Springhole.net Blog

High Blood Pressure? 10 Food Swaps to Bring it Down

Great article. Everyone should follow its advice, and not just because of the salt.

Here you are: your very own Bingo card containing a selection of poorly-informed and/or downright pathetic objections to low-carb diets. Have fun!

The human stomach releases more acid when meat is consumed.

Sounds like an adaptation to meat-eating to me…

I just found a great video about Henri VIII’s terrifying 5000 calorie-a-day-diet.

Aside from eating an insane amount of food overall, he also, as royalty did in that day, ate insane amounts of white bread and drank sugared wine. No wonder the guy was so fat.

(The other part of his liquid intake comprised of ale, which of course isn’t a very healthy way to go, either.)

Henry VIII also didn’t eat vegetables: the Tudor family didn’t go for that kind of thing, believing they were indigestible.

If Henry VIII had cut out the sugar and white flour and had eaten that nasty peasant food called “vegetables” instead, he probably wouldn’t have been able to stuff himself like he did. Sugar/white flour tends to mess up your appetite, making you feel hungry when you shouldn’t. And not only does it mess up your appetite, it just plain messes you up.

Okay, okay, just to clarify, I don’t have a problem with vegetarians or vegans. If you want to try a veg*n diet, fine. If it works for you, then congratulations.

What I have a problem with are veg*ns who subscribe to utter nonsense (humans ARE natural omnivores – the only way you can believe otherwise is with a heckuva lot of cherry picking) or insist that they are soooo healthy when they are essentially walking skeletons with dry, brittle hair that they can’t grow below the shoulders.

Anyway, my sister was reading around the Internetz when she came across an interesting blog, Mark’s Daily Apple. Mark posted an interesting story about a week-long vegan party he attended. Here’s a summation of the good bits.

A lecture was given by a long-time vegan proponent, Dr. McDougall. McDougall gave a lecture on the evils of meat and most soy (can’t argue with that one, actually), and apparently implied that when you eat vegetarian, you can eat as much as you want.

Funny stuff indeed, Mark! Most of us low-carbers know that grains and starches aren’t particularly filling. It’s easy to overfeed yourself on corn or bread, but quite difficult to do the same with meat. Few people appreciate that meat and fat is one of the best appetite suppressants there is.

Anyway, once the lecture was over, the people went for the food, which was probably some of the most pathetic vegan fare you could imagine. Loads and loads of grains, a few piddling vegetables, a “salad” of chopped Romaine lettuce, and no dressing. The only fat Mark could find was in a guacamole spread. Fresh fruit was available, which is a good thing, but the drinks turned out to be oversweetened fruit drinks. Yuck!

Now, here’s where it gets really lawl-worthy: these people, as far as Mark could tell, were not healthy. He watched as overweight people piled their plates high with grains and filled their cups with sugary juice. Sometimes they went back for seconds. I agree with Mark: This is a type-2 diabetes epidemic in the making.

Mark observed that people following the McDougall program for years didn’t look too healthy, either. They were thin, yes, but they had no muscle to speak of. They were mainly bones, a bit of fat, and skin.

A 62-year-old triathlete competitor who’d been on the McDougall program for 15 years told Mark that he was a fool to eat meat and that he should give the program a try. Mark was not impressed by her lack of muscle mass and overall unhealthy appearance.

Remember the ol’ vegan question: “Have you ever actually seen someone with a protein deficiency?” Well, it sure looks like Mark has!

You can read the full blog post here.

Really, vegans can be so funny. They often claim that meat is an unnatural addition to the human diet, that our bodies just aren’t cut out to handle all that protein/fat/whatever, and that’s why we’re dying left and right of all these horrible modern diseases. Yet they pile their plates high with heaping helpings of tubers, grains, and legumes which were not in the human diet in any significant amount until the agricultural revolution!

They yarp on about how toxic animal foods our to our poor little herbivorous bodies and that if we eat raw meat we shall surely die (actually, we don’t – we’re fully capable of eating raw meat unless it’s contaminated), merrily ignoring the fact that the plant foods they depend on contain toxins which are dangerous unless cooked out.

Silly, silly people. Let’s hope they learn before it’s too late.

I’ve been saying for awhile that no matter what anyone tells you, there is no One True Diet for humanity. Sure, there might be a One True Diet for you, but your OTD might not be your neighbor’s or mother-in-law’s OTD.

It turns out that Dr. Mercola has been pushing “nutritional typing” – that is, finding the diet that works for you and going with that.

Nutritional Typing – Eat the Right Food for You

And another interesting discovery I’ve made is the effect of different fruits on different peoples’ blood sugar.

Mrs. Obama is putting in an organic garden on the White House lawn.

Just… wow! What a way to be a great influence on the country! You’re now my favorite First Lady ever! Keep being awesome, okay?

And now, some links for the rest of us!

Mother Earth News
Organic Gardening Tips
Organic Gardening Guru

Today I was reading Treehugger when I found an article on incorporating more vegetables into one’s diet.  It looked interesting – and it was.  What I found blew me away… in a good way!  Here’s a summary of some of their advice:

-Try making tasty stir fries, curries, and vegetable soups.

-Make your salad more than lettuce.

-Don’t be afraid to try new vegetables or to re-try the ones you didn’t like as a child.

-Your protein should take up approximately 1/3rd of your plate.

This is exactly what I’ve been doing on Atkins, and what I would recommend to anyone starting a low-carb diet!  Many people freak out upon hearing the words "low carb," having been brainwashed by the media into thinking that it’s all about steak, bacon, cheese and butter.  It’s not!  Any healthy low-carb diet includes plenty of vegetables, low-sugar fruits, nuts, and legumes.  Sure, we don’t eat many of the sweeter or more starchy stuff, but let’s face it – humans spent millenia without much in the way of bread, potatoes, or bananas, and they did just fine.

It’s been my experience that most people who claim to dislike vegetables never had them prepared properly.  Sure, it’s unlikely that anyone will like every vegetable, but I suspect that many of you veggie-haters would be pleasantly surprised if you had them prepared properly.  I have a few salad-type recipes here, and there are many more to be found if you engage your Google-Fu.

Viva la veggies!

Cult Diet? What…?
A ‘cult diet’ is basically a search for better health gone wrong: rather than the scientific approach such a journey must have, it follows a quasi-religious path. If something goes wrong, your diet is never to blame; you are. You MUST follow this diet; all others are somehow inferior.

This is a list of symptoms to watch out for. Thanks to Beyond Vegetarian and Orange Papers for information and inspiration.

(more…)

As of late we have been encouraged to replace our children’s soft drinks with juice. However, this may not be such a wise decision.

A 12-ounce serving of Coca Cola has 30 carbohydrates. Different sodas have different amounts of sugar, but it’s usually pretty close to this.

Going to NutritionData.com, we find that grapefruit and orange juice has 36g of carbohydrates in twelve ounces. Of course, these are low-glycemic sugars, and therefore are better on your body.

Apple juice comes up again at 36 grams of carbohydrates per twelve ounce serving. Apples are NOT low-glycemic.

Grape juice comes in at a whopping 48 grams. Whoa nelly!

For our apple juice, we are going to use the data for Mott’s 100% apple juice. NutritionData.com doesn’t have it, so we’ll get it from the site. According to Mott’s, a serving is eight ounces – less than a twelve-ounce serving of soda. For eight ounces you have 29 carbs. Okay, let’s divide that by eight… we get 3.625. Okay… multiply that by twelve and you get 43.5. Oy!

Then there are pseudo-juices like Hi-C and Sunny Delight. These add up to 33 and 43.5, respectively.

Here’s what we’ve got:

12 ounces of Coca-Cola: 30g carbohydrates
12 ounces of Orange/Grapefruit Juice: 36g carbohydrates
12 ounces of Apple Juice: 43.5g carbohydrates
12 ounces of Grape Juice: 48g carbohydrates
12 ounces of Sunny Delight: 43.5g carbohydrates
12 ounces of Hi-C: 33g carbohydrates

I’m floored – are you?

It seems that if you’re going to give your child juice, you might as well give them a can of sugary soda and a vitamin pill.