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Cambridging, graveyards, poets & lots of fibre

Last weekend I went on a fascinating, moving and timely tour of four Jewish cemeteries, which Tamar Yoseloff led, photographed and blogged here. I have a few photos of my own to contribute.

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My last reading in the UK was on Tuesday in Cambridge. I enjoyed a day of wandering in town, which I hadn’t properly done or perhaps not for ages. I poked my nose into a couple of galleries and had a look at the Ian Hamilton Finlay show at Kettle’s Yard, but his work leaves me a bit cold. Though I enjoyed a few pieces – Catameringue was my absolute favourite – I either wasn’t in the right mood for it or it’s just not my thing. I found more to wonder over at Primavera, which stocks a huge and stunning selection of contemporary British jewellery, art and craft. I missed the reportedly wonderful show at the Fitzwilliam, but one cannot be everywhere at the right time. I did find myself 2015JanCambridgePintShopPorkBellyin the right place for lunch though: The Pint Shop was pleasant and delicious. I had the pork belly with Heaven & Earth (it was sat on a disc of black pudding and surrounded by pleasingly tart stewed apple) and washed it down with a modest little glass of Sirens chocolate porter, which was suitably dark and complex and worked well with the pork.

The CB1 Poetry venue has changed since my last appearance there some years ago, and is currently at the Gonville Hotel. The granting agency requires the series to offer disabled access, which unfortunately narrows the options and cuts the charm of available spaces. Still, the organizers have done their best to soften the corporate feel of the room, and aside from a bit of spillage from the Rotarians meeting next door, it was a comfortable and well equipped reading space. There were some good readings from the floor before Rebecca Perry and I took the stage. Rebecca’s work was great – varied, funny, edgy and moving. She works a lot with found poems and deconstructions. We had a good natter on the train back to London and I look forward to having a closer read of her first collection, Beauty/Beauty, when I have time to catch my breath.

And I’ve been walking around London getting a few last views in before I leave next week.

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The last couple of days have involved dining out – lunch in Brixton with poet pals at a restaurant I’ve undertaken not to discuss but whose very interesting work is described here, and lunch in Whitstable with Kent poet Sue Rose and Canadian poet/novelist Steve Noyes. And… I attended a British Nutrition Foundation half day seminar on fibre research, and have discussed that in more detail at my nutrition blog, Go Local Nutrition.

Teeth, nails, tongue, skin

Mark Schauss gave a couple of interesting talks. His research into nutrition and cognitive decline was comprehensive and detailed. One of his big messages was on the consistency he sees in research findings about the role of the two most heavily consumed excitotoxins (MSG and aspartame) in plaque development in Alzheimer’s. If you eat processed or packaged foods, both of these are hard to avoid since manufacturers play shell games with the naming. For MSG, see the comprehensive list from Truth In Labeling. For Aspartame, beware NutraSweet of course, as well as its new name, AminoSweet. He repeated an idea I’ve yet to see proven, that artificial sweeteners cause an insulin response similar to ingesting sugars, and lead as surely to insulin resistance and type 2 diabetes. I think there are lots of good reasons to stay away from them, but I await compelling evidence for this one. I do appreciate his main message thought, a plea for more attention paid to the gut microbiome: the more artificial the diet, the worse the gut, and a bad gut means poor communication along the gut-brain axis. Which means poor cognitive function. And, he added, exercise is the best thing you can do to keep the mind active.

Kelp, acid-alkaline, omnivorous environmentalism & brain food

KelpPeopleIt is possible to leave a nutrition conference freaked out about the state of the world, and in dire need of a good remineralizing kelp treatment. But ditto an environmental (literature) conference or just about any other kind of conference nowadays I suppose. Still, we must make the best of where we are, so a nutrition conference is a good place to take in ideas about both cautions and actions to get our bodies through. (And to get a kelp treatment if that will help you in the meantime.)

Chris Kresser has evoked much hand-wringing and teeth-gnashing in his cogently-argued dissection of the acid-alkaline theory, which has been the foundation of much nutritional training over recent decades. The theory holds that: (1) the foods we eat leave behind an ‘ash’ after they are metabolized, and this ash can be acid or alkaline; (2) we should eat more alkaline foods than acid foods, so that we end up with an overall alkaline load on our body, making us less vulnerable to conditions such as cancer and osteoporosis; and (3) that the pH of our blood can be determined by testing pH strips in our saliva or urine.

It is worth noting that although there is little agreement on which foods are acid and which alkaline (a red flag there?) the alkaline lists tend to heavy on fruits and vegetables, while acid foods include animal products, so the theory is a particular favourite with those who advocate vegetarian or vegan diets. And those would emphatically not be people attending a Weston A. Price conference (poles apart: see the veg view vs the WAPF view).

Kresser allows that foods do metabolize into ash, but dismisses the idea that what we eat affects our blood pH (except in metabolic disorders such as ketoacidosis, aka DKA, not to be confused with ketosis). And although the pH of saliva and urine may indeed be altered by diet, their pH has nothing to do with blood pH, which is regulated by the kidneys. He suggests that health improvements may follow any improvement in diet (and it’s pretty easy to work out what those are – fresh, whole foods vs refined carbs) rather than being caused by acidity or alkalinity of what’s been consumed.

For the full explanation, I recommend reading Kresser’s two-part article on the subject. He was, inevitably, asked why – if it is so obviously flawed – the theory is still taught and promoted, and he replied that it takes time for science to nudge belief into change. And not least when there are vested interests at work. He quoted Upton Sinclair: “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”

Speaking of (former) vegans, Lierre Keith (The Vegetarian Myth) revealed that her talk last weekend was the first she’d done that had not inspired pre-event death threats. She was there to make an impassioned plea for environmental responsibility, a cause that should straddle, but instead divides, vegetarian from omnivore. She described human agriculture as the “death of the living world” – its destruction of ecosystems and soil fertility, the biological corners cut to improve financial returns on large scale production, and the misuse of farmland to grow crops for factory farming or fuel.

When you buy a soyburger, she observed, “you’re actually giving money to the people causing the problem.” In the Weston A Price way, she referred to the health of traditional peoples as proof of the damage we’ve done to modern bodies: how  European explorers noticed the good health of the populations they encountered, and how poor health inevitably follows modernization of our diets. “Cancer, like insanity, spreads with civilization” (Stanislas Tanchou)

Mark Schauss gave a couple of interesting talks. His research into nutrition and cognitive decline was comprehensive and detailed. One of his big messages was on the consistency he sees in research findings about the role of the two most heavily consumed excitotoxins (MSG and aspartame) in plaque development in Alzheimer’s. Both of these are hard to avoid if you eat processed or packaged foods, since manufacturers play shell games with the naming. For MSG, see the comprehensive list from Truth In Labeling. For Aspartame, beware NutraSweet of course, as well as its new name, AminoSweet.

He repeated an idea I’ve yet to see proven, that artificial sweeteners cause an insulin response similar to ingesting sugars, and lead as surely to insulin resistance and type 2 diabetes. While I think there are lots of good reasons to stay away from artificial sweeteners, I await compelling evidence for this one.

Few could argue with his main message though: the more artificial the diet, the worse the gut, and a bad gut means poor communication along the gut-brain axis. Which means poor cognitive function. And of course, daily exercise is the first best thing you can do to keep your mind fit and healthy.

Nourishing Indiana

StairwellHere in the curious world of the conference hotel, if you can find the stairs, they won’t necessarily take you where you want to go. And they are bleak enough to discourage the faint-hearted. I enjoyed a good fifteen minute cardio workout yesterday, travelling with a well-intentioned Marriott employee who tried in vain to help me find the elusive “up-stairs” to get one floor above.

Never mind, there are plenty of long hallways to cover finding my way from FridayDinnerroom to meal to conference at the 51st instance of the Weston A Price annual conference in Indianapolis, where we “Focus on Food”. Which is invariably excellent and plentiful at these conferences. Here’s the happy queue at last night’s turkey dinner – birds donated by Fields of Athenry Farm (the farmers and producers are always credited in the menus found in our programs) and replete with several ferments (sauerkraut, fermented cranberry relish, sourdough bread, fermented herbal tea) and grass-fed butter.

Yesterday’s sessions were mostly all-day affairs. I spent most of mine fiercely concentrating on the rapid-fire thoughts and slides of Stephanie Seneff, whose talk covered Pesticides, Antibiotics, Vaccines & Pharmaceuticals at dizzying speed (see her web page to download her slides, as well as find links to  her research).

She walked us through research papers a-plenty to illustrate her points. She is a strong advocate of sulfur – it’s one of the least discussed yet most common mineral in the body after calcium and phosphorus and plays a huge role in amino acid development (essential, in short, for protein in the body). The American population tends to be deficient in it (esp. vegetarians and those on low protein diets), and chronic acetaminophen (Tylenol) use further depletes sulfate.

Glyphosate (Roundup) is implicated in many conditions, contrary to studies which claim it to be harmless. For licensing purposes, glyphosate is only tested in isolation, but Roundup contains many other ingredients designed to enhance its effects (up to 1000x); and of course it’s only studied for 90 days, whereas its health effects are cumulative. Seneff had tracked some interesting correlations: glyphosate use tracks closely with autism rates, anemia, sleep disorders, breast cancer rates, kidney disease and more.

Glyphosate has been found in breast milk, urine and water. That it hasn’t been found sooner is probably a product of the few labs willing to test for it.

Seneff explained that the reason glyphosate affects human health is its effect on beneficial gut bacteria, which serve a protective role in the body. Glyphosate blocks the production of tyrosine, tryptophan, and phenylalanine – three essential amino acids formed on the shikimate pathway. This pathway, the argument goes, “is only found in plants and microorganisms, never in humans” – however, it is found in our gut bacteria, which help to synthesize amino acids. Glyphosate also inhibits cytochrome P450 (CYP) enzymes which in humans help to break down toxins.

The best way to avoid glyphosate is to eat certified organic foods, including many sulfur-containing foods (and have epsom salt baths – which allows you to absorb sulfur and magnesium through your skin).

She had a lot to say about statins as well – I strongly recommend anyone taking these have a look at her slides and do their own research. The gist was that they may protect you from heart attacks, but they will cause heart failure – a long and limiting way to go – as well as weakening many other body systems.

I ended yesterday with a talk by naturopath Louisa Williams, who spoke about antibiotic-resistant bacteria. She believes these to be causing many chronic disorders (pain, anxiety, depression, fatigue, movement disorders, memory loss, constipation/diarrhea) and contributing to others (cancer, Crohn’s meningitis, multiple sclerosis, Parkinson’s, Pertussis, Sarcoidosis, Lyme’s…) . The gist is that antibiotic over-use has created resistant bacteria, which then mutate into cell wall defective (CWD) bacteria. These lack the structure that allows antibiotics and our own immune systems to recognize and deal with them.

Diagnosis is difficult. Treatment includes the usual detox protocols (removing environmental and dietary toxins); stop ‘feeding the fire’ by taking antibiotics except for acute conditions (even over-using microbial oils such as oregano will lead to problems); seek constitutional homeopathy remedies; and heal the gut with plant polysaccharides (mannose – though she felt the amounts needed exceeded what could be obtained through diet) and special probiotics.

Food and science

I’ve been grappling with the ins and outs of food for some years now, and my current concerns about how we should be eating for the health of the planet and ourselves have led me into some interesting places.

Recently I’ve been trying to understand who to believe in this “studies have shown” game. I thought Ben Goldacre cracked it for me in his TED talk about publication bias. There is another skeleton in the cupboard of health research though, and that of course is the question of vested interests.

A recent study on high protein diets and aging suggests (well, actually shouts) that high protein diets (especially animal foods) in middle age are dangerous, but as soon as you turn the corner to 65, they are necessary. In the interesting detail found in the paper’s funding, we can see that one of the named authors, Valter D. Longo, has equity interest in L-Nutra, a company that develops “medical food”. This medical food, it should not surprise us to learn, is a plant-based meal substitute, so there is a whiff of “follow the money” in the study’s conclusions. He appears to be the study’s designer (most? of the co-authors are his students)

Zoë Harcombe has analyzed this study and given a thoughtful assessment of its strengths and weaknesses. It’s a headline grabbing concept, she says, but the study doesn’t actually prove its case. She’s going to run the mortality numbers herself and see what they show.

A larger world

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Today’s class was about pediatric nutrition, and inevitably, we entered into discussions about obesity: how malnourished mothers give birth to the same problems in their babies as did those in the Dutch Famine Birth Cohort Study. That malnourishment nowadays is, of course, not necessarily tied to a lack of food, but to a lack of nutrients, which produces babies with impaired cognitive, functional and immune systems. The children are likely, like those in the Dutch study, to struggle with a life-long legacy of neural tube defects, schizophrenia, infertility, cancer, cardiovascular disease, respiratory dysfunctions, and obesity. And the issues persist into subsequent generations: their own children are likely to have shorter lives than normal.

Now that obesity rates have reached 1 billion in the developing world, it was timely to come upon Way Beyond Weight, a Brazilian documentary looking at obesity in children. Thanks to globalization of junk food, the story was much the same in Brazil as it would have been anywhere in the long-industrialized world.

The lives of these lonely overweight youngsters are already blighted by illnesses they are not old enough to understand or manage. The grim little titles that identify the conditions of the children interviewed – diabetes, thrombosis, arthritis and high cholesterol – hang in the memory as we witness their food choices: sodas, chocolate, chips, juice and cookies. One child confesses how often she fails to test her blood sugar and inject herself with insulin; another has a full-blown tantrum until his worn parents hand over the package of chips he’s after. Most are unable to identify common vegetables, but are experts in naming brands of junk food and directing their parents’ “food” buying patterns. McDonald’s and Nestle take a bow, showing the damage they can inflict through promotional toys and floating junk food supermarkets respectively.

Sugar content of infant formula Farinha Lactea
Sugar content of infant formula Farinha Lactea

The proud, loving and anguished parents are as bewildered as their offspring: they wean their babies early and switch to high-sugar infant formula, misread nutrition labels, and stare stupefied at the amount of sugar and fat their children’s favourite snacks contain. The health officer and tribal chief of one indigenous village explains how to prepare the instant noodles which he soberly opines are a healthy food. There are other wry moments too: the biologist who took a bite from a cupcake some school children were snacking on and who shows that it has not rotted or grown mouldy in the year and a half since; the school cook who admits that the only part of the meals she actually cooks is rice or noodles: the rest comes from cans.

Many experts lend their voices to the film; some Brazilian, others familiar to North American food watchers: Jamie Oliver and Ann Cooper both figure. In the end, the most optimistic observation, by advertising whiz Alex Bogusky, is that our consumer dollar is the only thing that can cause change. To the mothers who observed that their local store does not even stock fruits or vegetables, that will not seem like much of a solution.