the bacon of shoes

I posted a while back about some research I had done on the minimalist shoe movement and how I kind of bought into the entire thing. Namely shoes should really have wider toe-boxes and little to no heel support. I almost exclusively wear minimalist shoes now and what minor issues I had with my feet are largely gone. At the time I was trying out the Vibram Five Fingers which I still contend are a great pair of shoes.

Quite frankly though VFFs are just too conspicuous. So I hunted around for some alternatives and ended up trying the Merrell Trail Gloves. To say I love these shoes is an understatment. I now own 3 pairs and unless the occasion calls for something more formal they are on my feet. The toe box is huge. Which is good. I actually wear a pair of orthotic toe spreaders inside which as the name suggests spreads your toes out. The heel is very thin, the shoes are washable, and they breathe well so they don't get stinkified like the VFFs. And oddly these are the only pair of shoes that I get complements on. And you can use them anywhere. I use them to work out, hike, and stroll in the city.

oils

I mentioned previously that I'm becoming more skeptical of vegetable oils. Specifically industrial seed oils. Things like soybean (one of the more significant oils used in food processing), corn oils, sunflower, etc. More specifically these oils are referred to as polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFA) and depending on the type of fatty acid they can be further classified as n-3 (Omega 3 acids) or n-6 (Omega 6 acids). Typically oils have both types of acids but the prevalent one is sometimes used to describe a particular oil. We'll avoid that laziness.

Science lesson: What is an Omega 3/Omega 6 fatty acid?

Fatty Acids - generally a linear chain of carbon atoms with hydrogen atoms attached to the carbon atoms and on one end a carboxyl group which is (COOH). It looks like this, where R is the carbon chain and can be of various lengths.

Saturated fatty acids - Saturated here refers to the R part of the chain.  If the connected carbon atoms have single bonds with each other that leaves 2 spots for hydrogen to attach (- CH2 - CH2 - CH2 -).  The molecule is therefore "saturated with hydrogen".

Unsaturated fatty acids - The connected carbon atoms have one or more double or triple bonds which means there are less spots for hydrogen to attach. Monounsaturated means there is ONE double bond.  Polyunsaturated means there are MORE THAN ONE double bonds.

Omega-3 fatty acids - These are unsaturated fatty acids.  Therefore it has double or triple bond.  Omega 3 acids have a double bond in the n-3 postion or the 3rd carbon atom in from the non-carboxyl end (the CH3 end).  There may be additional double bonds farther up the chain depending on how long the carbon chains is. These dietary fats are mainly found in seafood, some seeds (flax and walnuts), and to a lesser extent in meats, vegetables and diary.

Omega 3 fatty acids - these acids therefore have a double bond on the 6th carbon atom from the non-carboyxl end. These dietary fats are found in industrial oils (corn, soybean, sunflower, cottonseed, etc.)

In general industrial processed seed oils are high in omega 6 acids.  And as food has become more processed we've been ingesting more and more of these types of oils.

People cite this chart and the obvious correlation with modern diseases and use this to make a point that these oils are bad.  But I have issues with this. I wish I could find the actual source of this data but I can't. Everyone uses this chart. And this chart doesn't actually show an increase in omega-6 fatty acids but unsaturated fatty acids in general. Many claim this is primarily omega-6 but I've never seen the proof of this.  So this could potentially show some correlation to modern day diseases but again that is just correlation and it's a weak form of an argument.  Anthropological research suggests we used to eat omega-3/omega-6 in equal amounts.

This USDA PDF states that polyunsaturated fatty acid intake (omega-3 & -6) increased form 13 grams in 1909-19 to 37 grams in 2004 and went from 11% of our total fat intake in 1909-1919 to 21% in 2004.

That PDF also has some PUFA consumption data that I plotted to just check on the graph above.  Looks similar.

The other reason mentioned in anti-vegetable oil articles is that these things have not been a part of the human diet until relatively recently. True, but I hate that reason. It's a lazy reason. The whole natural is good and unnatural is bad is a similar type of argument that is just as lazy. If something is bad then there should be a why? Poisonous mushrooms are natural but they are clearly not good for you. Similarly corn syrup is not natural yet once the sucrase enzyme in your mouth breaks sucrose (table sugar) down into glucose and fructose then it is identical to corn syrup; namely a bunch of fructose and glucose molecules. That doesn't make it healthy but it isn't any less healthy than the "natural" table sugar.

Also cited are research articles showing associations between omega-6 and diseases.

This research is cited as showing that omega-6 is associated with inflammatory diseases  It does nothing of the sort.  What it does is look at various countries and their dietary n-3 intake and compare against coronary heart disease mortality, stroke mortality, cardiovascular disease mortality, total mortality, homicide mortality, postpartum depression, major depression, and bipolar disorder. And it shows that the higher the intake of omega-3 the low incidence of these diseases.  In particular Iceland and Japan showed low incidence of most of these diseases (presumably they eat a lot of fish, high in omega-3).  It doesn't directly focus on omega-6 fatty acids but infers higher omega-3 consumption will lead to lower omega-6 consumption.  Possibly.

Also cite is this god awful page from the NIH. The key chart is this one.  That's as big as the chart is.  To be honest I'm not entirely sure what we are looking at.  Y-axis is CHD mortality.  Fine. X-axis is Perent Long 6 in total long.  I'm guessing this means the percent of PUFAs in various countries diets that are omega-6.  But frankly I'm not sure.  It could mean the omega-6 in the blood at time of death.  Not sure. The text is as bad as the web design.

What I really hate about this chart though is it has an R^2 of 95% meaning it's amazingly predictive. Man nothing is ever this predictive in science.  I'm wondering if the data was cherry picked or something.  It has happened before.

Another article with a bizarrely similar but different chart suggests these measurements are of highly unsaturated omega-6 fatty acids (HUFA) in cell tissue.  And the measurement in the cell tissue is a good measure of the fatty acids in the diet.

There are also research articles that supposedly look at the n-6 to n-3 ratios and how these protect against heart degenerative diseases.  But I can't get a hold of that one either.  And the abstract really just recommends eating more Omega-3.  In fact there are lots of links to research articles that are either not accessible, don't show what the author claims, or even are completely unrelated at all to what the author says.

So what can I say?  Not much.  Until the research focuses a little more on a holistic view of omega-6 and omega-3 then I'm not quite convinced.

Meanwhile if you want to avoid high Omega-6 oils these would be safflower, sunflower, corn, cottonseed, walnut, and soybean oils.  Basically any oil where you say to yourself, "how the hell did they get oil out of that plant?".  Coconut oil (my oil of preference) and flaxseed oil are the only plant oils I'll use.  And yes coconut oil is completely saturated.  And that's exactly why it is my oil of choice. Because saturated fat is good for you.  But that's another post.

fat camps and diabetes

Fat camp shows China battling the bulge:

While the fat camp thing has been published before I missed the little tidbit in this article that diabetes has increased to almost 7% of the population in China. I checked and the numbers are real.

Chinese with Diabetes:
2000 - 20.8 million (source: WHO)
2010 - 90.4 million (source: NEJM)

I'm not sure about that 2000 number.  But the 2010 number is a big sample and uses the gold standard for testing for diabetes. Not only that but 150 million are estimated at risk of diabetes. I have to imagine that the Chinese diet on average is still better than the US so the fact that the diabetes percentages are getting close suggests again that Asians unfortunately have a disposition towards diabetes.

As you can guess it's a rich persons disease in China. The poor eat unprocessed foods and the rich get to down fast and junk foods. And when I say processed I mean high carb.

It's going to be interesting to see how the government addresses this. If they adopt the US "low-fat" approach things are going to get dramatically worse.

bmi

BMI - Body Mass Index.  Calculated by taking weight in kg and dividing by height in meters squared.

I've seen lots of criticisms of BMI (most of them justified) but I've never seen the most obvious one. It is not dimensionless.

Being dimensionless means, duh, not having dimensions.  When we talk about quantities they either have dimensions (or units) or they don't.  Science likes dimensionless quantities because they have no dimensions.  The quantities aren't dependent on a particular geometry or environment.  There are lots of them.

BMI is not dimensionless.  It has units of kg per meter squared. A better calculation for BMI, let's call it BMIa, is weight divided by height cubed.

Now you'll say well that isn't dimensionless either (kg per meter cubed).  True.  But we can make it dimensionless by dividing by a density.  A good one would be to use a constant density of an "average" person.  The problem with the BMI dimensions is you can't get rid of them.  There's no kg per meter squared quantity in the universe.  There's no weight per area that applies.

The reason that BMIa can become dimensionless is that it makes sense physically.  Weight is a function of density multiplied by volume.  One characteristics length scale for humans is height.  So we use height cubed to get a volume.  It's self consistent.

It's still not perfect.  The perfect way to do it would be to divide weight by our body volume.  Or we could approximate it by taking height times width times depth.  This would just be our density.  Which is ultimately what determines if we are fat or not.  Dividing by an average human density would then give us a nice index.  If you were average density then you'd be BMI = 1.  Denser would give a BMI > 1.

The effect of the incorrect BMI calculation is that tall people suffer.  Take me for example.  I'm 173lbs and 6'2".  My BMI is 22.3.  That's a normal to high BMI but I'm very thin boned and have almost no fat on me so why would I be so close to being "overweight" (BMI > 25).  Well, because I'm tall.

So this has the effect of distorting the research when looking across countries when average country heights are radically different.

chinese obesity

Are Vegetables and Exercise Causing Childhood Obesity in China? - The Atlantic

There's sort of a bizarre article in The Atlantic regarding obesity in China. It's weird because researchers found odd correlations between obesity and lifestyles generally regarded as healthy. Such as,

• More vigorous exercise
• Eating less candy/fast food
• Less snacking
• More fruit consumption
• Higher parental education attainment

Some of these things like fruit consumption I don't think are healthy.  But eating less candy?  Weird results.

It's a weak study but one to keep an eye on. The data gathering approach is somewhat suspect. It's primarily based on self-reporting and we generally don't do that well.

I've said before that China is going to have a metabolic syndrom epidemic (worse than the US) on its hands in short order. Mainly because research seems to suggest Asians are more susceptible to insulin problems. This study has some facts to suggest it's a real problem already.

• As of 2004 20% of Chinese kids were already overweight or obese
• One-third of Chinese boys are overweight or obese
• Back in 1985 only 2% of kids were overweight

"What strikes me most about obesity in China is that it's like watching the U.S. except in high speed," she says. "It took Americans many decades to get this fat, and it took them no time at all."

nurses study

An interesting read on obesity causes in the New York Times. The piece is reporting on this report done by five nutrition experts at Harvard University. It follows 120,877 well-educated men and women who were healthy and not obese at the start of the study and were followed for 12 to 20 years. The data was captured within the Nurses' Health Study, Nurses' Health Study II and the Health Professionals Follow-up Study. In other words the study participants were nurses, doctors, etc.

The primary analysis focused on weight gain/loss over this time and the factors that influenced that gain/loss.

Interestingly participants gained 0.84 pounds per year on average. After the 20 years this amounted to almost 17 pounds of additional weight on average.

This is interesting because it shows that, on average, people over-consume about 8 calories per day. Take that piece of data in. To become overweight in 20 years requires you to mis-estimate your calorie requirements by less than two-thirds of a saltine cracker. While the conventional wisdom is that fat people are gluttons most health professionals know this weight gain is induced by very minor discrepancies in energy intake and expenditure.

“This study shows that conventional wisdom — to eat everything in moderation, eat fewer calories and avoid fatty foods — isn’t the best approach,”

So says the lead author (cardiologist and epidemiologist).

You don't say?

He then goes on to blow a hole in two of the more infuriating weight loss myths around.

“What you eat makes quite a difference. Just counting calories won’t matter much unless you look at the kinds of calories you’re eating.”

Got that? Reducing calories and increasing calorie expenditure won't help you lose weight.

“The notion that it’s O.K. to eat everything in moderation is just an excuse to eat whatever you want.”

Got that? Moderation is not a weight loss plan.

The study then shows that physical activity and diet are the two most important factors they measured for weight control. I think physical activity IS NOT important and that it is merely correlated with healthier eating habits (e.g., who eats cupcakes when they're working out every day or training for a race). In fact he goes on to say

Both physical activity and diet are important to weight control, but if you are fairly active and ignore diet, you can still gain weight,”

The study then lists the foods that contributed the most weight. What's disappointing about this is the study doesn't say how much of these foods were consumed. Also it doesn't separate out effectively the carb/protein/fat components of these foods. For example red meats and processed meats are listed as contributing weight gain but they don't say what form they are in. For example where does a hamburger fit or a turkey sandwich. Both have more carbs than protein. Most derogatory Atkins means like bacon cheeseburgers are absolutely not allowed on Atkins. What about things like bacon and salami which also can have large components of sugar in them and are eaten with with carbs. Again not clear.

On some level it doesn't matter though. Because this is a primary research report put out by Harvard based on data from 3 well known and highly regarded studies. It should get the ball rolling on making carbs the enemy.

The foods that contributed to the greatest weight gain were not surprising. French fries led the list: Increased consumption of this food alone was linked to an average weight gain of 3.4 pounds in each four-year period. Other important contributors were potato chips (1.7 pounds), sugar-sweetened drinks (1 pound), red meats and processed meats (0.95 and 0.93 pound, respectively), other forms of potatoes (0.57 pound), sweets and desserts (0.41 pound), refined grains (0.39 pound), other fried foods (0.32 pound), 100-percent fruit juice (0.31 pound) and butter (0.3 pound).

One last thing

At least six prior studies have found that rising weight increases the risk in women of heart disease, diabetes, stroke and breast cancer, and the risk in men of heart disease, diabetes and colon cancer.

I also believe this is not strictly true. I believe that metabolic syndrome is the precursor to these diseases and that most people in metabolic syndrome gain weight. But many do not because of genetics. Some doctors will opine that these are the most at risk patients because they have no tell tale signs that they are suffering from metabolic syndrome.

pass the salt

New Study Finds No Connection between Salt and Heart Disease: Scientific American

No surprise for anyone paying attention. The study is a meta-analysis which is the best type of clinical study.

i know, i know, more carb stuff

Read it.

TL:DR

1. A growing number of top nutritional scientists blame excessive carbohydrates — not fat — for America's ills
   
2. Cutting carbohydrates is the key to reversing obesity, heart disease, Type 2 diabetes and hypertension.
   
3. "Fat is not the problem," says Dr. Walter Willett, chairman of the department of nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health.
   
4. Says Dr. Edward Saltzman, associate professor of nutrition and medicine at Tufts University, "Now a growing and convincing body of science is pointing the finger at carbs, especially those containing refined flour and sugar."
   
5. All carbohydrates (a category including sugars) convert to sugar in the blood.
   
6. People are said to have the [metabolic] syndrome when they have three or more of the following: high blood triglycerides (more than 150 mg); high blood pressure (over 135/85); central obesity (a waist circumference in men of more than 40 inches and in women, more than 35 inches); low HDL cholesterol (under 40 in men, under 50 in women); or elevated fasting glucose.
   
7. "The take-home message from this study and others like it is that — contrary to what many expect — dietary fat intake is not directly related to blood fat. Rather, the amount of carbohydrates in the diet appears to be a potent contributor.
   

I'll also add on to point 6:

1. The only way to dramatically lower triglycerides is to reduce carbohydrates in the diet. Cut them to zero and your tris will drop precipitously.
2. Reducing salt will not reduce your blood pressure by any significant amount.
3. The best way to increase HDL cholesterol is to eat saturated fat and/or moderate amounts of alcohol

nutritional wisdom

I love this bit of nutritional advice from my daughter's gymnastics class

Your gymnast will have a snack break for 5 minutes during their workout. Please pack a small, light snack for your gymnast each day she comes to workout. This will help maintain her energy level and promote healthy eating habits. Great snacks are low/no salt crackers/pretzels, veggies, fruit. During summer we recommend avoiding dairy which may sour in their stomach or meat products which are too heavy. [...] We also request avoiding sugary snacks which end up causing a "crashing" effect.

No salt crackers now promote healthy eating habits. Interesting. Sugary snacks are to be avoided because of a crashing effect yet pretzels which metabolize into sugars in your digestive system don't. Fruit is okay even though the sugars are identical to high fructose corn syrup once your saliva's sucrase cracks a single bond.  Advice duly noted.

more extremerer

For those interested, P90X 2 is due out later this year. I'm midway through another round of the original P90X and I am looking forward to some new stuff. There's a new promo video below that doesn't give away too much.

Is it harder? Looks like it. But then again they are probably just showing the hardcore stuff for marketing purposes. The only thing I have heard is that this one will focus more on stabilization muscles which means it's going to have you performing exercises in relatively precarious positions.  Not precarious in a dangerous sense but precarious in you will fall over sense. The idea being the more precarious it is the more you'll tighten up lots of additional muscles. So you'll see things like pushups done on top of balls. I have to say it looks like loads of fun.

The other obvious difference is the use of a lot of additional equipment.  staffs, medicine balls, instability balls, push up bars.  I'm sure there will be P90X branded equipment on their site to take advantage of that selling opportunity.  So be it.  It's all a good investment.

The one thing I hope they don't do is make it too slick.  There was something appealing about home video quality of the originals and the fact they didn't use professional gym people but rather 'grads' from the class. P90X Plus which was an add-on had what seemed like professionals and it suffered as a result. I want the guy with a prosthetic leg like the original plyo disc has.

people grew shorter growing crops

People Grew Shorter Growing Crops

The dawn of agriculture around the world was accompanied by a surprising trend. From China to South America and everywhere in between, people in farming cultures became shorter and less healthy than their hunter-gathering ancestors.

“Humans paid a heavy biological cost for agriculture, especially when it came to the variety of nutrients. Even now, about 60 percent of our calories come from corn, rice and wheat,” said Armelagos.

fatso

Is the Mangalitsa the Next ‘It’ Pig?

I originally missed this article in the NY Times when it came out but came across it after a search.  I can't recall when I first came across Mangalitsa. It had to do with some research on low-carbing maybe 3 months ago. This breed of pig kept coming up. Mainly as a favorite of people who were adding additional fat to their diet. And it would get high marks compared to Berhshire/Kurobuta, the reigning king of pork production. Problem is it's tough to find.  It's starting to pop up on restaurant menus but that's about it.

DeBragga in NY carries it but as far as I can tell it's an online purchase which I don't really like to do. My other favorite butchers in NY don't carry it.

The pig is largely known for it's slightly different fat production characteristics when compared to other pigs. Namely it produces a ton of fat and it's of a slightly different makeup; less saturated. So it's creamier. My interest stems from wanting to start using Mangalitsa lard as a cooking oil. The more I read on vegetable oils the more I'm beginning to think they perhaps aren't so healthy.

You can see some evidence of the fat production from a picture of the chops. Those are some fatty chops.  Those look like they would be tasty after a nice grilling but they would clearly produce some serious lard after a nice rendering.  I'll keep on with my search.

ouch

Damn it. Lower back pain again. I used to really be plagued with lower back pain in my youth. It largely coincided with having a desk job which I have no doubt contributed to it. More recently it has not been nearly as chronic. And I think that is due to the eradication of the mid-life inner tube and more frequent exercise. However I always feel like I'm on the verge of doing my back in. I need to baby it. Unfortunately that's not always easy to do when you work out and sure enough yesterday I did a move (the Dreya roll) that I probably should have gone a little easier on.

So I'm tired of it and decided to do a little research. Actually a lot of research because most articles on back pain seem to run along the lines of conventional wisdom. "Strengthen your core", "stretch your hamstrings", etc. These sound ambiguous and like bullshit to me so I dug a little deeper.

Turns out there are a few key pieces of research that point to the multifidus muscle as being central to back pain. The multifidus muscle/s are a set of muscles that connect from the center of the vertebrae down 2 or 3 vertebrase to the side. Related are the quadratus lumborum muscles which connect the hip to both the lowest rib and some lower vertebrae. They are both stabilizing and support muscles for vertebrae.

The most interesting research was one conducted by a Danish scientist who showed that those people with better back endurance (not strength) had a lower rate of back incidents. The details aren't important since I think this is a case of more endurance equals better. I'm not sure there is any magic amount of endurance although the report suggests there is.

The back endurance was measured by patients performing a cantilever position. Their legs were strapped to a table. They were lying face down. Their upper torso was not supported by the table; just their legs. And they were asked to straighten their bodies (lift their torso horizontally) and hold that position. The paper says that 58 seconds was a good measure of strong endurance and low likelihood of lower back pain.

So I'm going to give this a try. So how do you build endurance in the multifidus muscles? Isometric exercises.

Easier:

1. Dog Pointers (easy) - Go into cat position on all fours. Lift opposing hand and knee off the floor but just barely. Enough to slip a magazine under them. Hold position.
2. Hip Raises - Lie on back on the floor. Try to move your hip towards the middle of your back; hiking it up. Relax everything else. Hold position.

Harder:

1. Dog Pointers (harder) - Go into cat position on all fours. Lift opposing arm and leg off the floor so their are horizontal and straight; parallel with the floor. Hold position.
2. Torso Cantilever - Same move as in the experiment.

I'm going to try this every morning and see how it goes after 6 months.

food addictions

This is great, although highly anecdotal. I found it over on the Fathead blog. Three people with "food addictions". The other problem is we don't really know what their true diets are. TV shows like this are sure to portray things like this to the extreme. And there are age differences. And there are.....

So with those caveats, guess who is overweight?

Cheesy Potatoes


Corn Starch


Meat


French Fries

mud pie

Lots of media articles on how the German e. coli outbreak was caused by Spanish cucumbers. Oops. Guess not. Actually it was German bean sprouts. People in the know agreed it was definitely bean sprouts because they are always contaminated. Oops. Guess not.

In case the big picture gets lost here with all of this flip flopping, let me spell out what you already know.

You have no clue how clean the produce is that you eat at restaurants and buy at grocery stores.

I don't really care what caused the outbreak other than curiosity. Assume all your vegetables have been caked in infected manure.

People were sure that bean sprouts were the culprit because they have been linked to tons of unpublicized cases of food poisoning and led to one of the largest caes (Japan) ever. It's ironic that such a symbolic vegetable (healthy, vegetarian, raw) is probably one of the most dangerous due to the factory-like meat industry. My guess is they are a problem because they are hard to clean and are always served raw. Their presence in grocery stores may be limited.

Wash your vegetables and cook them.

freaky toes

Well today I broke down and bought a pair of freaky feet Vibram Five Fingers.  Boy these things take a little getting used to aesthetically.  They are weird.  I feel like I have the feet of a gecko.  My daughter ran away when she first saw them and I don't blame her.  Wouldn't recommend wearing these on a first date.

I haven't had a really good chance to break them in so I don't have reliable impressions on this shoe yet. I purchased them mainly because I have mild but chronic feet issues.  Minor things that seem to come and go.  Pain in the big toe knuckle and ball of the foot.  Callouses here and there.  And I already know why I get them.  I have both wide feed and feet that are shaped more like an inverted triangle (narrow heel, wide toe knuckles).  Which is exactly what shoes ARE NOT shaped like.

It's clear to me looking at Vibram Fiver Finger (VFF) shoes that they look a lot more like my feet than anything else I wear.  And so I did a little research on them.

A lot of the bare-foot proponents point to this study (PDF format). It was published in 1905 and compared the feet of those people who had worn shoes their whole life and those who had never worn shoes. It's a poorly written and barely scientific study but it has some GREAT pictures which I'll show below. But the basic premise is that our shoes deform our feet and cause them to operate incorrectly and this leads to modern foot ailments. Seems reasonable.

The first one is a classic shot of someone who has NEVER worn binding footwear. Sandals don't bind so people who just wear those have feet like this too.  The most striking trait is the gap between the big toe and second toe.  Every shoeless person has this configuration.  You can also see it on ancient statues that have feet.  My big toe has no gap there.  Second I noticed the pinkie toe isn't curled under and inward like mine.  The other four toes just look well proportioned and aligned properly. But this is such an uncommon looking foot shape that it, like the VFF shoes, looks freaky. But that's just it.  The Vibram's look like these feet.  They are naturally shaped.

Here's another shot of someone that has not worn shoes.  I'm sure all these people would be awesome at the lumberjack olympic game where you balance on a log in water.  These people must be like Weebles.

And now for a shot of the modern foot.  This is obviously an extreme case but I have all these traits in my foot.  The crooked big toe and the rolling of the other toes under and inward.  After seeing the other photos these look even more freaky to me now. But it's clear why this occurs.  It occurs for the same reason that foot binding produces foot binded feet.  Your feet conform to the shape of the footwear.

And it will do this very quickly.  The study shows that even a few months in traditional western footwear is enough to drastically change the shape of the foot.  Below that foot on the right looks "normal" but it's significantly different from what is "natural".

So my hope is that the Vibrams will help rectify or alleviate some of these problems. Time will tell. I probably won't be wearing these in public because I don't enjoy disturbed stares. But I will work out in them and probably keep them on in the house since they actively separate your toes.

As I said I've only worn them today but I have a few observations.

1. They are incredibly difficult to put on. Precisely because my feet are "deformed".  It doesn't take hours but it does take some real effort to guide your toes into the "fingers" of the shoe. Particularly my curled up sorry ass excuse of a pinkie toe.  There are videos of people showing you how to get around some of the big problems in putting the shoe on. And most people say you get used to it and learn a technique that alleviates the time spent on this.
2. They were a little uncomfortable initially when I tried them on. Your toes are not used to being surrounded by a fabric and I felt like it would irritate my skin after a while.  Particularly down at the base of toes in between them.  I'm sure I'll go through some teething pains.
3. There's no cushion. This is part of the no shoes ethos.  In particular there is no padding on the heel and no elevation as a result.  Many people complain they have to learn how to run and walk in these types of shoes because them come down hard on their heels.  You'll put yourself out of commission if you do that with these shoes. Luckily I run on the balls and toes of my feet so that hasn't been an issue.
4. After wearing them in the house for 2 hours they felt fine.  Good even. They do feel a little weird but that seems to pass with time.  
5. Finally, you get used to the shape.  Even my daughter now wants a pair.

I'll update this post if I get any sort of drastic results over the course of the year.

e coli helper

From an old article.

The retail giant Costco is one of the few big producers that tests trimmings for E. coli before grinding, a practice it adopted after a New York woman was sickened in 1998 by its hamburger meat, prompting a recall.

Craig Wilson, Costco’s food safety director, said the company decided it could not rely on its suppliers alone. “It’s incumbent upon us,” he said. “If you say, ‘Craig, this is what we’ve done,’ I should be able to go, ‘Cool, I believe you.’ But I’m going to check.”

Costco said it had found E. coli in foreign and domestic beef trimmings and pressured suppliers to fix the problem. But even Costco, with its huge buying power, said it had met resistance from some big slaughterhouses. “Tyson will not supply us,” Mr. Wilson said. “They don’t want us to test.”

A Tyson spokesman, Gary Mickelson, would not respond to Costco’s accusation, but said, “We do not and cannot” prohibit grinders from testing ingredients. He added that since Tyson tests samples of its trimmings, “we don’t believe secondary testing by grinders is a necessity.”

The food safety officer at American Foodservice, which grinds 365 million pounds of hamburger a year, said it stopped testing trimmings a decade ago because of resistance from slaughterhouses. “They would not sell to us,” said Timothy P. Biela, the officer. “If I test and it’s positive, I put them in a regulatory situation. One, I have to tell the government, and two, the government will trace it back to them. So we don’t do that.”

sitting down is killing you

Anyone seen this? It's been making the rounds. I don't know about you but this thing reads like one giant heap of horse shit. Thankfully they have a list of "references" at the bottom that I'll be checking into when I get a spare moment. Sitting Down is Killing You [infographic]

is sugar toxic?

A new article in the NY Times by my favorite health write, Gary Taubes. There isn't much new in here. Sugar is bad. But it does reference an endocrinologist at the University of California, SF. He treats obese kids. And more importantly there is a link to a YouTube video of a talk he gives. It's an interesting talk. He does get some things wrong that aren't worth going into. It's better to focus on the stuff he knows well. Metabolic pathways. He goes through, in a not so great manner, the metabolic pathways of glucose, ethanol, and fructose. It's not riveting because he throws out too many big words and processes without explaining them. It almost comes off like he's showing off and treating his audience like they'll never get it. But if you can follow along at a high level he describes what happens to these three compounds as they are processed in the body and the effects it has on the body. In particular he believes fructose is bad and he does a good job of demonstrating why this is. He goes easy on glucose but his story is incomplete because he doesn't follow all the pathways of glucose. Just the ones in the liver. But glucose is processed in the entire body.  But that is fine if we just focus on why fructose is bad.

Remember sugar is 50% glucose and 50% fructose.  In most fruits the sugar content is close to that although there are fruits with much more fructose and much less fructose than that.



Here's what fructose does at the metabolic level

1. Fructose doesn't stimulate leptin production due to production of JNK1 - the hormone that gives us the feeling of being full. Even worse it reduces the brain's ability to perceive the presence of leptin
2. Fructose doesn't suppress ghrelin - the hormone that stimulates hunger
3. Fructose leads to significant production of LDL compared to other foods. Not just any LDL. A specific bad, dense form of LDL, VLDL. The one that really leads heart disease.
4. Fructose is sweeter than sucrose so it tastes good, yet we don't use less of it when substituting
5. Uses up phostphates in ATP. This ultimately leads to the creation of uric acid which leads to hypertension (high blood pressure) and gout (both of which have been on the rise over the last 30 years)
6. Produces Xylose 5-P which ultimately activates the three fat making enzymes and will send your triglycerides through the roof and increases free fatty acid production which leads to insulin resistance

focus

A CEO, a teabagger, and a union member are sitting at a table with 10 cookies. The CEO grabs 9 of the cookies. She turns to the teabagger and says, "That union member wants part of your cookie."

I don't know if it is an inherent problem with humans that they can't stay focused or that they can't process information to come to rational conclusions, but either way the current financial woes are being addressed in the media and by politicians in a way that doesn't have any bearing on facts. Or maybe it's just because the media and politicians are more beholden to corporate interests.

Here is the 2011 estimate for government expenditures.

You can see the breakdown here.

The biggest pieces in the pie are Health Care, Pensions (social security) and Defense.  The media seems to focus on unionized government employees as the source of easy cost cutting.  And I'm sure there is a lot of waste there.  But the reality is the main source of budgetary woes is in Health Care.  Even Social Security which is maybe a second area of concern is not terribly underfunded if you look at the data and is also easily solved with a minor increase in the retirement age.  The problem is Health Care.

The proof of that is here:

What justification is there for US to be spending so much on Medicare?  And yet we never talk about Medicare? I'm sure most people don't even know what Medicare really is? It's medical care for people over 65. And compared to social security it is hideously underfunded.  The costs of the system per user are about 3 times as much as they put in.  Completely unsustainable. And part of the problem is that chart above. And it also suggests that if it is right-sized that 16% of the budget would decrease to somewhere in the area of 8%. A massive savings of about $400B a year. In fact I would suggest that Health Care is the ONLY financial problem the US has right now.

But you'd never know it.