New discovery shows barley in diet before domestication

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 Loren Cordain and his book, The Paleo Diet.

Cordain writes 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.

Our view is that Cordain is mistaken about the consumption of grains in paleolithic societies, and also about the healthiness of whole grains in the diet.

The oldest evidence we have for the domestication of grains is about 10,500 years ago. But the direct evidence for the processing of grains for food (mortars-and-pestles) reaches back to 17,000 BC, well before agriculture.

Now, archaeologists have found new evidence for the organized storage of wild grains near the Dead Sea in Jordan. Some 1,000 years before the first domestication of grains, the inhabitants there had built and used graineries for storing wild barley.

We believe grains have existed in the human diet for ages, and are a vital part of any healthy diet.

How the Spartan Diet fixes the "10 diet mistakes men make"

Personal trainer Lorie Dudley posted a dead-on blog post called "10 'Diet' mistakes men make." Dudley lists each of the ten mistakes, and follows them with great advice and context on each. Here are Dudley's "10 mistakes" followed by brief commentary on how the Spartan Diet solves each one.

1. Eating too much. The Spartan Diet controls food quantity by limiting all food intake to three meals a day. Achieve hunger between each meal, then stop eating before getting full. There is no way to eat too much on the Spartan Diet.

2. Portion distortion. Spartan Diet recipes and meal plans provide all foods in just the right proportion, right-sizing protein, calories, vitamins, minerals, phytonutrients and all the rest in optimal quantities.

3. Drinking your calories. There are no caloric beverages on the Spartan Diet except for a total of four glasses of organic red wine or beer per week. There are no sodas, shakes, smoothies, juices or any other caloric liquids on the Spartan Diet.

4. Snacking on unhealthy foods. There is neither snacking nor unhealthy foods of any kind on the Spartan Diet.

5. Eating late at night. All food on the Spartan Diet is consumed in three meals per day.

6. Not eating breakfast. Breakfast is an important one of the three Spartan Diet meals.

7. Eating whatever you want. The Spartan Diet eliminates all low-quality foods, including all processed, adulterated or other junk foods. And it provides a system for choosing the most-healthy food option in every situation.

8. Eating processed foods. There are zero processed foods on the Spartan Diet.

9. Not drinking enough water. Water is the main beverage on the Spartan Diet, and most other beverages are not on the diet.

10. Not eating enough. The Spartan Diet three-meal, no-snacking system enables everyone to right-size meals and make sure that each Spartan Dieter gets just the right amount of nutrition-dense calories.

How industrial-food scientists turn food into drugs

The New York Times yesterday published an article about David A. Kessler's new book, "The End of Overeating" (link goes to Amazon.com page, which also has a video interview with Dr. Kessler). From the article:

"When it comes to stimulating our brains, Dr. Kessler noted, individual ingredients aren’t particularly potent. But by combining fats, sugar and salt in innumerable ways, food makers have essentially tapped into the brain’s reward system, creating a feedback loop that stimulates our desire to eat and leaves us wanting more and more even when we’re full."

The article -- and the book -- are worth reading. Kessler's essential point is that food scientists expertly "tweak" quantities of fat, sugar and salt in order to "hijack our brains" and make us crave, even need, their processed junk food. They do this by testing various combinations in order to reach "bliss points" -- that make some industrial food products almost irresistible.

This is the same point made by Michael Pollan in The Omnivore's Dilemma when he wrote: "The power of food science lies in its ability to break foods down into their nutrient parts and then reassemble them in specific ways that, in effect, push our evolutionary buttons, fooling the omnivore's inherited food selection system."

And Neal Barnard's entire book, Breaking the Food Seduction, is about how specific foods interact with the body in precisely the way drugs do to create something similar to addition. He goes into detail about a particularly addictive food: Chocolate. He writes that "chocolate is not just a single drug-like compound -- it's basically the whole drugstore: traces of mild opiates, caffeine, amphetamine-like components, and the equivalent of a slight whiff of marijuana."

As these and other authors (including us) continue to expose this trend in food science, which started out with food preservation, then developed techniques for making stale foods look fresh and now are perfecting methods for making foods interact with the body like addictive drugs, a rising public awareness of this phenomenon will motivate people to seek help.

The Spartan Diet is one cure. The Spartan Diet contains exactly zero food products created or "tweaked" by food science. There is no processed or industrial foods of any kind. Also: The Spartan Diet contains no cheese, chocolate or other foods that create a craving-satisfaction cycle of drug-like dependence.

When good science leads to bad advice

A study in the July/August issue of the Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior found that that because "peak bone mass" is not achieved until people are in their 30s, it's important for young people to get plenty of calcium, protein and vitamin D.

After detailing this good science, the article then gives bad advice: It says that people in their 20s should drink more milk.

Milk has been found to increase the risk of prostate cancer and Parkinson's disease.

Also: Much of the milk available in US supermarkets is from cows treated with a genetically-engineered bovine growth hormone, which is passed on in the milk (the hormone is banned in Canada and Europe). This hormone raises the risk of colon, prostate and breast cancer. Dairy cows are also typically treated with antibiotics and fed nasty foods treated with pesticides. (Go here to read more about the dangers of milk).

Meanwhile, milk is an inferior source of calcium, vitamin D (which is usually added artificially to the milk) and protein.

One of the best sources of calcium is kale, which is a major ingredient in Spartan Diet recipes. Other sources better than milk include: green leafy vegetables, cabbage, asparagus, broccoli, collards, figs, oats, almonds and prunes -- all key Spartan Diet foods.

Better sources of protein include wild game meats, egg whites, grains and legumes, all of which are major parts of the Spartan Diet.

And, of course, the best place to get vitamin D is from the sun.

So, yes, young adults aren't getting enough of the right nutrients for bone growth. But no, milk is not a good choice.

Lack of vitamin D may trigger cancer

Scientists at the Moores Cancer Center at the University of California in San Diego say a wide range of research shows that cancer develops when cells lose the ability to "stick together" in a normal way. This loss of ability, they found, may be inadequate vitamin D. In other words, having enough vitamin D in the body may halt the first stage of cancer.

The new findings support previous work by the researchers, which found a close link between lack of vitamin D in the bloodstream and the incidence and severity of breast, colon, ovarian and kidney cancers.

Previous research by the UK's University of Warwick found that getting plenty of sun cuts the risk of heart disease and diabetes, too.

The Spartan Diet calls for plenty of sunshine, and for exercising outdoors. Exposure to the sun is vital for health. We recommend a nice long walk in the morning or late-afternoon sun every day, and also taking excercise outdoors whenever possible.

Low fat, low red-meat diets prevent, treat prostate cancer

A new study published in the Journal of Human Nutrition and Dietetics shows that diets low in both fat and red meat, low in dairy and calcium, but high in fruits and vegetables, can both prevent and treat prostate cancer.

The Spartan Diet matches all this criteria, and then some. The Spartan Diet is low in fat, and gets nearly all fat from "good fat" sources, including raw nuts, avocados, olive oil and other plant sources. Red meat is limited on the Spartan Diet, and domestic animal meat banned altogether. There is no dairy on the Spartan Diet at all. And the diet is loaded with very high varieties of fresh, whole, organic fruits and vegetables.

In other words, this study shows that the Spartan Diet is ideal for maximum prostate health.

More excercise means less back pain

A new study at the University of Alberta found that people with chronic lower-back pain get far more benefits from more-frequent workouts. Specifically, people who hit the gym 4 days per week experienced 28 percent less pain and 36 percent less "disability" than people who worked out just two or three days per week.

The Spartan Diet advocates daily exercise, with an emphasis on walking. The human body is not designed to sit in chairs, and is not designed to go even one day without some exercise. By walking, working out and exercising every single day, most people can avoid all back pain, as well a an uncountable number of other problems caused the unnatural act of sitting around all day.

Sunshine cuts risk of heart disease and diabetes

A study by the UK's University of Warwick found in a study of 3,200 people between the ages of 50 and 70 that 94% suffered from vitamin D deficiency and 42% from metabololic syndrome, a range of disorders that includes heart disease and diabetes. Importantly, researchers found that these factors were linked -- the vitamin D deficiency contributed to the metabololic syndrome.

Researchers stated the obvious by saying that subjects suffered from vitamin D deficiency because they didn't get enough sunshine, and because they didn't eat enough of the foods rich in vitamin D.

The Spartan Diet calls for daily exposure to sunshine, and for excercising daily in the sun. The Spartan Diet also features a huge variety of vitamin D-rich foods.

Columnist's Experiment Would Be Easy On Spartan Diet

Washington Post columnist Jennifer Huget wanted to find out how hard it would be to meet all the USDA's Dietary Guidelines by eating food and without supplementing with vitamin and mineral pills. She turned to a registered dietitian named Danielle Omar, who attempted to put together the actual meals necessary to meet the nutritional requirements for a "hypothetical 35-year-old, 5-foot-4-inch woman who weighs 130 pounds and exercises three times a week."

I recommend that you read the article here. Here's my summary: They found it challenging and, in the end, gave the following bad advice:

* "Resign yourself to eating some processed foods"

* "supplementing your diet may be prudent, particularly when it comes to Vitamin D"

* "consider supplementing with calcium, Omega-3 fatty acids (for cardiovascular health) and folic acid"

Here's where they went wrong in their thinking, at least from a Spartan Diet perspective:

1. Exercising 3 times a week is inadequate. Even the very set of government guidelines she's trying to match advises to exercise "most days of the week," which is more than three. The Spartan Diet calls for plenty of exercise 7 days a week. Going an entire day without any exercise damages the body, and prevents proper metabolism. They tried to meet a 1,800 calories per day maximum, but that low number is necessary only because exercising 3 times per week is totally inadequate. By getting enough exercise, they could have kept their hypothetical victim trim, and eat well over 2,000 calories per day.

2. Omar struggled to get sodium intake down to recommended levels. The reason is that they assumed you have to buy ready-made foods, which we do not recommend for people on the Spartan Diet. Make your own foods, and keep salt to a minimum.

3. The advice to "resign yourself to eating some processed foods" is not explained in the article. Why? We recommend that you never, ever eat processed foods of any kind. You cannot achieve maximum health while eating industrial, science-fiction foods where some of the good stuff has been removed and non-food ingredients have been added.

4. Omar recommends drinking milk, which we recommend against.

5. Omar says to "sneak in as many fruits and vegetables as you can." On the Spartan Diet, fruits and vegetables aren't "snuck in" to the your diet. They are central.

6. The article says that you're "likely to fall short" on nutrition from fruits and vegetables, warning that "11 bananas to meet the target for potassium." Then they add parenthetically that beans, potatoes and orange juice are other prime sources of this nutrient. Yes, that's right. Beans, potatoes, orange juice, melons, peaches, avocados, tomatoes, squash, lentils, wild fish, nuts and many other foods are loaded with potassium. If you eat whole, raw, fresh foods in adequate variety and you'll easily get plenty of potassium -- as well as fiber and all the rest.

7. Omar concludes that people still need to supplement their diets with vitamin D, calcium, Omega-3 fatty acids and folic acid, but that's only because she is not emphasizing sunshine and Spartan Diet foods, which provide plenty of everything and then some.

In a nutshell, the reason this experiment was so challenging is plain to see right there in the article. Omar's recommendation to drink milk and to go ahead and eat some processed foods causes nutritional deficits, because both displace or theoretically replace whole and nutrient-rich foods.

Omar recommends inferior or compromised actions, rather than best actions. She doesn't recommend exercising more than three times per week. She recommends inferior vitamin D pills instead of sunshine. She recommends Omega-3 fatty acids pills instead of flax sees (a daily requirement on the Spartan Diet). She recommends folic acid pills instead of the superior folate, which is plentiful in dark-green leafy vegetables, beans, peas as well as many fruits, vegetables and seeds.

The other problem with this advice is that there is zero consideration regarding food quality. Tomatoes are tomatoes, olive oil is olive oil, soup is soup. On the Spartan Diet, quality is everything. Organic process is higher in nutrients. Organic extra-virgin olive oil is vastly more nutrient-rich than any random bottle of olive oil available in American supermarkets.

I invite Jennifer Huget and Danielle Omar to contact us, and we'll show them how to sail past the government's pathetic minimum dietary recommendations with the most delicious, strength and health promoting diet ever.

How to Make Spartan Gruel

Bread is ancient. But more ancient still is gruel, which is at minimum grain cooked in boiling water, but can include other ingredients. Gruel is nowadays called porridge, grits, hot cereal, oatmeal, oatmeal mush, porridge oats, groats, pease porridge, cream of wheat and farina, depending on region, preparation and ingredients – and that’s just in the English-speaking world. Cooked grain in a bowl is as universal to mankind as language and fire. Every country on Earth and every civilization in history had its variants. Gruel is the most ancient and universal of prepared foods, predating even bread. The ancient Greeks called it maza.

It’s likely that bread evolved from gruel, discovered by accident in the same way as wine from fruit juice and cheese from milk (hey, if you leave this stuff sitting around, it gets better and easier to carry around!)

Ancient Greeks probably conceptualized grain foods differently than we do. For example, they probably conceived of bread and gruel as the same thing, prepared differently. They made a very wide range of foods out of barley and water, including both cooked and uncooked gruel, dumplings, broths and drinks. They also viewed grains as the centerpiece of their meals and the foundation of their diet.

The Spartan Diet calls for three meals per day of roughly equal size, starting with a hearty breakfast of Spartan Gruel. The Spartan Gruel concept is far healthier than any one preparation, because it's always prepared in the healthiest possible fashion, but with maximum variety.

As you can see in the recipe below, the main ingredients -- grain, nuts and fruit -- remain unspecified. The reason is that Spartan Gruel is something to be eaten daily, or almost daily, but with constant change in the types of grains, nuts and fruit. (Make sure all are organic.)

The grains you can use include barley, wheat, brown rice, quinoa, kasha, oats, millet, amaranth, corn, sorghum, rye and triticale, and most of these come in many varieties. Nuts can include raw, organic walnuts, almonds, cashews, pecans, pistachios, Brazil nuts, pine nuts, macadamia nuts and hazelnuts. Fresh fruit can include banana, apple, peach, nectarine, cherries, mango, apricots, blueberry, strawberry, blackberry, pear, pineapple, persimmon and pomegranate. Dried fruits include dates, raisins, prunes, figs, apricots, pineapple and apple.

One morning it might be 7-grain cereal with raisins, walnuts and apple, the next day you might go with steel cut oats with figs, pecans and blueberries.

People tend to view some kinds of grain, such as oatmeal, as breakfast grains to be sweetened, and others, such as rice, as savory dinner grains. On the Spartan Diet, consider all grains fair game for any meal. And maximize variety. Wheat, barley and oats are great, but also try quinoa, millet and kasha -- and different varieties of each. Always buy whole and organic grains. And you can mix grains, too. Just remember that some cook more slowly. For example, if you mix barley with oats, cook barley first for five minutes or more before adding the oats. Experiment to get the timing down.

Also: Go ahead and use a real table spoon (the one that's part of your tableware set) so you can leave the measuring tablespoon in the drawer. You can use one spoon to mix, measure and eat with. The recipe below is about right for one 30-year-old adult male who is fairly active. You may need to modify the amount of grain and nuts up or down depending on your age, gender, metabolism and activity level.

Spartan Gruel

2 cups filtered water
1/4 cup whole organic grain
1/8 tablespoon organic cinnamon
1 pinch sea salt
1 heaping tablespoon ground organic flax seeds
1/2 tablespoon raw, unfiltered local honey
1 portion organic fresh fruit
1 heaping tablespoon organic nuts
1 heaping tablespoon organic dried fruit

Boil water. Add grain, cinnamon and salt. Mix and bring back to boil, then reduce to low simmer. Chop or slice fresh fruit and place in bowl, then add dried fruit, nuts and flax to the top of the fruit. Monitor how well cooked the grain is by tasting (different grains require different cooking times). When it's cooked to your liking, add honey, mix and pour into bowl on top of fruit, nuts and flax. Let it sit in the bowl for a few minutes so the grain can cool and the fruit and nuts can warm.

As you get better at making Spartan Gruel, you'll learn how different grains cook, and you can modify, for example, the amount of water (most likely by reducing it a bit). You'll also find that making Spartan Gruel is easy, tasty and leaves you filled with incredible energy. It's a great way to start every day.

The Spartan Way to Celebrate PB&J Day

Today is National Peanut Butter and Jelly Day in the United States. It's not a real holiday, but a marketing gimmick invented seven years ago by Smuckers, a company that makes unhealthy industrial peanut butter and jelly.

When most people think of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, they think of that staple of American youth: 1) Processed white bread filled with preservatives, sugar and chemicals; 2) peanut butter augmented by sugar, salt and trans fats; and 3) jelly, which is essentially processed juice and water, massive quantities of sugar and corn syrup all gelled into a solid with industrial pectin.

The standard, junk-food version of the peanut butter and jelly sandwich weakens muscles, slows digestion and metabolism, spikes insulin, promotes fat storage, decays teeth and provides almost no nutrition. The average American child eats 1,500 of these before adulthood.

The peanut butter and jelly sandwich was popularized by American G.I.s during World War II who were trying to make due in the field with the MRE rations available to them. When they returned, the sandwich "spread" fast, accelerated by the American love affair with futuristic science and industrial food innovation during the 1950s.

We've abandoned many of the foods from that era. For example, most of us don't drink instant coffee, or coffee from a can and brewed in a percolator. We don't eat Spam, or fruit cocktail from a can or any of other futuristic foods from that era. Why do some people eat 50s-era peanut butter and jelly sandwiches?

These three junk-food ingredients are pretend versions of real foods. Why eat fake food, when the real thing is so much healthier and satisfying?

Here's the Spartan Diet way: First, start with whole grain bread (not "wheat," or "whole wheat" bread, which can contain a lot of processed white flour). Bake it yourself, buy it locally or get it at the health food store (we love Ezekiel breads from Food for Life).

Next, peanut butter is nice, especially if organic, freshly ground and not augmented by any other ingredient. Even better is almond butter. Check the bin section of your healthy supermarket for a machine that fresh-grinds organic almond butter or grind it yourself at home.

And, finally, use a banana instead of jelly, or dried figs and honey.

There you go: an American classic, Spartan Style!

Olive oil becomes less healthy after six months

Researchers at the University of Foggia in Italy have found that after three months of storage, extra-virgin olive oil loses none of its antioxidants, one of the qualities that makes olive oil so healthy. But after six months, oil loses about 40 percent of its antioxidants.

The Spartan Diet calls for the elimination of all concentrated oils from the diet except for low-acidity, extra virgin olive oil (and organic flax seed oil) that's as fresh as possible. Unfortunately, olives are harvested annually, so it's important to store olive oil properly in a ceramic or dark-glass container in a cool, dark place.

Meet the Spartans

This lecture by Professor Donald Kagan is part of a Yale course on the history of Ancient Greece posted on Academic Earth.

Study Confirms that Vitamins No Substitute For Food

An eight-year study of 161,808 postmenopausal women found similar results as a study in men: that vitamin pills don't significantly reduce likelihood of cancer or heart disease. Researchers came to the obvious conclusion that people should "get nutrients from food. Whole foods are better than dietary supplements."

To oversimplify the matter, there are three major reasons why vitamins have little effect. 1) fruits, vegetables and other whole foods have vitamins as just one of the health-giving ingredients, and the body needs all of them together; 2) vitamins are viewed as a substitute for fruits and vegetables, and people are eating unhealthy displacement foods instead of produce; and 3) vitamin supplements tend to be inferior to vitamins as it appears in whole foods.

Best Diet Advice Ever: Don't Be a Wuss!

US News & World Report's Katherine Hobson summarizes some of the ideas in a book called The Complete Beck Diet for Life, by Judith Beck. These ideas are surprisingly, well, Spartan.

Much of the advice falls into the overarching Spartan Diet attitude of: suck it up and stop being such a wimp. For example, the ideas that 1) hunger is bad; 2) overeating when emotional is good; and 3) taking a break from healthy eating is OK are also explored and discredited in the Spartan Diet.

Other notions we disagree with. For example, the list of unhealthy attitudes includes the idea that some foods should be permanently avoided. We agree with that "bad attitude." If you want optimum health, you should never, ever eat fried foods, processed foods, domesticated animal meats, mayonnaise, sugar and a long list of other foods. We say, suck it up, Judith Beck, and stop being such a wimp. Banning bad foods is a great idea.

Best of all, according to Hobson, Beck totally nails the reason (which we'll cover in detail in the upcoming Spartan Diet book), why nearly all weight-loss diets fail: "People haven't been taught the mental skills necessary to sustain changes in their eating and exercise habits."

Exactly!

Why You Should Excercise Outdoors

A fitness site called Straight to the Bar posted six reasons why exercising outdoors, rather than indoors, is is a good idea -- especially in winter. The reasons:

1. Mental stimulation
2. Avoidance of negative effect of working out on perfectly flat surfaces
3. Benefit from coping with uneven surfaces
4. Boost to immune system
5. Protection against injury due to cold weather
6. Psychological benefit that goes with physiological benefit

We agree with these points, and would like to add four more:

7. Sunshine is vital for optimum health, especially in winter
8. Exercising outdoors, especially in harsh weather, builds mental toughness
9. Fresh air is good for you
10. Constantly focusing near, then far, improves eyesight

What do all these points have in common? In general, the human body benefits from challenge. It grows stronger when confronted with obstacles, inconveniences, extremities.

So get out there and exercise, every day!

Big, Fat Facts From "The World Is Fat"

Barry Popkin's book about the global obesity epidemic, called "The World Is Fat," contains a lot of detail about why so many are so overweight. US News' Katherine Hobson wrote up a list of facts from the book, including:

* The average American gets 400 calories a day from beverages. (Note: Spartan Dieters get 0 calories per day from beverages.)

* The American Dietetic Association says that getting up to 25 percent of your daily calories from sugar is OK. (Most of the ADA's recommendations are a joke -- this one included.)

* You're not crazy. Clothing makers are changing the numbers they slap on sizes. What used to be a woman's 8 is now a 6, for example. (Clothing makers are profiting from acting as enablers for the denial of shoppers as they gain weight.)

Processed Carbs Highly Addictive - Study

A New Zealand researcher at Auckland Regional Public Health Service has found that "heavily processed" carbohydrates -- such as white bread, white pasta and anything with sugar in it -- are physically addictive like cigarettes and cocaine. These foods produce a "rush of sugar" in the body, which "stimulates the same areas of the brain that are involved with addiction to nicotine and other drugs."

The New Zealand research parallels a study (reported on this blog in December) that found sugar as addictive as heroin or cocaine.

His findings were published in the journal Medical Hypotheses.

The Spartan Diet has zero processed foods of any kind, including processed carbohydrates, and zero sugar and therefore totally breaks the cycle of addiction and craving common to most people who eat processed foods.

Produce Absorbs Livestock Antibiotics - Study

Scientists at the University of Minnesota have found that vegetables fertilized with the manure of livestock absorb the antibiotics fed to the animals and pass those antibiotics along to the people who eat the vegetables.

Approximately 70 percent of all antibiotics produced in the US are fed to cows, pigs and chickens, totaling 25 million pounds of antibiotics per year. About 90 percent of the antibiotics given is passed in the form of waste. The manure of those animals is used to fertilize crops and the crops are passing them along to humans. Of course, people ingest antibiotics from eating livestock animal meat as well.

Scientists have previously found a link between child-consumption of antibiotics and allergies and asthma, which have risen dramatically over the years.

The Spartan Diet bans all domesticated animal meat (wild fish and game is OK), and calls for wild or organic produce, which is far less likely to contain antibiotics from livestock fertilizer.

Group Seeks to Re-Introduce Real Bread Into Diet

A small group of committed people in Oxfordshire, UK, are rebelling against industrial bread and founding a movement to re-introduce real bread back into the human diet. The group, called the Real Bread Campaign, includes bakers, biologists, growers, consumers and Andrew Whitely, founder of a local bakery and author of the book "Bread Matters."

The group advocates the rejection of industrial bread -- the kind you buy in the supermarket -- which uses mono-culture, genetically modified grain grown with chemical fertilizers, herbicides and fungicides and is baked with synthetic chemicals, softeners, preservatives and other unhealthy ingredients.

Instead, the group calls for the home-baking or local purchase of long-ferment bread made from ancient, locally grown grain using traditional growing methods (150 to 200 types of wheat in one field, compared with a single variety grown in industrial fields).

The Spartan Diet applauds this movement, and looks forward to visiting participating bakeries on future trips to the UK.

Clearing Up Confusion About Grains

What's "whole grain" and what isn't? Is "wheat bread" the same as "whole wheat bread"? What are ancient grains?

A New Hampshire publication called Feast, which is a supplement to the Telegraph newspaper, published a nice piece on grains that clears up many common misconceptions.

To summarize the two main points:

* Ancient grains are those that have not been modified (or have been less modified) by modern agricultural techniques of selective breeding and genetic modification. The article lists amaranth, millet, quinoa, spelt, kamut, sorghum, teff, faro and einkorn.

* "Whole grain" does not mean that grains are whole and intact. It means that all elements of the grain are present in the same proportion as found in the intact grain. Flours, breads, pastas and other foods that are not whole grain contain just some parts of the grain, not the whole thing.

The Spartan Diet calls for the embrace of ancient grains in part because they tend to be healthier, and also in part to increase dietary variety. They can also be very easy to prepare. For example, Quinoa can replace rice in just about every dish where rice is called for, but you can cook it in just a few minutes.

The Spartan Diet also bans the consumption of any grain -- modern or ancient -- that is not "whole." Grains, like fruits, vegetables, legumes, nuts, seeds and other foods are healthiest when consumed whole.

The Spartan Diet book will go into detail on grains, what to look for, where to buy them and how to prepare them, including recipes.

German Study Emphasizes Plant Foods, Variety

A recent study by the German Association of Sports Medicine and Prevention found that people can add 10 years to their lives by maintaining weight, avoiding meat and eating a variety of fruits, vegetables and grains. They hint at the superiority of the Mediterranean diet. They also recommend not smoking.

All this is pretty obvious and vague advice. The only potentially ground-breaking conclusion the study appears to have arrived at is that the "variety of foods consumed is just as important as the volume in relation to a person's weight." In other words, they found (as many other recent studies have also found) that weight is not a simple calculation around calories consumed. It's the quality of those calories that counts.

We would have liked to see the study take their research further, and measure high quality foods (organic, raw, whole) instead of simply focusing on food categories (fruits and vegetables).

One way to look at the Spartan Diet is to view it as a very high-quality version of the Mediterranean diet. Here's how the Wikipedia summarizes the Mediterranean diet:

[The Mediterranean diet] "emphasizes 'abundant plant foods, fresh fruit as the typical daily dessert, olive oil as the principal source of fat, dairy products (principally cheese and yogurt), and fish and poultry consumed in low to moderate amounts, zero to four eggs consumed weekly, red meat consumed in low amounts, and wine consumed in low to moderate amounts'."

The Spartan Diet takes this much further, and bans sugar and all sweeteners except raw, unfiltered honey; insists on organic produce; bans all dairy products and domesticated animal meat (most wild fish and game is OK in moderation); and has many other elements that make it the "healthiest diet in history."

The Spartan Diet will be detailed in an upcoming book called, The Spartan Diet. Go here for more information on the Spartan Diet.

Grape Seed Extract 'Destroys' Cancer Cells

A clinical study conducted at the University of Kentucky found that an extract from grape seeds causes cancer cells to "commit suicide." Within 24 hours of application, the majority leukemia cells exposed were "killed off," while healthy cells were unharmed.

According to a report on the BBC, "scientists said it was too early to recommend that people eat grapes to ward off cancer."

We disagree. We strongly recommend that people eat grapes, and lots of them.

Western scientists who do such research are looking for drugs that can treat cancer. Our view is that the human body evolved to simply assume and expect a diet that includes grapes and fruits like grapes, and that insufficient quantities of grapes in the diet is one of the major causes of cancer.

Grapes formed a major part of the ancient Spartan diet, and the modern Spartan Diet. Eat plenty of dark-skinned organic grapes for maximum health. It's the perfect Spartan dessert.

Common Additive in Processed Foods Linked to Cancer

Researchers at Seoul National University in South Korea have identified a link between an additive commonly used in processed foods and lung cancer. The use of inorganic phosphates has increased dramatically in the past few years in processed meat products, as well as cheese, beverages and other industrial foods.

The BBC quoted Professor Stephen Spiro, the deputy chairman of the British Lung Foundation, as saying:

"Whilst this may be a relevant observation it has never been assessed in man, and any recent increase in high phosphate ingestion due to excessive phosphates in processed foodstuffs would be likely to take many years before they could affect tumour development in humans."

In other words, don't do anything rash -- like eating healthy food.

The Spartan Diet, of course, is 100% free of inorganic phosphates because zero processed food products are on the diet, as well as zero cheese, zero domesticated animal meat and zero canned or bottled beverages.