The Spartan Diet

No, beans aren't better for you than rice

2011-09-01T21:54:00.000-07:00

A new study appears to have concluded that the universal staple of Latin America, beans and rice, are a mixed bag, health-wise. The beans, they concluded, are excellent for human health. The rice? Not so much.

Harvard researchers, studying a population in Costa Rica, found that by reducing the rice and increasing the beans, the likelihood of diabetes can by reduced by 35 percent.

The problem with rice, they found, is that it's "pure starch" and therefore "easily converted into sugar by the body," the lead scientist told Reuters.

Here's what's really going on. The beans and rice widely consumed in Latin America usually involve whole beans and white rice.

Beans are a largely natural food, while white rice is industrially processed. Here's what industrial food is.

A better solution to reducing white rice and increasing beans is to eliminate white rice and replace it with whole-grain brown rice. In addition, both the beans and the rice should be fermented by soaking in water for between 12 and 24 hours before cooking.

This research is yet another case where an industrially processed food is found to be unhealthy, and then the news stories that result from that finding vilify not the industrial processing, but the food that is only made unhealthy by industrial processing.

Post-industrial food is the future, but you can have it now

2011-05-16T15:18:00.000-07:00

In our last post, we defined industrial food in detail, and told you how it has created the health crisis. Industrial food is obviously unsustainable. Following current trends, the United States will be bankrupt by healthcare costs, and will be unable to find enough young people fit enough to join the military in just a few decades.

So what comes next?

The solution to industrial food is not, and cannot be, to turn back the clock to a pastoral, agrarian past. Technology and science got us into this mess, and technology and science will get us out.

The old industrial food system would have us buying most of our food at the supermarket, a majority of which would be packaged, canned or pre-prepared foods. We would go to restaurants, which would involve incredibly processed industrial ingredients made compulsively appealing to our basest cravings with massive amounts of low-quality fat, sugar and salt.

The foundational enabler of this system is a pact of ignorance -- We won't demand to know what's in the food, and food processors will do everything in their power to prevent such knowledge from getting out.

The post-industrial food system will be driven by transparency and knowledge about our food and what's in it. Driven by the growing legions of foodies -- locavores, slow foodists, urban farmers, organic foodists, farmers market enthusiasts, real-food fundamentalists, gourmands, Food Network fans and all the rest -- people will increasingly refuse to buy "ignorance food." If you won't tell us what's in it, we won't buy it.

The Internet will spread knowledge of new and traditional food processing and cooking methods from all over the world. Technology will bring us a world of new cooking and food-related apps, kitchen equipment, and supplies. The Internet will make good food stuff made anywhere available everywhere.

Shoppers will stop buying at industrial-food supermarkets, and start embracing the new range of food sources. Above all, more people will buy directly from producers via the Internet. They'll join co-ops and buy into livestock shares for meat and raw milk. They'll turn to the small specialty stores popping up everywhere that make high-quality bread, or specialize in single ingredients, like olive oil. They'll frequent farmer's markets in such numbers that the size and number of markets will just keep growing.

As food awareness grows, people will stop growing lawns and shrubs around their homes, and start planting fruit trees and vegetable gardens.

You'll see a transition by the massive food corporations toward healthier fare. Industrial food processors will start innovating in ways to mass-produce healthy food, not just cheap food.

All this will be driven by science information. As researchers continue to understand the central role of news areas of health, including gut flora, epigenetics, endocrine disrupters and the role of diet in predisposing people to cancer, heart disease, diabetes and more, it will become common knowledge that today's toxic industrial food is wrecking lives by the millions.

Post-industrial food will someday become the mainstream approach to food. But today, it's only a growing fringe movement.

In 1960, Americans were among the biggest smokers of cigarettes. After a massive cultural shift in attitudes about tobacco, the United States has earned a global reputation as being among the most anti-cigarette.

We believe the same thing will happen with food. Right now, America leads the world in the embrace of toxic industrial junk food, and we lead the world in the lifestyle diseases that go with it. But a cultural movement has begun that will reverse this trend. America will become the nation that leads the world away from garbage food.

That's our prediction anyway. What do you think?

(Pictured is a loaf of bread from the deliciously post-industrial Tartine Bakery.)

What is industrial food, and why is it so bad?

2011-04-24T16:23:00.000-07:00

How did our food get so bad? Ironically, the catastrophic decline in food quality began more than 200 years ago with breathtaking improvement.

The Industrial Revolution, which would transform the lives of billions, was really a series of smaller, mutually reinforcing revolutions: The industrial energy revolution, the industrial transportation revolution, the industrial chemicals revolution, and so on. One of these was the industrial food revolution.

From around 1800 to about 1950, all of the major food problems that had plagued mankind for centuries were largely solved by industrialization, at least for people in the minority of countries that industrialized during this period. Famine, food-borne illness, lack of food variety, basic nutritional deficiencies among the poor and other problems were largely eliminated for millions.

Agriculture machinery, chemicals, railroads and trucks, factory assembly lines, refrigeration, pasteurization, sterilization and other industrial-revolution innovations drove down the cost of food, and increased nutritional safety and variety. Lower food costs, plus supermarkets and household appliances meant people no longer had to spend most of their time paying for, acquiring or preparing food. Combined with advances in medicine, lives became longer, healthier and better.

So what happened between 1950 and today?

The industrial food revolution turned food into a product. Like all consumer products, food now had to constantly evolve into something "better," cheaper and faster. This evolution involved gradual changes in the actual biochemistry of what we're putting in our mouths. But while the food keeps changing, our bodies don't. With each passing year, the food supply becomes less compatible with human biology.

We define industrial food as food modified for factory farming, factory processing, mass distribution or mass marketing. Industrial foods are those that have been changed to satisfy the demands of the consumer marketplace.

One of the many false assumptions about industrial food is that, well, food is food, and it doesn't matter if a computer-controlled machine mixes the raw ingredients together in a factory or a cook does in a kitchen. What's the difference? The difference is not the mixing, but the myriad changes made to the food to optimize it for the overall industrial process.

Most foods are "modified" or "processed" at some point. The question that separates industrial from traditional foods is the purpose of those modifications. Traditional modifications tend to improve the taste, health qualities, digestibility and long-term storage of foods. Grains are modified to make bread, for example. Olives are processed into olive oil. The food is altered to make it more edible, nutritious and desirable, as well as storable.

The highest purpose of industrial processing is to lower the cost of food. Consumers favor cheaper food, so food companies compete to find new ways to lower costs. Just like computer software or cars or any other industrial product sold in the competitive marketplace, there has been constant innovation in industrial food processing to drive down costs. Low cost is achieved by optimizing absolutely every aspect of food manufacturing, including seeds, soil, farm equipment, harvest schedules, trucks, factories, additives, processes, packaging and more. Another strategy for lowering costs is to offshore the production and processing of foods to China or other countries with low production costs and lax food-safety regulations, or simply buy the ingredients from Chinese companies.

Modifications to food begins before seeds are even planted. The first part of the industrial-food process is the selection of raw ingredients. Almost every food type originated with massive variety -- literally thousands of species of, say, apples or wheat. But industrial processing tends to favor only one or a small number of species, which have been heavily hybridized, cultivated or genetically modified to make them better for modern food processing systems. If you buy an apple pie at the store, it's made from single modern species of apples and wheat that didn't even exist 200 years ago.

Industrial processing and mass marketing dictates ingredient selection choices. Modern wheat is favored for bread-making over other grains because of its higher yield, machine thresh-ability, super high gluten content and other reasons. Specially bred dairy cows are favored over, say, goats, because they produce a lot more milk and can be feasibly kept in pens and a host of other reasons amenable to mass industrial processing, even though goat milk is far more compatible with the human digestive system. Corn and soy are chosen as the universal "fillers" for processed foods, because they're super cheap to grow, in part because growers receive government subsidies to grow them.

The most extreme modifications are made in the lab. Biotech company scientists custom-tailor the genetics of seeds in ways that used to be only science fiction. Fish genes are grafted into strawberry DNA to reduce crop loss from frost, for example. Corn and potatoes are altered to manufacture their own toxic pesticides. Many of these designer crops are created to be wholly dependent upon a specific brand of herbicide or insecticide. Produce has also been hybridized and genetically modified for uniformity, blemishlessness, durability for transportation and other qualities that boost the salability of food. As with all industrial food innovations, these crops have been transformed into a better product to sell, and not a better food to eat. And they look better to the uniformed consumer than organic produce, with its blemishes and variable shapes and sizes.

GM technology is great for the companies that create them. Genetically modified foods are patentable, for example, which confers a marketplace advantage on the patent holder. And seeds genetically modified to require specific brands of herbicide or pesticide lock in customers for those products.

Genetically modified crops have been aggressively introduced into our diet only in the past 15 years or so. According to the USDA, the percentage of soybean acreage devoted to GM soy rose from less than 10% in 1996 to more than 90% in 2010. GM corn acreage rose from almost zero to more than 2/3 of all acres. The vast majority of processed packaged foods contains one or both of these GM crops. Farm animals are usually fed GM feed. Vitamin pills are often made from GM crops. GM foods have pervaded the entire industrial food supply, at least in the United States where they are legal and unlabeled. They've not been seriously tested for human health, and they do not require consumer notification on the label. Adults today are feeding their children foods that didn't exist when they themselves were children.

Once the particular type, species or "brand" of seed has been planted, the growing or raising of industrial foods is typically done in a way that optimizes the ingredients for industrial processing. Just a century ago, farms involved the raising of a variety of crops and animals in a symbiotic ecosystem where the waste from animals fertilized the crops, and some of the crops fed the animals. Crops were rotated to maintain soil health.

Industrial farming involves plots of land growing a single crop -- often genetically modified and crop-dusted with an airplane spraying hundreds of gallons of poison all over the food and the soil -- not because it's healthy or results in better-tasting food, but because that's how you get the maximum amount of produce out of each acre of land at the lowest cost.

Fruits and vegetables destined for industrial processing are typically harvested well before ripening, so the food can survive the long journey to the factory, where it may be ripened with ethylene gas. The same goes for a lot of the produce sent to supermarkets.

Before produce even gets to the factory or supermarket, it has already been modified aggressively. As a result, according to several studies, the overall concentration of nutrients in foods has decline dramatically in the past 50 years. The protein concentration of wheat, barley and corn is way down. The mineral content of wheat and many vegetables is down. This general trend makes intuitive sense. As producers successfully find new ways to get more pounds of food out of the same acre of land, you might expect the nutritional quality to decline with rising yields.

But it's at the food processing and packaging plant that the deep modifications take place. Of course, different kinds of foods undergo very different processes in the manufacturing process. One nearly universal outcome is that food usually has to be sterilized or nearly sterilized before leaving the factory.

A typical food manufacturing facility involves pipes and vats, bins and kettles of such size and complexity that it's impossible to keep these things clean. Because food is processed in mass quantities, bacterial contamination can spoil huge amounts of food. And because industrial food will usually be stored for long periods of time, any bacteria would have weeks or months to develop into a full-blown pathogenic danger. That's why many industrial processes require the pasteurization or sterilization of food before, during or after the bottling, canning or packaging stage.

Food sterilization can be problematic for health in two ways. First, it changes the food, destroying or altering the chemical structure of nutrients. Second, it turns out that human health needs the bacteria, fungi and other microorganisms that live on natural whole foods. Eating a diet of primarily processed foods can leave you with a compromised gut environment, which can lead to susceptibility to illness, allergies and other problems.

Because industrial food will be eaten when old, rather than fresh, food processors have to employ a wide range of tricks to "embalm" the food and prevent it from decomposing, as it naturally would.

We all know that when food gets old, it "goes bad." Food is transformed by bacteria, molds and enzymes, causing it to lose flavor, texture and color. Liquids and semi-liquids separate. The shape, structure and texture of food degrades. Because industrial food products will be shipped, handled roughly, kept at unpredictable temperatures and sit on the shelf for weeks or months, all the potential damage to the product must be countered with additives. The food industry employs thousands of chemicals and compounds that act as preservatives, emulsifiers, stabilizers, anti-caking and anti-foaming agents, thickeners, color enhancers, flavor enhancers and others. Some of the unpronounceable ingredients on food labels are chemicals and additives that make old, stale food look fresher. Other additives don't have to be listed on the label at all. For example, cottage cheese, non-fat milk, sour cream and some ice cream brands are whitened with a potentially toxic substance called titanium dioxide. But you won't find that on the label because of a loophole in the regulations that enable its classification as a "manufacturing aid" rather than a food ingredient. Other loopholes allow companies to hide a huge number of ingredients single umbrella terms like "artificial flavors," even if the ingredient is not used to affect the flavor. The list of ingredients that can be legally added to wine without being disclosed on the label runs six pages.

Food products need containers, which are constantly being upgraded for lower cost shipping and storage, and increasingly made from plastic or plastic-lined cans. Plastic is cheaper than glass, less breakable and lighter, too, which brings down shipping costs. As with many industrial food innovations, plastic containers improve the product but wreck the food.

It turns out that chemicals in plastic containers can leach into the foods they contain. In the past few years, consumers have become aware of the dangers of substance in many plastics called Bisphenol A, or BPA. BPA is used in many plastic containers, and also in the plastic lining of many canned foods.

When BPA gets into food, and then into the body, the human endocrine system mistakes it for estrogen. Such anti-angrogens, or anti-male hormone compounds, harm the health of women as well as men. Researchers are still working on how all this fake estrogen affects health, but it could be partly to blame for declining sperm counts in men, as well as have some link to cancer, diabetes and heart disease.

BPA isn't the only problem. Many different kinds of plastics have many other different chemicals and compounds that also disrupt the endocrine system.

Container makers often use a class of substances called phthalates, which make plastic containers soft and flexible. Phthalates leach easily into foods from containers because they're not strongly bonded to plastics. As the plastic containers age, they break away from the container and blend into the food, onto the surface of the outside of the container and even into the air we breath. These also disrupt the hormonal system, and have been linked to all kinds of health issues, from birth defects to obesity and even insulin resistance.

Both BPA and phthalates can be detected in the urine of just about every adult in America. Our bodies are saturated with these anti-androgen hormone disruptors.

Other types of industrial-food containers have similar problems. Swiss scientists discovered, for example, that the recycled cardboard used for industrial breakfast cereal boxes contain enormous quantities of toxic chemicals that can leach into the food.

The differences between industrial and traditional foods are profound and many. Because industrial food has been so thoroughly modified, it bears almost no resemblance from a nutritional perspective to traditional foods.

Nearly all the foods available to consumers, from grocery stores, to restaurants, to vending machines to company cafeterias are industrial foods. Even cooking at home from scratch can involve industrial foods, in the form of modern wheat, industrially sourced and processed oils, pasteurized ingredients and other foods from the supermarket. Likewise, it's possible to make traditionally processed food products in factories – what matters is the degree to which foods have been modified for reasons other than taste and health.

Confusion about the difference between industrial and non-industrial food has led to mistaken conclusions about which foods are healthy, and which are not. In recent years, various food categories have been vilified as unhealthy. Meat, milk, grains, sugar and so on have been vilified by various health experts as categorically bad for you. But it turns out that only the industrial versions of these foods are bad. Wild fish and game, raw goat milk, ancient grains, raw honey – the traditional versions of these foods are healthy in moderate quantities, while the industrial versions are not.

As we said at the top of this post, we define industrial food as food modified for factory farming, factory processing, mass distribution or mass marketing. Industrial foods are those that have been changed to satisfy the demands of the consumer marketplace. It's not the industrial processing that matters, but the modification of biochemistry specifically for that processing.

Industrial food doesn't taste good. It doesn't look good or smell good. It doesn't promote health. It doesn't make you feel good. It's just cheap.

The Spartan Diet is what we call a post-industrial diet. We'll explain what that means in the next post.

New discoveries: cherries, gut bacteria, weight loss, avoiding cancer and more!

2011-04-23T16:29:00.000-07:00

Tart cherries have a unique combination of powerful antioxidants that may help reduce inflammation http://bit.ly/hJOYvv

Strange but true: the brain is shaped by bacteria in the digestive tract http://bit.ly/hj1FWY

Type 2 diabetes may be an autoimmune disease http://lat.ms/hbmfMW

YMCA survey: 74% of US kids don't get minimum exercise; 74% of parents choose TV for family time. Coincidence? http://bit.ly/fRJ4J7

How to reduce BPA exposure from food http://bit.ly/hpRlln

Losing weight improves your memory! http://usat.ly/eJ37bI

Nationwide study finds US beef and poultry is widely contaminated http://bit.ly/fM8moH

Nearly three-quarters of samples tested of top-selling imported olive oil failed extra virgin standards. http://lat.ms/fJe4gO

Why tea is better than coffee, green tea better than black, and white better than green. http://lifehac.kr/idOkLQ

The science is clear: Sugar can also make us fat and unhealthy http://bit.ly/hMAvDs

How the military is being hammered by obesity and yo yo dieting as service men and women try to cope: http://bit.ly/fVl68t

Eating more carbs at dinner may help with weight loss and cholesterol http://lat.ms/hYNQwM

New study explains factors that contribute to childhood obesity, type 2 diabetes http://bit.ly/fj5HzJ

Caffeine may contribute to diabetes http://bit.ly/eTzgKd

Eating less meat and more vegetables is tied to a lower risk of cataracts http://reut.rs/g9E01S

Strawberries have the potential to prevent esophageal cancer http://on.wsj.com/eSHd9t

More than two alcoholic drinks a day increases risk of cancer http://bit.ly/e52WJc

The American diet in one chart, with lots of fats and sugars http://bit.ly/f5BJ22

Differences in gut flora appear to have a big effect on whether one develops heart disease. http://bit.ly/fpxohF

"Showing a milkshake to some people is like dangling a cold beer in front of an alcoholic." http://on.wsj.com/gFPzCa

Natural wine documentary coming next summer

2011-04-23T09:52:00.000-07:00

The makers of an upcoming documentary called Wine From Here have posted a trailer for the movie. The documentary is about the burgeoning natural wine movement in California, which is a post-industrial process for making wine without the long list of chemicals, additives and processes used by industrial wine makers. Most natural wine makers use grapes from vineyards that are unsprayed and sometimes even unirrigated. They add no sugar or yeast, make no changes for acidity and they add either very little or no sulphite (the stuff universally overused in industrial wine that can wreck the flavor).

Natural wine is a global movement, but the documentary focuses on 14 winemakers in California.

We're really glad this documentary has been made, because anyone who drinks wine needs to understand how conventional wine is made (it won't be pretty), and also why natural wine is so much better.

Our own favorite natural wine maker, A Donkey and Goat, is featured in the documentary.

Stop calling it the 'Western diet'!

2011-04-14T14:45:00.000-07:00

The standard villain in any discussion of the global health crisis is the so-call "Western diet." The meaty, sugary, refined-grain and processed-food heavy diet is blamed for the unprecedented growth of obesity, cardiovascular disease, diabetes and all the rest. "Western" is convenient shorthand. Unfortunately, it's also intellectually dishonest, lazy and inaccurate.

The "West" refers generally to Europe and its former colonies. It's a legitimate cultural designation based on historical reality. Europe was a creation of the Roman Empire, which itself was largely modeled on classical Greece. The "West" is Ancient Greece and its cultural descendants. The traditions that began in Greece, which served as the foundation for our views about Democracy, science, architecture, philosophy and more also included a culture of food. And while key aspects of the Greek cultural tradition (Plato, Socrates, etc.) was lost, then rediscovered during the Renaissance, Greek food culture was never lost in Europe, and served as the foundation for two millennia of what can accurately be described as the real "Western diet."

If you're an American, Canadian, Brit, German, Australian or citizen of any other Western country, you probably don't think there's anything particularly foreign or exotic about eating bread, cheese, salad, olives, raisins or any number of foods that can draw a direct line from you to back through Europe, Rome and all the way back to Ancient Greece. Our "Western" food traditions are ancient. And they're anything but unhealthy.

The healthiest cooking oil in the world is extra-virgin olive oil. The healthiest alcoholic beverage is red grape wine. The healthiest fruit in the world is the pomegranate (according to one study). These foods are as "Western" (and Greek) as you can get. The traditional staples of Western Civilization going back at least 2,700 years until the Industrial Revolution -- olives, figs, apples, pears, grapes, lettuce, cabbage, peas, beans, ancient whole grain wheat and barley, almonds, walnuts, onions, garlic and so on are now considered super-foods. This is the "Western diet." Ironically, it's the abandonment of the "Western diet," that's largely to blame for the health crisis.

When people say "Western Diet," they're really talking about an industrial diet -- the factory foods developed since the Industrial revolution, which became far more pervasive since the end of World War II. Processed foods, stripped of nutrients and loaded down with added fat, artificial colors, preservatives, sugar, corn syrup and all the rest -- these concepts are recent inventions and as alien to the Western tradition as chopsticks.

Western academics and writers tend to use the "Western" label for negative things, but not positive ones. As affluence and modernity spread throughout the world, it's no longer politically correct to say that a rich Asian country is "Westernized," as used to be the case with early Asian modernizers like Japan. Istead, we say "industrialized." The new label is far more accurate, because there's nothing uniquely "Western" about modernity. Likewise, there's nothing uniquely "Western" about junk food. Well-off people all over the world, including in Japan, China, India are suffering the same illnesses from the same kind of food as people in the "West." You can find industrialized junk food versions of both "Eastern" and "Western" foods all over the world. Ramen in a Styrofoam cup can be found in every grocery store. Nearly every sushi restaurant in the world serves artificially colored ginger and fake wasabi. Most Chinese restaurants in America served the hardcore junk-food version of Chinese food. Junk food is not a Western phenomenon, and health food is not exclusively Asian or non-Western.

One major component of so-called "Western diet" is white sugar, which is actually a food invented in and borrowed from India.

One problem with the "Western" slur is that it implies that the solution is Eastern food -- as if tofu, curry and shark-fin soup are secrets to better health. The obvious truth is that both East and West offer foods that span the spectrum from healthy to deadly. The white rice favored in Asia isn't an improvement over white-flour bread. The fatty sauces of India aren't much of an upgrade from the fatty sauces of France. Chicken fried in a wok is no better than chicken fried in a pan.

The biggest problem with blaming the "Western diet" for the global health crisis is that it's simply inaccurate. The traditional foods of Western civilization are at least as healthy as any tradition in the world. Of the five regions identified in the book "The Blue Zones" as the healthiest spots in the world, four of them are located in the West and are based on a Western diet: Sardinia, Italy; Loma Linda, California; Nicoya Peninsula, Costa Rica; and Icaria, Greece. (The fifth "zone" is Okinawa, Japan.)

In each of these four cases, residents are eating traditional Western foods in moderation, and abstaining from modern industrial junk food.

It's absurd to use the word "Western" to identify the diet that's wrecking modern health. The real villain is industrial food. And the solution is to reject such foods and embrace the traditionally prepared healthiest foods from all over the world, including and perhaps especially from the West.

So by all means let's blame fatty, meaty, sugary industrial junk food for the health crisis. But don't call it the "Western diet."

6 ways to build your immune system

2011-04-05T11:04:00.000-07:00

Your mother told you that "germs are bad." The germ theory of disease says that we get sick when pathogenic microorganisms invade and infect our bodies. Your best bet is to wash your hands and avoid sick people -- at least that's what we were told.

In recent years, we've learned a lot more about how the immune system works -- or doesn't work. It turns out that pathogenic microorganisms are invading our bodies every day. They're in the air we breathe and the food we eat. They're on the surface of just about everything we touch.

Not getting sick is more about fighting germs than avoiding them. Our immune systems are engaged in a constant battle, and usually destroy these bugs before they can cause our bodies to generate noticeable symptoms.

The most interesting update to the germ theory is that, yes, microorganisms can make us sick -- but when we don't get sick it's usually because other microorganisms protected us.

Some 200 trillion tiny creatures -- bacteria, fungi and viruses -- live in our bodies and on the surface of our skin and hair. For every human cell in our body, there are 20 non-human cells. The vast majority of these critters live in our digestive systems -- probably far more than 1,000 species of different microorganism inhabit our guts.

The scientific understanding of gut microbes is still in its infancy -- we haven't even identified most of these species, and we don't fully understand how they all work. However, it has become clear that gut microbes play a vital role in protecting our bodies from invading pathogens.

Using mice as test subjects, researchers have discovered that the right mix of gut bacteria can mean the difference between getting sick from an invading pathogen, and not getting sick. Scientists were able even to control the degree to which mice got sick by fiddling with various combinations of gut bacteria.

Gut microbes achieve this protection in at least four ways. First, they lower the pH level inside the intestine, which favors good microbes and harms bad ones. Second, they coat the lining of the intestines, which creates an actual wall of defense that's both physical and chemical -- pathogenic bacteria has a harder time escaping the gut and entering the blood stream. And third, they starve the invaders by eating their food supply. And fourth, they exhibit a poorly understood role in controlling, training and generally directing the entire body's immune system.

A very recent study, for example, found that protection from airborne flu virus in the lungs is actually directed or signaled by gut microbes. Researchers discovered that a compromised gut ecosystem increases the likelihood of getting the flu because a healthy gut is required in order for the lungs to defend against pathogens.

This whole emerging science around the gut microbiome is new. But we already know enough to take action based on what has been discovered so far. The bottom line is that with a healthy gut ecosystem, you'll get sick a lot less and enjoy much better health than if you have a damaged or compromised gut ecosystem.

The most efficient way to damage gut microbes is to take antibiotics, which can wreck your gut for months and even years. But other factors cause harm, too.

The gut environment changes dramatically hour by hour, day by day. And it's likely that a wide range of environmental factors damage the ecosystem. Chlorinated water, toxic food, pollution, household chemicals -- all these probably take their toll.

You can also starve your gut bacteria by eating sterile processed industrial foods instead of whole, fresh foods. Certain types of foods function as prebiotics (not to be confused with probiotics). Prebiotics are foods you cannot digest, but which gut bacteria transform into food for themselves through fermentation in the colon. Prebiotic foods include whole grains, root vegetables, raw goat milk, garlic, onions and some green vegetables.

If you care about your health, you're probably already eating a pretty healthy diet. So why are you still getting sick as often as you do? We've found that many people who eat well and exercise, still get sick because of stress.

Recent science has shown that stress is one of most high-impact ways to negatively change the gut ecosystem. Research at Ohio State University found that stress changes all aspects of gut microbes, including the number of cells, the balance of various species and the number of species. The lowering of intestinal microbe diversity was found to be directly associated with the ability to resist disease. The lead researcher in the project said it plainly: "Stress dysregulates the immune response."

Also note that stress is not only caused by emotional distress. You can also stress your body through sudden, extreme exercise that you're not fully conditioned for or any other physical shock to the body.

Of all the factors that allow otherwise healthy people to get sick, stress is probably the most common trigger. One reason is that it can happen suddenly. You're eating well and feeling great, but then have an upsetting encounter with your spouse, child or boss. The next day, you're sick! Just like that. What's happening is that your immune system, guided by your gut microbes, had been keeping invading pathogens at bay and under control. Then the emotional distress wipes out a critical mass of gut microbes, which causes a general lowering of the defensive barrier, and in come the pathogens.

But even if you don't kill your gut microbes, they can slowly die of natural causes -- which is why you need to replenish your supply. (In the mouse study referenced above, scientists planted good gut bacteria into mice, which lived in the rodents' digestive tracts for only a month or so.)

You re-stock your gut by eating a diet rich in probiotics, which are foods teaming with healthy microbes -- raw, organic fruits and vegetables, raw fermented foods (like sauerkraut, olives, kimchi, pickles, etc.), raw goat milk, and raw goat or sheep milk cheese. Note that because heat kills all or most good bacteria, fermented foods that come in a jar or can won't work, nor will pasteurized milk, as these products have been sterilized in the factory. (Note that some health food stores carry good fermented foods in jars, but they'll make a big deal on the label of saying they're "cultured" and "raw" -- that's how you know.)

There's no need to buy specially marketed probiotic products – a healthy diet will keep your gut microbes healthy and strong.

How to avoid getting sick

So if you want to stay well, and feel great -- even while everyone around you gets sick as a dog -- you need to take a multifaceted approach:

1. Listen to your mother: Wash your hands and avoid sick people.

2. Avoid antibiotics in consultation with your doctor. If you can muddle through without them, and your doctor approves, choose to not take antibiotics.

3. Avoid pollution, conventional household cleaning chemicals (use natural products from the health food store), fire smoke, heavy alcohol and other toxins.

4. Eat probiotic foods -- raw, organic fruits and vegetables, raw fermented foods, raw goat milk, and raw goat or sheep milk cheese.

5. Feed your gut microbes the prebiotic foods they need: whole grains, root vegetables, raw goat milk, garlic, onions and green vegetables.

6. Avoid stress -- change your stress-driven view of life, meditate, do yoga, take a vacation, get plenty of sleep, laugh, don't allow yourself to get worked up -- stay chill.

Of course, if you do damage to your gut microbes -- by taking necessary antibiotics, getting stressed out or some other way -- double up your efforts to rebuild your gut with the right foods and a relaxed frame of mind.

We can't guarantee that you'll never, ever get sick. But by making these six lifestyle changes, you'll have your best chance of getting sick less often, and less severely if you do catch something.

New discoveries: gut microbes, fiber, fitness and vitamin D!

2011-04-04T18:45:00.000-07:00

The huge range of harmless and beneficial microbes that live in our guts may be the key to health without antibiotics. http://bit.ly/fk2WOD

Why the United States has the highest rates of cancer in the world (TEDtalk video) http://bit.ly/i1dOrr

How optimal fitness has changed the life of one 46-year-old http://bit.ly/g8YQH9

Add anorexia to the growing list of diseases that used to affect only adults but now hit very young children: http://bit.ly/gXwZAo

Vitamin D and sunshine key to pregnancy health http://bit.ly/ieAHpD

The most common heart rhythm disturbance, called an atrial fibrillation, is largely preventable with healthy diet. http://bit.ly/fES0Tx

Coffee after high-fat meal can raise blood sugar to harmful levels http://bit.ly/eiOuQx

Get outside and get some sunshine, people! Vitamin D levels linked with health of blood vessels http://bit.ly/e9doAw

Exercise gets more necessary with age, not less http://usat.ly/eceXHP

Probiotic bacteria could help treat Crohn's disease http://bit.ly/hegFiW

Is depression an inflammatory condition caused by an industrial diet? http://bit.ly/eqtSCm

Why apples, cranberries and prunes are good for your brain http://bit.ly/e2z3rU

Sugary soda and juice can boost blood pressure, weight http://bit.ly/harDKk

17 bad habits that weaken your heart: http://huff.to/dO56gx

Some of the olive trees that still produce for Italy's olive oil industry were planted during the Roman Empire! http://bit.ly/eKSnUA

Six ways to avoid BPA: http://www.silentspring.org/pdf/our_research/six_steps.pdf

From the Department of Obvious: Diet along with exercise may be the best way for seniors to gain strength and fitness http://lat.ms/gUGnSo

How Seth Godin can help you get ripped: http://huff.to/h06rYP

New study shows that eliminating packaged foods from diet significantly reduces BPA levels. http://bit.ly/hmUfNd

Exercise may blunt salt's effect on hypertension: http://usat.ly/fQwc9c

Want to try some fruit juices you've never even heard of before? http://bit.ly/ebtk4X

Let's be very clear: "Heart failure," which killed Elizabeth Taylor, is caused by low-quality food and unhealthy lifestyle. http://bit.ly/g0irc0

Everybody blames "Western" diets, but it's more accurately described as "modern and industrial" diets: http://n.pr/dE5Mwi

Lovers of raw milk cheese savor its unique flavors http://bit.ly/ek1iZ5

Why healthy people smell so good: http://bit.ly/gf24l2

Obese youths may have insulin resistance, inflammation and higher homocysteine levels due to junk food diets: http://bit.ly/ieL1fu

Antibiotics linked to obesity http://bit.ly/hnT3tK

Gut feeling? Take it seriously. Your gut is constantly "talking" to your brain, and is a wise counselor: http://bit.ly/g6Xwco

I can personally vouch for the awesomeness of this @donkeyandgoat wine, both in taste and in health quality! : ) http://bit.ly/fpDmGX

10 fitness myths debunked: http://bit.ly/hvPXwk

Toenail study finds mercury-laden fish doesn't cause catastrophic cardiovascular illness. That's a pretty low bar... http://yhoo.it/dZpIPJ

Ever get sick after severe stress? The reason is that stress harms gut bacteria, which is your first line of defense: http://bit.ly/gQQypZ

The easiest way to get healthier: Sleep in a dark room! http://bit.ly/haZ8JQ

The US Military joins the fight against childhood obesity http://bit.ly/elZlhi

Here comes the new science of designer probiotics http://bit.ly/eiUWTb

3.23 p.m. is prime-time for going off your diet. http://bit.ly/e4G76X

Chemicals in plastics linked to early onset menopause http://bit.ly/guVaYH

Fiber reduces risk of cardiovascular disease http://usat.ly/h0pHs2

St Patrick was on the Spartan Diet: http://yhoo.it/gomDAw

Gut microbes may help combat flu virus in your lungs http://bit.ly/h7mGKr

Omega-3 fatty acids may decrease a woman's risk of age-related macular degeneration http://bit.ly/hEjtCV

Plentiful antioxidants before and during pregnancy prevents obesity and glucose intolerance in offspring. http://bit.ly/fEMdIE

Why you want to filter your home air: Air pollution can trigger arrhythmia even in healthy people: http://bit.ly/gT2yjo

Heirloom tangerine tomatoes a better source of a powerful antioxidant called lycopene than regular red tomatoes: http://bit.ly/exvXlB

How vegetables fight cancer: They contain compounds that "suppress gene aberrations that... cause fatal diseases." http://bit.ly/ftu2Rg

"64 percent of children diagnosed with ADHD are actually experiencing a hypersensitivity to food." Drugs not the answer. http://n.pr/hEbzy1

A Mediterranean diet -- rich in fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and olive oil -- reduces metabolic syndrome http://bit.ly/fPv7W9

Researchers discover that gluten sensitivity is different from celiac disease. http://bit.ly/eD1bUc

Scientists are figuring out how to process chocolate to preserve all its amazing health properties: http://bit.ly/i6kEfU

Exercise and sex (not necessarily at the same time) are good for your brain: http://bit.ly/dR9kPc

Potassium strengthens your cardiovascular system: http://bit.ly/hSXydK

Research provides new insight into why poor diet during pregnancy negatively affects offspring's long term health http://bit.ly/i0H4FI

Why you should grind your own flour: http://lat.ms/eljUmg

The Mediterranean diet still linked to lower heart disease risk http://lat.ms/gnvPtC

How to keep your kids away from the toxins in plastic: http://bit.ly/emJ1e2

YMCA launches program to end diabetes: http://bit.ly/hZwdYA

Why is sauerkraut a "superfood"? Because it's fermented: http://bit.ly/i8XKFX

A high-fiber diet helps you live longer: http://bit.ly/hvh9XF

One sixth of foods labeled 'fresh', 'organic' or 'handmade' isn't: http://bit.ly/eUoyDy

Researchers have discovered a new type of Australian honey found to be radically anti-bacterial. http://bit.ly/fEgBlw

The six qualities that transform bread from junk food to superfood

2011-03-09T18:05:00.000-08:00

Good bread is one of the healthiest foods you can eat. Unfortunately, it's almost impossible to find. Your town's fanciest bakery doesn't have it. Even your local hippy coop or yuppie grocery store probably doesn't offer truly good bread.

(Don't worry: We're going to tell you were to get great bread at the end of this post.)

The only kind of bread generally available is industrial-revolution sci-fi bread made with mutant grains and leavened without fermentation.

By historical standards, it's not really bread. It's something strange and alien to the human diet.

Because most bread is so unhealthy, many have concluded that grains in general, and bread in particular, are bad for you. People are giving up bread before they've ever even tried the real thing.

Our abandonment of good bread in favor of bad bread is a very recent phenomenon. If you were to compress the whole history of bread into one hour, we humans have been eating quality bread for 59 minutes and 59 seconds, but stopped eating it in favor of junk bread in the last second.

Bad bread is new to the human diet, so we shouldn't be surprised that it's making people fat, sick and weak.

Good bread is the universal human staple, our most important food, historically. Bread is so central to our culture that the word bread can be used as a synonym for food.

Good bread, the kind people have been eating for thousands of years and right up until about 200 years ago, has the following qualities:

1. Natural leavening and fermentation
2. Ancient grains
3. Organic grains
4. Whole grains
5. Freshly milled flours
6. Zero non-food ingredients

Bad bread is the opposite of all this. Conventional, industrial-age bread is leavened without fermentation. It uses a mutant strain of wheat that's very unhealthy. The wheat is grown with pesticides, herbicides and other toxins. The most nutritious part of the grain is removed. It's milled in a way that destroys even more nutrients, then bagged up and stored for long periods of time before use. And like so many other processed industrial foods, bread is then loaded with preservatives, additives and other chemicals that help the product survive the industrial process.

Let's have a look at each of the qualities that make good bread good:

1. Natural leavening and fermentation

Conventional industrial bread available in stores and made at home is leavened (filled with pockets of gas) by a single-cell fungus called baker's yeast. Although there are thousands of species of yeast in nature, baker's yeast is almost always a single uniform species called saccharomyces cerevisiae. The same species is called "brewer's yeast" when used to make beer.

The control and isolation of this industrial baker's yeast is an achievement of 19th- and 20th-century science. From the middle ages to the early 19th century, bakers got their yeast from beer brewers. Before that, stretching back at least 5,000 years before the present time, nearly all leavened bread was raised with a process we Americans call "sourdough," but which is also called natural leavening.

Like most transitions from traditional to industrial food processing, the decline of natural leavening and rise of baker's yeast involved faster and more reliable mass production at the expense of health and taste, and uniformity at the expense of variety.

Sourdough is a gold-rush era American word for a broad category of bread leavening that is international and ancient. Sourdough is also the word used to describe the American process for making this kind of bread, and also for the bread itself.

Be warned, however, that there are several types of breads called "sourdough" that use baker's yeast as the main leavening agent. These aren't true sourdough breads, and they don't improve the dough the way a real sourdough process does. Many online recipes, and most sourdough breads for sale in the supermarket, are not real sourdough breads and do not provide the health benefits described in this post. If yeast is listed as an ingredient, it's not sourdough.

Naturally leavened traditional breads are still widely available in some European countries, including Italy, France, Germany, Russia, Poland and all the Scandinavian countries. The words used to describe this kind of bread are language- and even country-specific. Pumpernickel, pain au levain, and just about every kind of rye bread are traditionally made with a "sourdough" or natural leavening, for example.

Naturally leavened bread is a fermented food like olives, pickles, cheese, tofu, miso, sauerkraut, traditional soy sauce and yoghurt. Like all these foods, the fermentation of bread is something developed over the millennia that improves flavor, texture, shelf-life and above all nutritional quality.

There have been more than 20 species of yeast identified in sourdoughs and more than 40 species of lactic acid bacteria. However, the overwhelming probability is that you'll find in true sourdough starters a species of bacteria called lactobacillus sanfranciscensis (of which there are dozens or hundreds of strains) and possibly a second complimentary bacterium species that is region-specific.

Natural leavening improves the quality of bread in many ways that industrial baker's yeast does not.

The stable co-metabolism between yeasts and lactic acid bacteria creates an environment where other microorganisms cannot survive. This anti-microbial activity is stronger even than refrigeration, improving the safety of bread and making it stay fresher longer and preventing the formation of mold.

Grains are packed with nutrients. But they also contain anti-nutrients, including phytic acid. While phytic acid in small amounts offers health benefits, including anti-cancer action, it also chelates or binds to dietary minerals in the gut in a way that reduces the amount of minerals absorbed into the body.

If you eat a healthy diet with lots of grains and other seeds, it's a good idea to reduce the overall intake of phytic acid. And sourdough-leavened bread is a great (and traditional) place to make that reduction in a major way.

There are several ways to reduce the phytic acid content of grains. Soaking grains can reduce anti-nutrients by about 15%, and sprouting by another 10% or so. But sourdough leavening is by far the most powerful method, reducing phytic acid by up to 75%.

It also increases the solubility of both magnesium and phosphorus, making those minerals much easier to metabolize.

Natural leavening bacteria acts as a "prebiotic" that encourages the growth of bifidobacteria, which is a class of gut bacteria known to reduce allergies and fight cancer.

It also transforms the gluten in bread, potentially enabling even gluten-intolerant people to eat it without any problems.

Natural leavening performs another awesome trick: It takes the phytochemical antioxidants locked inside grains and makes them easily digestible, elevating grains into the same antioxidant-rich class as berries!

While baker's yeast-leavened dough raises in an hour or two, naturally leavened loaves require between 12 and 24 hours or more to fully develop naturally leavened dough, and requires more skill, which is why most commercial bakeries don't use it.

2. Ancient grains

There are some 30,000 varieties of wheat, broadly classified by the seasons they can be planted in and also in the ratio of protein to starch in the endosperm. So called "hard" wheats are prized by bakeries because they have more protein and less starch. That protein is called gluten, and the more of it you have, the stretchier and lighter the bread.

All grains can be divided into "modern" and "ancient" varieties. Modern grains have by definition been modified extensively in order to make them more compatible with industrial processing. Ancient grains have not.

Most bread is now made from a species of wheat called triticum aestivum, which is also called bread wheat, common wheat or modern wheat. There are many types of wheat within this species.

Over the last 200 years, modern wheat has been favored and developed because it's the cheapest to grow, mill and use. Selective breeding has radically increased the yield -- the amount of food in weight that can be grown on an acre of land -- and also the gluten content. It also has a genetic mutation that enables the grains to come off easily.

Modern wheat has been so heavily domesticated that it can't survive in nature. It's a freak plant with mutations and selective breeding traits that have rendered it human-incompatible. Modern wheat makes an impressive contribution to the global health crisis, creating allergic reactions, gluten intolerance and other issues.

When you hear about the cultivation of wheat in ancient times, you're hearing about a completely different food source. The ancient Egyptians built an empire on wheat bread and beer, but they used emmer wheat (also called farro, which is based on the Ancient Greek word for emmer wheat, which was, "far").

Europeans grew spelt and emmer starting in the Bronze Age, and continued to do so right through the middle ages.

There are many other varieties of ancient wheat, but these are some of the best and easiest-to-find alternatives to modern wheat.

One easy way to tell the difference, by the way, is that modern wheat tends to be sold with the word "wheat" -- hard winter wheat, soft winter wheat, whole wheat and so on -- while ancient varieties of wheat usually don't use the word "wheat" on the packaging. Spelt wheat for example, is just called "spelt" or "spelt flour." Emmer wheat is usually called just "emmer," etc.

Emmer and spelt are widely available, and they make superior tasting breads and other foods, as do non-wheat grains like barley, quinoa, oats, millet, rye and others. They've been tampered with much less than modern wheat, so they're much more compatible with human health.

Modern wheat has by definition been optimized for mass industrial production, and is therefore super cheap. And it makes bread that's super soft. These are the two qualities most consumers favor in bread, and so this kind of wheat has come to predominate. But if you want to be really healthy, you should never eat it.

3. Organic grains

Organic grains are grown without chemical fertilizers, insecticides or herbicides, and are not genetically modified.

To the best of our knowledge, no study has been conducted on the impact of chemical insecticides or herbicides on the microbial quality of sourdough microbiota. But common sense suggests that chemicals designed to kill bugs and plants may affect the balance of yeasts, fungi and bacteria in sourdough.

It's also possible that organic grains may contain slightly more nutrients, on average, than conventionally grown.

There's no question that so-called conventional growing methods improve yields and lower the cost of grain. But it's very likely that cost savings comes at the expense of bread quality and long-term health.

4. Whole grains

The idea that white bread is modern is a myth. White bread made from white flour was prized by the Greek and Roman aristocracies. But even the Romans knew it was muscle-weakening junk food, which is why gladiators were fed only whole grain barley or whole grain wheat. The Spartans ate whole-grain barley, even as other Greeks gradually replaced barley with wheat.

Grains contain three main parts: endosperm, bran and germ. Refined white wheat flour is simply the endosperm without the nutritionally dense bran and germ. Whole grain wheat bread has about the same calories as white bread, but nearly double the protein and more than twice the fiber.

Whole grain bread is also a rich source of minerals, but only if naturally leavened.

White flour is compatible with industrial processing because it lasts for months without going rancid. True whole grain flour lasts only a month or two. Unfortunately, industrial processors often process the wheat to remove either most of the bran or extract the oil from the bran. Even though they've removed some of the nutrition, they're still legally allowed to call it "whole wheat."

The best way to tell if "whole wheat," flour well, isn't: Check the shelf life. If it's three months or more, that means the manufacturer has either removed something (probably the oil) or added something (preservatives).

Refined grains and true whole grains are nutritional opposites. Refined grains create inflammation; whole grains are anti-inflammatory. Refined grains generally raise the risk of type II diabetes, hypertension, cardiovascular disease, cancer and obesity, while whole grains lower the risk of all these conditions. One contributes to disease, the other protects against it.

And we're not just talking about wheat. The modern industrial diet has gotten just about everyone eating the same three monocultures in many of the foods we eat: soy, corn and wheat. If you eat a standard junk food diet, you could have (without knowing it) the exact same genetically modified strain of soy in your breakfast, lunch and dinner.

The concept of dietary non-diversity is alien to the human species. Dietary variety is healthiest, and so the Spartan Diet calls for maximum variety in all foods, including grains. You can make or buy bread containing all kinds of grains, from barley and rye to millet and quinoa (according to our six criteria, of course), and we recommend that you experiment, mix it up and try as many different types of grain as you can. And always eat 100% organic whole grains.

5. Freshly milled flours

The Spartan Diet is obsessed with food quality, which usually requires food freshness. Many foods considered "fresh," are in fact made fresh with stale ingredients. Bread is one of them.

If you go to a local bakery -- even one that advertises the freshness of their bread -- it's likely that they're using flour that has been sitting around for weeks or even months.

Grains are grass seeds. They're alive. Grains can remain dormant for a year. But if you soak them in water, they'll sprout. The moment grains are milled, however, they begin to deteriorate like any other dead organic matter. Oxidation sets in. The nutritional quality degrades, and the flavor goes with it.

One way to improve both the nutritional profile and flavor of bread is to bake with freshly milled grains. (And stone grinding is best, in part because friction doesn't heat the flour and thereby destroy nutrients.)

6. Zero non-food ingredients

A basic bread contains grain, water and salt. The addition of olive oil improves the taste and texture, and the addition of nuts, seeds or any number of foods and additional grains combine to produce wonderful varieties. You can add anything you like to bread, as long as what you add is real food.

Processed industrial bread, however, tends to contain lots of non-food ingredients, including emulsifiers, dough conditioners, preservatives and more. Generally speaking, these additives exist to create the illusion of freshness for bread that isn't fresh.

Non-food ingredients help make the sale, but they wreck the bread. Good bread is made out of 100% food.

So where do you get good bread?

The Spartan Diet takes all these qualities very seriously in the selection of bread. The best bread, and the only kind on the Spartan Diet, is sourdough leavened, made from freshly milled ancient, organic, true whole grains and contains zero non-food ingredients.

Unfortunately, these criteria disqualify nearly every bakery in existence.

One way to get bread with all six of the criteria we listed is to buy a grain mill, grind your own flour, cultivate your own sourdough starter and bake your own bread.

If that sounds like something you don't want to do, we have good news: We've finally discovered a bakery that makes bread according to all these criteria -- and you can order online; they'll ship by mail!

It's called Grindstone Bakery, located in Rohnert Park -- a small town in California's Foodie Belt. The owner and chief baker is a bread visionary named Mario Repetto. With a background in both flour milling and science, plus a passion for the health potential of naturally leavened ancient grains, Mario is working miracles in his small bakery.

Grindstone slow-grinds organic whole grains into flour on the same day that flour is made into dough.

Grindstone never uses baker's yeast. The sourdough cultures used by Grindstone have all been captured in the Sonoma area (in California's wine country), and cultivated carefully to produce a wide variety of starters for each of the different grains used in Grindstone breads.

The bakery is incredibly innovative with grains and bread. While you'll find traditional bread concepts like rye bread and multi-grain breads, Grindstone offers bread concepts you've probably never heard before. For example, they sell an oats-and-barley bread, quinoa ciabatta, and even a rye bread made with espresso coffee and chocolate! Most Grindstone breads are made with spelt, and some include welcome additions like sprouted seeds, flaxseeds and in one loaf, quinoa, flax, rye and buckwheat combined. They also make cookies using the healthiest ingredients like extra virgin olive oil instead of butter, cold-pressed extra-virgin coconut oil and raw chocolate.

We recommend that you spend some quality time on the Grindstone web site. Mario has written extensively on the health properties of his bread with much more detail than we've gone into in this post.

Grindstone bread, like all truly good bread, is the opposite of processed industrial white-flour bread in every way. Conventional bread is cheap, light, soft, flavorless and mostly air, and can leave you feeling bloated, foggy and edgy. Grindstone bread is relatively expensive, dense, textural, rich in flavor and 100% nutritious food. It's delicious, filling and leaves you feeling physical energy and mental clarity.

The mild tangy sourness of many Grindstone breads, and the way the "bubbles" appear in the crust, are indications that the leavening in these breads is fully developed. That means that the health potential of the natural leavening process is fully realized.

Did I mention that it's dense? A loaf of Grindstone bread takes up about half the space as a conventional loaf of bread, but may weight twice as much. You eat a lot less of it, but get a lot more healthy nutrition and a lot more taste.

We highly recommend Grindstone bread. If you try it, we'd love to hear your feedback.

(Photograph courtesy of Grindstone Bakery.)

New discoveries this week: bad chemicals, good nuts and more!

2011-03-05T10:47:00.000-08:00

Study finds most plastics overload you with female sex hormones: http://bit.ly/ihnicv

PCBs, found in plastics, may impair fertility http://bit.ly/fYOFG8

Canadians have roughly half the toxic BPA in their systems as Americans. http://bit.ly/eVsl9F

Chemical in plastic shown to degrade the mental development of newborn girls. http://bit.ly/ija2MD

Five common chemicals in cosmetics, how they affect you and what you can do to avoid them: http://bit.ly/f2GDDx

40,000 scientists address the chemical crisis, call for better testing. http://bit.ly/eawwlS

Pecans lower the risk of heart disease AND cancer, thanks to antioxidants. http://bit.ly/ij89pI

Walnuts improve memory and brain function http://bit.ly/gikdQ4

Two Michigan State professors have developed maps that offer a visual perspective of urban food deserts. http://bit.ly/f1TfnR

Wild mushrooms show antioxidant potential http://bit.ly/gsexS3

A diet rich in potassium can reduce your risk for a stroke by 21 percent and lower your risk of heart disease http://bit.ly/hZnS16

The FDA is reviewing the aging requirements for raw-milk cheese. Raw proponents fear a ban on raw-milk products. http://bit.ly/hTcwC6

Only 2% of children in US have a healthy diet according to USDA. http://ow.ly/46pdS

Skim milk contains a possible carcinogen called Titanium Dioxide, which does not have to be listed with the ingredients http://bit.ly/eGMznE

Here's another link on Titanium Dioxide http://bit.ly/fIWyzJ

Gut bacteria can control organ functions! http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2011-02/asfm-gbc022811.php

Country kids are less prone to asthma than city kids, probably because they're exposed to more diverse bacteria. http://lat.ms/horQ1s

McDonald's turns cheap, healthy oatmeal into expensive junk food. http://nyti.ms/gRnXZW

12 million tons of Chinese rice contaminated with toxic metal. http://ti.me/dKlwcJ

Beer company sells no-alcohol beer as a sports drink for athletes. (It's better than Gatorade.) http://yhoo.it/f1EGnI

Headline says "Weight Loss Surgery May Cut Knee Osteoarthritis Pain." Why surgery and not weight loss diet? http://buswk.co/hqxVL9

Trend: Restaurants are phasing out free bread. http://bit.ly/eF0Cai

Want to save the oceans? Eat sardines! http://bit.ly/gYNV1f

The best therapy for chronic fatigue syndrome? Exercise! http://bit.ly/fpoyVW

Half of all heart attack victims go back to eating junk food http://lat.ms/e42FmZ

Vegan diets tend to be low in iron, zinc, vitamin B12 and omega-3 fatty acids http://bit.ly/hzWOSP

Eliminating processed foods may reduce the symptoms of attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder in children. http://bit.ly/ej7VxA

Men more likely than women to exercise less after marriage http://bit.ly/fvrLdg

Whole Foods isn't as expensive as people think it is http://bit.ly/dSermS

Over-use and abuse of antibiotics are called the single "greatest threat to human health" http://bit.ly/ghEdPf

Father's diet can influence metabolism of kids http://bit.ly/gggIfT

Is junk food making kids dumb and destroying America?

2011-02-13T16:46:00.000-08:00

Politicians love to cite reports that demonstrate dramatic declines in the test scores of American children.

A recent test, called the Program for International Student Assessment, which is administered internationally every three years, found American kids lagging behind peers in several foreign countries, most especially those in South Korea, Finland, Singapore and China.

The knee-jerk explanation for the American shortfall gravitates to culture. American kids watch too much TV, play too many video games and are too obsessed with social networking and popular culture to focus on math and science.

But what is the role of diet, tap water and toxins in declining American test scores? Recent studies and reports paint an alarming picture. In a nutshell, a variety of conditions pervasive in the United States have been found to measurably lower the IQ of children.

Research at the University of Bristol found a strong correlation between process junk food and lower IQs, as well as healthy diets and high IQs.

A recent British meta-study and a separate Chinese study found that fluoride reduces the measurable intelligence of children. It has been re-classified as a neurotoxin that retards the intellectual development of the brain. Fluoride has been added to public drinking water and toothpaste in the United States for decades.

Manganese, which is present in many sources of drinking water, has also been determined to reduce the intelligence of children. It can also contribute to memory loss, anxiety and aggressiveness.

Mothers who ingest a chemical in a common insecticide called piperonyl butoxide have lower-than-average IQ children -- nearly 4 points lower, on average.

Exposure by pregnant women to other toxins, such as lead, mercury and Polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) have also been found to lower IQs of their offspring, and have been detected in more than 99 percent of pregnant American women. Lead has been found in wide range of toys, paints and other low-cost products (mostly made in China). Mercury accumulates in some species of fish. PCBs are now banned, but in the past have been used for the manufacture of lights, plastics, paints, glue and a wide range of other uses.

These are only some of the very recent studies linking dietary and environmental conditions that decrease intelligence.

The average American child is affected not by one of these phenomenon but all or most of them in combination.

Cultural causes of low American test scores are speculative. But nutritional and environmental causes of lowered IQs have now been demonstrated.

Retired military leaders have already highlighted the problem that a majority of young people are too fat, unhealthy or have other problems to be eligible for military service. Few question the fact that this crisis has been brought about by junk food, processed food, environmental toxins and sedentary lifestyles.

Now, we know that these same factors are making Americans unable to compete intellectually in industries of tomorrow.

Nearly all of these factors are caused by laws enacted by our representatives in government. Junk food is actually subsidized by our taxes. The addition of fluoride to the water supply is required by law. And most of the other toxins are allowed by law, despite their toxic effects on children.

While politicians divert attention from the real crisis by continuing to focus on how we pay for health insurance, the nation's politicians are dramatically lowering the intelligence of the public by supporting, allowing or requiring foods and chemicals known to lower IQ.

While there's little anyone can do in the short-term about public policy, you can protect yourself and your family from all of this. Eat organic, natural food made from scratch at home and avoid all processed food, fast food and packaged food. Filter your tap water with a Brita filter or some other kind of water filtration system. Filter the air in your home (buy one with an actual filter that can be cleaned or changed). Replace conventional household cleaning and other supplies with less toxic products. Never use pesticides in or around your home. Eat only fish that is low in mercury (salmon, sardines, etc.,).

New discoveries this week: broccoli, gut bacteria and more!

2011-01-29T09:30:00.000-08:00

Children are trained by their parents to prefer toxic junk food - study http://usat.ly/g64MU6

New gym charges you less if you work out more! http://bit.ly/g1J2gS

Diabetes up 9% since 2008 http://lat.ms/f4e86z

How broccoli fights cancer: http://bit.ly/hD165P

How the microbes that live in your digestive tract protect you from infection: http://bit.ly/h9yV3s

How bacteria keep us healthy http://bit.ly/gZDhG8

Report blames lower US lifespan on smoking and obesity. http://yhoo.it/dMgtrm

Just updated our popular Spartan Muesli with Spartan Cashew Milk recipes: http://bit.ly/96GbRh http://bit.ly/c5KYmh

Taco Bell's "meat mixture" contains less than 35 percent beef, according to new lawsuit. http://apne.ws/e8qW0V

Eating factory-farmed meat can make you test positive for performance-enhancing drugs http://abcn.ws/hW53mA

Baby formulas based on cows milk lead to more weight gain in infants http://n.pr/gjuMnn

Bittman to write weekly food column for NYT's OP/ED page http://bit.ly/eQu1cE

New discoveries this week: fat, fermentation, cabbage and more!

2011-01-24T09:19:00.000-08:00

How winter makes you fat http://bit.ly/gLKtOB

How your mind affects your immune system http://bit.ly/g6okC9

Moderate wine drinking may improve the cognitive abilities of women http://bit.ly/i5xeQa

Freak GM rice with *human genes* will soon go into production http://bit.ly/hRYLSj

How diet and toxins affect your genes to make you fat http://video.pbs.org/video/1525107473

Health benefits and nutritional value of cabbage http://dld.bz/pHDh

Why we need fermented foods http://bit.ly/f7eHAc

Ancient foods are becoming popular with people who want to be healthier http://bit.ly/fdnXSH

Sunscreen blamed for severe Vitamin D deficiency http://bbc.in/ht9AG9

Britain slams Coco-Cola for advertising Vitaminwater as healthy http://wapo.st/eNzhMg

Sauerkraut: the new 'superfood'? http://bit.ly/fAhrd5

Flab takes its toll on the US military http://bit.ly/f6Ipem

Smoking a cigarette can cause genetic damage within minutes http://bit.ly/e38ZhE

You could eat "functional foods" invented by Cargill with a barley-derived additive. Or you could eat barley. http://bit.ly/fp2pkX

How dieting makes you fat

2011-01-24T06:10:00.000-08:00

Millions of people go on diets every once in a while in order to lose weight. Unfortunately, going on and off weight-loss diets usually makes you gain a lot more weight in the long term.

Dieting to lose weight is like treating a knife wound with morphine. Yes, getting stabbed in the arm hurts. But pain is a symptom of the core problem, which is the knife in your arm. The right course of action is to first remove the knife, then stop the bleeding, then protect the wound against infection. But simply taking a pain killer without the rest will only temporarily appear to solve what you think is the problem. Oh, and it’s important to not stick the knife back into your arm after the wound has healed. Yet this is precisely how yo-yo dieting works.

Excess body fat is like pain from a knife wound. It’s not the cause of your troubles, but merely the one symptom you cannot ignore.

Yo-yo dieting not only fails to address the root cause of excess wight, it adds to the problem by reprogramming the brain, metabolism and gut for sustained weight gain. Here's how.

Brain

Short-term dieting changes the brain's response to stress. If you have a history of going on weight-loss diets, you're more likely to seek out more and fattier foods during times of stress in the future.

The genes that govern the brain's stress response are actually re-programmed to make you load up on fat and calories as part of how your body deals with stressful situations.

Unfortunately, weight loss causes stress, and gaining it back is stressful, too. And you deal with all this stress by craving more and more fattier foods.

Metabolism

"Going on a diet" is by definition temporary -- at some point, dieters go off the diet. It's common for people to binge either as a self-reward for dieting, or based on the knowledge that a diet tomorrow will compensate for pigging out today.

Unfortunately, it turns out, a short-term binge leaves you with long-term consequences. One study found that four weeks of slacking on both diet and exercise -- the kind of lifestyle many people live during the holidays each year -- can cause unnatural extra weight gain for more than two years after the binge. Binging changes metabolism to favor weight gain, an effect found to last for at least 30 months.

Gut

As we detailed in a November post, what and how you eat affects the populations of bacteria, fungi and other microbes that live in your digestive tract. These micro-organisms are necessary for health. They make up approximately 75% of your immune system, break down toxins, transform food into nutrients, protect your body from infection and other essential functions. They also help you regulate weight.

Sterile food (all packaged processed food is essentially sterile), as well as junk food high in fat and sugar, can all alter gut flora in a way that predisposes your body to weight gain. So can drugs or stress. Damage to gut populations has been found to last for up to four years.

That means if you've compromised your gut microbes with junk food, drugs -- especially antibiotics -- toxins or stress, weight loss dieting is working against the environment of your digestive system. Worse, many fad diets actively contribute to unhealthy gut microbiota by providing inadequate nutrition and placing stress on the body.

"Going on a diet" is by definition a short-term fix that reprograms your brain, metabolism and gut for long-term weight gain.

Instead of "going on a diet," the far better strategy is to change your diet. Instead of rapid weight loss, it's better to never lose weight quickly.

The Spartan Diet transforms your diet and lifestyle to re-program your brain, metabolism and gut for optimal weight. Over time, it eliminates the intense food cravings caused by yo-yo dieting, and gets you on a life-long path of total health and fitness.

(Picture shows Peachy Walnut Scones, a Spartan Diet recipe that will be published later this year.)

Why counting calories doesn't work

2011-01-10T18:38:00.000-08:00

Most people believe, and in fact many diet experts will actually say, that you gain weight by eating more calories than you burn, as if the spectacularly complex biochemistry of metabolism were comparable to filling up the car with gas.

Healthy newborn babies enter the world with a complete set of self-regulating systems designed to keep everything in balance. Our bodies brilliantly maintain balance in body temperature, blood water levels, blood pH, blood pressure, blood salt levels, sleep and the elimination of wastes. The human body is magnificent at simultaneously maintaining balance of hundreds of sub-systems throughout life.

Optimal weight is another thing the human body is great at balancing. Our taste and olfactory senses are programmed to enjoy foods that keep us healthy. The hunger-satiety cycle tells us when to eat and when to stop.

If we gain weight, it doesn't mean we're not effectively counting calories. It means our body's system for maintaining healthy weight has been broken.

So what broke it?

The short answer is that our food did. The longer answer is our food, environment and lifestyle conspired to knock our bodies out of balance.

Let's start with what's wrong with our food.

Far too much of the food we eat has been ultra-processed. Stripped of nutrients, modified beyond recognition, sterilized, and augmented with non-food chemicals, our food isn't fit for human consumption.

Most processed food is too soft. Simple carbs like sugar and white flour-baked goods, processed oils, fatty meats -- too much of our food is eaten and digested too quickly and easily. While most dietary advice focuses on the bio-chemistry of foods (fats, carbs, protein), researchers have demonstrated the importance of bio-physics. You'll gain more weight with soft food than rougher food (whole grains, fresh fruits and vegetables, etc.) even if the calories are the same.

Processed industrial food is also unhealthy for our gut flora. While some of the food we eat goes straight into our bloodstreams, other foods and food components are eaten by the trillions of microbes that live in our digestive tracks, and our bodies are then nourished by the flora. Foods that our gut microbes eat are called prebiotics. The best sources of prebiotics are whole-grain wheat and barley, berries, specific raw fruits and vegetables, flax, garlic and other foods.

When we're born, our guts are sterile. We acquire the hundreds of species of microbes necessary for optimum health from our food and the environment. Simply eating organic strawberries, fresh salad, organic whole grain bread or eating raw-milk cheese supplies the kind of gut microbes we need for optimal health. But these aren't the kinds of foods that most people eat. Canned, bottled and most packaged food is sterile to keep it from decomposing. Our bodies were never designed to eat so much sterile food.

Even fermented foods, which were traditionally used to improve the nutritional quality and flavor of and preserve food, as well as supply our gut microbes with vital reinforcements, are now sold in a sterile form. For example, olives, sauerkraut, pickles and others are sterilized for mass production and distribution. Milk is usually sterilized through pasteurization before being sold for drinking, or being made into cheese or yogurt.

All that sterile food, plus the consumption of fatty, sugary junk food, is decimating the natural balance of healthy gut microbes, causing all kinds of havoc, including on our bodily systems for maintaining healthy weight. Researchers have recently discovered that junk food and processed food diets damage gut bacteria in a way that leads to unnatural weight gain. In other words, you'll gain more weight on a diet that harms gut bacteria than you will on a healthy diet, even if calories are the same.

Food-borne, environmental and household chemicals, a lack of sleep, drugs, inadequate sunshine and Vitamin D and not enough exercise all prime your body for weight gain beyond what mere calories in, calories burned would predict. And, in fact, the vast majority of people in industrialized countries are damaging their bodies not with some but all these factors.

The whole process of counting calories is an act of self-delusion. First, the difference between perfect weight and morbid obesity over a period of a few decades is less than 50 calories per day. Nobody can "count calories" with that level of precision. You can't know how many calories you really need. You can't know how many calories you're "burning." And you can't know how many calories are in the food you eat.

Counting calories is a futile guessing game that doesn't get at the root of the problem.

The problem is that people are trying to replace a functioning bodyweight balancing system with blind guesses about how many calories they're eating and burning.

The solution is to fix your broken body, and allow it to naturally maintain a healthy weight for you.

The way to fix your body is to fix your diet, get plenty of sleep, exercise outdoors every day and avoid all the toxic chemicals you can. And this is what the Spartan Diet shows you how to do.

What is 'man food'?

2011-01-08T18:42:00.000-08:00

Food is culture. Methods for growing, storing, distributing, choosing, preparing, eating and even thinking about foods are learned, shared and passed down from one generation to the next.

It's also cultural in the sense that we associate food with specific types of people. People with certain socio-economic status, region and ethnicity are assumed to favor specific foods. For example, suan cai, kimchi, sauerkraut and curtido are four methods for fermenting cabbage and other vegetables, associated respectively with Chinese, Korean, German and Salvadoran cultures. In the United States, fried chicken is Southern. Hot sauce is Western. Clam chowder is North-Eastern. Caviar is rich-people food. Red Bull is for young people. Sprouted barley is a "hippy" thing if eaten, but not if drunk (beer is made from sprouted barley, water, yeast, and flavored with hops).

The association of specific kinds of foods with specific kinds of people is harmless, unless people receive and accept the message that "people like you are supposed to eat junk food – healthy food is for those other people." And this is exactly what's happening. A culture of "man food" has arisen, aided and abetted by aggressive product marketing, which is contributing to the health crisis.

Differences in food preferences between American men and women were detailed in a 2008 population survey of the Foodborne Disease Active Surveillance Network (FoodNet) that found, in general, a male preference for meat and a female preference for fruits and vegetables.

This study barely scratches the surface of the national gender divide over food. For example, while men are more likely to prefer meat than women, we have observed gender differences over the type of meat, with men more likely to prefer unhealthier meats like pork and beef, and women more likely to prefer “lighter” and “whiter” meats like fish and chicken. Women are more than men likely to advocate vegetarianism, veganism, organic foods and salads. Men are more likely than women to prefer fast food, barbequed meats and fried foods.

Like so many of these things, it’s not clear how much of all this is biological, and how much cultural. To be sure, food marketing is aware of them, and uses these gender differences to sell food products.

One example is a recent marketing campaign for the Nutrisystem diet plan, which has separate versions for women and men. Nutrisystem provides pre-cooked meals that dieters eat, so Nutrisystem is not just an approach to dieting but also a food distribution company. The lead-in on the Nutrisystem home page advertises the women’s plan like this: “Eat The Foods You Love. Yes! You can eat chocolate every day and still lose weight!” The plan for men, on the other hand, read like this: “Mmm…MAN FOOD! Eat burgers, pizza, pot roast -- and still lose weight!”

Nutrisystem’s marketing department is skillfully taping into cultural norms as they relate to food and gender. Women, for example, may not want to diet if it involves giving up chocolate. Men may not want to diet if it involves eating “effeminate” foods, like salads, light pastas and other standard “diet” fare.

The actual menus for men and women have more or less that same stuff. But the packaging and even the order they list things on the web site are designed to appeal to cultural associations between food and gender.

The absurd and largely unexamined foundation of, say, beef as a "man food" is that beef is high in protein, protein is associated with muscle strength, which is associated with masculinity. And beef is associated with Western cattle culture, the cattle drive, rodeo, the frontier and rugged individualism.

The problem is that the cultural association doesn't match reality.

Beef is high in protein, but it's a bad source of protein because of what else you get with it. Most beef in the supermarket comes from cows fed genetically modified grain mixed with chicken parts, feathers, feces and even beef fat. They're typically injected with antibiotics and steroids to maximize the amount of sellable flesh that each animal can produce.

Cows have been selectively bred over the centuries to be passive, docile, fatty and slow. Unlike wild game meats, which tend to have very high ratios of protein to fat, and don't come with a payload of toxic chemicals, beef is a "soft food" that if eaten to excess makes you fat, sick and weak.

Beef is associated with a long list of cancers, including breast cancer, colorectal cancer, stomach cancer, lymphoma, bladder cancer and prostate cancer. Beef has been linked to high blood pressure, cardio vascular disease, bone loss, type 2 diabetes and arthritis.

Beef, as well as the whole range of incredibly fatty "man foods," have been linked to infertility in men. One study found that women who ate a lot of beef during pregnancy were more likely to produce boys with lower sperm counts.

In general, "man foods" are laden with bad fats and toxic chemicals. These are the kinds of foods that contribute to diabetes, kidney disease, atherosclerosis, vascular disease, heart disease, which are diseases that cause erectile dysfunction. Many of the drugs prescribed to combat these diseases, including blood pressure medication, are also linked to erectile dysfunction.

Even though a cultural association remains between beef and rugged outdoor living, the connection defies logic. The passively bred animals walk right up the ramp and into the factory, where a mechanized, assembly line process kills the animals for dismemberment.

To acquire this flesh, you go shopping. You acquire it in exactly the same way one buys toilet paper or laundry detergent. What a man!

So there's the paradox. The foods culturally assigned as "man foods" cause lower sperm counts, man breasts, erectile dysfunction, pot bellies, muscle weakness, disease and early death.

We believe it's time for a cultural re-set. We believe that real "man foods" are foods that lead to manly outcomes: virility, strength, athleticism, independence and health.

Why cooking food wrong makes it toxic

2010-12-02T18:40:00.000-08:00

Healthy eating isn't just about which foods you eat, but how they're prepared. Cooking food wrong can create toxic chemicals that make you sick. These chemicals are called Advanced Glycation End Products, or AGEs.

An average person accumulates excess AGEs just from eating common processed industrial foods and beverages. AGEs cause inflammation and contribute to heart disease, diabetes and other problems, including damage to the overall immune system. AGEs can simulate premature aging by damaging skin collagen, promoting arthritis and hardening arteries.

Of course, the body is capable purging itself of the small level of AGE intake that results from a natural, whole-foods diet cooked properly. But a typical industrial diet overwhelms the body's ability to keep up, so they accumulate. You should also know that your body's ability to remove AGEs decreases with age (no pun intended).

When meat, or foods high in sugar or fat, are fried, grilled or even baked at high temperature, AGEs are generated spontaneously in the food. The effect is magnified when foods contain high amounts of both sugar and fat together, as is the case with most industrial junk food. Generally speaking, the process is most common in foods that are less healthy to begin with (processed white flour, fatty domesticated meats, sugary foods) that are also heated at too high a temperature. The coffee roasting process also produces an unacceptably high quantity of AGEs.

Potato chips, french fries, dark toast, cold cereal, barbecued and fried meats -- just about any industrial-age foods made crispy, crunchy, roasted and toasted are also made toxic with AGEs. Boxed cold cereal, for example, which tends to contain both fat and sugar and is roasted until it's crunchy, can be very high in AGEs. A better alternative is Spartan Muesli (pictured).

Whole foods, as well as any foods lightly sauteed, boiled or slow-cooked produce much smaller quantities of AGEs.

The Spartan Diet is an anti-AGE diet. The upcoming book will detail exactly how to choose and cook food in a way that keeps the incoming AGEs far lower than your body's ability to remove them.

Why organic produce is more Spartan than conventional

2010-11-11T10:58:00.000-08:00

Pesticides, herbicides, artificial fertilizers, ripening agents, genetically modified grain, the use of radiation and other "conventional" methods improve crop yields. A far greater percentage of fruits or vegetables or beans survive until harvest, at which time the producer has more to sell, as measured by weight.

Conventionally grown foods are artificially coddled, protected and babied. Their natural defenses may atrophy, as they're supplanted by artificial defenses. Contrary to nature, the weakest plants and fruits survive until harvest just like the strongest do.

With organic foods, on the other hand, only the strong survive. An organic Apple for example, survived until harvest not because it was sprayed with man-made poison, but because it engaged in a battle against insects and plant disease using its natural defenses -- and emerged victorious.

Conventionally grown foods are weak, and they pass their weakness on to the person who eats them. Organic foods are strong, and this strength is passed on to the eater. New science is showing how this works.

Organic blueberries have been found to contain higher values of ORAC (Oxygen Radical Absorbance Capacity) than conventional, on average. (Higher ORAC means higher cancer-fighting ability.) Another study found that organic tomatoes are between 79 and 97 percent higher in the flavonoids quercetin and kaempferol -- both antioxidants -- compared with conventionally grown. And yet another study found not only higher rates of anti-oxidants in organic produce, but also more vitamins.

It turns out that the same biochemical factors that enable a plant to survive are the same ones that strengthen the human immune system and help us to survive. The phytochemicals so beneficial to human health are the same chemicals that enable plants to resist disease and insect attacks.

In other words, organic foods are generally stronger for two reasons: 1) weak plants and fruits die, and never make it to market; and 2) without man-made protection, plants must develop and strengthen their own defenses to survive, and these "defenses" benefit human health when you eat them.

Note that nutritional differences between conventional and organic foods is controversial, and that direct comparisons are very difficult due to variations in soil quality, weather, climate, and the skills of the farmers involved. For example, one meta-study found that looking at many comparative studies the organic produce was healthier, but that the overall differences weren't statistically significant.

More research is needed. In the meantime, common sense suggests that organic foods, which have to rely more on innate defenses rather than artificial ones, are stronger and probably healthier. And don't forget: Organic foods don't have traces of the toxic pesticides, herbicides, ripening agents and other chemicals that conventional foods are likely to have.

How gut microbes can make or break your health

2010-11-08T15:25:00.000-08:00

Don't look now, but you're not alone. Inside your digestive system, trillions of microbes play a central role in your health.

The vast majority of both cells and genes in your body, in fact, aren't human, but intestinal gut flora cells and genes present in the hundreds of species that have colonized different parts of your digestive tract. They are so numerous that they collectively weigh between between two and five pounds. (Note that a gallon of water weighs about 8.3 pounds.)

These gut microbiota not only digest and process your food, they are the foundation of health. They manufacture hormones, biotin and vitamin K, suppress the growth of harmful bacteria and "train" the immune system, among many other tasks.

You can upset the normal balance of intestinal microbes by eating processed food, taking antibiotics, experiencing stress, not drinking enough water and in other ways. The simple act of eating domesticated animal meat, for example, may trigger the gut to produce carcinogenic toxins, and even destroy helpful gut bacteria through the presence of veterinary antibiotics. Taking prescription antibiotics can wipe out up to half the species of intestinal microbes normally present. And food preservatives, household cleaners, chlorine and other everyday poisons can damage the normal balance of gut microbes as well.

The composition and health of your gut flora can even influence weight by affecting how your body stores fat. A typical American high-fat, high-sugar diet has been found to alter intestinal bacteria so you gain weight faster than you would on a healthy diet with the same calories. This is yet another reason why yo-yo dieting doesn't work. A crash diet can starve your body thin, but your intestinal flora can stay optimized for weight gain for months, or even years. It takes less than 24 hours to throw gut flora out of balance. And it can take anywhere from two weeks to four years of eating a healthy diet and avoiding antibiotics to restore that balance.

We are born without any gut flora, and we cannot produce them. We must acquire them from the environment and from the food we eat. Processed industrial food, which is sterilized to avoid spoilage as it ages, prevents the natural transfer of healthy microbes from nature into our bodies. This is why laws in many states requiring pasteurization of dairy, nuts and other foods may do more harm than good: Pasteurization cuts off our needed supply of microbes. We get these necessary microbes from raw honey, which most people never eat, from nuts like raw almonds, which are illegal to sell in the supermarket, from whole grains, which most people don't buy and from fresh produce, which hardly anyone eats enough of, and from fermented foods like sourdough bread, raw-milk cheese, olives and others.

A study conducted by Italian scientists found that African children who eat a diet of primarily millet grain, sorghum wheat, legumes, vegetables and even the occasional termite had vastly superior gut flora than Italian children who eat a typical Western diet high in animal protein, fat and sugar. Most likely because of that better flora, the African kids rarely get allergies, asthma or suffer from the wide range of autoimmune disorders common among European and American children.

A recent study found that sufferers of both irritable bowel syndrome and ulcerative colitis are missing many of the species of gut microbiota that people without the disorders have.

Scientific understanding of intestinal microbes is still in its infancy -- many species have yet to be even identified. But it appears that throwing these communities out of whack can predispose you to a wide range of diseases and contribute to excess weight and even metabolic syndrome.

The bottom line is that healthy diet and lifestyle equals healthy gut flora, and healthy gut flora is absolutely necessary for a healthy body.

Diet can largely determine whether gut microbes help or hinder digestion, protect from or create inflammatory conditions, protect from or produce harmful bacteria and toxins or strengthen or weaken our immune systems.

The Spartan Diet is not only the healthiest diet for humans, but also for the gut microbes we depend on every day for optimal health.

New discoveries this week

2010-10-24T22:12:00.001-07:00

USDA to implement new standards for extra virgin olive oil http://bit.ly/9q0lIO

4 ways to protect yourself from cancer http://bit.ly/cS9k5K

Spartan Diet fish, such as salmon and tuna, help prevent cancer, cardiovascular disease, inflammation, obesity. http://bit.ly/bbkEiL

More exercise and a better, healthier diet can improve type 2 diabetes symptoms http://bit.ly/ckKDnz

High-fat diet increases risk of sepsis http://bit.ly/c455Cb

Paying for groceries with cash, rather than credit cards, reduces purchase of fatty, sugary junk. http://bit.ly/az8zDi

Whole grains linked to reduced risk of heart disease, stroke, cancer, diabetes and obesity. http://bit.ly/cVVMdX

Diabetes rose 90% between 2002 and 2008. Junk food is killing us. http://bit.ly/9PoPmf

Nearly a third of Americans may have diabetes by 2050 - study http://bit.ly/aGnkNg

Hormone replacement linked to cancer http://bit.ly/angOTR

Mathematical model helps marathoners pace themselves to a strong finish http://bit.ly/a4nrPF

To help reverse an obesity explosion from Western diets, China to require all government employees to exercise http://lat.ms/cjbYIT

Why you should never EVER eat canned food. http://bit.ly/axlQas

Overweight dads can increase risk of kids' diabetes. http://bit.ly/9t5qEO

New searchable database will tell you if your doctor is taking bribes from Pharmaceutical companies. http://bit.ly/dpbS83

Humans made flour 30,000 years ago http://bit.ly/bPmgUF

Inside the Spartan syssition

2010-10-24T13:43:00.000-07:00

The entirety of ancient Sparta's rich and fascinating food culture is often reduced to a caricature of brutes grunting over a nasty concoction of pork-and-blood soup in a solemn nightly ritual. The horribly inaccurate Wikipedia entry on "Ancient Greek cuisine" sums up the misperception nicely: "Spartans primarily ate pork stew, the black broth."

This view is misleading, a misreading of history, devoid of Spartan context and purpose and easily invalidated.

Ancient observers of Sparta obsessed over aspects of Spartan culture that were unusual or unique. One of these was the famous group dining clubs, or syssitia, to which all citizens (males in good standing over the age of 20) were required to belong, and all members required to attend most nights for dinner. Because this meal was so heavily commented upon, many have made a bizarre leap to assume this was the only possible meal in ancient Sparta.

Let's explore just how easily this widely held notion can be invalidated.

First, the majority of Spartans weren't eligible for syssitia membership. Women, who were a majority in Sparta, were not eligible, nor were children and teenagers. Only males in good standing over the age of 20, with good reputations and who were able to pay dues in the form of annual food donations and regular meal contributions could belong to a syssition. Male children and teenagers, as well as women and girls of all ages were ineligible for syssition membership, and never ate syssition-specific meals.

But even full-fledged adult male Spartiates ate breakfast and lunch like other Greeks, and ate dinner outside their syssitia when hunting, traveling, training away from the city or while at war. Sparta was famous throughout Greece for its many elaborate, multi-day annual religious festivals, most importantly the Karneia, Hyacinthia and Gymnopaedia, which involved a wide variety of festival-specific foods of incredible variety. These festivals superseeded all other activity by Spartans, including syssitia meals, hunting and even military campaigns.

And even within the Spartan syssition meal itself, blood soup represented only a small fraction of the total meal. According to my admittedly unscientific calculation, black soup accounted for about 3 percent of the total caloric intake of Spartan men, women and children -- hardly what they "primarily ate."

Our only source for black soup ingredients, a book called Deipnosophists (or "The Banquet Philosophers") written by a 3rd century A.D. Greek-Egyptian writer named Athenaeus, also spells out the incredible varieties of other foods provided at every dinner. So if you accept the ingredients in the broth, you must accept the other foods specified in that same section from Athenaeus' master work.

Based primarily on Athenaeus, and secondarily on other sources, let's reconstruct a typical nightly Spartan syssition meal, then consider what was really going on.

Somewhere between a dozen and 30 or so members file in at the appointed hour and take their seats on benches at a group table. At the same time, hundreds of other such clubs are similarly gathering for the exact same type of meal.

As always, dinner will be served in two distinct parts. The first part, called the aiklon, is dictated by Spartan Law, mandated in every detail by the state and prepared by a guild of hereditary cooks. The foods prepared for the aiklon meal come from member dues in the form of a very specific amount of barley, wine, cheese, figs and money required of each Spartiate in order to maintain membership -- and citizenship. These items come from the farm that each Spartan is required to own, and produced by Helot slaves provided by the state for the purpose of growing and producing food for the Spartan people.

The second part of the meal, called the epaiklon, is made up of dishes shared voluntarily or more accurately required by custom and social dynamics, and prepared by the households of members.

Even though all the food is provided by members, it's essentially food provided by the state. Rather than taxing citizens money, then buying food, Spartan Law simply cuts out the tax man and required that Spartiates feed each other.

The aiklon course begins. The cooks serve each member a small amount of black soup, a broth made from water, blood, vinegar and salt. Ideally, this broth is made with wild boar meat of which each member is provided a very small amount -- no more than a quarter pound. Sometimes only broth is served without meat, and some older members are said to prefer broth only. Accompanying the black soup there may "possibly be an olive or a cheese or a fig," according to Athenaus, or the group may share "a fish or a hare or a ring-dove or something similar." After the soup, each Spartiate is given barley-cake (essentially an un-sweetened barley gruel mixed with olive oil). The amount of food in this initial course is very small. Each member has his own cup, into which is poured a watered-down wine.

During this first part of the meal, no food or wine is shared. Each is given his ration and nothing more.

When the aiklon ends, the epaiklon begins. The second part of the meal also includes member-contributed food, but it's done on a voluntary basis. Before it begins, members may invite boys under the age of 20 to come in and listen to the conversation. The boys file in quietly and sit on the floor around the table where the men remain seated, and are served barley cakes wrapped in laurel leaves. The practice of inviting in the boys is aimed at teaching them how to engage in proper Spartan conversation, learn Spartan stories and history and how to speak with brevity and wit.

Although that's all the boys get for dinner, the members are served whatever foods have been voluntarily provided by members. The only rules for this food appear to be that it cannot have been purchased; it must have been produced by the contributing member's farm and prepared in his home. Wealthy members tended to provide bread and fresh, seasonal produce. Members might bring olives, pomagranates, apples, almonds or any number of foods grown on the farm. Poorer Spartiates could provide game killed in the hunt, or animals raised on their farms, including small birds or very rarely, lamb.

Atheneaus quotes a 2nd Century BC stoic philospher, who taught in Sparta and served as an adviser to the Spartan king Cleomenes III. Sphaerus, who wrote a now-lost work called "The Spartan State," as writing that "Sometimes the common people bring whatever is caught in the chase; but the rich contribute wheat bread and anything from the fields which the season permits, in quantities sufficient for the one meeting alone, because they believe that to provide more than is enough is uncalled for."

Contributions confer status on the member providing, based on the quality of the food, and also the quantity: The amount provided must feed everyone a small portion. Any deficiency in quantity, or worse, excess, is frowned upon. Xenophon wrote that "from beginning to end, till the mess breaks up, the common board is never stinted for food nor yet extravagantly furnished.

Members chose the very best foods their lands and homes could produce, then shared those foods in restrained portions as a status-conferring point of pride. Epaikla foods were not supposed to be fancy, fashionable or complicated. But it's very likely that this was the highest-quality food in Greece. Sparta had the most and the best agricultural land, every acre of which was controlled by syssitia members. Each member competed against the others to provide the very best foods he could to the mess.

So what's going on here?

The nightly syssition meal was an institutionalized form of socialization, the ritualized preservation of a very ancient Doric military custom for how the ancestors of the Spartans ate in the field, and a powerful system for creating strong bonds and shaping the basic military organization of the Spartan army. First, they ate rations in the form of a soup made from animals killed in organized hunting. Then they ate anything acquired by individuals through looting or foraging.

The ritual was remarkably well preserved for centuries. The aiklon course didn't evolve much because the ingredients and cooking methods were enshrined in law. The epaiklon course, however, being "whatever you could get your hands on" evolved greatly with farming and with the attachment of status to the quality of food. For example, it's likely that breads gradually transitions from mostly barley in the early centuries to mostly wheat breads.

Consider that the Spartiate's farm fed both farm and household helot slaves, as well as his extended family. The land controlled by a single Spartan no doubt fed somewhere between 10 and 100 people. Given the importance of status within the syssition, only the best of the best foods were selected for epaikla courses. Any unusually great crop of apples or pomegranates, any especially delicious batch of olives, cheese or wine -- anything on the farm that was especially good would be diverted to the Spartiate's syssition to bolster his status. Further, this food was very fresh, probably picked or slaughtered that day and prepared in the home in the late afternoon. How could any other system in Greece result in higher-quality food?

It's official: Grains were part of the original 'Paleo diet'

2010-10-18T15:16:00.000-07:00

There are many versions of the modern Paleo diet, which intend to re-create or simulate the diet of humans during the Paleolithic era (starting about 2.5 million years ago and ending about 10,000 years ago with the advent of agriculture). All these variants share an opposition to the consumption of grains, such as barley, wheat, rice, quinoa, kasha, oats, millet, amaranth, corn, sorghum, rye and triticale.

That anti-grain stance is based on the belief that since Paleolithic man didn't eat grains, we shouldn't either.

Archeology is now proving that Paleolithic man, in fact, ate grains as a regular part of the original "Paleolithic diet."

That's right: The entire premise of the Paleo diet's anti-grain stance is false.

How did this misunderstanding happen? 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 millennia later.

When the Paleo concept was first popularized in 1975 by Walter L. Voegtlin, and even when Loren Cordain published his influential book The Paleo Diet in 2002, there was little material evidence for Paleolithic grain consumption. That lack of evidence, combined with an absence of grain in the diets of today's remaining hunter-gatherer groups, lead to the belief that grain consumption was not part of the Paleolithic diet.

Thanks to improved methods and technology, however, the evidence for Paleolithic grain consumption is starting to pile up.

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.

Mortars and pestles with actual grains embedded in the pores were 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 deep into the Upper Paleolithic era, and 13,000 years before the end of the Paleolithic era and the beginning of domesticated grains, agriculture and civilization.

This week, a paper published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences details the new discoveries of Paleolithic-era flour residues on 30,000-year-old grinding stones found in Italy, Russia and the Czech Republic. The grain residues are from a wild species of cattail and the grains of a grass called Brachypodium, which both offer a nutritional package comparable to wheat and barley.

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 -- during the Middle Paleolithic. The grain was sorghum, and an ancestor of modern sorghum used even today in breads and beer.

Some Paleo diet advocates claim that while there is evidence of sorghum processing, there is no evidence that the practice was widespread or that the grain was sprouted and cooked in a way that made it nutritionally usable -- in fact, the dating shows usage of the grain well before the development of pottery.

This is true: There is no evidence of widespread use or cooking. It's also true that there is no evidence against it. We simply don't know.

It's easy to imagine how Paleolithic man might have processed grains for food. Essene bread, for example, is made by sprouting grains, mashing, forming into flat patties and cooking them on rocks in the sun, or on hot rocks from a fire. It's easy to sprout grains -- in fact, it's hard to keep them from sprouting without airtight containers or water-proof roofs.

Palelithic peoples used gourds extensively. Before the development of pottery, gourds were used for cooking. By filling a gourd with water and dropping rocks into it from a fire, the water boils. Into that boiling water, the addition of meat, vegetation and grains would make the most nutritious meal and the most efficient use of available foods. It would enable the removal nutrition from the marrow and creases of bones, soften root vegetables, improve the digestibility of foods like leaves. In other words, such cooking methods would not only be necessary to benefit from grains, but from a wide variety of other foods as well.

None of these technologies -- sun-cooking, hot-rock frying and gourd-based boiling -- would leave a trace for archeologists after 100,000 years.

The Paleo Diet belief that grain was consumed only as a cultivated crop, rather than wild, also fails the history test.

The grain we now call wild rice was a central part of the diets and cultures of Ojibwa peoples in Canada and North America, and an important food of the Algonquin, Dakota, Winnebago, Sioux, Fox and many other tribes through trade. There was even a tribe called the Menominee, or "Wild Rice People."

Native American and First Nation gatherers of this grain did so by canoe in a method prescribed by tribal law for at least 600 years when they were hunter-gatherers. The cereal crop was instrumental in enabling the Ojibwa people to surve incredibly harsh Northeastern winters, the annual success of which shocked early French explorers.

Today, most wild rice you can buy in the store is grown in paddies in California. However, the Ojibwa still harvest wild rice in canoes, and you can buy it from them on the Internet.

So now we can say it: Archeology has proved that grains were part of the Paleolithic diet. The anti-grain stance of modern Paleo dieters is based on incomplete archeology.

And it's time for Paleo diet fans cave-man up, admit the error and to start eating healthy whole grains.

Discoveries this week

2010-10-17T12:25:00.000-07:00

Compound in carrots, peppers boosts brain health. http://bit.ly/9FtMAq

Brain Food: 10 super foods to lift your mood and improve memory. http://bit.ly/bf4NYI

Canadian researchers to investigate whether giving babies antibiotics triggers asthma and allergies later in life. http://bit.ly/drY5kb

Cancer is a modern, man-made disease caused by environmental factors such as pollution and diet - study http://bit.ly/9CLuW1

American Spartan Shalane Flanagan has never run a marathon. But she just might win her first: The NYC Marathon. http://nyti.ms/dd1R6d

Group calls for food labels that spell out how dangerous and unhealthy the food inside really is. http://nyti.ms/d74sxC

Canada formally declares BPA toxic. The chemical mimics estrogen, and leaches from cans and bottles. http://nyti.ms/bz6pdi

How corporate egg producers use sneaky tricks to barely pass as "organic." http://bit.ly/bydn3z

From the Department of Obvious: Americans not eating enough whole grains http://bit.ly/9e44aZ

Eating fish may reduce risk of getting prostate cancer. And fish makes those who get it more likely to survive it. http://bit.ly/aw1ZmE

Chili supplement doesn't work as a shortcut to weight loss http://yhoo.it/8XYs7i

Eating too much fish oil found to induce severe colitis and colon cancer in mice http://bit.ly/apJycH

Soy improves bone health, cuts hot flashes and pain in postmenopausal women http://bit.ly/9TRwiq

New study finds that regular exercise, healthy diet, and limited alcohol lower risk of breast cancer. http://bit.ly/cqhGaL

Lights on at night probably make you gain weight. http://bit.ly/cCGeCw

Too much screen time is bad even for active kids. http://bit.ly/9PJnRs

Children who spend more than two hours a day watching TV are prone to psychological problems. http://bit.ly/9PTWcV

(Picture shows purple carrots.)

Why science alone can't tell you what's best to eat

2010-10-14T17:41:00.000-07:00

We live in an age of incredible scientific discovery about all kinds of things, including about the connection between diet and health.

Literally every day, new discoveries are announced that improve our understanding of human biology, and about the complex interaction between DNA, diet, behavior and environment to determine how long and how well we can live.

There is, however, an unfortunate disconnect between what scientists do and what the public thinks they do. As a result, media stories about new findings can confuse as much as they enlighten.

Here's what you need to keep in mind when considering scientific discoveries about diet and health:

1. Scientists are never finished understanding anything.

The pace of new discoveries appears to accelerate with the application of new research technologies. Yet no final understanding of anything has ever been achieved. There is always more to learn.

For example, all the major dietary vitamins were discovered by scientists between 1913, with the discovery of Vitamin A, through 1941, with the discovery of Vitamin B9. These discoveries spawned an industry of vitamin pills, which were viewed by many consumers as an alternative to eating plenty of fruits and vegetables.

The assumption by the lay public was that vitamins and minerals were all fresh produce had to offer. Another assumption was that, say, the vitamin you get in a pill is as good as the vitamin you get in food.

In the last couple of decades, researchers have discovered the importance of phytochemicals, including polyphenol antioxidants. Even newer research has identified not only that vitamin pills can't substitute for food, they can even damage health.

Those substituting vitamin pills for produce all those years were robbing themselves of important nutrients because they had irrationally assumed that science was finished understanding how fruits and vegetables maintain health.

This is a lesson for the future. All the discoveries that will be made about food in the next hundred years already apply to the foods you're eating today.

Scientists can tell you what they know, but they can't tell you what they don't know.

2. The baseline is usually "normal," not "healthy."

The average human subject in dietary research is unhealthy. Scientists find representative samples from the general public. The average person is overweight, severely deficient in Vitamin D, chronically under-hydrated, out of shape, stressed out and subsists on a highly inflammatory diet that's too high in fat, sugar, salt and man-made chemicals and deficient in most key nutrients.

Even in rigorous double-blind studies, both the experimental and control groups are likely populated by unhealthy people. So when some effect is attributed to a food or drink, it's not necessarily applicable to those eating plenty of fresh, whole organic foods and avoiding processed foods and addictive substances.

For example, numerous research studies have linked the drinking of coffee to lowered risk of one disease or another. One study found that drinking four or more cups of coffee per day may lower the risk of gout. A casual health-conscious consumer of this news might conclude that drinking a lot of coffee is a good idea. And for someone with a horrible diet, metabolic syndrome and a refusal to embrace a healthy lifestyle, four daily trips to Starbucks might delay gout.

But for a non-coffee drinker who eats a great diet, the introduction of coffee degrades, rather than improves, health.

The scientific assumption of bad health has another curious effect. It leads researchers and journalists to express improved health from eating a healthy food as if that food was a kind of drug that improved a natural unhealthy condition. For example, a recent study found yet another link between the amount of vegetables people eat and their likelihood of getting cancer. Here's the lead sentence from the institution's press release:

"Investigators from the Slone Epidemiology Center at Boston University School of Medicine have reported that African American women who consume more vegetables are less likely to develop estrogen receptor-negative breast cancer than women with low vegetable intake."

See how that finding has been expressed? To paraphrase, they're saying that eating more vegetables lowers the risk of a specific breast cancer.

A more accurate but less scientific expression of that finding might be that not eating enough vegetables increases the risk of a specific breast cancer. It's more accurate because our DNA simply expects us to eat vegetables. (In fact, another study has determined that cancer may be an entirely modern and made-made disease, caused by environment, industrial diets and other recent phenomena.)

However, scientists must take the world as they find it. In the actual world, normal must be the baseline, not historically normal, or healthy normal, or biologically normal, but normal as an expression of average or typical.

3. Science must isolate factors, but in the real world nothing is isolated.

Much diet-related health research involves identifying specific ingredients in food that affect specific aspects of health.

Let's say a food company develops a new preservative, and wants to test whether it is safe for human consumption. Researchers might do this by eliminating all other unhealthy substances from the diet of laboratory animal subjects so that any ill effects can be faithfully attributed to the preservative. But let's say the researchers find the preservative safe, and so does the government, so the preservative is approved and added to the company's products.

But when people buy and eat the product, they are doing so in conjunction with an incomprehensibly large number of other factors not tested in the lab. Scientists found the preservative safe in isolation, but what about when combined in the bloodstream with the chemicals from toxic pesticides on non-organic fruit, household cleaners, personal-care products, car exhaust inhaled during jogging and excessive alcohol?

In other words, scientists must test foods and food ingredients in isolation. But we don't eat them in isolation. It's likely that some diseases, such as some cancers, may often be caused entirely by the long-term combination of a large number of substances proved safe in isolation.

Also: Natural foods vary in their biochemical and nutritional makeup. But scientists need precision in testing. So often they'll test not with a whole food, but with an extract, or a concentration, or a powder, or even a single isolated substance from food.

When they announce their finding, they report the truth, which is that a specific food extract had a specific measurable effect. But that doesn't mean the extract is better to eat than a whole food. It means only that it's better for testing.

And finally, scientists try to nail down a specific effect. For example, the Boston University study mentioned above tested for the effect of vegetable consumption on one very specific form of breast cancer. A reasonable person can conclude that if eating more vegetables lowers the risk of one form of breast cancer, it probably also has a wide-ranging benefit to overall health. But scientists can't say that unless they tested for it.

4. Science is biased in favor of new products or policies.

Broadly speaking, scientific research about health tends to result ultimately in the development of a new product, such as a pill, or in a change in public policy. There are two reasons for this.

First, science doesn't happen unless it's funded. While some funding is made by grants or taxpayer dollars, a lot of funding comes from companies that make the investment with the intention of monetizing it through product development. In other words, projects that are seeking a new pill that can be sold for profit are much more likely to be funded.

Second, scientists are aware that human behavior is very difficult to change. The greatest number of people will benefit from research not by giving advice that most will ignore, but by making the consumption of a substance either very easy or mandatory.

By advocating a pill, rather than a wholesale change in diet or lifestyle, researchers can do the most good for the greatest number. In cases of major public health, lawmakers often mandate the introduction of substances, such as the addition of fluoride to water, or vitamin D to milk -- and they do so often on the recommendations of researchers.

That doesn't mean a new pill or new law is best for you, personally.

Scientific research is the best tool we have for understanding our world, including the part of our world we eat every day. But by itself, science can't tell you what's best to eat because of the limitations listed above.

The best answers come from combining scientific findings with reason and common sense -- which is what we do in the Spartan Diet. That, plus a little help from our friends in ancient Sparta.

How to beat food addiction

2010-10-04T21:02:00.000-07:00

Food is pleasurable to eat. Nature has endowed us with a desire to eat the foods that keep us alive and healthy and a sense of enjoyment and satisfaction when we do so.

The pleasure of food is part of the body's balance system for maintaining weight and health. We're designed to be motivated by this pleasure to seek out foods that sustain life and health. As we eat them, they become less appealing until we stop. The system works perfectly to maintain optimum weight with foods provided by nature.

That two-thirds of all Americans are overweight does not represent a failure of our bodies to regulate weight, but a failure of our food system to provide real food.

While most foods taste good and are pleasurable to eat, some foods act on our bodies like drugs. Certain combinations of concentrated salt, fat and sugar and other ingredients act on the brain's reward system much like heroin, cocaine, or morphine.

Cupcakes, for example, have high concentrations of processed white flour, sugar, and fat. In addition to tasting good, this combination can trigger the release of dopamine, which is the brain's "feel-good neurotransmitter." Later, the body craves another hit of dopamine. But over-stimulating the brain receptors for dopamine causes the body to produce less of it. So the more cupcakes you eat, the more cupcakes it takes to reproduce the dopamine high you crave. In other words, you'll eventually have to eat two cupcakes to get the same dopamine reward you used to get with one.

This is why fatty, salty and sugary foods are such a perfect product. They're cheap to manufacture, and once companies get people to try them through advertising, they may quickly become addicted. The foods themselves generate a strong desire to eat an ever-increasing quantity.

Companies have become skillful at engineering food products to trigger exactly this addictive response. As the amount of food necessary to satisfy the addiction goes up, companies are happy to super-size portions to respond to the "demand" they have created through addiction-engineered foods. You'll notice that only fatty, sugary, salty -- addictive -- food portions have risen. Portions of non-addictive foods have not.

Addictive junk foods are designed to side-step your rational decision-making process and turn you into something like a drug addict. Food companies have hijacked your food decision-making process to serve their goals, and at the expense of your health.

What they’re really engineering is the ideal customer: one who compulsively eats increasing amounts of their branded food products. (They're also engineering the ideal customer for the medical-industrial complex, but that's a topic for another post).

Caffeinated sodas represent a "perfect storm" of addictive qualities. They contain sugar and caffeine, which are both addictive. But the carbonation itself causes an additional release of dopamine. Those tiny bubbles create pain in the mouth, which causes the brain to release dopamine.

Some foods and beverages are addictive, but not unhealthy. For example, sparkling "fizzy" water in glass bottles is perfectly healthy. Spicy foods made "hot" with chili peppers can be very healthful. And chocolate is highly addictive, but raw cacao is generally beneficial to health.

The risk in eating peppers and chocolate is that these foods are often difficult to find without a generous portion of junk. An addiction to peppers could lead you to crave nachos, for example. But if you make your own spicy food at home using healthful ingredients, spicy pepper addiction does no harm.

Chocolate is especially problematic, in part because it's unusually addictive but also because it tends come overly processed and mixed with junk like sugar, milk, preservatives and other ingredients that are not the healthiest of foods. Even if you buy organic raw cacao and add it to foods without resorting to sugar, dairy and the rest, you risk a strong addiction that could later motivate you to eat chocolate bars and chocolate cake.

Most addictive foods are total junk foods. Worse, these foods tend to be very high in fat and calories and low in nutrients. So too much junk food in your diet can leave you malnourished. This triggers a panicky survival mode that combines with the junk food addiction to make you experience a weird metabolic hunger that causes even more urgent uncontrollable eating.

But addiction can strike even when you're not hungry. The most common example is craving for dessert. By having something sweet after a meal, we condition our brains to expect a sugar-high and dopamine reward after meals. Even when we feel full to the point of discomfort, we still want dessert.

Uncontrollable junk food addicts behave very much like drug addicts -- hating themselves for lack of control while simultaneously becoming defensive about junk food and hostile toward healthy foods. Extreme cases involve hoarding, hiding and lying about food, and damage to career and relationships.

Plutarch tells a story about the Spartan King Agesilaus leading his army through Thasian territory. The Thasians sent the Spartans barley meal, plus a wide variety of sweet desserts, fatty delicacies and a wide variety of "expensive things to eat and drink" -- the addictive junk food of classical antiquity. Agesilaus kept the barley for his army, but ordered the rest distributed to the Helot slaves in their company. When the Thasians asked why he did this, Agesilaus said: "It is not in keeping that those who practice manly virtues should indulge in such gormandizing, for things that attract servile people are alien to free men."

We believe that all addictions, including food addictions, constitute a form of slavery.

The Spartan Diet solution is to, well, get on the Spartan Diet.

The Spartan Diet takes a two-part approach to addictive foods. First, all addictive foods are eliminated: No processed flour, no concentrated fats like butter, and no overly salty foods. In fact, there are no industrial "engineered" foods at all. And we also call on Spartan Dieters to honestly identify which foods are eaten with addictive compulsion -- and to stop eating them, eliminate them from the kitchen and take pride in abstinence. If you crave dessert, stop having dessert altogether. The compulsion will slowly decrease until you no longer feel it.

The second part is to increase the healthy pleasure of food. Because Spartan Diet foods are by definition the highest quality, fresh ingredients, Spartan Diet foods taste just about as good as food can taste. In our upcoming book, we'll show you how to make the healthiest foods also the most delicious.

The drug-addict's dopamine pleasure is replaced by the pleasure of how food tastes, and also by the pleasure of vibrant health.

By abstaining from addictive foods, and embracing fresh, nutritionally complete and balanced whole-foods, you enjoy food more than ever, plus enjoy the ultimate pleasure of total, lifelong health – which we believe is better even than cupcakes.

Spartan Diet recipe: Butternut Squash Soup

2010-10-03T10:58:00.000-07:00

Squash is one of the most under-appreciated foods around. It’s delicious, nutritious and versatile.

The ancient Greeks ate something similar to squash, which is often mistranslated as "pumpkin" or "squash." In fact, squash is native to North and South America. The English name "squash" is derived from the Narragansett North American tribe word "askutasquash."

Available from August through March, peak squash season is October and November. Squash is eaten like a vegetable, but is technically a fruit.

Butternut squash, like all other Winter squashes, is an excellent source of antioxidants, vitamin C, potassium, niacin, phosphorus, folate, iron and fiber. The deep yellow colors show the richness of healthful carotenoids, such as beta carotene, the precursor to vitamin A. Just half a cup serving of squash can provide a day’s worth of beta carotene, essential for good eyesight, protection from free radicals and overall good health.

Choose squash that is free of blemishes and decaying or moldy spots. They should feel heavy, solid and have a small stem still attached that feels firm. Store squash in a cool, dry place. Squash can last for weeks, if not months.

One reason some don’t like cooking with squash is that they’re more challenging to peel than other fruits, especially the ones with harder and thicker skins, such as kabocha. But we believe the inconvenience is well worth the trouble.

You’ll need a heavy chef’s knife and, even better, a meat cleaver. Cut off the stem, and with the knife or meat cleaver, chop once lengthwise so that the knife gets lodged in the top. Use a rubber mallet or heavy object to carefully hammer the part where the blade and handle of the knife meet to dig the knife deeper and make the squash split in two. Scoop out the pulp and seeds with a spoon.

Squash can be cooked, steamed or baked with skin on, as it will be easier to remove skin after cooking. But thinner skin squash can be peeled before cooking and cut up into cubes for roasting, making stew and soup.

All squash can be steamed, baked, roasted, pureed and added to soups, casseroles, salads and stews. With the exception of spaghetti squash, most squash is versatile to cook with. Different types of squash can be used interchangeably with other squash or even sweet potatoes.

Buy locally grown, fresh and whole butternut squash, at your local Farmer’s market when possible.

Here’s how to make our Butternut Squash Soup.

Butternut Squash Soup
(Yields 6 to 8 servings)

Winter squash is a "super food." But this soup also contains others, including ginger and turmeric, which are powerful anti-inflammatory foods that boost the immune system. Use only organic olive oil and produce.

INGREDIENTS

2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
1 medium onion, finely chopped
3 celery stalks, finely chopped (green part only)
3 small carrots, finely chopped
3 medium leeks, finely chopped (white part only)
1 small shallot, finely chopped
3 quarts of filtered water
1 medium to large butternut squash, peeled, pulp and seeds removed (½ inch cubes)
1 tablespoon finely chopped fresh thyme
½ teaspoon finely chopped fresh sage
2 tablespoons finely grated fresh ginger (peeled)
¼ teaspoon ground ginger
2 tablespoons finely grated fresh turmeric root (peeled)
½ teaspoon ground turmeric (plus ¼ teaspoon if fresh turmeric not available)
¼ teaspoon curry powder
¼ teaspoon paprika
¼ teaspoon freshly ground white pepper (or black pepper)
Sea salt to taste (We prefer Real Salt, Celtic Sea Salt or Himalayan Salt brands)

INSTRUCTIONS

In a large stockpot, heat olive oil over low heat. Add onions, celery, carrots, leeks and shallot sautéing over low to medium heat for 10 to 15 minutes or until onions and celery look translucent.
Add water, butternut squash, thyme and sage. Cover with lid and simmer over low heat for 20 to 25 minutes or until butternut squash is tender.
Add 2 or more cups of water if more liquid soup is desired. Stir in fresh and ground ginger, fresh and ground turmeric, curry, paprika, ground pepper and salt continuing to simmer over low heat for 10 to 15 minutes. Adjust seasonings as desired. Remove from heat and serve.

NOTES

The USDA and others refer to the entire head of celery as a "stalk," but here a "stalk" is a single rib of celery.
The recipe as written here is chunky, but you can puree the soup for an even texture at the end, if that's the kind of soup you prefer. Use a food processor, blender or immersion hand blender.
If there's no fresh turmeric is available, add an additional ¼ teaspoon of ground turmeric.

Why weight loss is not a worthwhile goal

2010-09-25T11:56:00.000-07:00

Losing weight is a global obsession. Health club marketing, fitness and beauty magazines, diets and drugs cater to the desire to shed pounds. But why do people want to lose weight?

Our industrial food and sedentary lifestyles have made a majority of people fat and unhealthy. Excess weight is only the most obvious symptom of ill health.

The human mind is finely attuned to the health of other people. We respond instinctively and automatically to the health of others. Although we live in a completely different environment than our ancestors, our DNA -- our bodies and brains -- are essentially identical.

We are intensely social creatures designed to live in a small tribe or village. Our minds are built to evaluate the health of others in our community. This evaluation helps us to choose mates and establish the social hierarchy of the group. The fittest members of any human community are usually held in higher esteem than others.

And this is why people diet: to hide the most conspicuous evidence that we are unwell. We diet to simulate health in order to become more attractive, powerful and respected in our social groupings.

We can do better than that. Much better.

The appearance of good health is no more valuable than the appearance of education or the appearance of athletic achievement. For example, you can "attend" some unaccredited online university and receive a bogus diploma you can frame and hang on your wall. You can buy a trophy on eBay.

Striving to lose weight without improving health is like buying a diploma or trophy: You might impress some people, but you haven't gained the thing of real value, only the superficial appearance of having done so.

We believe that life and death isn't binary, but exists on a scale. At one end is death, and the other end is the most alive you can be given the totality of your circumstances. Most people exist between those extremes.

The purpose of the Spartan diet is to become as alive as possible.

Sure, everyone on the Spartan Diet who is overweight loses excess fat. But the weight loss comes as a result of fixing what was broken, not breaking it further.

If you simply cut calories, or embrace some gimmicky fad diet – in other words try to lose weight without bringing your physical body into balance – the weight will come back. And worse, you’ll knock things further out of whack.

Faking health through weight loss is a losing proposition, and an unworthy goal. A vastly superior goal is to actually achieve lifelong health.

Your whole metabolic system will be restored to balance, but so will your immune, digestive, circulatory, muscular and other systems. Your energy level will soar, and your mind will be clear and function much better. Your immune system will defend you from all kinds of diseases, and you'll have the strength and energy to pursue all your dreams.

In short, you will become much more alive.

Now that's a worthwhile goal.

Join us on Facebook!

2010-08-31T11:51:00.000-07:00

If you're interested in joining a growing conversation about the Spartan Diet, why not join us on Facebook? Just click here, then click on the "Like" button. After that, you'll see Spartan Diet page posts on your Facebook "News Feed."

Spartan Diet fans are posting pictures of their Spartan Diet recipes, which often lead to great conversations about ingredients (and where to find them), cooking methods and Spartan Diet principles.

So if you use Facebook, please visit our page! If you like it, please "Like" it!

Scientists test Spartan Diet foods as sunscreen

2010-08-29T12:37:00.000-07:00

Scientists at The University of Texas Health Science Center San Antonio are experiementing with extracts from Spartan Diet foods that, when applied to the skin, may prevent skin cancer.

The researchers have found that combinations that include resveratrol, found in red grapes; ellagic acid, present in berries and walnuts; and calcium D-glucarate, found in a wide variety of both fruits and vegetables have already proved effective in protecting against skin cancer, even in low quantities. Interestingly, these ingredients worked far better in combination than when each was tested by itself.

The ongoing research supports previous experiements that found that right foods (all major Spartan Diet foods) can prevent skin cancer and sun damage to the skin.

It also supports research conducted in Japan that found extra virgin olive oil applied to the skin after sun exposure greatly reduced skin damage and skin cancer.

Interestingly, some 2,600 years ago, the Spartans started the "fad" in Ancient Greece of applying olive oil to their skin after competing in the Olympic Games and other athletic competitions (which always took place in the blazing Greek sunshine). The Spartans were just doing something they did every day -- after training and excercising all day in the sun, the Spartans routinely applied olive oil to their skin.

Scientists are just now starting to understand how a diet like that of the Ancient Spartans, and also how applying antioxidant rich food to to the skin, prevent skin cancer.

It's worth noting that even though Spartan men and women spent enormous time in the sun every day, and altough they mostly lived well into their 80s and older, they didn't seem to get skin cancer.

Food for thought.

How to do a Spartan Reboot

2010-08-28T19:35:00.000-07:00

The ancient Spartans made a constant ally of hunger. They cultivated familiarity with hunger, and were so controlled in their diet that outsiders were shocked, horrified and amazed at how little the Spartans ate.

Of course, they ate well, and generally got enough to eat. And our modern Spartan Diet involves neither deprivation nor excess.

But wealthy aristocrats from Athens and elsewhere given a rare invitation to join a Spartan mess for dinner found something very different to the gluttonous, drunken symposia they were accustomed to. Spartans made an art form out of providing each person with precisely enough food to sustain health, but not a bite more. Boys in the agoge were repeatedly starved so they would become familiar with, and tolerant of, real hunger. If you can imagine hundreds of teenage boys capable of going days without food -- without complaining -- then you can imagine the Spartan agoge.

The irony of Spartan hunger is that Sparta was an incredibly wealthy polis, and their wealth existed entirely in the form of fertile farmland and food production. Every Spartan citizen by definition owned a huge farm. They had the means -- far more than most ancient Greeks -- to have stuffed their faces at every meal, but, as a matter of principle, abstained.

In the modern industrialized world, the cultivation of sensible hunger is utterly alien to us. We never go hungry. Not really. Although our incredibly low-quality food and sedentary lifestyles make us experience an urgent, panicky kind of hunger, most of us never go very long without eating all we want -- and more.

We're habituated with food-related discomfort. We're used to feeling edgy, dull, bloated and "stuffed." We've all experienced the cloudy, weak feeling from over-indulging in greasy, fatty or sugary foods. But hunger? We really don't understand it.

The Spartans did. And for good reason: It's a powerful practice to cultivate. If you do it right, hunger can sharpen your mind, lighten your body, and give you incredible energy.

New research at Washington University explains at least in part why the Spartan Reboot gives you mental and physical energy. Apparently hunger changes how the body manages the storage and use of fat molecules called lipids in a way that prevents those molecules from activating fatigue.

Want to try it?

A technique we call the Spartan Reboot enables you to use hunger to quickly attain high energy, mental clarity, physical stamina and overall vitality. Here is how to do it:

(This is a great thing to do on Sundays, by the way, to prepare for an awesome Monday.)

Eat a healthy balanced breakfast and lunch at the normal times, plus some fruit in the mid-afternoon. Then, after eating your fruit, go on a very long walk, hike or run – at least fifty percent more time or distance than you usually do. We generally do about 15 miles or so, but your miles may vary. Make sure you stay well hydrated.

Then you skip dinner. Go to bed early enough to get a solid 8 hours of sleep.

That's it! You've only skipped one meal. But when you wake up, you'll feel like a different person. Your body will feel light. Your mind will be super sharp and clear. And you'll have physical and mental energy and stamina all day. And you won't even be that hungry. In fact, if you follow your hunger, you'll probably want to eat less than you normally do.

Try it, and please report your results back to us here in the comments area of this post!

Exercise makes you less hungry - study

2010-08-24T15:17:00.001-07:00

Brazilian researchers believe they have discovered why people who don't exercise feel hungrier than people who do.

In a study conducted at the Department of Internal Medicine at the State University of Campinas in São Paulo, researchers found that "physical activity reorganizes the set point of nutritional balance through anti-inflammatory signaling," at least in the obese rats they studied.

It turns out that during exercise, the muscles release key proteins that optimize the body's signaling system for hunger. Stated another way, in the unnatural condition of little to no exercise, all aspects of the body's hunger triggering system are not present, which explains in part why couch potatoes experience more intense hunger than triathletes.

The Spartan Diet calls for daily exercise, and relies upon the fine-tuning of your hunger-satiety system for optimizing food quantity (instead of counting carbs or calories).

Berries prevent age-related memory loss - new research

2010-08-23T11:26:00.000-07:00

New research has discovered that in addition to health effects previously discovered, polyphenolics in berries and other whole foods actually perform "housekeeping" chores in the brain, sweeping away "biochemical debris" that causes age-related memory loss and mental decline.

The research, presented by Shibu Poulose and James Joseph of the U. S. Department of Agriculture-Agricultural Research Service (USDA-ARS) Human Nutrition Research Center on Aging in Boston, found that in younger people cells called microglia engage in a process called autophagy, which involves removing biochemical debris that would interfere with brain function. As we age, microglia slowly become less effective, the debris builds up and people experience age-related mental decline, including memory loss. The research found that the polyphenolics sustain the effectiveness of microglia, enabling them to continue protecting the brain well into old age.

A wide range of foods contain these polyphenolics, including berries and other fruits, especially those with dark red, orange or blue colors, and also nuts, including walnuts.

Eat these foods according to Spartan Diet principles -- eat them as fresh, raw and organic as possible.

(Photo shows Spartan Muesli with Spartan Cashew Milk topped with blueberries and acai.)

How to get REAL extra-virgin olive oil

2010-08-19T13:09:00.000-07:00

Extra-virgin olive oil is a wonderful thing. The "extra virgin" designation indicates the highest quality: Olive oil extracted from the first pressing that has an acid content of less than .8 percent.

Organic extra-virgin olive oil is the only oil on the Spartan Diet. But there's a problem. A recent study by the University of California at Davis Olive Oil Center, in collaboration with the Australian Oils Research Laboratory, found that many products labeled as "extra virgin olive oil" in fact are not.

Unlike in Europe, where the "extra-virgin" designation is defined by law, there is no enforcement of standards in the United States.

Researchers found that 69 percent of imported oil labeled as "extra-virgin" in fact was not, whereas 10 percent of oils produced in California and sold as "extra virgin" were not. However, nearly all (99%) of oil labeled as extra-virgin olive oil in the United States is imported, so many American olive-oil eaters have never even tried US-made olive oil.

Researchers found that a wide variety of events can disqualify olive oil from the extra-virgin designation. Inferior-quality olives, oxidation of the oil, improper storage or the addition of lower-quality oil all can ruin olive oil and make it not truly extra virgin at the time of purchase.

In other words, many olive oils sold as extra virgin in fact did qualify at the time the oil was pressed, but has been degraded by some event later in the storage, transportation or bottling process. Oil can be oxidized, for example, by sunlight, heat or oxygen. The oxidation process raises the acidity level to above the "extra-virgin" limit, no matter what the label says.

This may explain why California olive oils tested so much better than imported oils: UC Davis is in California, so the California oil was all local, less handled and probably fresher.

Even olive oil that's high-quality extra-virgin stuff when you buy it can degrade in your kitchen. Improper storage (with sunlight or heat) can damage the oil, of course. But even in ideal conditions, the quality of olive oil naturally degrades over time. One study found that after 6 months, olive oil loses about 40% of its antioxidants.

You can also ruin olive oil at the last minute by cooking it at too high a temperature.

So what's an olive-oil obsessed Spartan Dieter to do? First of all, we need to think of extra virgin olive oil as something different than the indestructible cooking oils we grew up with. Because it's unheated and unprocessed, olive oil is really almost a fruit juice.

You want to make sure your extra-virgin olive oil comes from a reputable producer, has been properly stored and handled between the producer and the store, and has been pressed as recently as possible.

Some farmer's markets offer locally produced extra virgin olive oil. Because you're buying it directly from the producer, it's less likely to have been damaged during shipping and so on. This is not always the case, however. Grill the seller until you're satisfied he or she is doing it right and selling the real deal.

Look for domestic olive oil, wherever you live. The less transportation the oil undergoes, the fewer the opportunities for spoilage.

Buy only organic. In our experience, organic producers tend to be more honest and more careful with oil quality. Besides, who wants pesticides in their salad?

Look for acidity level. Some olive oils proudly boast of their low acidity levels. This is a good sign. The lower, the better.

Ultimately, however, there is no substitute for becoming an olive-oil snob and knowing the difference based on how oil looks, smells and tastes. Because even good oil can go bad in your kitchen.

Look for olive oil tasking opportunities, and cultivate your ability to tell good oil from bad, virgin from non-virgin and extra from not-so-extra.

Extra-virgin olive oil in small quantities is the foundation of the Spartan Diet. But if you want truly extra-virgin olive oil, you can't just passively accept what labels are telling you. You've got to fight for high-quality olive oil -- but it's worth the battle.

Farmer's market discovery: green almonds!

2010-05-23T13:07:00.001-07:00

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

2010-05-15T14:33:00.000-07:00

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 exposure -- 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

2010-05-03T12:24:00.000-07:00

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

2010-04-26T11:48:00.000-07:00

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 became unhealthy because they ate too much fatty foods and didn't get enough exercise, while the poor became unhealthy because they often suffered from nutritional deficiencies caused by a lack of variety in the diet. (Only in the industrial age do we have both: People get too many calories and also suffer nutritional deficits.) Sparta completely ended both extremes. 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

2010-04-23T13:43:00.000-07:00

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

2010-03-27T12:09:00.000-07:00

Note, this post has been updated and revised with new information. Read the updated version here.

Major-label apple juice can contain arsenic

2010-03-20T17:07:00.000-07:00

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

2010-03-20T15:59:00.000-07:00

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 typically 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 preservatives added.

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

2010-03-16T18:08:00.000-07:00

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

2010-02-08T19:36:00.000-08:00

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

2010-01-26T17:32:00.001-08:00

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

2009-12-01T15:13:00.000-08:00

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

2009-11-05T10:57:00.000-08:00

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.

Another study found an association between the presence of BPA in the bloodstream and the both the quantity of sperm production and the amount of DNA damage to sperm cells.

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

2009-10-15T16:34:00.000-07:00

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 many 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. All "mainstream" chocolate products also contain preservatives and other additives that are less-than-healthy.

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 with more than 400 different compounds, some of which are mild drugs. It's both an "upper" (central nervous system stimulant) and a "downer" (narcotic) 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.

Note that much of the research on the health benefits of chocolate are funded or conducted by giant chocolate companies, who tend to do research on the cocoa bean itself. The products they actually sell do not have all the antioxidant benefits of raw cocoa beans, plus they have additives not referenced in the media reports on their cocoa bean research.

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 likelihood 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 bio-active 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

2009-10-13T13:17:00.000-07:00

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

2009-10-08T17:40:00.000-07:00

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

2009-10-07T21:22:00.000-07:00

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

2009-10-07T20:18:00.000-07:00

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.

Reducing salt in teenagers' diets cuts risk of heart disease 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

2009-10-03T20:19:00.000-07:00

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

2009-09-27T10:02:00.001-07:00

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

2009-09-08T13:27:00.000-07:00

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

2009-09-02T10:51:00.001-07:00

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'

2009-08-25T08:32:00.000-07:00

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

2009-08-18T12:18:00.001-07:00

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.

How to make Spartan Muesli

2009-08-17T12:00:00.000-07:00

Forget about that stale, sugary old industrial cereal that comes in a box. For a healthy start to your day, a delicious bowl of Spartan Muesli gives you incredible flavor and all the nutrients you need for total energy. It's easy to prepare, and you can make plenty in advance. We recommend you have it with Spartan Cashew Milk.

INGREDIENTS

3 ½ cups rolled old fashioned whole-grain oats
½ cup raisins
1 cup sugar-free, sulfur-free dried fruit bits (date, fig, apricot, prune, apple, pear, cranberry, peach, cherry, pineapple, coconut, etc.)
¾ cup ground yellow or brown flax seeds
½ cup raw chopped walnuts
¾ cup raw whole almonds
2 tablespoons raw sunflower seeds
1 ½ teaspoons ground cinnamon
Spartan Cashew Milk
Fresh fruit (sliced banana, peaches, apples or blueberries)

INSTRUCTIONS

1. In a large bowl, combine all dry ingredients well with a large fork.
2. To serve, in a bowl, combine ½ cup to ¾ cup of muesli mix with ¾ cup to 1 cup of cashew milk and top with 1 cup sliced fresh fruit or berries or a combination thereof.

NOTES

Store in a large glass jar or bowl with lid. Place it in the cupboard to last a week, or in the refrigerator to last several weeks.

What's so great about white tea? Everything.

2009-08-15T18:59:00.000-07:00

Organic white tea is on the Spartan Diet Superfoods list. If you drink caffeinated beverages, we recommend that you choose organic white tea because it boosts your immune system, slows the aging process, facilitates weight loss, protects you from disease and even strengthens your teeth. More on all that below. First, what is white tea exactly?

White tea comes from the same plant (Camellia sinensis) as green tea, the kind served in Chinese and Japanese restaurants, as well as black tea, which is the tea used for iced tea, English Breakfast tea and other ordinary teas served in Western homes and restaurants. The differences between white, green and black tea are in the particulars of harvesting and processing.

Black tea is the most processed. After harvesting, mature tea leaves are first "wilted," which means they're dried for a few hours. The leaves are then "bruised" to break down the plant's chlorophyll and release tannins in a process called enzymatic oxidation. While this process changes the flavor and improves the tea's durability for long-term storage, it also destroys a lot of the plant's nutrients. Some call the process "fermentation," but that's a misnomer.

Green tea is also from mature tea leaves, which are picked, then "wilted," or dried, then heated via a frying, steaming or other process, before being dried again.

White tea is the least processed. First, white tea is usually the buds and young tea leaves, or just the buds. It's then "wilted," then dried. That's it. White tea is also less "processed" by you, the drinker. Instead of pouring rapidly boiling, 210-degree water on the tea, as is the accepted process for black tea, white tea traditionally uses water heated only to about 185 degrees. (When a tea kettle first starts to make a quiet "white noise," that's about 185 degrees.)

Although the Chinese have been drinking white tea for centuries -- possibly millennia -- researchers have just begun discovering its incredible health benefits in the past ten years. It turns out that nutrients are concentrated in the buds and young leaves that white tea is made with, and the minimal processing retains those nutrients best.

Very recent research in Germany has found, for example, that substances in white tea inhibit the growth of new fat cells in the body, and also promote the breaking down of existing fat cells.

Another study in the UK has found that white tea contains anti-aging properties. It contains substances that protect the structural proteins of the skin, specifically elastin and collagen, from the enzymes that create aging-related symptoms, including wrinkles. Researchers found that white tea reduces inflammation associated with not only wrinkles, but also rheumatoid arthritis and some cancers.

White tea has more polyphenols (specifically a powerful class of flavonoids called catechins), even than green tea, which have been found to reduce the risk of diabetes, heart disease, stroke and cancer.

White tea may also help you fight off bacterial infections, including staph infections, strep throat, pneumonia and dental bacteria. White tea also contains fluoride -- although not quite as much as green tea -- so it's good for your teeth. Plus, it doesn't stain your teeth the way coffee and black tea do.

More benefits: You don't take it with milk or sugar, neither of which is on the Spartan Diet. You drink white tea at a lower temperature than other teas. Because white tea should be drunk weak and in larger quantities -- and, because you re-brew leaves three or four times -- it can take quite a while to drink white tea. That protects you from the sudden caffeine shock of guzzling a coffee drink, and also from the inevitable crash.

White tea is very likely the healthiest caffeinated beverage around, the extra-virgin olive oil of the caffeine kingdom.

White tea seems like it's more expensive than other kinds. However, you use less of it, and you can brew three or four pots with the same leaves.

Our favorite white tea company is Rishi, which has a wonderful variety of awesome white teas (we prefer Rishi's Snow Buds when they're available, and White Peony when they're not). Buy in bulk to save money.

Fresh garlic better for heart than not-so-fresh

2009-08-11T19:10:00.000-07:00

University of Connecticut School of Medicine researchers found in an experiment that the heart-protective effects of garlic are strongest in fresh garlic, and weaker but still present in garlic paste, pre-peeled cloves, garlic powder and garlic pills. Specifically, fresh garlic was found to be superior in protecting the heart from damage, and also facilitating the recovery from damage.

Scientists must isolate causes and effects, such as the effect of different types of garlic on one function of one organ. But it's reasonable to assume that fresh garlic is also healthier for other organ systems and for health overall than non-fresh garlic. It's also reasonable to assume that fresh produce in general is superior to non-fresh.

The Spartan Diet calls for lots of fresh garlic, and never any other kind.

New study claiming no organic benefit is simply wrong

2009-08-04T09:42:00.000-07:00

A report commissioned by the British government's Food Standards Agency (FSA) and based on a review of 162 scientific papers by researchers from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine concluded that organic food has no nutritional benefits over conventionally produced food.

The conclusion does not follow from the findings. Although the most recent and relevant scientific papers were systematically excluded from the study, the papers they did include showed massive nutritional benefits in organic foods. One of the report's authors wrote:

"A small number of differences in nutrient content were found to exist between organically and conventionally produced foodstuffs, but these are unlikely to be of any public health relevance."

Here are some of the "irrelevant" nutritional differences they found in organic foods:

* Protein: 12.7% higher
* Beta-carotene: 53.6% higher
* Flavonoids: 38.4% higher
* Phenolic compounds: 13.2% higher
* Copper: 8.3% higher
* Magnesium: 7.1% higher
* Phosphorous: 6% higher
* Potassium: 2.5% higher
* Sodium: 8.7% higher
* Sulphur: 10.5% higher
* Zinc: 11.3% higher

In other words, they found massive differences in nutritional content, then dismissed their own findings as either flawed or statistically irrelevant.

The FSA study excluded EU-funded studies conducted at Newcastle University, which found very large nutritional differences between organic and conventional produce, grains and milk.

A study conducted in 2007 at the University of California, Davis, found that organic berries and corn contain up to 58 percent more polyphenolics than conventionally grown.

Another study conducted at UC Davis found that levels of the flavonoids quercetin and kaempferol were found to be on average 79% and 97% higher in organic tomatoes than conventionally grown. These antioxidants have been found to reduce risk of cardiovascular disease, cancer and dimentia.

It's easy to go on and on citing studies proving the nutritional superiority of organic foods. But these studies don't even contradict the FSA study, which found the same pattern of nutritional benefit.

The FSA study also looked exclusively at differences in nutrient levels and completely ignored the cumulative effect of the toxic herbicides, pesticides and fertilizers used in conventionally grown produce -- the avoidance of which is the main reason people choose organic foods in the first place.

The media take-away from the FSA study was "organic foods aren't healthier than conventional." That message, however, is utterly and provably false. Organic foods are better for you -- MUCH better for you -- as they contain significantly higher amounts of vitamins, minerals and photochemicals, and have significantly lower amounts of toxic herbicides, pesticides and fertilizer chemicals.

American children suffer from sunshine deficit

2009-08-03T11:31:00.000-07:00

A new report claims that seven out of 10 American children are too low in vitamin D levels. Vitamin D deficiency causes the body to reabsorb calcium from the skeleton, weakening bones. It also increases risk of heart disease, rickets and probably other bad health issues researchers haven't yet discovered.

The conventional advice to remedy this health problem, of course, is: go buy a product. In this case, it's either milk with added (often synthetic) vitamin D, or vitamin D pills.

Vitamin D is not a vitamin. It's a hormone. Your body produces it when your skin is exposed to sunshine.

Milk isn't all that good for you. Neither are fake hormones in a pill. The best advice is to turn kids loose outside. They will get exercise, sunshine, fresh air and other things they need without anyone buying anything, or without experimenting on kids with ill-advice public health initiatives.

Processed junk food, inactivity hits Brit forces

2009-08-02T18:29:00.000-07:00

According to a leaked army memo, Britain's Afghanistan effort is being "hampered" by soldiers who are too fat, sick and weak to fight. The memo concludes that the army has "not consistently maintained our standards of physical fitness" and needs to "reinvigorate a warrior ethos and a culture of being fit."

The memo echoes a similar problem among German forces in Afghanistan. A parliamentary report published late last year found that German soldiers were on average fatter than the German civilian population and generally "too fat to fight."

The problem is not confined to Britain or Germany. US military drill instructors report steep, ongoing declines in the physical fitness of recruits.

Contrast this to the athletic reputation of ancient Spartans. Every Spartan man and woman, girl and boy, trained as if they were to compete in the Olympic games. Unless there was a festival or a war, Spartan men trained hard outside every day. Every one of them at what we would now call fresh organic produce, whole grains, wild game and other fresh, whole raw nuts, seeds, legumes and more. Their only oil was olive oil. Their only sugar was raw honey. They drank wine, but never got drunk.

The problem with the British, German and American militaries is that fighting men and women are taken from a population immersed in industrial food marketing, and consumer societies where much of our energies are devoted to pursuing passive leisure and fake foods.

When the British Army Major who sent the memo called for a "reinvigorate a warrior ethos and a culture of being fit," he was in fact calling on Britain to become more like Sparta. Easier said than done. You see, it "takes a village" to raise a Spartan.

We have taken so much from ancient Greece -- democracy, philosophy, medicine and a million great ideas. But we forgot to learn from the society that did military fitness better than anyone: Sparta. The Spartan Diet book will re-introduce lost wisdom about food, health, fitness and life.

Risk of sun exposure 'overstated' - report

2009-07-13T06:43:00.000-07:00

A new report published in the journal Nature Genetics says the cancer risk for sun exposure is "overstated." Researchers from Queensland, Montreal, Philadelphia and London found that the amount of sunshine you get is a weak predictor of skin cancer, but the presence of moles is a very strong one.

They also point out that mole-related skin cancer, called Melanoma, can be treated by the early removal of a suspicious mole.

Researchers say that an "obsession" with avoiding sun to prevent skin cancer is contributing to Vitamin D deficiency, which is causing other health problems.

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

2009-06-23T13:33:00.000-07:00

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

2009-06-23T10:56:00.000-07:00

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

2009-06-15T07:59:00.000-07:00

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

2009-06-15T07:21:00.000-07:00

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.

Higher blood levels of vitamin D have been found to be associated with a lower risk of colorectal cancer, according to a recent study published in the British Medical Journal.

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

2009-06-03T08:40:00.000-07:00

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

2009-06-03T08:35:00.001-07:00

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

2009-05-12T07:25:00.000-07:00

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

2009-04-20T08:59:00.000-07:00

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

2009-04-13T14:51:00.000-07:00

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.

Our Spartan Gruel recipe below is the quintessential Spartan Diet breakfast.

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. You may want to modify the amount of grain and nuts up or down depending on your age, gender, metabolism and activity level.

INGREDIENTS
1¾ cups filtered water
¼ cup whole grain
¼ teaspoon cinnamon
⅛ teaspoon sea salt
1 heaping tablespoon ground organic flax seeds
½ tablespoon raw, unfiltered local honey
1 cup fresh fruit (bananas, peaches, berries, apples, any in season)
1 heaping tablespoon raw nuts
2 tablespoons dried fruit (unsulphured)

INSTRUCTIONS
1. Rinse grains and leave soaking for up to 12 hours in a bowl (soaking is optional, but make sure you rinse).
2. Drain grains and discard soaking water.
3. In a medium heavy saucepan, bring water to a soft boil.
4. Stir in grains, cinnamon and salt.
5. Reduce heat to lowest setting, cover with lid and simmer until grains are tender.
6. Chop or slice fresh fruit and place in bowl, then add dried fruit, nuts and flax to the top of the fruit.
7. When grains are done, add honey if desired, then mix and pour into bowl on top of fruit, nuts and flax.
8. Let it sit in the bowl for a few minutes so the grain can cool and the fruit and nuts can warm.

NOTES
The cooking time varies depending on grain type and size.

It’s best to keep grains covered with a lid while cooking.

The Spartan Way to Celebrate PB&J Day

2009-04-02T08:37:00.000-07:00

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

2009-03-22T12:54:00.000-07:00

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

2009-03-10T09:55:00.000-07:00

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

2009-02-09T18:53:00.000-08:00

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!

2009-01-26T14:13:00.000-08:00

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

2009-01-19T19:00:00.000-08:00

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"

2009-01-12T10:51:00.000-08:00

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

2009-01-08T13:02:00.000-08:00

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

2009-01-06T12:06:00.000-08:00

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

2009-01-05T21:44:00.000-08:00

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

2009-01-05T16:02:00.000-08:00

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

2009-01-05T13:32:00.000-08:00

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

2008-12-31T12:46:00.000-08:00

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

2008-12-30T22:51:00.000-08:00

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.

Why You Should Never Buy Honey at the Store

2008-12-30T21:12:00.000-08:00

The Spartan Diet bans all concentrated sweeteners (like sugar and sugar substitutes) and sticks exclusively to honey (to be used sparingly). And like all foods, the Spartan Diet emphasizes the qualitative. So we insist on local, raw, wild, unfiltered honey -- preferably from the local farmer's market.

When you buy from the Farmer's Market, the seller can tell you what plants the bees are frequenting. Which is important, because you don't want honey from bees that are pollinating conventional agriculture, as they'll pick up pesticides and other nasty stuff.

You should never, ever buy "conventional" honey from the supermarket. Besides the quality being degraded by pasteurization, filtering and other processing, you really don't know what it is you're buying.

A brilliant investigative piece published today in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer uncovers a common practice in the international honey trade called "honey laundering" -- low quality, fake and even toxic honey from China is often re-labeled as originating in other countries (such as India, Australia or Malaysia) and sent to the United States, where it is mixed with honey from elsewhere and sold in supermarkets.

In most cases, the honey company is the one being duped. They believe they're buying honey from one country, when in fact it originates in another. Hardly any of it is inspected or tested.

Some of the honey is diluted with sugar water or corn syrup, according to the article, or "tainted with pesticides or antibiotics." Chinese honey producers often use an antibiotic called chloramphenicol to treat bee disease epidemics, an antibiotic banned by the FDA. Chloramphenicol can cause illness or even death among some people.

Stay Spartan, and use only local, raw, wild, unfiltered honey.

How to Make Spartan Cashew Milk

2008-12-30T07:40:00.000-08:00

In addition to being far healthier than cow's or soy milk, Spartan cashew milk tastes a lot better, too.

Spartan Cashew Milk is ideal on Spartan Muesli, both because the taste pairing is perfect, but also because the protein in the nuts and oats combine to make complete protein. Spartan Cashew Milk is great on any kind of hot cereal, too, or used in preparing dishes where you would use milk or soy milk.

Spartan Cashew Milk Recipe

INGREDIENTS

1 cup raw cashews
5 ½ cups water (filtered)
8 dates (or 3 tablespoons, raw honey)
2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract
¼ teaspoon sea salt
¼ teaspoon cinnamon

INSTRUCTIONS

1. Combine all ingredients except for 4 cups of the water in a high speed blender and blend thoroughly until very smooth.
2. Add the rest of the water (use ice water if you want it cold) and quickly blend.
3. Adjust sweetness if desired.

NOTES

It's best to blend this fresh just before serving. If you have some left over, store it in a jar and use it within three days. Use about 5 dates in place of some of the honey -- sweeten to taste after blending in the dates.

Why Look to the Spartans for Diet Advice?

2008-12-23T22:22:00.000-08:00

The idea of taking lessons from ancient Greece is one of the oldest and most profitable in Western Civilization. During the European Middle Ages, theological philosophers actively studied and emulated the techniques of Plato, Aristotle and other Greek philosophers, and tried to reconcile those ideas with Christianity. The European Renaissance was based in part on the rediscovery of classical Greek aesthetic, political and philosophical ideas.

In fact, the whole of Western Civilization is based in large measure upon lessons learned by studying ancient Greece. Modern ideas in politics, academics, philosophy, science, law, architecture, theater, literature and medicine are all based on ancient Greek culture. The American government does its most important business in buildings based on the architecture of Classical Greece. Doctors still take the Hippocratic oath.

Once you accept the truth that our own culture has failed to produce a physically healthy population, it makes enormous sense to draw once again from that deep well that has served us so reliably in so many spheres of cultural life.

The ancient Spartans are uniquely qualified to teach us the lessons we need most of all. Unlike us, they figured out how to stay strong when everything in their environment promoted weakness. In the midst of great wealth, the Spartans avoided overconsumption. In an age of rising and unprecedented civilization, the Spartans never lost touch with their animal nature. In an environment of plenty, the Spartans stayed lean. These are lessons we desperately need, and have not figured out ourselves. The Spartan Diet attempts to convey these lessons from Spartan culture to ours.

Here's what we can learn about food, health and strength from the mighty ancient Spartans:

Culinary primitivism promotes health and virtue. Compared to other cultures in the ancient world, the Greeks believed in the virtue of basic, traditional foods and cooking. They distained, for example, the decadent Persian love of deserts and culture of culinary innovation. But Spartans were culinary primitivists compared even with the rest of Greece. Their foods were basic, and they ate far more wild game than domesticated, for example. Culinary innovation is a product of the upper classes in any society. The Spartan mess system suppressed the aristocratic inclination to evolve increasingly unhealthy foods -- everybody ate the same crude, unadorned, unimproved foods, from kings to footsoldiers.

"Easy" makes you weak. "Hard" makes you strong. Spartans avoided anything that might weaken or soften or cause any human faculty to atrophy. Torches were banned so everyone had to sustain good night vision. Children went without shoes, so their feet get tough. Spartan boys and men wore one item of clothing all year, which acclimated them to being too hot in the summer and cold in the winter. The Spartans were obsessed with the idea that hardship is an opportunity for overcoming personal limitations, rather than something to be avoided for personal comfort.

Frugality is a high virtue. Fancy houses were against the law. Everyone wore plain clothing. Make-up, perfume and fancy jewelry were banned. Lavish banquets never happened. Even grave markers were universally plain, and sang no praises of the deceased unless they died honorably (in battle or childbirth), and these were mentioned only as plain facts. These and other rules didn't effect the poor, upon whom frugality is required everywhere. What made Sparta different was that frugality was imposed on the rich and even the royal, including what Plutarch referred to as a Spartan "frugality of the diet."

It's better to choose strength over pleasure or comfort. Whenever confronted with a choice between pleasure and strength, comfort and strength, convenience and strength -- the Spartans always chose strength.

Drunkenness is for slaves. The Spartans were one of the few city-states in Greece that rejected Symposia -- the wine-drinking parties common to that era. While the Greeks broadly frowned upon drunkenness, the Spartans banned even minor tipsiness. As Plato pointed out in "The Laws," "there is no drunken revelry in Sparta, and any one found in a state of intoxication is severely punished" and with no excuses accepted even during festivals. Part of the agoge education involved forcing a Helot slave to get drunk, then parading him in front of the boys to show how alcohol causes weakness, dullness, delusion and foolishness -- in other words, un-Spartan behavior.

Train harder than real life. Observers during war often commented about how Spartans seemed relaxed and happy before battles. The reason for this is that war was one of the few things that gave Spartans a break from their grueling training regimen. Think about that.

Lifelong athletic training is for everybody. Both men women practiced physical exercise from childhood and well into middle age. Unlike most other cultures, which view what we might call "working out" the exclusive province of athletes or soldiers, everybody trained in Sparta.

Excuses don't win battles. Spartan culture and institutions appear to have provided zero space for excuse-making. Sparta was a stand-and-deliver, do-or-die culture that tolerated no complaining, bullshitting or excuse-making.

Sugar as Addictive As Heroin, Cocaine - Study

2008-12-14T18:44:00.000-08:00

Princeton University researchers have found that sugar alters how the brain works and triggers cravings in a way that duplicates how highly addictive drugs, including heroine and cocaine do. They found also that withdraw symptoms are similar as well.

Weightloss, Genes and Fate

2008-11-09T19:38:00.001-08:00

Millions of Americans are "on a diet" and trying to lose weight. It's a national, never-ending obsession. It's a cliché that diets rarely work, and that weight loss rarely lasts.

But excess weight is only the most obvious and visible symptom of an unhealthy, unbalanced lifestyle. Diets treat the symptoms, not the root causes. Dieting to lose weight is like taking pain killers for a broken leg. Yes, pain may be the most visible symptom, but the leg won't heal unless it's set properly in a cast. If you take pain killers only, you'll suppress some symptoms now, but the pain will return even worse than before because the root cause has not been dealt with. Likewise, if you lose weight without embracing a healthy diet and exercise, the weight will probably come back.

About one third of all Americans between the ages of 20 and 74 are technically obese, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. And another third are overweight but not obese. That means a solid majority -- two-thirds -- are overweight.

What is less understood, or at least underappreciated, is that most overweight people are undernourished. Our industrialized modern diet provides far too many calories and far too few vitamins, minerals, fiber, and antioxidants than people need for good health.

The combination of toxic foods and non-foods, excess, low-quality fats, plus malnutrition, leads to at least two outcomes that further promote weight gain and weaken our muscles, organs and immune systems. First, our bodies are designed to seek out nutrition when they're not getting enough. So if you starve yourself of nutrients, your body triggers an intense hunger reflex. People who eat a standard diet often experience overwhelming feelings of hunger, which leads to overeating. Second, cheap, fast, convenient, high-sugar and high-fat food not only overloads the body with thousands of excess calories, which turn into body fat but it also has a negative impact on the metabolism and immune system, which promote further weight gain and sickness.

Of course, there are many other reasons for excess weight, including obvious ones, such a lack of exercise, as well as less obvious ones like insufficient sleep or sunshine.

Adding to confusion is the role of genes in excess weight. It's true that some people eat very little and exercise a lot, and can seem to never shed their excess weight. Other people pig out on junk food and stay slim.

But genes are not fate. Not entirely. In fact, just about every lifestyle related illness or physical problem has a genetic basis. Even smoking, alcoholism and reckless driving! We offer these examples to make a point. No matter how much your genes prompt you to seek out addictive substances like smoking or alcohol or take risks while driving, you won't suffer the consequences if you don't smoke, drink or drive poorly.

We all have unique genes that expose us to or protect us from an unimaginable range of problems, diseases, disorders, inclinations and more. But we're human. We have free will. We have the capacity to choose, and to learn and to grow. We can develop the knowledge, skills and habits for maximum good health.

Alzheimer's Linked to Diet -- Report

2008-10-30T04:57:00.000-07:00

In a previous post, we pointed out that monks on Mount Athos, who eat something similar to the Spartan Diet, never get Alzheimer's, which suggests that Alzheimer's is made far worse by diet.

New research at Canada's University of Laval has found that mice fed a diet rich in animal fat and poor in omega-3 showed amyloid-beta and tau protein concentrations 8.7 and 1.5 times higher than the control group mice, respectively. These proteins are associated with Alzheimer's. They also found that high-fat diets reduced the levels of drebrin protein in the brain, which is another sign of Alzheimer's.

One co-author of the study told a reporter that "metabolic changes induced by such a diet could affect the inflammatory response in the brain."

It's likely that as more research emerges on the causes of Alzheimer's, it will increasingly be understood to be a lifestyle disease like most diabetes and cancers, totally preventable by simply eating a healthy diet.

The Spartan Diet calls for the elimination of all domesticated animal meat, which is the very food that researchers have associated with Alzheimer's, and emphasizes food high in omega-3 fatty acids (such as wild fish and flax seeds), which researchers associated with preventing Alzheimer's.

The Spartan Diet Obsession with Quality

2008-10-23T13:53:00.000-07:00

The Spartan Diet is obsessed with the qualitative aspect of food.

Most diets, and in fact the whole of our health food culture, focuses on categorical distinctions between different kinds of foods. For example, the idea that olive oil is "good for you" has seeped into mainstream conventional wisdom. But that notion is only potentially true.

The Spartan Diet emphasizes the quality of olive oil, not just the category. Non-organic, refined olive oil, and olive oil heated to an excessive temperature while cooking, isn't all that healthy.

First cold pressed (extra-virgin), low-acidity olive oil is the very best kind, and the only kind we recommend. And the Spartan Diet calls for keeping olive oil below it's "smoke point" -- the temperature at which the oil begins to break down from the heat and becomes less healthful.

This obsession with quality over category is part of the Spartan Diet revolution in how we think about food -- and should be applied to every single food choice you make.

Americans Spend Most On Healthcare, Die Early

2008-10-22T17:03:00.001-07:00

Healthcare is a big topic in the current presidential race, and the debate centers largely around who pays for health insurance. But that's not the biggest problem. Americans spend more than twice as much on healthcare as the number-two national spender, but is ranked 42nd in life expectancy.

We spend a fortune on healthcare, but how many people do you know who have "health"?

The stark truth is that Americans spend their entire lives damaging health with processed junk food, then try to counteract the effects of their food choices with expensive drugs that further damage health.

So while politicians blather endlessly about who's going to pay America's $2.3 trillion annual healthcare bill, nobody's talking about the food that makes us so damned sick.

Do yourself a favor and don't wait for politicians, insurance companies, your doctor or anybody else to take responsibility for your health.

It's up to you.

Meet the Spartans, Part II

2008-10-14T14:22:00.000-07:00

Thucidides asked, "How will the men of the future realize the glory of Sparta from its Ruins?" The answer to that question turns out to be: through reputation.

Famous battles, including the Battle of Thermopylae in which 300 Spartans (and a few hundred allies and slaves) held off the mighty Persian invasion for an entire week, and killed some 22,000 in the process, helped build Sparta's awesome reputation, which lives on to this day.

When we think about the Spartans, we think of military prowess. But this is an outsider's view. It's true that the whole of Spartan society was mobilized for winning battles. But why? What were they fighting for?

A useful way to understand Spartan culture is to focus on the radical transformation of Spartan culture that resulted from radical reforms enacted during the 7th century BC -- new laws and rules created to eliminate corrupting influences that were thought to weaken Spartan citizens. This historically unprecedented innovation was followed by centuries of conservation -- rigidity to maintain the innovations that was the Spartan system.

Most of these rules are attributed to a man named Lycurgus (whose name means "He who brings into being the works of a wolf"), the Father of Classical Sparta, and whose very existence is a point of controversy among historians. Lycurgus appears as one of the 23 lawgivers depicted in marble bas-relief in the chamber of the U.S. House of Representatives in the United States Capitol Building and also on the south wall of the U.S. Supreme Court Building.

Lycurgus' rules for Sparta were codified in a kind of constitution called the Great Rhetra, which served the same broad purposes of the American Constitution: to limit the powers of government, identify the powers of each component of government and build "checks and balances" that would prevent any "branch" from taking over and ruling arbitrarily.

Sparta had two hereditary Kings, both of whom were believed to be direct descendents of Heracles (Hercules), who ruled simultaneously. In an age of absolute monarchy, these Kings were weakened and shackled by institutions and laws that divided real power between citizens and Sparta's elite.

The most powerful institution in Sparta was a group of five Ephors, or "overseers," one representing each of Sparta's five villages. What was unique at the time of the formation of the Spartan system was that these powerful men were elected directly by citizens, and could hold office for one term of one year. The Ephors were so powerful they could actually arrest Kings who broke the law during war. They also controlled a kind of "secret police" called the Krypteia, made up of young Spartan men whose main purpose was to control the massive slave population through the murder of upstarts.

The citizens (defined as adult males in good standing) formed the Assembly, which had the power to approve or reject all major laws proposed by a "Council of Elders" called the Gerousia. This Gerousia contained 28 members over the age of 60, plus the two Spartan kings.

This system of elections, checks and balances, and the degree to which the monarchy was subjected to limitations, was unheard of in the ancient world in the 7th century BC. Lycurgus's government was just one of the many unique features of Spartan society.

Lycurgus decreed that all male children should be taken from their families and placed into a regimented school system designed to teach them military excellence, loyalty, citizenship, hunting, dancing, singing and overall Spartan citizenship and culture. Agoge training started at the age of seven, and didn't end until 29.

One goal of the agoge was to disassociate the child's loyalty from his biological family, and re-associate it with a group formed around the communal dining system, called syssitia or pheiditia. These dining clubs formed the foundation of Spartan cultural life.

In addition to rigorous training, suffering and hardship were deliberately built into the agoge system. Young Spartans were banned from wearing shoes, to toughen their feet. They had to wear one item of clothing all year, which guaranteed they would be too hot in summer and too cold in winter. They slept on reeds from the Eurotas River, which they gathered themselves by hand.

Spartan youth weren't given enough food to survive. If they wanted to avoid starvation, they had to steal. This tradition reveals much about the Spartan mindset. The purpose of starving the young into stealing was above all military preparedness. Stealing food required youths to act in groups, moving silently at night using stealth and cunning, the ability to navigate in the dark and other skills useful in espionage and warfare.

Of course, the Spartans considered theft abhorrent and unethical just like everybody else, but they viewed failure to prepare Spartans for warfare the greater evil. Forcing the young to steal was simply the realization of Spartan priorities.

Spartans believed not only that hunger makes children grow taller, but that familiarity with hunger might someday prove useful during war, and enable soldiers to continue fighting for days without food, while the enemy might give up the fight. In other words, they viewed familiarity with hunger as a strategic advantage. They viewed hunger as one of a whole range of discomforts to be psychologically mastered in the development of soldiers. Others included pain, fear, fatigue and confusion.

If youths were caught stealing, they were publicly whipped -- not for theft, but for failure. Theft was mandatory. But a lack of tactical skill was unforgivable. The punishment itself was interesting. It continued until the boy chose to stop it. So powerful was the Spartan culture of strength and endurance that some boys collapsed or even died because they wanted to demonstrate full "Spartanness," the ability to endure pain and suffering.

The institution of stealing food as military training was so central to Spartan culture that they even held a regular festival to commemorate it. This event, called the festival of Artemis Ortheia, featured Spartan youths making their way through whip-wielding guards in order to steal as many cheeses from an alter as possible.

Meet the Spartans, Part I

2008-10-12T15:00:00.001-07:00

Nearly three millennia ago -- somewhere between 776 BC (also the year of the first Olympic Games) and 710 BC, five little towns on the bank of the Eurotas River on the beautiful and fertile Laconian plain in Western Greece organized themselves into one of the most extraordinary societies in the history of mankind.

They called themselves Dorians (a tribal or quasi-ethnic distinction), Lacedaemonians (the proper name of their "city state"), or Homoioi (translated as "Similars." We know them as Spartans.

Democracy, philosophy, engineering, trade and the arts -- as well as slavery and military conquest -- provided many ordinary Greek citizens with something historically rare -- leisure time, personal freedom and plenty to eat.

Although many Greeks lived happy and fulfilling lives, the threat of war and slavery was ever present. The external threat to Greeks was real and palpable -- defeat in war could mean slavery for the citizenry and the permanent destruction of their beloved culture.

The internal threat from this life of ease -- decadence, laziness, enervation -- was less terrifying but still very real.

Among the many independent but culturally similar Greek city-states, Sparta more than all others linked the internal with the external threats.

The Spartans decided that they would never allow wealth, ease and privilege to weaken them militarily. Freedom for themselves, they reasoned, required victory in battle and control of their entire region.

And victory required physical and mental strength, military skill and supreme discipline. In other words, they understood that their ability to defend themselves against external threats depended on their ability to defend against the internal threat of decadence, excess, laziness and soft living in general.

Unlike their classical contemporaries, the Athenians, the Spartans avoided the building of monuments, temples, grand houses, statues or the cultivation of written works or other records. (In fact, fancy, well-built houses were forbidden by law as a way to enforce equality.) As a result, we know little about ancient Sparta. And most of what we do know comes from rare observation by outsiders.

Sparta is often referred to as "militaristic," probably because non-Spartans were largely banned from observing everyday Spartan life. Outsiders saw Spartans mostly on the field of battle, impressive in their discipline, professionalism and ferocity, and usually victorious.

If you visit modern Sparta, you'll find a few sites where the stone remains of their culture lay scattered about, unprotected and unimpressive. When you compare Sparta's few modest classical-era ruins with the grand spectacle that stills exists in Athens -- the Athenian acropolis alone holds structures that by any measure far exceed the quantity or quality of all known Spartan ruins -- you may be forgiven for incredulity to learn that at its height, Sparta controlled more than three times the territory of Athens.