What if you drank only lukewarm raw milk, and didn’t eat anything else?

Former Home on the Range agister, raw milk advocate, and speaker at the recent Vancouver conference “Fresh Milk, Food Politics”, Alice Jongerden, has decided to go on a milk fast. It seems that a milk fast is a diet in which you drink raw milk, but don’t eat anything. Simple enough. She’s been on the fast for a few days now, and sends this progress report to the Bovine:

Author Alice Jongerden, photo by Shannon Mendes, from Vanmag.com. Original caption  “Alice Jongerden’s Home on the Range Dairy raises its herd on the back 40 of a derelict farmhouse in Chilliwack. From there, the unpasteurized milk and other dairy products travel to depots around the Lower Mainland…” Click image to go to the October 2010 Vancouver magazine article about Alice’s backstory.

I recently read an article about a Raw Milk Fast, and was reminded of a conversation I had quite some time ago, from a lady who often enjoys her raw milk fast, her longest one being 45 days . I thought to myself…Yes, that is what I should do. A Raw Milk Fast!

Being constantly surrounded with raw milk joy and controversy, it seemed a logical step to take.

I love milk, but I seriously wondered if I could really enjoy having ONLY milk for a week or two or three. I wasn’t sure if I could even make it through one day.

In addition, usually I like my milk cold. But cold milk can be hard on digestion. So if I was going to start a milk fast, I knew that I had to get used to the idea of drinking lukewarm milk.

Pink ribbon products… and GMOs

From Raine Saunders, at Agriculture Society:

“Before the clock runs out on this month’s breast cancer and GMO awareness, I’d like to point out some facts that may not be obvious to some consumers.

No doubt you’ve seen the pink ribbons all over food labels in the grocery store or on fast food products like KFC.  These labels are easy to spot on packages, cups, cans, boxes, and other containers of many foods and beverages.

But there’s something else to notice too – a majority of these foods bearing the pink ribbon for cancer awareness are full of harmful, toxic ingredients. Don’t believe me? Just pick up one of these food products and have a look.

Interview with “Wheat Belly” author

From Tom Naughton, on the Fat Head blog:

“You all (or y’all, as we say around these parts) submitted so many good questions for Wheat Belly author Dr. William Davis, we decided to make this a two-part Q & A.  We’ll probably have part two ready early next week.

Fat Head: You’re a cardiologist by profession, and yet you just wrote an in-depth book about the negative health effects of consuming wheat.  How did wheat end up on your radar?  What first made you suspect wheat might be behind many of our modern health problems?

Dr. Davis: It started several years ago when I asked patients in my office to consider eliminating all wheat from their diet. I did this because of some very simple logic: If foods made from wheat raise blood sugar higher than nearly all other foods (due to its high-glycemic index), including table sugar, then removing wheat should reduce blood sugar. I was concerned about high blood sugar since around 80% of the people coming to my office had diabetes, pre-diabetes, or what I call “pre-pre-diabetes.” In short, the vast majority of people showed abnormal metabolic markers.

Diet for a smaller planetary population?

From Concerned Citizen, on the Lyme Disease Sentinel blog:

“We are being told by government to eat low fat, low salt,high grain, low or NO meat and other animal products. We are being conditioned to think that animal foods are bad for us and that an unbalanced diet of mainly vegetables and grains is what we must eat for optimal health. It is crucial to note that indigenous groups throughout history thrived on unrefiined salt, organ meats,animal products,berries, insects, roots and tubers and some greens.

“11 bananas for a snack” — a glimpse into the world of vegan bodybuilding

From Mary Pilon, in the New York Times:

HUNTSVILLE, Ala. — Jimi Sitko gets up at 4 most mornings, works out two to four hours a day and can bench-press nearly twice his weight. He has a shaved head and a brightly colored tattoo on his left arm, and he can easily be mistaken for a Marine separated from his platoon.

Competitors like Jimi Sitko are forging a distinctive subculture of antibeef beefcakes who hope to change more of their competitors’ eating habits.

His apartment is filled with medals and trophies from bodybuilding competitions, snapshots of his tanned, rippled physique in full flex. His uniform is an assortment of sweat pants and hoodies, which he occasionally lifts when his abs look particularly fierce.

Minding your Mitochondria — how Dr. Terry Wahls cured her MS through diet

From Cryptogon.com:

“This is one of the most astonishing videos that I have ever seen. Please consider sharing this through your networks. Dr. Terry Wahls learned how to properly fuel her body. Using the lessons she learned at the subcellular level, she used diet to cure her MS and get out of her wheelchair.”

Internal documents show USDA diet guidelines panel dominated by group sponsored by big food companies

From Kimberly Hartke:

Washington, DC–December 15, 2011–Under pressure from the Healthy Nation Coalition, the USDA recently revealed the identities of the 2010 Dietary Guidelines “Independent Scientific Review Panel,” which is credited with peer-reviewing the Guidelines to ensure they are based on the preponderance of the scientific evidence available. Seven out of the eight panel members are Registered Dietitians (RDs), chosen according to the USDA, “for their knowledge in nutrition communication and dietary guidance.”

At the same time, RDs across America are reeling from the news that the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) will not reimburse them to provide intensive behavioral counseling for obesity. While the Federal government appears to be relying on RDs as experts in the midst of America’s obesity crisis, it doesn’t want to pay them to help people lose weight.  This news comes as the American Dietetic Association (ADA)—the professional organization for RDs—is under scrutiny for its ties to food and pharmaceutical industries.

Butter shortage in Norway blamed on recent “fad” for high-fat, low-carb diets

From the Huffington Post:

“…Reuters reported that a diet craze involving low carbs and high fat is partially to blame for a butter shortage in the European nation, which will likely spell trouble as the holiday season fast approaches.

“Sales all of a sudden just soared, 20 percent in October then 30 percent in November,” Lars Galtung, the head of communications at TINE, Norway’s biggest farmer-owned cooperative, told Reuters.

Now, the ingredient is being sold on Norway’s leading auction website for $13 for a 250-gram piece, Reuters reported, which is about four times higher than its normal price.

Lifestyle and diet affect jaw size, shape

What’s missing in this picture is any reference to the pioneering work of Weston A. Price on the relation between diet and jaw formation. Here’s the story, from Clare Pain, at ABC Science in Australia:

Click image to go to ABC Science story

“Lifestyle is known to affect many aspects of health but now a UK anthropologist says it could even change the shape of our jaws.

Dr Noreen von Cramon-Taubadel of the University of Kent reports her findings in this week’s edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

She made detailed measurements of the skulls and jaw-bones (mandibles) of nearly 300 individuals from 11 different subsistence cultures – some from hunter-gatherer societies and some from societies with primitive agriculture.

The measurements were of skulls in museum collections, which were from people who lived in the past couple of thousand years.

“These people are likely to be analogous to people living today,” says Cramon-Taubadel.

Paleo diet — early man goes out to eat

From Alesh Houdek, in The Atlantic:

Image: Lord Jim/flickr via The Atlantic. I'd say that looks like a photo of street art by Banksy.

“The idea of the Paleo diet has been around for decades, but it’s really taken off over the last couple of years, with a slew of books, blogs, and a prominent podcast espousing its virtues.

And no wonder—it has a compelling sales pitch. It’s based on the idea that while humans have been eating for approximately 200,000 years, we’ve been farming for only about the last 10,000 or so.