Farmer's market discovery: green almonds!

I love this time of the year. The weather is mild and the Farmers’ Market is teeming with life. I’m not talking about the big crowds with families enjoying their morning shopping at the market, or the joy of watching young children tasting fruits and learning about real food. I’m referring to the incredible varieties of produce and rare seasonal treats that appear at farmer's markets and which you will never see at the supermarket. What really caught my eye today were the beautiful freshly cut, right off the tree, green almonds.

The almond is native to, and was first domesticated in, the Mediterranean Middle East -- present day Lebanon, Israel, Syria, Jordan and nearby countries. However, almond trees spread throughout the region, and have been a major food in Greece for thousands of years. In ancient Greece, almonds were eaten in a wide variety of states, from dried and roasted, as we eat them, or green and right off the tree. Green almonds are still eaten in Greece. The Greek word for green almond is tsagala.

The fuzzy green shell is still very soft and can easily be cut with a paring knife all around like an avocado. Inside you’ll find the kernel, which is surrounded by a thin skin, the one that becomes brown once matured. The inner kernel is translucent and soft to the bite. It tastes like it has tannins (slightly astringent), which makes sense as it's still young and green. It's hard to describe the flavor, but think of an un-sweet cross between grape and cucumber.

The farmer I bought these from told me that green almonds can be eaten whole with fuzzy shell and all or shelled -- just the tender kernels by themselves. They can be steamed or sautéed with olive oil, garlic and herbs to enjoy them by themselves or put into salads or throw them into soups.

Almond season starts late April and lasts through mid June. - Amira

How to protect your skin from sun damage -- with food

Researchers at the UK's University of Newcastle found that eating tomatoes helps prevent sunburn.

The volunteers in the study who ate five tablespoons of tomato paste every day were on average 33 percent more protected against sunburn than the control group. Researchers calculated that this quantity of tomatos is the equivalent of constantly wearing a 1.3 SPF sunblock.

The scientists attribute this effect to an antioxidant present in tomatoes called lycopene, which is also responsible for giving tomatoes their red color. It's also found in red carrots, watermelons and papayas.

Lycopene has also been linked in the past with protection against age-related events like macular degeneration, the formation of skin wrinkles, prostate cancer and the rise in bad cholesterol.

The research suggests that we should re-think our understanding of sun damage and skin cancer as not just about exposure, but also diet.

In the past few decades, we have seen dramatic rises in both Vitamin D deficiency and skin cancer, one thought to be caused by not enough sun, and the other by too much sun.

Of course, individual cases vary -- and statistical changes can be partly determined by the immigration of people to climates incompatible with their skin types -- but in general the rise in skin cancer may be closely linked to the degradation of diet.

In the past ten years, an enormous number of discoveries have been made about the link between diet and skin cancer. Broccoli, green tea, grapes, pomegranates, onions, red kidney beans, blueberries, cranberries, blackberries, rasperries, strawberries, apples, pecans, cherries, plums and black beans, tumeric (every single one of them a Spartan Diet superfood) have all been found to contain compounds that "fight" skin cancer.

Even extra-virgin olive oil applied to the skin after sun expsure -- a practice the Spartans started in Ancient Greece more than 2,600 years ago and something they did every day -- reduces the risk of skin tumors.

These breakthroughs are typically reported in the media as "this food fights skin cancer" or "that food linked to cancer protection." In reality, humans are designed to both get a lot of sun and also eat the foods that "fight" skin cancer. It's the removal of these foods from our diet that may be a leading cause of the the skin cancer epidemic.

Talk to your doctor about your personal skin cancer risks, based on skin type, climate and other factors. But also don't wait for a cure to come in pill form. Prevention is the best medicine, and the best food is the best prevention.

The Spartan Diet is loaded with all the foods researchers have found to prevent skin cancer. We also call for plenty of outdoor excercise. Doing both wisely in consultation with your doctor is your best approach to optimal health free of vitamin D defficiency and cancer of any kind, including skin cancer.

Processed foods: The good, bad and ugly

Most foods are "processed" at some point. For example, if you slice an apple, you have "processed" it. If you cook rice, make a salad or bake salmon, you have by definition transformed them from unprocessed to processed foods.

People talk about "processed foods," but it's a confusing term because some processing is good and necessary, and some is bad and unnecessary.

The Spartan Diet draws a very sharp distinction between foods processed for eating on the one hand, and those processed for preservation on the other. Although the Spartan Diet is made up almost entirely of raw, whole, unprocessed foods -- at least when you buy or pick them -- foods that have been processed for eating are on the diet. Olive oil, for example, has been processed. The oil has been extracted from olives, and that's a process -- and a necessary one if you want olive oil. However, it has not been processed for preservation. Good olive oil hasn't been pasteurized, irradiated, or subjected to any process to give it shelf life. Olive oil stays good for months on its own, if properly handled, so no such intervention is necessary. High-quality, organic extra-virgin olive oil is a processed food. But because the processing isn't for preservation, it's OK.

Here's the problem: Food decays. As soon as an animal has been killed, or a plant food has been removed from the plant or soil, it begins a process of decline. Some foods, such as grains, stay perfectly good for years. Some fruits can last days or weeks after being picked. Others, such as lettuce, decline in hours.

As foods decay, the taste, smell, and appearance are transformed. As a survival mechanism, we are hard-wired to be attracted to fresh foods and repulsed by old foods. Nature is looking out for us. Our preference for fresh foods is designed to keep us healthy.

In order to manage the mass distribution of food cost effectively by reducing spoilage, and to make seasonal foods available for sale all year, people have come up with processes that slow or hide this decay. Food preservation is all about hiding the age of food, and tricking human instinct into accepting old food as fresh.

In ancient times, people salted and dried foods for preservation. These processes are still used, but we also have more modern methods that include canning, pickling, irradiation, pasteurization and many others. (Food companies also use food additives to preserve and improve the appearance of old food, but this post is about understanding processed foods, rather than food additives.)

Just about every food or drink that comes in a bottle, can, carton, box, bag or plastic container has been processed for preservation. And because of this processing, which universally degrades nutritional and gastronomic quality, these foods are not on the Spartan Diet. (One notable exception is frozen foods, which are generally good enough if fresh versions are unavailable.)

Most food preservation methods are products of advancing science, technology and infrastructure improvements. But in the last few decades, our civilization has advanced to the point where we can eat fresh foods every day, and never eat foods that have been processed for preservation. A historically unprecedented variety of fresh, whole, raw un-adulterated foods are easily available to the vast majority of people in the industrialized world.

People still buy foods processed for preservation, largely because they are far more aggressively marketed (the processing and additives turn them into a branded product) and because they can appear to be cheaper. But they're not necessary. And avoiding all such processed foods, and eating a diet of fresh foods, you can enjoy much better health -- and far better tasting meals.

Spartan Diet foods are simply foods of the highest quality. Foods that have been processed for the purpose of making old food look fresh just aren't good enough.

How to raise a Spartan child

A group of retired military leaders issued a report recently called "Too Fat to Fight: Retired Military Leaders Want Junk Food Out of America’s Schools."

The report cited Department of Defense data showing that 75 percent of Americans 17 to 24 years old are ineligible to join the military. "Being overweight or obese turns out to be the leading medical reason why applicants fail to qualify for military service."

Healthcare experts say the obesity crisis is now so bad that it threatens national security.

The report's recommendation focuses on removing junk food from schools. That's a great recommendation, but it doesn't go far enough.

It a nutshell, we're growing so soft and weak as a nation that we may soon be incapable of defending ourselves.

Most people don't know this, but ancient Sparta faced a comparable crisis.

In Ancient Greece, wars were fought mainly by aristocrats -- wealthy land-owners who could afford helmets, shields, spears and swords and the leisure time to train. Because of Sparta's many geographical advantages, Spartan aristocrats grew very rich and the country was very hard to invade. The fighting class grew soft, so soft that Sparta faced what we would call a national security crisis.

A series of events lost to history resulted in the total transformation of Spartan society into the awesome war machine we remember even today. History credits a reformer named Lycurgus, who sparked a revolution of Spartan government, society and culture.

Plutarch wrote:

Lycurgus’s laws meant wealthy Spartans "could no longer spend their lives at home, lying on their couches and stuffing themselves with unwholesome delicacies, like pigs being fattened for slaughter. No longer could they ruin not only their minds but also their bodies, becoming so weak by lazy overindulgence that they needed long sleep, warm baths, and about as much care as if they were constantly sick."

As part of the Lycurgan reforms, land was taken from the rich, and re-distributed equally among citizens. Each male child was given a huge farm at birth (although women could own and inherit property, too).

In traditional ancient societies, the wealthy become unhealthy because they eat too much fatty foods and don't get enough exercise, while the poor become unhealthy because they often have nutritional inadequacies. (Only in the industrial age do we have both: People get too many calories and also suffer nutritional deficits.) Sparta banned both. The rich were no longer able to eat delicacies. The poor were fed the same foods as the rich -- plain, varietal, fresh, whole foods in very measured quantities. In fact, the richest Spartans (with the biggest and best farms) were required by law to feed the rest their best foods.

At the age of 7, boys entered the famous Spartan agoge for 23 years of military training, which involved hours of daily outdoor exercise, among other things. The "herd," as they called the boys, were hardened against heat, cold, hunger, pain and fatigue.

Less is known about the education of girls, but we do know they trained hard also, even in Olympic events like wrestling, javelin, discuss, running and so on. Spartan women scandalized Greece for centuries. Disparaged as "thigh flashers," because they wore short skirts (unlike the head-to-toe garb required of proper Athenian women), Spartan girls and women were famous for singing, dancing and for an exercise that involved jumping straight up and kicking one's own butt with the heels. (The picture top right is of a statue of an amazingly fit Spartan teenage girl from about 550 B.C.)

Unlike aristocratic women from other wealthy Greek city-states, who were invariably soft, white and a little sick from wearing toxic make-up, Spartan women were famous for being ripped, tan, muscular and beautiful even though they didn't wear any makeup.

It's likely that obesity was non-existent in post-Lycurgus Sparta. Among men and boys, even minor chubbiness probably didn't exist. The combination of constant exercise, incredibly healthy food and a conspicuous "frugality of the diet" prevented that.

Ancient Sparta faced a similar crisis to our own. And they solved it so completely that 2,600 years later they're still famous for physical fitness.

What can we learn from them about raising healthy children?

Clearly dragging 7-year-olds out of their homes and into boot camp is out of the question. Our society is based on individuals and families, rather than on Spartan-style, state-sponsored collectivism. And we like it that way. Still, Ancient Sparta has much to teach us about lifelong fitness.

We don't know much about the daily lives of Spartan families. But we do know that Spartan parents didn't pamper their kids. Plutarch tells us that Spartan children "grew up free and active, and without any sort of cry-baby ways. Spartan children were not afraid of the dark, or finicky about their food."

It's also worth pointing out that Spartan children slept all night (boys mostly slept outdoors under the stars), and didn't even have torches, let alone Xbox, to keep them up late. Of course, Spartan kids never ate processed food, junk food, white sugar, preservatives, artificial flavors, soda, candy bars or any of the other junk foods that wouldn't be invented for more than 2,000 years. Instead, they ate fruit, vegetables, whole grains, wild fish, seeds, goat cheese, and meat and poultry in very small quantities (all "free range").

This is the opposite of how American children typically grow up -- un-free, inactive and being crybabies about everything. They're afraid of the dark and finicky about their food. Worse, they live in a world of media, with a lot of their interaction with the world taking place through TV, computer, video-game and cell phone screens.

Instead of indoctrination in martial virtues and devotion to the nation, American kids watch hours of TV every day and are indoctrinated in the "virtues" of consumer culture and personal gratification. The most heavily advertised children's products are incredibly unhealthy foods. The average child is bombarded by thousands of ads per year designed to imprint on them a strong desire to eat packaged breakfast cereals (some of which are more than 40 percent sugar), snacks, candy, soda, and fast food laden with ingredients proved to promote cancer, heart disease, hyperactivity, obesity and a long list of other maladies.

We can and we must fix the problem. We have to dismantle the industrial junk-food complex, and replace public school cafeteria junk food with real food. But most of all, we have to change the culture of parenting in America.

Ancient Spartans achieved incredible physical fitness by obeying laws written by Lycurgus and enforced by the state. But you can achieve the same thing for your children by following and enforcing some common-sense rules that will make your kids a little more Spartan:

1. Never ask children what they want to eat.

The best way to engender bad food habits is to invite kids into the decision-making process. That gets them thinking of the world of junk foods they'd rather be having, and focuses on personal immediate gratification. Instead, get them used to the idea that parents decide what they eat, and kids eat what they're given.

2. Limit screen time.

Kids keep spending more and more time sitting and watching TV and movies, playing video games, using the PC or using a cell phone. This passive "activity" has displaced sports, exercise, personal social interaction and outdoor time. Take 24 hours in a day, and subtract 9 hours for sleep, the time they're in school and doing homework, the time they should be doing physical activities, meal times and other activities, and arrive at a number, which is probably one or two hours. Enforce that number as the maximum amount of time each day they can sit there watching a screen.

When schedules get tight, screen time should be the first to go.

3. Maximize outdoor time.

My cousin goes running with his kids almost every day. Why not? Build solid outdoor family time into your daily life. Kids need sunshine, exercise and interaction with trees and plants in order to be healthy. Make them go outside.

For kids younger than, say, 10, just turning them loose outside guarantees that they'll exercise. That's what kids do: They run, climb, wrestle, goof around. Kids are naturally physical when they go outside.

4. Make meals from scratch, and get kids to help.

We've experimented on kids to find out what happens if they eat a lot of processed, industrial junk food. What we learned is that they get fat, sick and weak. It's time to learn from that failure and embrace what we know: Real food, made at home from scratch is the healthiest kind.

Sure, we've forgotten all the knowledge our great-grandmothers knew about food. But you can learn anything on the Internet. Re-embrace home-cooked meals and make your kids help fix it. That way, when they go out on their own they won't rely on packaged junk food.

5. Teach kids to be cynical about advertising.

Food companies are programming our children for failure and suffering. The least we can do is constantly remind kids what's going on with advertising. Nearly all ads aimed at kids are for junk foods known to cause heart disease, diabetes, cancer and other conditions. Constantly tell them what you know about what certain advertised foods do to the body, and why they even show ads in the first place. Make your kid media-savvy.

6. Don't let kids eat foods "designed" for kids.

Any food that's aimed at children -- Happy Meals, Froot Loops, SpaghettiOs and all the rest -- is bound to be incredibly bad for health. If it's targeted at kids, don't let your kids eat it.

7. Never let kids snack on "products," only produce.

The corporations have trained us through advertising to believe that snacks come in the form of packaged products. Instead, all between-meal eating for both kids and adults should be produce, not products.

If you're going to let kids snack, let them snack on fruit, raw nuts, seeds and other whole foods. Never let them eat snacks that have been manufactured.

8. No screens in bedrooms.

Kids stay up too late because of TVs, computers and cell phones in bedrooms. They don't get enough sleep, which causes them to be too tired for physical activity. They copy adults, and use caffeine as a pick-me-up. The whole cycle that results in fat, weak and sick kids starts with bad sleep.

Recent research has shown that looking at the illuminated screen of a TV, PC, cell phone or iPad just before going to bed triggers insomnia, because it confuses the brain about whether it's daytime or nighttime.

Simply ban anything with a screen from being brought into kids' bedrooms. When you make them go to bed at night, they'll have nothing to do but read -- or sleep.

9. No cell phones in bedrooms at night.

If your child carries a cell phone, their friends may be calling or texting at random hours in the night. When this happens, kids tend to wake up and respond. All this interrupted sleep causes all kinds of health problems. Don't allow it.

Give your child or teen a cell phone only on the condition that they hand it over every night.

10. Ban all soda.

Americans now get hundreds of calories per day in beverages, often sodas. It's not the calories per se -- diet soda is bad, too. Get your kids in the habit of drinking filtered water when they're thirsty.

These simple, common-sense rules will make your child far healthier, smarter, happier and more successful in life than allowing them to become just another depressing statistic.

You probably wouldn't want your child to grow up in Ancient Sparta. But we can all learn a thing or to about raising healthy children from a culture that produced so many incredibly healthy citizens.

How high heat turns good food bad

A new study found that foods cooked at high temperatures may harm your metabolism, increasing the likelihood of type-2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease.

Researchers, who published their results in a recent issue of the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, fed two groups the same foods cooked differently -- one with low temperatures and another at high heats. Researchers found that "one month of consuming the high-heat-treated diet induced significantly lower insulin sensitivity and plasma concentrations of long-chain omega-3 fatty acids and vitamins C and E."

In other words, foods cooked at high temperatures are probably bad for your health.

Another recent study by researchers at the University of Texas found that well-done meat and fried, grilled and barbecued meat can increase your likelihood of bladder cancer. University of Minnesota School of Public Health scientists found last year that charred meat can increase the risk of pancreatic cancer.

Another phenomenon related to cooking method and temperature is that different oils contain different "smoke points" -- the temperatures at which specific oils turn toxic at the molecular level. For example, canola oil becomes unhealthy at 440 degrees, while safflower oil goes bad at 318 degrees.

Unfortunately, the healthiest oil has the lowest smoke point. Extra-virgin olive oil -- the only kind on the Spartan Diet -- goes from superfood to carcinogen at tempuratures as low as 280 degrees (olive oil smoke points vary by type and brand). That's not very hot. (It's also one reason why boiling or steaming foods that contain olive oil is so safe -- the boiling point of water is 212 degrees.)

You should know that almost all restaurants cook foods at extremely high temperatures, oblivious to research about frying, grilling and barbecuing, as well as cooking-oil smoke points. That's one of the reasons cooked restaurant food is likely to be bad for your health. Pizza restaurants, for example, make pies with olive oil, then bake it at over 500 degrees -- some even as hot as 800 degrees! It tastes great, but if you walk out of a pizza place feeling like you've been hit by a truck, that overheated olive oil is probably one of the reasons.

Scientists have identified specific risks involved with cooking specific kinds of foods at high temperatures. Their findings are limited because that's how good science works. But as someone who eats food, you should understand that, in addition to specific risk of type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease and bladder and pancreas cancer, it's likely food cooked too hot is generally and broadly bad for your health, even if you never get the specific ailments scientists narrowly identified.

The Spartan Diet takes all this research into account. Spartan Diet foods are never fried, grilled or barbecued, only baked, poached, steamed, boiled or lightly sauteed using the lowest heat setting. And when olive oil is involved, the temperature of Spartan Diet foods never exceeds about 270 degrees.

It takes longer, but the result is healthier food that also tastes better.

Recent discoveries prove grains in paleolithic diet

The healthy diet community is split between the majority who believe whole grains are healthy and a minority who believe they are best avoided. The anti-grain camp is lead by followers of the ppaleo diet.

Paleo diet enthusiasts believe that grains were introduced into the human diet after the domestication of wild grains. Because human populations before the advant of "civilization" didn't eat grains, he argues, we shouldn't either.

The oldest evidence we have for the domestication of grains is about 10,500 years ago. But the direct evidence for the processing of wild grains for food goes back much earlier than domestication.

Unfortunately, archeological evidence is skewed toward materials that survive the centuries, such as stone, bone and other hard objects. Soft materials (such as grains) don't survive unless hard objects were used to process them. Even then, actual food residues are unlikely to be detectable millenia later.

When Cordain published The Paleo Diet in 2002, there was little material evidence for paleolithic grain consumption. But since then, the evidence has started to emerge.

The earliest known mortar and pestil with actual grains embedded in the pores was found in Israel dating back 23,000 years, according to a 2004 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences paper.

Note that the grains processed were wild barley and possibly wild wheat. This is direct, unambiguous evidence that humans were eating grains 13,000 years before the end of the Paleolithic era and the beginning of domesticated grains, agriculture and civilization.

Even more recently, archeologists published a paper in the December, 2009, issue of Science unveiling their discovery in Mozambique of stone tools with thousands of wild grain residues on them dated to 105,000 years ago. The grain was sorghum, and an ancestor of modern sorghum used even today in breads and beer.

This evidence doesn't prove that all humans everywhere have been eating grains for at least 105,000 years, nor does the absense of evidence at any time during the paleolithic era prove the absense of grain consumption. We don't know. What we do know is that the notion that paleolithic man never ate grains has been proved false.

Major-label apple juice can contain arsenic

A newspaper called the St. Petersburg Times commissioned testing of apple juice from major brands, and found arsenic in more than one-quarter of the samples that surpasses the Food and Drug Administration's "level of concern" for toxic heavy metals in juice.

The most likely culprit is arsenic-based pesticides used to grow the apples. According to an article in the paper, more than 60 percent of the apple juice from concentrate sold in U.S. stores comes from China, and most of the rest is grown in Chile, Argentina, Turkey and other countries.

A recent University of Arizona study found similar results with both apple juice and grape juice, according to the story. Two years ago, the FDA discovered high levels of arsenic in pear juice from fruit grown in China.

The consumption of arsenic over time has been linked to cancer, diabetes, organ damage, hormonal problems and brain development issues. That it's found in juice is particularly troubling because many children drink it every day.

The Spartan Diet has zero juice, avoids non-organic produce and a bans concentrated or similiary processed foods.

Why you should never eat movie theater popcorn

Have you ever noticed that eating too much movie theater popcorn can make you feel a little sick? That's because it probably is making you a little sick.

Popcorn may seem like the one snack available in a movie theater that's potentially healthy enough to make the Spartan Diet cut. After all, popcorn is just corn, a whole grain. If you ask for it without butter, it's healthy Spartan Diet-worthy, right?

Well, no. Not even close.

As you probably know, some theaters buy pre-popped popcorn, which is warmed up using lights in the theater. Pre-popped popcorn is cooked in unhealthy trans fat oils, and flavored and colored with artificial ingredients, often including MSG. And because this kind of popcorn is popped first, then stored for an unknown amount of time, it has added preservatives.

A bag of popcorn popped in the theater typically contains four individual concession stand supply products, including the popping corn, cooking oil, "butter" and seasoning salt. (Go here to see a nice collection of movie theater popcorn supply products.)

The corn itself is grown using insecticides, herbicides, fungicides, fumigants and other chemicals used to "treat" the corn. Go here to see the complete list.

Most movie theater popcorn is cooked in an oil product that is mostly hydrogenated coconut oil, a highly toxic trans fat. (The National Academy of Sciences has stated publicly that there is no safe level of trans fat consumption, and that it should be totally eliminated from the human diet.) The oil used for popping theater popcorn also contains artificial butter flavoring. That's why when you ask for no butter, the popcorn still tastes like fake butter, and still has a weird yellow color.

Some theaters boast of popcorn cooked in canola oil, which is supposed to be a health benefit. In fact, they're popping the corn in partially hydrogenated canola shortening, which is also a trans fat.

So if you order movie theater popcorn with no butter and no salt, that's what you're getting: corn that has been compromised by insecticides, herbicides, fungicides, fumigants and other chemicals, as well as trans fats, artificial flavors and probably preservatives as well.

But what if you do go for the butter and salt?

The artificial-butter-flavored topping is typically made mainly from hydrogenated soybean oil (another trans fat), artificial flavoring, beta carotene for color, and preservatives. Different theaters use different brands or supply sources, but this roster of toxic ingredients is typical.

One "flavoring agent" used in popcorn "butter" is called diacetyl, and it has been associated with lung disease among workers in the factories where it's made.

Popcorn supply companies don't have to disclose the use of diacetyl, or specific exactly what their flavoring agents are made of.

In addition, even the salt theaters use is something of a science project. The list of ingredients for one movie theater concession stand salt (which is typical), includes: "salt, artificial flavors, artificial sweetener (Acesulfame K), Yellow #5 Lake and Yellow #6 Lake." Some products also contain MSG.

Last year, the Center for Science in the Public Interest conducted a study on some nutritional aspects of movie theater popcorn, especially calories, fat and salt content, as well as other theater concession stand fare. Even by that shallow analysis, movie popcorn comes out as an assault on health. From the report: "A combo at [one theater chain] (medium popcorn plus medium soda) has 1,610 calories. That’s like eating six scrambled eggs with cheddar cheese, four bacon strips, and four sausage links before the lights come up."

If you enjoy eating popcorn at the movies, why not pop and bring your own? Buy organic popping corn from the bin section of your grocery or health-food store. Pop it in an air popper, and add a little extra virgin olive oil and a little quality sea salt, then smuggle it into the theater.

The whole thing will cost less than one-tenth of what you'll pay at the megaplex. It will taste a whole lot better. And best of all, it will actually be very healthy, instead of a massive toxic hit to your body.

What you need to know about seafood and mercury

Mercury is a toxic metal. Very small quantities are harmless, and it's eliminated in about a year. However, if too much mercury enters your bloodstream before previously ingested mercury is eliminated, your health can be affected.

Coal-fired power plants emit mercury into the air, which settles to the ground. Rain washes the mercury into creeks and rivers and eventually into oceans. Once in water, the mercury is transformed into methylmercury.

Tiny sea creatures ingest the methylmercury. Then larger fish eat those animals, and ever larger ones eat those, right up the food chain. Nearly all seafood contains methylmercury. However, some accumulate very high quantities, and others do not, depending on their diets.

You should never eat the high-methylmercury fish like king mackerel, shark, swordfish or tilefish. Always choose low- methylmercury seafoods, which include catfish, salmon and shrimp.

The best commonly available fish to eat is fresh, wild salmon, because it is low in methylmercury and high in protein, Omega-3 fatty acids, and vitamin D.

Also: Avoid eating more than two servings of any kind of seafood per week. And, of course, never eat farmed fish or seafood of any kind. Make sure it's prepared according to Spartan Diet principles, and cooked by poaching, boiled in soups, baked or raw. Don't fry or barbecue.

Not beer, but sprouted grain, boosts bones

A new study reports that some types of beer contain a lot of silicon, which may counter some age-related bone degeneration.

The study, carried out by the Department of Food Science & Technology at the University of California, resulted in the kind of simplistic "beer is good for you" headlines and lazy reporting we've all come to expect. The truth is more complex -- and interesting.

Beer is an ancient beverage, dating back at least 9,000 years. By definition, beer is a drink made primarily from water and grass seeds (otherwise known as grains).

Alcoholic beverages always need a source of sugar. In the case of beer, that sugar is normally supplied by the grain, which has starch that's converted into sugar during the brewing process.

Most beers are made with malted barley. The malting process is little more than taking whole barley grains, and sprouting them -- starting the growing process, called germination -- then drying the grains in an oven once the sprouts have emerged from the grains. (The picture accompanying this post shows malted barley.) The purpose of the malting process is to convert the starches in the grain into fermentable sugar.

Some beers are made from sprouted wheat, rather than sprouted barley. But it turns out that beer made with barley is higher in the silicon that benefits bone health.

So let's be clear about what the researchers are reporting. It was already well known that sprouted barley and other sprouted grains offer dietary silicon, which is good for bones. Its role is to boost the bone-building power of dietary calcium and also vitamin D, which is a hormone produced by the skin when exposed to sunshine. It's also worth noting that the sprouting process improves the nutritional quality of grains in other ways, including boosting its protein quantity and improving the relative quantities of various amino acids.

The University of California research has found that much of the silicon in sprouted barley and other grains survives the brewing, bottling and storage processes of beer, and is still present in the final product. They also discovered some detailed facts about which types of beers and which brewing processes best convey the greatest amount of silicon to the final product.

So just to recap: Sprouted grains contain silicon, and silicon is good for your bones. Beer is made from sprouted grains, and so it also contains silicon. The bottom line is not that "beer is good for you." Beer is a nutritional mixed bag. Most commercial, industrial beer is junk food. Some higher-quality beers are much better for you. But alcohol is hard on your body, and is best consumed only occasionally, if at all. Don't look to beer as a substitute for healthy food.

The ancient Spartans didn't drink beer. But they did eat sprouted-grains all the time -- mostly barley, but also wheat. In fact, as some classical-era Greeks (generally the wealthier ones) increasingly ate more wheat and less barley, the Spartans -- rich and poor alike -- stuck with barley as their primary grain.

Our modern Spartan Diet also calls for the near-daily consumption of sprouted barley or wheat.

In the meantime, look to food, not beer, for nutrition. Embrace the Spartan Diet, and you'll get all the sprouted barley and wheat you need.

Why normal-weight people can be obese

A new, nine-year study by the Mayo Clinic found that even relatively thin people can suffer the ill effects of obesity.

They even came up with a name for it: "normal weight obesity." Researchers believe as many as 30 million Americans may fall into that category.

The problem stems from a body-mass index out of whack. When people have low muscle mass, and some fat, their muscle-to-fat ratio can mirror someone with much more muscle mass and a lot more body fat. And the health effects can be similar, including increased risk of metabolic syndrome, which is a collection of familiar lifestyle diseases including high blood pressure, elevated blood sugar and so on, as well as an increased risk of heart disease.

The Mayo researchers pointed out that dieting to lose weight can make you lose both fat and muscle, and leave your muscle-to-fat ratio largely unchanged.

That's why the Spartan Diet is so perfect for anyone who wants total health. It's not a fad weight loss diet. Instead, it's a total transformation of the diet that normalizes weight, and boosts strength and muscle.

Spartan Diet Foods Now Available In Santa Barbara

Amira Elgan, the main creator of the Spartan Diet and co-author of the upcoming Spartan Diet book has been working with the owners of an innovative eatery to introduce menu items that adhere to Spartan Diet principles.

The restaurant is called Backyard Bowls, and its one location is in Santa Barbara, California.

Backyard Bowls has introduced Spartan Muesli, and will soon roll out other Spartan Diet foods. (We'll keep you posted as new items are added to the menu.)

Backyard Bowls itself is a wonderful place to eat. If you live in, visit or even find yourself passing through Santa Barbara, you must experience Backyard Bowls. If you can imagine an entire menu where just about every item and even every ingredient is a fresh, whole superfood, then you can imagine Backyard Bowls.

Most items on the Backyard Bowls menu are cold, blended fruits and/or other ingredients in a bowl, topped by fresh fruit, nuts, fresh-ground flax seeds, bee pollen, and other ingredients. They also have smoothies and other items. What's amazing about Backyard Bowls is that they don't compromise on ingredients. For example, the honey they use isn't the standard junk most restaurants use, but whole, raw local honey (Spartan Diet approved!). The menu also conspicuously emphasizes the use of acai, one of the most healthful foods in the world.

If you ever find yourself anywhere near Santa Barbara, do yourself a favor and check out Backyard Bowls. Try Spartan Muesli. And if you get a frozen bowl, ask them to add Spartan Muesli as a topping. We just had one yesterday, and it was a mind-blowingly healthy and delicious treat.

Consumer Reports finds canned food contains BPA

Consumer Reports will publish a ground-breaking study in the December issue showing that many canned foods, and other packaged foods, contain a synthetic estrogen called Bisphenol A (BPA).

BPA, which was invented in the 1930s as a synthetic estrogen, is used to make the plastic and epoxy resins used in all kinds of food containers, including the lining of food cans. Consumer Reports found the substance in canned foods of all kinds, including those labeled "BPA Free" and "Organic."

The human body responds to BPA as if it were estrogen, which feminizes men and increases the risk of breast cancers in women. It disrupts the body's hormonal system in other, less predictable ways as well.

Some studies have linked BPA to obesity, heart disease, early puberty in girls, aggression in toddlers and other problems.

The industry produces some 6 billion pounds per year of BPA, most of which touches food or beverages, human skin or is exposed to household air at some point. We eat it, drink it, touch it and breathe it.

Based on its findings, Consumer Reports recommends the following:

* Choose fresh food whenever possible.
* Consider alternatives to canned food, beverages, juices, and infant formula.
* Use glass containers when heating food in microwave ovens.

For people on the Spartan Diet, this doesn't go far enough. Never eat canned foods. Store foods and drinks only in glass containers. Nearly all your food should be fresh.

Why chocolate isn't on the Spartan Diet

Recent science has discovered healthful properties in cocoa, which has lead media organizations that cover health, fitness and diet to proclaim chocolate as a health food. One of the better articles summarizing the health benefit of chocolate was published on the Huffington Post: "7 Healthy Reasons To Enjoy Chocolate--Without the Guilt!" Those seven reasons are:

1. High in antioxidants

2. Helps with cholesterol

3. Reduces inflammation

4. Lowers blood pressure

5. Helps with mood

6. Improves blood flow

7. It's delicious!

Sounds great! Here's the problem. Nearly all these reasons benefit only those who eat poor diets, or who don't get enough exercise or both.

Conventional medical and health reporting assumes that you're overweight, undernourished and suffer from some level of cardiovascular disease. In fairness, those are pretty safe assumptions when writing for the general American public. Given those assumptions, chocolate can help make up in some small way for your shortfall in antioxidants, and help alleviate your industrial-diet caused high blood pressure, poor circulation, high cholesterol and high inflammation.

However, if you're on the Spartan Diet, you're not going to have any of these problems. The diet gives you all the antioxidants you need with fresh, organic fruits, vegetables, legumes, nuts and other plant foods. Because small amounts of extra-virgin olive oil is the only concentrated fat, and because the diet is generally as healthful as a diet can be, you won't need chocolate to help you cope with non-existent cardiovascular problems and the like.

Meanwhile, chocolate has some problems advocates gloss over. First, it's very unlikely that anyone will eat chocolate without sugar. So to recommend chocolate is usually to recommend white table sugar.

Second, chocolate as most people will eat it is a highly refined, highly processed food with many of the touted antioxidants and other nutrients compromised by heat and age. It's not usually a fresh food, but a processed, stored food that's been sitting around for weeks or months.

Third, chocolate is a spectacularly complex food, loaded with mild drugs. It's both an upper and a downer at the same time. One of the most appealing things about chocolate for some enthusiasts is improves mood. Chocolate contains bioactive chemicals, such as tryptophan, and is thought to increase the production of dopamine. Although pleasurable, chocolate can also be addictive.

The healthiest way to eat chocolate is to buy fresh, raw, organic cocoa, and make a chocolate drink with it based on cashew milk sweetened with a small amount of honey. Such a drink is just about as healthy as chocolate gets. But what's the liklihood that you'll take your chocolate like this? Most will grab a chocolate bar, or make hot chocolate with roasted cocoa and milk.

Because all the health benefits of chocolate are already fully present in the Spartan Diet, and because those benefits come in the form of a processed food with addictive bioactive chemicals, sugar and other bad stuff, chocolate does Spartan Dieters more harm than good.

The Spartan Diet is based on a solid list of core principles, including maximum (rather than adequate) health, zero addiction and the avoidance of processed foods and sugar. And that's why chocolate doesn't make the cut.

The Spartan Diet optimizes mind as much as body

A new study published in the FASEB Journal found that rats fed higher-fat content diets took longer to finish a maze, and made more mistakes in memory than rats on a lower-fat diet. The study suggests what we already know intuitively: High-fat diets can make us mentally slower. We believe this is especially true with lower quality fats, including trans fats.

Another recently published study has found that a Mediterranean diet, low in meat, dairy, processed foods and high in nuts, fish, whole grains and fresh fruits and vegetables, is associated with lower rates of mental illness and depression.

And a recent study at Tufts University looked at low-carb diets, such as Atkins, and their effect on cognition and memory. They found that performance on memory tests started declining measurably compared with subjects on a moderate-carb, low-fat diet.

We have found in our own experiences, and in the experiences of others on the Spartan Diet, that all this is very true. The Spartan Diet is both relatively low in fats, has plenty of complex carbs, and also is an extremely Mediterranean diet.

People on the Spartan Diet report feeling mentally sharper, more upbeat and generally good all the time. That makes it easier to sleep better, exercise more and generally do all the other things that, combined with diet, lead to a more fulfilling and successful life.

How (and why) to make delicious Quinoa

Quinoa is a grain-like seed that originates in the South American Andes. It's not an actual grain because it doesn't come from a species of grass. Quinoa has been cultivated and eaten by the Incas in what is now Peru and Bolivia for 6,000 years.

Quinoa is fantastic because it's so flexible -- it goes with just about everything -- can be made in just a few minutes, and it has quite a lot of complete protein.

It's a great idea to always keep prepared quinoa in the fridge. You can quickly and easily create a wonderful meal with it thanks to its nutty and delicious flavor. Add it to just about any cold or hot meal including soups and salads. It also goes well with any type of cuisine including Mexican, Italian, French and Indian. Quinoa is a powerhouse food that provides complete protein with all nine essential amino acids.


INGREDIENTS

2 cups dried quinoa (red, white or black, rinsed)

4 cups water or vegetable stock (or 1 cup water, 1 cup stock)

1 tablespoon olive oil

Sea salt to taste

Freshly ground pepper


INSTRUCTIONS

1. Rinse quinoa in fine mesh sieve or strainer. In a medium deep pan, combine quinoa and water or broth, cover with lid and simmer over low heat for 20 to 25 minutes or until all the water has been absorbed.

2. Remove from heat and let it rest for 5 minutes covered. Add olive oil, salt and pepper and fluff with fork. Use in any recipe or let it cool and refrigerate to use in later meals.

Whole grains lower risk of high blood pressure

Both men and women who eat the greatest amounts of whole grains have the lowest likelihood of high blood pressure, according to a study in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition. Men in a grouping that averages 52 grams of whole grains every day were 19 percent less likely than the men who ate an average of about 3 grams per day to develop hypertension, after other factors like activity level were factored out.

The Spartan Diet calls for all dietary grains to be whole grains, and for the total elimination of flour and compromised grains.

Research shows health effects are cumulative, long-term

We're living in a golden age of scientific discovery about the many links between diet, behavior and environment on the one hand and human health on the other.

Scientists often try to and succeed in matching specific individual causes with specific individual effects. But rational minds can detect trends, and deduce best actions to take to protect the health of our families and ourselves.

One of the trends we've noticed lately is that scientists are discovering links between events or behaviors that take place in childhood, affecting health in adulthood. These include:

Children who eat candy every day in childhood are more prone to violence as adults.

Rare, often fatal adult brain cancer may be linked to inactivity in teen years.

Childhood anxiety increases the likelihood of adult obesity.

Childhood social status predicts adult health.

High blood pressure in childhood is associated with hypertension in adulthood.

Childhood lead exposure associated with criminal behavior in adulthood.

We could go on and on with this. It would be trivial to cite hundreds of links between causes in childhood that create effects in adulthood.

These trends shatter several rarely-vocalized myths about health. The first is that you're either sick, or you're "fine." A typical scenario might go like this: A man visits the doctor for annual checkups. Every year, his heart and blood pressure are below some threshold. But one year, blood pressure or cholesterol or both appear in the danger zone. The doctor pronounces an official diagnosis, and prescribes a remedy, which might be a prescription combined with minimal advice about eating less fat and exercising more.

The problem with this scenario is that the conditions leading up to cardiovascular disease have been present for decades -- probably unhealthy diet and inadequate exercise.

The second myth is that if something causes no harm in the short term, that means it's "not bad for you." People say things like, "a burger and fries once in a while isn't going to kill you." Or "pesticides on produce won't hurt you."

What's actually happening is that our time horizon for cause and effect is growing longer. A century ago, you could take sip of something, and if you didn't drop dead on the spot, the liquid would be pronounced "safe." This short-term view of toxicity and ill health lead to the universe of food additives and processed foods that cause our overwhelming health crisis.

Very slowly and gradually, we're widening that time horizon. Now we're realizing that the junk food kids eat causes obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular disease and a world of problems, even if no symptoms show up until adulthood.

Broadly speaking, it appears that bad health can result from decades of unhealthy foods and behaviors in totally unpredictable combinations. In fact, it's reasonable to assume that a lifelong combination of environmental pollution; toxic household materials and cleaners; chemicals from plastic beverage containers; domesticated animal meat treated with hormones and drugs; processed foods; produce pesticides; excess fat, sugar and salt; and many other factors conspire to compromise our immune systems and expose us to a wide range of unpredictable health problems.

That's what the Spartan Diet is: Avoiding all of it for maximum health, total fitness, strength, vitality, energy and longevity.

Why Pankration must be restored to the Olympics

The first modern summer Olympics, held in Athens in 1896, included events selected at the first Olympic Congress organized by French historian Pierre de Coubertin. Nearly all the events selected were modern sports actively practiced in countries in Europe and in the United States, but many with roots in the ancient games. (One exception was the Marathon, the idea for which was proposed for the Olympics by French philologist Michel Jules Alfred Breal as a way to capture the glory of ancient Greece.)

The Ancient Olympic Games, which started in 776 BC and lasted for nearly 12 centuries, included the following events throughout most of its history:

Stadion (a roughly 200-yard running race)

Diaulos (twice the distance of a stadion)

Dolichos (7 to 24 stadions)

Long jump

Javelin

Discus

Pentathlon (long jump, javelin, discus, stadion and wrestling)

Wrestling

Boxing

Pankration

Hoplitodromos (medium-distance race run by athletes in armor)

Plus, a variety of horse races.


All the ancient human athletic events (as opposed to horse races) have direct modern equivalents except the Hoplitodromos. They're very familiar to us -- track and field, as well as wrestling and boxing. Ancient Olympians viewing the modern Olympics would recognize these events immediately.

There is a good reason why both Pankration and the Hoplitodromos were excluded from the founding of the modern Olympics: They had both long since disappeared as fully-functioning competitive sports. And Hoplitodromos is totally obsolete, as it involves running with bronze-age helmets, armor, shields and spears.

But over the past few decades, Pankration has staged a come-back.


What Is Pankration?

Pankration, which means "all powers," is roughly a combination of wrestling and boxing. It's the world's first "martial art," predating all known Asian martial arts by centuries. It may have even been practiced more than a millennium before the first Ancient Olympic Games.

Ancient Olympic Pankration had only two rules. No biting, and no gouging the eyes out. All Pankration athletes were pardoned preemptively for murder, should any of them kill opponents in the contest. Knockouts were common, but many Pankration matches went to the ground, where joint-locks, pins, body strikes and other moves were combined with choking. An athlete could raise his hand to the referee at any time to concede defeat.

Pankration was central to Spartan life. As in all things, the mastery of Olympic events in general, and Pankration in particular, were viewed as vital to military supremacy. Pankration made up a huge component of agoge education. In Sparta, Pankration was practiced with no rules. The Spartans prided themselves on their skill in the biting and eye gouging banned at the Olympics.

Hoplite warfare very often degenerated into chaos, with shields and weapons easily lost. Spartans were trained from childhood to kill without weapons, and defend without armor. This wasn't an academic exercise -- Pankration skill was one of the most important factors in the Spartan's many battlefield victories during the classical era -- including at Thermopylae and Plataea where Spartan-led armies saved Greece from conquest by the much larger Persian forces.


Why Pankration Must Be Restored to the Olympics

Simply put: Pakration is the only ancient Olympic sport that is growing and flourishing internationally in the modern world, but that's not included in the Olympics.

Martial arts tournaments around the world include sparring events. Mixed martial arts and Extreme Fighting are among the most popular spectator sports ever. These are all, more or less, Pankration. But one of the fastest growing sports in the world right now is Pankration itself.

Ancient Pankration has been modernized for safety. Practitioners in Greece and around the world are reviving Pankration with new teams and tournaments, new rules and regulations.

In fact, the United States Pankration Team triumphed in the 2009 Pankration World Championships in Siauliai, Lithuania, in early September.

So here we have a central sport to the Ancient Olympic Games. It has undergone an enormous resurgence outside the Modern Olympic Games. What's wrong with this picture?

The Olympics includes the Japanese martial art of Judo, and the Korean martial art of Tae Kwon Do -- both fairly modern inventions -- but not the Greek martial art. The original martial art. The Olympic martial art.

The International Olympics Committee reviews a wide range of submissions for new sports to be added to the Olympic Games. Pankration is different from all of these sports. Pankration should receive immediate and automatic inclusion in all future Olympic Games, starting with the London games in 2012.

The creation of the Modern Olympic Games more than 100 years ago was a profoundly European idea. But Europe itself probably would never have existed without Pankration. The ancient Spartans and the ancient Greeks used Pankration, among other skills and practices, to defeat invaders and defend Greece. And without Greece, there would have been no Roman Empire, no Europe, no Renaissance, and no Modern Olympic Games.

Pankration must be restored to the Olympic Games.

Ryoichi Sekiya wins Spartathlon

Ryoichi Sekiya has won the 27th annual Spartathlon. Sekiya is a 52-year-old ulramarathoner from Japan. He completed the 152.85 mile course in 23 hours, 48 minutes and 24 seconds. The top female finisher was Japan's 43-year-old Sumie Inagaki who finished in 27 hours, 39 minutes and 49 seconds.

According to the Wikipedia:

"The Spartathlon aims to trace footsteps of Pheidippides, an Athenian messenger sent to Sparta in 490 BC to seek help against the Persians in the Battle of Marathon. Pheidippides, according to an account by Greek historian Herodotus in The Persian Wars, arrived in Sparta the day after he departed. Herodotus wrote: "On the occasion of which we speak when Pheidippides was sent by the Athenian generals, and, according to his own account, saw Pan on his journey, he reached Sparta on the very next day after quitting the city of Athens.

Based on this account, British RAF Wing Commander John Foden and four other RAF officers travelled to Greece in 1982 on an official expedition to test whether it was possible to cover the nearly 250 kilometres in a day and a half. Three runners were successful in completing the distance: John Foden (37:37), John Scholtens (34:30) and John McCarthy in (39:00). In the following year a team of enthusiastic supporters (British, Greek and other nationalities) based on the British Hellenic Chamber of Commerce in Athens and led by Philhellene Michael Callaghan organised the running of the first Open International Spartathlon Race. The event was run under the auspices of SEGAS, the Hellenic Amateur Athletics Association.

The race starts at 7:00 am, usually on the last Friday each September, at the foot of the Acropolis. It runs out of Athens toward the coast and runs along the coast towards Corinth via Elefsis, Megara, and Kineta. The route reaches the Corinth Canal at 78.5 kilometres and the runners hit the first of six major check points at 81 kilometres.

After Corinth, the race heads toward Ancient Corinth, Nemea, Lyrkia and at 159 kilometres, reaches the top of Mount Parthenio. From there, it continues south toward Nestani and Tegea, before reaching the main Sparta highway just before the 200 kilometer mark.

Runners must pass through 75 checkpoints along the way and each checkpoint has a cut-off time. Runners outside the cut-off may be pulled out of the race although tardiness in the first half of the race is generally tolerated. This tolerance begins to fade after sunset and in the last third of the race, organisers may pull out runners who are either outside the time limit or who display extreme fatigue."

French study directly contradicts UK report on organics

We blogged a study published over a month ago by the British government's Food Standards Agency (FSA), which found enormous nutritional differences between organic and conventional produce, but then bizarrely concluded that the differences were insignificant. The press then broadly reported that organic foods aren't any better for you than conventional.

A new study by the French Agency for Food Safety (AFSSA) found the same thing as the UK study -- massive differences in health properties between organic and conventional foods. But unlike the UK study, their conclusion supported their findings.

The AFSSA found that:

* Organic foods contain fewer pesticides and nitrates linked to disease

* Organic foods have higher levels of minerals

* Organic foods have more antioxidants known to protect against disease

* Organic plant products contain more "dry matter," which means they're more nutrient dense

* Organic animal products contain more polyunsaturated fatty acids

The study also concluded that differences in carbohydrate, protein and vitamin levels are "insufficiently documented."

It's worth noting, too, that the UK study didn't look at the overall health properties of organic foods, only whether they contained more nutrients.

Exercise cuts weight re-gain in three ways - study

University of Colorado at Denver researchers have found that exercise minimizes weight re-gain after dieting by curbing appetite, burning fat and lowering what scientists call the "defended" weight.

The study found that exercise causes the body to burn fat before it burns carbohydrates. Because the carbohydrates are still available to be burned for energy, the body is slower to trigger pangs of hunger.

Researchers also discovered that exercise prevents an increase in the number of fat cells during weight gain, which challenges the belief that the number of fat cells are fixed in number.

The "defended" weight is each individual's "natural" weight, which the body constantly strives to achieve. Exercise lowers that weight, so the body tries to stay slimmer than it otherwise might.

The Spartan Diet perspective is that everyone should exercise every day. Nobody should go on a temporary diet, but instead permanently embrace the diet that leads to total fitness.

Atkins and other low-carb diets 'damage arteries'

Researchers at Harvard Medical School's Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in the United States have found that the Atkins diet and other high-meat, low-carb diets can lead to atherosclerosis, which increases the risk of heart attacks and strokes.

Atkins appears to provide superficial, short term benefits of weight loss without an increase in cholesterol. A visit to the doctor may lead you to believe your health is improving. But Harvard researchers have shown that the longer-term effect seriously degrades cardiovascular health.

After reporting their good science, the researchers then gave bad advice (which is usually the case for reasons we will detail in our upcoming book). They told the BBC: "For long-term health at least one-third of what we eat should be bread, rice, potatoes, pasta or other starchy food."

This is terrible advice, as they do not specify the healthy versions of these foods. White bread, rice, potatoes and pasta aren't going to benefit health.

The Spartan Diet calls for getting the majority of dietary protein from plant sources (easy to do on the Spartan Diet), the total elimination of domesticated animal meat, and the elimination of processed everything, including "bread, rice, potatoes, pasta." Instead eat only sprouted (flourless) whole grain bread, brown rice and other whole grains, limited quantities of potatoes (as it's a low-nutrition food) and only sprouted, whole-grain pasta.

Processed meats may lead to cancer -- report

The World Cancer Research Fund International (WCRFI) issued a report this week saying that eating smoked, salted or cured meats places you at risk of bowel cancer. They're talking about ham, bacon, pastrami, salami, hot dogs, some sausages -- that sort of thing.

They also warned parents that sending your child to school with a baloney sandwich or other processed meat product could contribute to bowel cancer later in life. (They didn't mention that the white bread and mayonnaise likely to envelop the baloney isn't doing them any favors, either.)

WCRFI says a diet high in processed and red meat is the top risk factor for developing bowel cancer.

The Spartan Diet calls for the total elimination of all domesticated animal meats, processed foods, and engineered foods from your diet. All smoked, salted or cured meats fall into one or more of these categories, and foods like baloney fall into all three.