Raising grass fed beef cattle reduces our carbon foot print. Now, I’m not one for recycling and ethanol. But, I could do my part this way. According to Eliot Coleman, who wrote the “bible of organic vegetable farming,” raising cattle the way they evolved to eat–that is by eating grass–causes a net reduction in green house gases, by strengthening ecosystems.
It works like this: grass is a perennial. Rotate cattle and other ruminants across pastures full of it, and the animals’ grazing will cut the blades — which spurs new growth — while their trampling helps work manure and other decaying organic matter into the soil, turning it into rich humus. The plant’s roots also help maintain soil health by retaining water and microbes. And healthy soil keeps carbon dioxide underground and out of the atmosphere.
What’s the pay-off for more grass-fed beef?
Collins goes even further. “With proper management, pastoralists, ranchers and farmers could achieve a 2% increase in soil-carbon levels on existing agricultural, grazing and desert lands over the next two decades,” he estimates. Some researchers hypothesize that just a 1% increase (over, admittedly, vast acreages) could be enough to capture the total equivalent of the world’s greenhouse-gas emissions.
That’s just another blow to the meat haters. And another point for living in tune with your genetics. Its not just good for your plate and for the cow, but it is also good for the environment. Maybe we’ll live to see the day when a chunk of the money given to corn farmers will be given to support grass-fed cows.
New York City’s new war on salt is reminiscent of its pioneer smoking ban, decision to regulate trans-fats in restaurants, and mandatory posting of calorie content. It’s an ambitious initiative by our admittedly salt-aholic mayor to coax a voluntary 25 percent reduction in salt content in our food over the next five years.
Again we have a great example of cause and correlation being confused.
Hypertension, along with obesity, diabetes, cancer, acne, and a host of other maladies are part of a group of disorders generally called metabolic disorder. The hallmark of metabolic disorder is “hyperinsulinemia,” or chronically high levels of the hormone insulin.
But it is always important to realize that as with most things in life, hypertension is a multi-causal event.
From my reading of Good Calories, Bad Calories—which is probably the best summation of dietary science you can find for under $20—chronically high insulin, and by extension, consumption of refined carbohydrates are a cause. Chronic stress is another big cause, but that is a very complicated mechanism. Here’s how the carbohydrate hypothesis explains hypertension:
Salt causes the body to retain water, but the kidneys generally cause the body expel salt via urine. However, in the case of high insulin, the body doesn’t expel salt via the kidneys. Instead, it retains salt, and thus the higher levels of water in the body. The high level of water in the body is what causes hypertension. To add insult to injury, chronically high insulin stimulates the sympathetic nervous system to activate our “fight or flight” response.
Thus, once again, we see that refined carbs and Neolithic junk food serve to gum up the human body’s sensitive homeostatic system to our detriment.
If you’ve ever gone paleo, or tried Atkins or the Zone, you’ve experienced this initial loss in retained water. It’s not uncommon to hear (usually unfit) people deride junk food restriction by saying “that’s just water weight.” Yeah. That’s the point.
Salt isn’t paleo, and too much is problematic for reasons other than blood pressure, but an information campaign to dispell the myth of the food pyramid would do much more to improve New Yorkers’ health.
A random thought for the day, if someone were to play me in a movie, I would vote for Michael Cera. Now, my post.
So, as some you may know I went to Wellesley College. And, I LOVED Wellesley College. It was an intellectual boot camp. Now, I may not be the poster girl for Wellesley given that I am an overweight blogger who is on unemployment, but I am blessed to keep in regular touch with wicked smart, accomplished women.
My friend Adrienne (who was a French major and I forgive her for that) who is a professor down south and very much a self identified Black woman (capital B), has taken to reading my nonsense regularly. Imagine my surprise when this intellectual, stable, professional woman actually takes me seriously and writes to me about doing CrossFit and that my posts are helpful…
Anyway, I want to share a note I received from Adrienne after a phone call we had this week. While both of us of not anthropologists, we got to talking about the Paleo diet. And, well this is what happens after two Wellesley girls start talking diets, we get all intellectual and shit. Adrienne writes:
Before I go to bed, I want to say thank you for introducing me to CrossFit. I’m going to to give it a try, but more importantly just hearing your enthusiasm gives me hope.
I wanted to say something more about the Paleo Diet and how I feel about evolution and migration. The paleolithic period is prehistoric and as much as anthropology has told, there is still so much we don’t know. What we do know is that this is the period of time when Hominids (I think we were called that by then) started moving around the world.
Many tens of thousands of years have passed since then. And if our ancestors adapted so differently, in ways that are visible to us now, it only makes sense that we may have adapted in ways that are invisible to us.
For instance, Asians, Native Americans, and blacks are lactose intolerant, and blacks (the group I know best) tend to grow strong bones without consuming a lot of calcium through milk. White women are prone to osteoporosis and tend not to be lactose intolerant. Also, Sickle Cell is an adaptation that protects blacks from malaria, but can still kill us. Whites don’t have Sickle Cell. In our attempt to become colorblind (which I think is completely ridiculous), we forget that there are real differences that need to be acknowledged and respected.
In all of these years struggling with my weight , I have come to the conclusion that any diet promoted widely in the U.S. is missing something for me. I can’t put my finger on it.
I’ve been doing my own bit of research into where I came from prior to the most recent “migration”. I think there may be some answers there for me. In the meantime, I have had to acknowledge that my people–in the most immediate past–were incredibly active people who worked very hard with their bodies on very few calories. I have to find something that makes me work hard because the basic calories in/calories out equation isn’t going to work for me; nor, to put a fine point on it, is a diet based on only part of our evolutionary past that ignores the migration and the variation in our evolutionary pathways sufficient information that informs a wide based dietary program.
I don’t mean to get preachy, but the minute I read about the Paleo Diet much of this occurred to me. Anthropology is complex, and I’m sure I’ve missed something crucial, but I think there is support for my perspective.
When I was 12, I went to Camp Academy at Babson College. I was in a group that we so saucily named the Foxy Girls. I was by no means a fox at 12. I wore Sally Jesse Raphael red coke bottle glasses.
At Camp Academy, a tween’s social acceptability index was contingent on your daily participation in gymnastics. I was a mature looking 12 year old (which has worked out well b/c even though I hated being “developed” at a young age, at this point in my life people always think I’m in my 20’s). Gymnastics. Girls could do cartwheels, splits, back handed flips and anything else that prepared most of these young sluts to infamy with Joe Francis ( I jest…sort of).
Me. I could tumble. Yep, tumble. On a great day, I could do a backwards somersault. My cart wheels on the front lawn made the neighborhood dogs cry.
So, in my infinite quest to become a CrossFitter, I was musing with Ben and a bunch of other CF coaches, just how does a new CrossFitter do a handstand. I have a great sample of responses (another post) of some great CF coaches approach to the hand stand. Strangely, I was talking to my buddy Marcus at CrossFit Oahu, he texted his buddy, Jeff Tucker, unbeknownst to me, and I get a call from a TUCKER!!!
Jeff Tucker is a perfect Texan gentleman and quite humorous. I immediately thanked him. We talked about a half hour on the importance of gymnastics for athletes of all ages. Unfortunately, Tucker noted that similar to the US, when he has done certifications in the England and Ireland, gymnastics has befallen a similar fate: most grade schools and high school have nixed gymnastics all together from the curriculum; let alone proficiency in gymnastics. Tucker states:
The ability to move one’s body weight effortlessly and with confidence will transfer in strengths across the board in your training and daily life. My personal experience bears this out. Throughout my twenty years of service with the Fort Worth (Texas) Fire Department I had one constant on my mind; I knew I was more agile, stronger, and a more confident firefighter than those I worked with simply because I had been trained as a gymnast. I knew my body’s limitations and strengths as I was trained in my youth to use my entire body and to do so with strength, speed, endurance, and utmost control.
I asked Tucker straight to the point, how do I get my ass at 35 to do a handstand. Tucker’s response (and mind you Tucker is so cool, he is calling me at 9 p.m. when he is leaving for Japan the very next a.m.):
Amanda, inversion for some can be terrifying for the client and an unwatchful coach. Especially, with those that I refer to as the lost generation of play – you know those folks who never even tried to get upside down on anything like branches, jungle gyms, rings, or headstands… or those who don’t take cues well to protect cervical spines.
I take great care baby stepping them into inversion, on apparatus or the ground and I have had many adults shake in there shoes of the mere thought of doing a handstand. I make sure there is no past history to deal with first – like i was dropped once by a spotter. Old memories like getting dropped on the head stay with many folks and there will be demons to kill.
I also check kinesthetic awareness for the client to make sure they have body awareness and strength to perform such moves. Strength is key for such moves and needs to be developed for such movements. Once we are comfortable we go toward inversion in many ways and with many scales toward safety.
Piked body positions inverted work with feet on elevated platforms like tires or ply boxes, as does headstand drills with elbows on knees for time and balance, then progressed into the common headstand inversion for time and balance, handstands using a spotter or a wall for time, handstand push ups with assistance power bands and spotters, – I also slow down the lunge position for the required kick up into a HS… this is a major part of my cert…
But with all of these scales – much needs to be developed in concert – such as tight core, tight body vertical forms, how to maintain active shoulders, what is balance, head positions for good vertical form.
AB: Are you 100% sure I can do a handstand, Jeff?
JT: Yes. I will personally coach you through it if we meet up at a certification. ( I will hold you to that, Tucker!)
