocol. They are a bit more spartan, but they do work miracles for people with severe digestive issues and autoimmune conditions, as they get the body back onto a path to heal itself properly.

After food is in order, the next thing to tackle is sleep. If you’re sleeping poorly, you’re going to feel terrible, and you sure as heck won’t digest properly. 65 degree room, pitch black, comfortable bed/pillows, establish good “bedtime hygiene”.

Next up is micronutrient deficiencies. This can be the toughest one to tackle, and often requires the most testing, but it will also glean the most systemic improvements in health. Here’s a list from Paul Jaminet about some of the most important vitamins and minerals to digestive health:

- Vitamin D3 sufficient to raise serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D above 40 ng/ml.
- Vitamin K2, at least 100 mcg/day.
- Magnesium citrate, 200 mg/day.
- Melatonin, as needed for deep restful sleep.
- Selenium, 200 mcg/day.
- Iodine, 1 mg/day or more, taking care to assure that auto-antibodies are absent before trying high doses.
- Thyroid hormone sufficient to bring TSH below 1.0 and body temperature to 98 F.
- Vitamin C, 1 g/day.
- Glutathione, 500 mg/day, preferably in the reduced form, taken between meals on an empty stomach with a full glass of water (since it is destroyed by stomach acid).
- N-acetylcysteine, 500 mg/day.
- Iron, zinc, and copper sufficient to relieve deficiencies.

If you’re already deficient in any of these items, then a paleo diet is only going to keep you from getting worse, it won’t necessarily help you replace what’s missing. You may find that you need to take a multivitamin and/or fermented cod liver oil/butter oil blend from Green Pasture. I’ll repeat my warning again though: Please work with your doctor or other health practitioner before making any changes based on what you read here.

So these steps will do a lot to get your gut on the path to healing, but in order to give it the building materials it needs, I recommend drinking bone broth daily. It’s really straight-forward to make, takes no time in a slow-cooker, and even less time in a pressure-cooker.

You also need to give your beneficial gut flora a happy home with plenty of soluble and insoluble fiber so it has something to use to repopulate your gut. If you know that you have depleted gut bacteria (say after following a course of antibiotics), you can use a prebiotic to lay the foundation and a priobiotic to up the population. I’ve found this to be one of the trickiest experiments to carry out, as every prebiotic contains different strains, and the wrong kinds or too much can hurt your stomach. It’s best to work with a practitioner. After you’ve repopulated your gut, you can keep it going by eating fermented foods like sauerkraut and kimchee, or kombucha, kefir (if you tolerate dairy), and carrots and pickles if you can’t do FODMAPS.

If you’re still having trouble digesting, you may need some support in the form of digestive enzymes or betaine HCL. Recognize that these are temporary solutions, but they can allow some of the burden to be taken off of your gut during the digestion process so that it can spend time healing.

And lastly, deal with your stress. Be mindful of when you’re stressed, and be active in managing it. Step away from your desk, go for a walk, practice meditative breathing exercises, do yoga, etc. Come to realize that you cannot control anything in this world, that it’s best to just enjoy the present, and that nothing is ever as bad as it seems. Unless it’s The Jersey Shore, that is as bad as it seems.

Stay tuned for the next part, where I’ll get in to some fun hormone stuff, and maybe share what’s been going on in my own journey.

For more information:

http://robbwolf.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/the-paleo-solution-episode-28.pdf
http://balancedbites.com/2012/05/podcast-episode-38-poop.html

http://balancedbites.com/2012/01/why-you-want-more-stomach-acid-not-less.html

http://balancedbites.com/2011/10/balanced-bites-podcast-episode-8.html

http://chriskresser.com/how-stress-wreaks-havoc-on-your-gut

http://chriskresser.com/myths-and-truths-about-fiber

http://chriskresser.com/the-high-price-of-antibiotic-use-can-our-guts-ever-fully-recover

http://chriskresser.com/3-reasons-why-coconut-milk-may-not-be-your-friend

http://chriskresser.com/the-healthy-skeptic-podcast-episode-9

http://chriskresser.com/a-healthy-gut-is-the-hidden-key-to-weight-loss
http://scdlifestyle.com/2010/09/why-fructose-malabsorption-causes-gas-cramping-and-diarrhea-and-how-to-bea-it/

http://scdlifestyle.com/2012/03/the-gut-health-recovery-quiz/

http://scdlifestyle.com/2011/03/what-to-do-when-the-scd-diet-isnt-working/

I’ve been excited about In Search of the Perfect Human Diet since I contributed to the project last year. I recently received my DVD copy, and while the film fell a little but short of my high standards for Paleo instruction, it was pretty darn good overall.

CJ Hunt is an incredibly polished story teller, due to his experience as a broadcast journalist. The impetus for the film was his own struggles with health as he literally died while running on a track at age 24. Over the next 22 years, he tried everything under the sun to control his health. Nothing worked, until he arrived at a real food prescription.

The film sets up the problem quite well: Americans are fat and are too confused to know what to do about it. Hunt’s own journey parallels the average American’s; that is live life until something catastrophic happens, then make a complete lifestyle change.

At the beginning of his search for the Perfect Human Diet, Hunt discusses the work of Weston A. Price. When I first stated a Paleo lifestyle, I was largely ignorant of Dr. Price’s work, but through AHS and people like Chris Masterjohn and Laura Schoenfeld, I’ve seen that they’ve had the right idea for quite some time.

Some other highlights:

• A visit to a vegetarian/vegan conference
• Interviews with Mike Eades, Robb Wolf, David Getoff, Boyd Eaton, and Gary Taubes (with some uncomfortable closeups)
• Excerpts from talks from Sally Fallon Morrell and Adele Hite
• A neat football field timeline demo with Loren Cordain
• Tours of various anthropological and archaeological sites and a discussion of what they found about our ancestors’ diet
• Caveman and cavewoman naughty bits
• A tour of a grocery store with Lane Sebring

One of the more interesting parts of the film was a visit to Mike Richards of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology where his group is looking at what the composition of our ancestors diet was, including vegetables and protein. Using some pretty advanced lab techniques, the group has been able to superimpose the diet data from other carnivores and herbivores to show that Neanderthals in Europe were getting all their protein from animal foods (not from dairy or legumes) and fish, and weren’t eating too much plant food overall. Of course, none of that can tell you what you should eat now for optimal health, but it’s still pretty interesting.

Overall, the film still emphasizes a low-carb Paleo diet, which we’re starting to realize may not be the right prescription for everyone, especially hard-charging athletes and people with thyroid conditions. And that’s a little bit in conflict with one of the experiments cited within the film, conducted by Kerin O’Dea, in which she had a group of aborigines who had become sick and unhealthy after consuming a modern diet for years, return to their hunter-gatherer roots. The group got healthier of course, and the macronutrient ratios that naturally resulted were 54-80% animal protein, 13-40% fat, and from 5-33% wild, fibrous carbohydrates. That data right there should be enough to tell us that a low-carb approach isn’t necessarily the most optimal, but unfortunately, Hunt misses the mark on explaining this.

While the film showcases a ton of really interesting evolutionary anthropology work, I view mostly as a prequel to a larger story. You already know that I’m not big fan of the “Caveman Diet” logical fallacy so I generally balk a little bit at articles and films that only address one side of health. My perfect sequel to this film would be a look at the biochemistry of how these foods make us sick, the power of real food to make us better, and some real studies, testimonials, and empowerment talk. Maybe after CJ gets done taking the film around the world he could get cracking on this next project. It’s a good film overall, and the story is told well without hyperbole or editorializing, and is definitely worth a watch.

A friend pointed me to a new documentary called “Hungry For Change“ that’s from the folks that brought us Food Matters. Now I have not yet watched Food Matters, though I’ve heard many good things. Here’s the trailer for Hungry For Change if you haven’t seen it yet:

Sounds like it could be pretty good, right? Well, it definitely hit on some good points once you waded through the incredible amount of hyperbole and correlation = causation missteps. The story focuses on a young woman, Natalie, who is depressed about the life she leads and the food choices she makes. Her body image issues prevent her from pursuing an office romance with Jason, the debonair, coiffed gentleman we only see briefly. To illustrate the dire situation that our protagonist is in, we see her chronically making poor choices and spiraling ever downward into a pit of despair. She’s drowning in processed food, which brought me to my favorite gaffe of the film:

Diet Cola, now with calories!

Uh-oh, since when do diet sodas have calories? While I agree they’re terrible for you, it’s because of the nasty compounds and the hormonal response, not the calories.

The film gives us a panel of “teachers” (it’s how they’re billed in the credits, I’m not being a dick), from a variety of backgrounds. Some of them are health care practitioners, some are just incredibly motivational people who have turned their lives around. I do wish they had included some more scientifically-minded folks in the group, because by not doing so, they left the very controversial and sometimes wacky, Dr. Joseph Mercola to discuss much of the science behind real food.

I did appreciate the film’s vehement anti-sugar approach. I completely agree that excess calorie consumption from sugar-laden processed foods is largely responsible for obesity and the diseases of modern civilization. I still could have done with less hyperbole and a little more science, but I am a giant nerd, so I understand if that’s not what everyone wants.

One of the teachers that I really liked was Daniel Vitalis (if that’s his real name he was born for this kind of stuff). He believes strongly in the Ancestral Movement, almost to an extreme, where he teaches a lot of historical reenactment. But that was why I liked him; he had a great quote that I’ll paraphrase: “We need to start thinking of a diet as what a species habitually eats.” For countries other than America, this is largely true; a “diet” is just the term for your daily regimen of food. Only in this country has it gotten to a point where we’ve perverted that word to be an oppressive term. The central tenant of the film that I’ll echo here is that diets don’t work; what we need is lifestyle change.

I also appreciated how the teachers stayed largely macronutrient agnostic, choosing instead to focus on micronutrients and the nutrient density of food. See the reason that the SAD (Standard American Diet) is so effective at promoting weight gain and disease is that it is largely hypercaloric (provides more calories than needed) while lacking micronutrients. This creates a state of being “overfed, yet starving to death.” As Vitalis pointed out, most hunter-gatherer-gardener populations had a diet that was adequate in calories or low in calories (hypocaloric), while still being very nutrient dense.

Here’s where the film got really uncomfortable for me as a scientist. The film proceeded to compare Frankenfoods to cigarettes and paint MSG as the cause of all disease and death in the past 70 years. While I agree that both are terrible for you and you shouldn’t use them, unfounded scare tactics provide very little credibility to discerning viewers.

Perhaps the claim that annoyed me the most was made by Dr. Mercola. As his reasoning for avoiding the aspartame found in diet sodas, he cited an urban legend that in the airline pilot community, they know not to drink diet sodas while flying because when aspartame is consumed at high altitudes, it can cause hypotoxia (lack of oxygen to the brain). Furthermore, he claimed, aspartame will make you depressed. Whoa, that’s some bold stuff right there. Join me in putting your thinking caps on for a minute, and let’s take a closer look at this.

Planes are pressurized so that they have a similar pressure to what you’d experience on the ground. Otherwise, passengers and pilots would both feel the effects of hypoxia, altitude sickness and more. The idea that aspartame can some how cause people to experience vision loss or drop dead as Mercola would have us believe, just because you’re at altitude, is just silly.

I pulled up the study that he referenced to see if it was actually proving the claim he made. This study was conducted with two fairly small groups where one group had severe mood disorders and the other was considered “normal.” The individuals were given doses of pure aspartame several times per day to simulate the consumption of diet soda, or a placebo, but in alternating weeks so that each subject served as their own control. The study was halted early by the school running it because the symptoms of those with mood disorders became more severe. In fact, two of the patients started having problems with their eyes (a retinal detachment and a conjunctival hemorrhage). While these are severe results, they can’t definitively be pointed to the aspartame due to the way the study was set up.

The aspartame study used a dosage of 30mg/kg/day. For a 165lb (75kg) person, that’s 2250 mg of aspartame. There are 15mg/oz of aspartame in Diet Coke. That means it takes 150oz or 4.4L or 12.5 cans of Diet Coke to get the same dose. But because the data is incomplete, and the dose is so large, the only conclusion you can get out of it is there may be a correlation between high doses of aspartame and mood disorders, and maybe those people shouldn’t drink 4 liters of diet coke a day for a week straight then go off it.

And Mercola knows this. He totally does. In fact he can’t even look at the camera straight when he makes these outlandish claims:

Every time you equate correlation with causation, a puppy cries.

This review is getting a bit long, and the movie does makes some good points about skin health, fermented foods and the opioid effects of sugar, flour and dairy. But the rest is more sensationalism without too much practical knowledge transfer. In fact, it seems like the only practical suggestion that the film gives for improving your health (besides the stop eating fake food mantra, and get more sleep) is that you can juice your way out of anything. Just throw a bunch of fruit and veggies in a blender and you can beat all disease! Anyone who’s tried to lose weight and who helps people get healthy know that it’s far more complicated than that.

There was one more part of the film that I wanted to mention, and it was where the protagonist started watching the Hungry For Change documentary herself. That’s right, they went totally meta with it.

What is this? Inception for foodies?

This is where I totally lost interest in this documentary as a serious tool for helping people make change. I liked a lot of the teachers that were featured, but the film made too many logical leaps and hyperbolic statements to be effective. I’d rather show people films like Fat Head, Food, Inc. or King Corn. At least they don’t charge for a gimmicky recipe book.

I don’t have kids, but I really like them because they’re hilarious, adorable and irrational. When I do have kids one day, I absolutely plan to raise them to have the healthy habits it took me so long to learn. So when I received my early copy of Sarah Fragoso’s new children’s book Paleo Pals: Jimmy and the Carrot Rocket Ship, I was excited to see how she plans to teach the world’s kids how to love real food. For those who have never visited Everyday Paleo, first, I say shame on you! Second, you really should check it out because it eliminates the “I don’t have time to make real food” excuse. Sarah is a mother of three, a trainer, an author, a blogger, a speaker and if she can do all that and still feed her family, you can too.

Bottom line: I LOVED THIS BOOK! Yes, the 20-something hardcore, CrossFit caveman likes a kid’s book, deal with it. What I liked so much about the book was that it is a well-crafted story about three superheroes who each have something to teach Jimmy, the child who’d rather go hungry than eat delicious paleo food; it’s reminiscent of Dickens’ A Christmas Carol in that way. There are lessons on farming, cooking, and how food affects energy, mood and learning. Sarah even manages to sneak in a picture of inflamed enterocytes to make us science nerds happy!

The daughter of a children’s book author, Sarah has certainly picked up the trade and makes the characters and morals pop off the page and really stick with the reader. To round out the great story, the book is filled with shopping lists and kid-friendly recipes. And I have been assured that the Paleo Pals will return in The Paleo Pals Cookbook. All in all, if you have kids and are looking for a good way for them to buy in on the benefits of a healthy lifestyle, this book is a great choice. I look forward to reading it to my kids one day.

“You have a fear of commitment”

- Aimee Everett

I love to lift. It’s definitely my favorite part of CrossFit, and I’m fortunate to belong to a box that incorporates a lot of lifting into its programming. And I’m even more fortunate that I have a great coach who has taught me a ton of good technique.

But in the quest for me to be the best version of myself as possible, I happened upon the Performance Menu, Greg’s Book on Olympic Weightlifting, and the accompanying DVD, all of which are excellent resources for you to get more awesome at life.

And when Mr. Fitbomb organized a field trip for the CFPA crew to attend the 2-day Olympic Weightlifting Seminar at Catalyst Athletics taught by none other than Greg and Aimee Everett, I knew I had to do it despite an extremely messed up wrist.

The first things you notice about Catalyst isn’t the nice wide-open space or the lifting platforms or how clean it is. No, the first things you notice about Catalyst are Aimee and Greg. They are an incredibly nice and funny and frighteningly strong couple. We spent a good chunk of the first morning working on squatting and flexibility drills, including the infamous “Russian Baby Makers” which are a new favorite of mine. Then we worked a lot of the basics of the snatch: the hook grip, the first pull, mid-thigh hang position, the scarecrow, snatch balance and more. Most of these progressions are covered in the book and the DVD, so it was mostly review for me. At the end of day one, my power snatches were looking great, but I was still having trouble committing to a full-depth squat on my regular snatches. Talking with Aimee, she explained it was a common trait among CrossFitters, because we’re used to WODs where we’re trying to punch out reps quickly, and that I had a “fear of commitment” with going into a full squat. Absolutely spot on, and once I committed, the rest felt better. At the end of day one, I was exhausted, partially because I barely slept the night before, but largely because of the hundreds of squats and snatches we did throughout the day.

Day two was a lot more fun for me. I got a little more sleep, which definitely helped, but also cause we finally got to clean & jerks, something I had yet to try. And did you know that the push jerk and power jerk are not technically the same thing? I didn’t, and I’m a sucker for semantics. Anyway, the split jerk was definitely my favorite move to learn, though the first few times it was incredibly awkward to perform. So how do you decide which foot to use as your forward foot in the split? Stand up and take a walking lunge. Whichever foot you used to perform it, that’s your lead foot. Try the other one out too just to make sure, but Greg boasts that that method works damn near every time.

After the jerk, we spent some time on the clean, which went by quickly since we were already snatch rockstars (that sounds so wrong). Putting it all together felt great; there’s something immensely satisfying about putting overhead all the weight you just cleaned up. My wrist started screaming again before I could go too heavy, but I did set a PR of 60kg on the clean and jerk (mostly cause it was the first time I had done the whole movement). But hey, a PR is a PR, right?

So was the whole weekend worth the price? In retrospect, I would have loved to do it when I wasn’t injured, but I would have missed out on the group discount, which helped out a lot. Overall, I’d say yes it was worth it. I know what to look for now on my lifts and started feeling myself self-correct. Were there some parts of the seminar that could be improved? Yes, especially the feedback portion from the coaches walking around. I know that expert coaches can look at multiple students at the same time, but there were definitely times where there were two or three coaches sitting around one group, while half the room felt ignored. And other times a coach would provide feedback to one lifter in the group and then leave when we switched. My advice would be to have the coaches continually circling, providing feedback to all the members of a group before moving on. We certainly did enough reps for that to happen, and it’s how other seminars I’ve been in are run. That said, when we did get feedback, it was always spot on and led to instant improvement.

“Never go to the bar, make the bar come to you”

-Greg Everett

So what were my big takeaways?

- Don’t move your body to the bar, make the bar come to you

- Stick that butt out like J. Lo

- Work the progressions

- That Greg and Aimee would make sailors blush

All in all, I had a great time and look forward to the next time I can go learn from those folks again!

I even wore my Norcal Shirt to kiss Greg's ass

Hi all! Just wanted to let you know that a guest post I wrote about grains is up at the Whole9 blog. Thanks so much to Dallas and Melissa for letting me be part of their process!

Whole9 Life – Why Gluten Free Isn’t Good Enough, Part I

Cheers,
Badier