I thought it'd be obnoxious to start another food question thread. I was just going to wait to see if anyone had a question they wanted to ask. So it's here if you want.

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If you have any food related questions or thoughts, share them here viewtopic.php?f=8&t=10351

Great, I was hoping you would restart this thread here. I'm very novice at cooking, but enjoy it. I recently got a recipe for beef kebabs with a mint yoghurt sauce. After a few trials, I tend to be happy with the sauce and vegetables, but not always the beef. For example, the first time I made the mistake of grabbing stew beef, which was WAY too chewy. What cut of meat would you recommend, and is there anything I should try to prepare it or cook it properly?

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Okay... here's a general question, although not sure I expect a real answer. In my family, my daughter is vegetarian, my wife is gluten-intolerant, and I've just been told to cut my fat intake. Meal suggestions welcome!!

I'm only going to post about this once lest I become known for it.

Just about everything you've been told about diet and health is wrong. Shockingly, criminally wrong. Starting with the idea that fat, especially saturated fat, is bad for your heart. (More detail) (Trans fat, which people used to replace sat. fat when the government started telling us it was bad, really is as horrible for you as they say.)

High cholesterol is not necessarily bad. Only a very particular form of it is actually associated with heart disease. And it's not LDL; it's a subtype of LDL. The LDL number tells you NOTHING about your heart attack risk unless it's broken down further.

Grains (even and perhaps especially "heart healthy" whole grains) are not actually that good for you unless prepared properly (= long fermentation), and practically no one does so. (One example, incidentally this is the article that got me first investigating all this stuff) Wheat especially is quite bad for people. (Argument against cereal grains)

I found all this stuff almost a year ago and changed my diet accordingly. The term for it is the "paleolithic diet" and the idea is to eat the things our species evolved to eat, and not modern innovations associated with society's current health issues. Practically, this means to stop eating 1. wheat, 2. sugar (and high-fructose corn syrup, etc), and 3. modern oils (corn, safflower, cottonseed, peanut, etc). The best how-to list I know of is here. I feel better, sleep better, and my teeth (gums, rather-- I've never had a cavity) are better. Just dropping wheat had a noticeable effect.

Unfortunately, I discovered all this right when I was starting to get really good at making bread.

Apologies for the wall of text and I hope this doesn't run afoul of the "no religion" rule. hehe. I may or may not respond to questions, I don't really want to get into a debate, but I feel kinda obligated to at least attempt to get this info out there.

Most of my links above go to one of the more scientific sources, but it's far from the only one. Here are some others:

* http://www.proteinpower.com/drmike/
* http://www.paleonu.com/
* http://heartscanblog.blogspot.com/
* http://nephropal.blogspot.com/
* http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/
* http://freetheanimal.com/


Anyway, by way of an actual response (sorta) to GoCat: Ignore the low-fat rule. All of you should stop eating bread/wheat. Cook with lots of coconut milk (curry, mmm) and let your daughter pick the meat out.

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Hey, it could be worse! I know when to let you come up for air.



Not really. Low average life expectancy in the past is mainly due to high infant mortality. If you lived to 20 (and were not engaged in a war) you'd probably live to 60 and beyond.



Feel free to try this. On someone else. Far away from me.

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Thanks for the input. I actually am a quite healthy eater, and have been most of my life. Yes, I still eat wheat, but in moderation. The low-fat thing isn't due to obesity (I'm not even close) or worries about cholesterol; it's because I just had my gall bladder removed. From what I understand, if I engage in high-fat meals, I'll simply have a harder time digesting. Nothing all that bad or fatal, but maybe more trips to the loo!

We could get into why, with my reasonably healthy lifestyle, I ended up with an inflamed gall bladder that had t be taken out. I couldn't say for sure, but one does suspect diet. I've never shied away from meats and fats, in general, and I do wonder if I've indulged too much at times. Probably genetics plays a part, too -- many people my age eat far worse than I do and still own a gall bladder.

Anyway... I appreciate your comments, although I suspect that the dietary lifestyle you are choosing for yourself and suggesting for others is no better or worse than many other choices.

As Helel pointed out: from an evolutionary point of view, I should probably be dead already (I'm 53). If we think back to pre-agricultural times (before we started eating lots of cultivated grains and dairy) probably any diet that provides sufficient calories will get you through your expected life span.

between 40/40/20 and 40/30/30 pfc split is what i like, but doctors orders may supersede that !!

Lol, that changes things. Bile is required to emulsify fats, so yeah, if you eat a ton all at once you may regret it!

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Go for chuck, short rib, or brisket. Also make sure you got alot of fat in there. Fat adds moisture, flavor, and tenderness. Also you can try curing the meat. Just salt it and leave it for an hour. But fat is the key.

@dan... Well said. With all the propaganda, it created a continental wide neurosis of the issue.

@ go-cat I'll post a few recipes when I get more time. But in general, stick to cuisine like asian, where rice makes up the bulk of the diet. Watch out for alot of brands of soy sauce. Most of them use wheat.

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If you have any food related questions or thoughts, share them here viewtopic.php?f=8&t=10351

Alright, I've got a food question. I want to start cooking chili for myself because you can make a bunch at once and then have meals for weeks. I'm looking for a good, simple recipe.

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Agree on both... we do a lot of foods in a wok, over rice or rice noodles. And yeah, we know about the soy sauce thing -- we even carry a bottle of tamari (wheat-free) with us when we go for sushi!

Hey, and Fwiffo's question brought another to mind for me: Any slow-cooker (CrockPot) recipes for things like chilis? Any general thoughts/hints/rules of thumb for slow cooking? I ask because many days it seems like a great way to easily get a hearty meal -- toss things in by noon, add things as it progresses, serve in the evening. I've always liked that approach.

Also -- thanks for the thread -- any info you offer is appreciated!

What daniel_the_smith says is interesting. I, also, don't want to get into a debate.

While I'm personally not convinced, since if one follows the food pyramid (before it was revised) and eats smaller portions one can be very healthy.

I'm also not a nutrition expert, though the "correct" diet may lie somewhere in the middle.

I am liking the links that he linked to, though, as I'm finding them very interesting.

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I'm really embarassed to say this, but I've never made chili before. Let me play around a bit and get back to you.

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If you have any food related questions or thoughts, share them here viewtopic.php?f=8&t=10351

This is the dietary system I endorse: "Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants."

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Just to be clear about what I was saying: yes, I'm asserting that the food pyramid (old and new) is a large part of the problem and is completely out of whack with what humans have eaten for the last 500,000 - 2 million years. For example, grains make up the bulk of the diet under the food pyramid, but grains have only been cultivated for about 10,000 years. Historical cultures range from nearly all meat (the Inuit) to moderately high in starchy tubers (Kitavians), but none ate significant quantities of grain and all ate as much meat and fat as they could get.

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Misleading anecdotes. The inuit have traditionally had a very good reason to not eat grain but unhealthiness isn't it.

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I don't understand how that was misleading. Grains were not available to the Inuit until very very recently, and the Inuit were a healthy culture ~100 years ago, if you believe the contemporary reports. Therefore grains are not necessary to be healthy.

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Surely that's because they are high-energy foods and people couldn't afford to let a short-term abundance go to waste? It doesn't imply that eating as much meat and fat as you can get is healthy. It also seems a very weak argument that we should do something just because that's what (some vaguely defined understanding of) humanity has always done; as has been pointed out, there wasn't some halcyon period one million years ago where everyone grew up strong and healthy and lived vigorous lives until they were ninety. There are also plenty of examples of local adaptation to environmental factors that need to be taken into account for situations like the Inuit.

Also, based on the argument I've seen in this thread, any true "paleolithic" diet would probably require you to have long fasting periods, or periods of poor nutrition, interspersed with brief periods where you gorged yourself. You'd also probably require a very high activity lifestyle. I suppose that you'd also want to be cutting out cheese and milk products, as the human adaptation for lactose-tolerance in adults is quite recent.

I'd also question what "healthy" means in this context. It can mean "I'll live a long time", or "I'm not morbidly obese". (Having said that, I did see some recent research that showed that you can be both obese and fit, with the health risk being a lack of activity rather than the fatness itself.)

That's speaking as a vegetarian who lives on beans and pulses, and does a fairly high amount of aerobic exercise.

I'm not saying that you're wrong, I'm just saying that the justifications I've often seen associated with this dieting model are typically very weak, and are backed up by small-scale studies that go against a lot of the scientific literature. (Again, going against the scientific literature doesn't make something intrinsically wrong, it just adds an extra burden of proof and rigour on the person making the claim.)

Anyway... to answer GoCat, I'd offer two ideas for good vegetarian meals that should satisfy: dal with rice, and vegetable (or mushroom) risotto or paella. Chickpeas are a good source of experimentation as well -- you can make an amazing salad just by boiling them up, adding a few spices and spring onions, some lemon juice and perhaps a dash of olive oil if you can allow that.

/T

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Some of this is correct. I usually eat only two meals a day, for example (which would have been unthinkable before I switched my diet because I was hungry all the time). Really strict paleos do indeed cut out milk products, but most of us don't find it necessary-- actually cream (I'm somewhat lactose intolerant) and cheese are important parts of my diet.

There are rebuttals to some of the other things you said, but I've bored people enough, I'm sure (and I have other things to do)-- if you really want to know, I think I left enough links in my first post to follow it down the rabbit hole.

PS if I were going to be a vegetarian, I would eat as much Indian food as possible. Naan and daals are wonderful. Muttar Paneer (peas and cheese) is my favorite Indian dish.

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I agree, Indian food like Naan and paneer are great. I've never had dal, but really want to try it after hearing the reviews here and looking at it on wikipedia. This sort of thing is why I would always have a hard time with any genre-restrictive diet. I understand 'eat less' or 'eat more of x, y, and z', but I love variety of delicious food too much to stick with anything that restricted it. For example, not being able to eat cheese, meat, and such. The only reason I would consider something like that is for ethical reasons (like vegetarianism), and I just don't think I'm ethically motivated enough or have enough willpower to do something like that.

Perhaps I'll try something with chickpeas, tealeaf. That sounds delicious.

edit: Sorry, I know this is a tangent from the cooking thread. However, while I enjoy cooking, I'm much better at appreciating food than cooking it. =D

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