# Se não instanciou o template não tem nada de errado

Considere este código:

struct Adapter1 { static const int Size = 10; };
struct Adapter2 { static const int NoSize = 10; };
template<typename Adapter> struct Size { int size() { return Adapter::Size; } };
int main() { }

Vai quebrar em que linha? Resposta: nenhuma. Isso porque não há uma instanciação de nenhum template Size e o compilador não tem código algum para validar. Tudo que ele sabe é que, uma vez instanciado Size seu tipo Adapter precisa ter um membro chamado Size compatível com um inteiro para que o método size() seja um código válido.

int main()
{
    Size<Adapter1> a1;
    int sz1 = a1.size();
    Size<Adapter2> a2;
    int sz2 = a2.size(); // error C2039: 'Size': is not a member of 'Adapter2'
}

Agora, sim. O código existe; não é mais apenas um "gabarito", termo que foi a tradução de template na primeira edição de A Linguagem de Programação C++ (agora até que faz sentido esse termo). E enquanto Size<Adapter1> gera um código 100% correto Size<Adapter2> não, pois seu único membro não se chama Size.

# Frieren: Beyond Journey's End

A ideia do ponto de vista da passagem do tempo de uma elfa em comparação com as pessoas que ela convive é interessante. O anime parece que começa no final, quando a guilda que ela pertence derrota um demônio poderoso. Porém, a ideia é que seus amigos morrem e ela, imortal, continua a mesma.

Após alguns saltos de décadas na história ela adota uma pupila e ecos do seu passado heroico vão se tornando tema. Não dá para saber se esta será a fórmula (ao que tudo indica sim). O anime é muito bem desenhado e detalhado. Ele não precisa de muitos frames por quando você pode admirar por vários instantes cada cenário.

O humor é lento e a lógica do universo é de isekai, mas no lugar de lutas com poderzinho uma reflexão lenta, quase inexistente, sobre a vida.

# Bartender

A atenção aos detalhes desta animação espirituosa sobre bebidas e quem as prepara nos faz esquecer do roteiro maniqueista que coloca essas duas meninas sempre na frente do personagem-título. A graça da história está de fato nos momentos em que ele prepara uma bebida que harmoniza com seu cliente e seu momento, mais pela beleza da dedicação do preparo do que pela construção da cena. Existe magia na construção de um drinque, e Bartender consegue captar e inclusive resgatar um pouco da história das bebidas icônicas e exóticas. Mas tudo não passa de uma farsa de diálogos manjados.

# Game of Thrones S03

Um pouco mais agitada que a temporada anterior, continua cozinhando em Banho Maria os desdobramentos da primeira, embora com um aproveitamento melhor do orçamento. Dragões crescidos e milhares de soldados soam verossímil em 2013. Encucado, perguntei para a IA a comparação de budget:

Game of Thrones: around $10-15 million per episode

Lord of the Rings (trilogy): around $94 million per film (or around $31 million per episode, assuming 3 episodes per film)

The Rings of Power (Amazon Prime series): around $465 million for the first season (or around $52 million per episode, assuming 9 episodes per season)

O que torna ainda as obras baseadas em Tolkien relativamente mais caras que a série baseada nos livros de George R. Martim. E pelo menos os filmes de Peter Jackson com uma atuação muito melhor, bem escritos e dirigidos.

Não sei sobre Rings of Power, não consumo muito esse tipo de conteúdo.

# O que O Artista me diz em sua revisita?

Um filme como poucos. Homenageia o cinema mudo ou qualquer pequena revolução na sétima arte, as perdas, os ganhos, com muito charme. A relação entre a nova atriz que chega e o velho ator que sai é muito mais que simbólica. Ele atua em cima de vários níveis e hoje pode ser visto sob outros aspectos, como a mudança social abrupta e o quão ele é doloroso para os da geração anterior. Ao mesmo tempo ele é fofinho, doce, engraçado e mantém um ritmo sem som invejável comparado com a maioria de filmes coloridos e em som.

# Sacred Cow (Diana Rodgers and Robb Wolf)

Lendo este livro indicado em algum podcast da Tribo Forte. Também coletando outras opiniões, como o famoso artigo do The Guardian desbancando 18 argumentos a favor de comer carne; este assunto parece espinhoso na comunidade científica ou é apenas fumaça da mídia?

Como medir a força de uma pesquisa:

• What type of study was it? Observational? Experimental?
• Were there any conflicts of interest? Who paid for the study? Did a company with a vested interest in the results fund it? Were the researchers vegan or vegetarian?
• What foods were tested? How was the information about the foods eaten collected?
• How many participants? Who were the participants? Humans? Animals?
• Are the results of the study significant to overall mortality? Were they just looking at one specific compound in a food?
• If the study reports an increase in disease risk, what is the overall significance of this risk?

Clippings

Meat is strong. It’s red, bloody, has a rich flavor, and throughout our history has been associated with hunting, ritual, power, vitality, sexuality, and wealth.

Current research suggests that at least 2.6 million years ago animal products became an important part of the hominin diet.

It may seem a stretch to link the Cold War to our current obesity epidemic and billion-dollar junk food industry, but in a fascinating article in the Guardian, investigative reporter Jacques Peretti traced the origin of our problem to Richard Nixon’s Cold War maneuvering.

Humans don’t really need “protein”; we need amino acids, and meat has the perfect balance of amino acids plus micronutrients that plants don’t have.

Scientific studies show that both low fat and low carb diets can work for people,18 but if you’re looking to lose body fat and maintain muscle mass, increasing your protein and lifting some weights while being careful not to overconsume total calories (which is a lot easier to do when you’re getting decent amounts of protein because you feel much more full thanks to the satiating effects of meat) is the golden ticket.

Cancer, diabetes, and heart disease are not diseases that develop quickly; they take years to develop. This is why most nutrition research looks at large populations over long periods, which is called observational epidemiology.

The current RDA for protein intake is explained in the Dietary Reference Intakes by the Institute of Medicine,5 which based their original protein recommendations on nitrogen balance studies. This gets a bit technical, so bear with us. Nitrogen balance is the difference between nitrogen intake and excreted nitrogen. It’s difficult to measure, and varies greatly between individuals

For nearly fifty years the US government told the world that a diet high in saturated fat and dietary cholesterol would increase our likelihood of everything from cancer to diabetes to heart disease. Not long ago a retraction was published saying, in effect, that there is no connection between dietary cholesterol and fat intake and the aforementioned diseases.

We see a suspiciously high rate of cardiovascular disease and other systemic inflammatory problems with elite athletes who consume prodigious amounts of refined carbohydrates

Some experts have been making gains in reversing the widespread bias against fat. However, decades of fear of fat and cholesterol aren’t so easily erased. It all started with a researcher named Ancel Keys.

The recent DIETFITS randomized clinical trial placed participants on either a whole food–based low-fat or low-carb diet and tracked their progress for thirteen months. This is a well-designed study that not only provided ongoing education, support, and monitoring to help ensure adherence but also looked for genetic markers that might suggest one diet or the other would be a better fit for any given individual. Protein intake was equal and adequate in both groups!

The claims that meat causes heart disease come largely from the fear that saturated fat increases cholesterol, and that high cholesterol causes heart disease. Earlier in this chapter, we discussed how Ancel Keys incorrectly implicated dietary saturated fat as the cause of heart disease. A very large meta-analysis and systematic review of both observational and randomized controlled trials involving over six hundred thousand participants concluded that “current evidence does not clearly support cardiovascular guidelines that encourage high consumption of polyunsaturated fatty acids and low consumption of total saturated fats.”

By simply cutting out nutrient-poor, ultraprocessed foods that stimulate us to overeat, people will naturally lose weight. Second, when people reduce their overall caloric intake, they will lose weight. But weight loss is not the same as fat loss. Both low-carb and low-fat diets lead to weight loss because they usually also involve restricting calories, but what is important to note is that high-protein diets that are either lower in carbs or low in fat lead to more fat loss. A review published in the Journal of the American College of Nutrition found that the benefits of a high-protein diet were found even when people continued to eat the same amount of calories.

Based on their findings, the authors recommended a daily intake of 1.5 to 2 grams per kilogram of body weight of high-quality protein (from animal sources).

Protein has a high thermic effect on food because it takes more energy to break it down. Interestingly, high-protein diets tend to negate having to count calories. People who followed a high-protein diet and either cut their calorie intake or kept it the same have shown to improve body composition—but people who ate more calories still did not seem to see increased fat mass when those extra calories came from protein. Simply put: increase protein, keeping calories the same, work out, and you will likely lose weight.

Among all the components in meat that have been vilified, perhaps the only one that deserves closer attention is advanced glycation end products (AGEs). There is concern that certain types of cooking result in high levels of them, and that dietary advanced glycation end products (dAGEs) are known to contribute to increased oxidant stress and inflammation.32 The effect of cooking that’s implicated here is also referred to as the browning or Maillard reaction; it is a normal part of cooking but is thought to be problematic in large amounts. Lower-temperature cooking, moist heat, and the use of acids like lemon and vinegar all seem to reduce the formation of AGEs.

The case of the mid-Victorians is what in science is called a natural experiment. When we consider the differences between experimental and observational studies depicted below, although natural experiments are technically observational, they often contain elements that are remarkably similar to the gold standard of biomedical research, the randomized controlled trial (RCT).

The main difference in the mid-Victorian diet initially was an increase in meat, seafood, fruits, and vegetables. Before 1850 the population had eaten a diet higher in grains. Health and longevity improved markedly alongside this improvement in dietary quality. Then, after 1880 dietary trends shifted again, becoming higher in refined foods, including significant increases in sugar, flour, and canned meats. This happened in conjunction with a reduction in vegetables, fruits, fresh meat, and seafood—and health deteriorated

What’s more, there was a strong temperance movement that resulted in approximately a third of homes abstaining totally from alcohol. Beer was frequently consumed, but it’s estimated that the alcohol content was probably only 1 or 2 percent in the home and about 2 to 3 percent at pubs, which is much lower than today’s average of 5 percent.

We’ve known since at least the ’70s that stress within forty-eight hours of slaughter causes glucocorticoids to infiltrate the meat, lowering its pH (makes it more acidic) and making it less tender.29 However, whether slaughter stress or chronic stress from the factory farm environment has an impact on the nutritional content of beef hasn’t been investigated.

Although animal products contain the richest sources of most micronutrients required by humans, there are some vitamins and minerals that are best found in plants—for example, vitamins folate, C, E, and betaine. In the mineral category, plants provide greater quantities of magnesium, potassium, selenium, and manganese than most animal sources.

Nuts and seeds are an excellent source of minerals, including magnesium, manganese, copper, selenium, and zinc. But relying only on nuts as your primary source of these minerals can have a few downsides. Most nuts are high in omega-6 fats, which are already found in excess in many of our diets and compete for absorption of anti-inflammatory omega-3s. We do need some omega-6 fats for health, but most of us are already eating too much, so adding an additional source of omega-6 may not be ideal.5 They also contain antinutrients (see the next section).

Although plants contain calcium, bioavailability of calcium from food can vary greatly. Even soybeans, which are considered “high” in calcium, are only 30–40 percent bioavailable. Soy milk, which is frequently used as an alternative to cow’s milk, is fortified with calcium, increasing the bioavailability to 75 percent. Although many of these plant foods do contain calcium, the amount absorbed is quite low.6 Nonheme iron comes from plant sources and is not as well absorbed as iron from animal protein, as it is not bound to any protein. Iron absorption from plants is low, at about 5–12 percent.

Plant foods like seaweed contain B12 analogs and not the true form of B12. These analogs actually increase your need for the true form of B12.

Iron deficiency is the most common nutrient deficiency worldwide, affecting approximately 25 percent of the global population and almost half of all preschool children.

Vegans have been found to have higher bone turnover owing to low calcium and vitamin D, which are both critical for bone health.

Other nutrients of concern for those on meat-free diets include glycine, selenium, methionine, taurine, creatine, choline, and iodine.

There are several studies that have found a disturbing link between depression and meat-free diets. Many of the nutrients commonly missing in meat-free diets are directly shown to have impacts on depression and anxiety.

Creatine, a substance found naturally in our muscles, is lower in vegetarian diets and may also influence healthy brain development

In her book The Vegetarian Myth, Lierre Keith explains how much her body suffered because of eliminating meat. Lierre became vegan at the age of sixteen after learning about the horrors of industrial-scale animal production. She did her research and made sure her diet contained all the right combinations of proteins. She took B12 supplements, and ate lots of fruits and vegetables. Most of the protein in her diet came from soy products. She followed the diet for twenty years. Although she lost her period, suffered from depression, and developed degenerative disc disease that caused morphine-level pain, she explains that she never really drew the connection between her medical problems and her diet. Her pain became absolutely crippling, and her exhaustion unbearable. She went to see a qigong master, whom she heard had “cured the incurable.” He quickly summed up her state and sympathetically told her she must eat some meat. She went to the store, picked up a can of tuna and a plastic fork (because she didn’t want to contaminate her dishes), and ate it. “Oh my god, I thought: this is what it feels like to be alive. I put my head down and sobbed,” she writes.

In a 2014 study researchers evaluated the impact of the addition of meat, milk, or just additional calories to the diet of largely vegetarian children in Kenya and compared them to a control group, who received no additional food. The results were fascinating. When measured for growth, intellectual ability, behavior, and academic performance, after two years the meat group had the best outcomes by far. The milk group showed the least improvement on Raven’s Progressive Matrices—a measure of fluid intelligence—even when compared to the children that didn’t receive any additional calories. The meat group showed remarkably more physical ability, leadership, and physical growth during the study period. Those who only received the milk substitute lagged behind the meat group in every aspect.

In his book Collapse, the anthropologist and historian Jared Diamond writes: Consider a narrow river valley below a high dam, such that if the dam burst, the resulting flood of water would drown people for a considerable distance downstream. When attitude pollsters ask people downstream of the dam how concerned they are about the dam bursting, it’s not surprising that fear of a dam burst is lowest far downstream and increases among residents increasingly close to the dam. Surprisingly, though, after you get just a few miles below the dam, where fear of the dam bursting is found to be highest, concern then falls off to zero as you approach closer to the dam! That is, the people living immediately under the dam, the ones most certain to be drowned in a dam burst, profess unconcern. That’s because of psychological denial: the only way of preserving one’s sanity while looking up every day at the dam is to deny the possibility that it could burst.

It may be a bit counterintuitive, but certain systems, particularly those that involve shifting both energy and resources (such as economies, ecosystems, and growing children), not only benefit from but thrive upon complexity. In physics, the term for this is resiliency, while the noted author Nassim Taleb coined the term “antifragile.”

The carbon sequestration process starts when the grasses, legumes, and forbs go through photosynthesis. The leaves of these plants take carbon dioxide out of the air and convert that CO2 to oxygen. The plants also exude carbon down through their roots to feed the microbes. This carbon, which is essentially sugar, is known as exudate. Various soil microbes exchange sugar for nutrients like minerals, which the plants need to grow via the root system (known as the rhizosphere). Fungal networks connected to this root system form pathways for the microbes to move through the soil. These fungal networks also produce acids that break down minerals that make the minerals bioavailable to the plants. Minerals have to be made bioavailable for the plants to be able to use them. The increased carbon in the ground changes the structure of the soil, providing more open spaces—kind of like a sponge. Thus, healthy soil is less compact, and can absorb significantly more rainwater than brittle, compacted, plowed, or overgrazed land.

Growing food is a biological process, but we’ve taken this biological process and turned it into a chemical one.

In our modern industrial food system, cows eat mainly grass. There is a widely held belief that cattle consume large amounts of grain and that this is effectively “taking food away” from what could otherwise feed humans, but this is incorrect. We’ll look at this topic in depth later in the book, but for now, we want

The saying “A chicken in every pot” has been erroneously attributed to 1928 presidential candidate Herbert Hoover. In fact, a group of supporters of Hoover’s political campaign coined this phrase, but the promise was alluring: before the intensification of our food system, there was not extra grain available to raise chickens en masse as is common practice today. The bulk of animal products consumed came from grazing animals, for reasons that are hopefully becoming clearer. Eating chicken today is inextricably linked with modern industrial farming practices that are unsustainable in the long term.

1. If climate change is of concern (and it should be), interventions should reduce net greenhouse gas levels. If possible, the intervention should even present an option for reversing this process. 2. As much as possible, the energy needed to raise our food should come from the sun, not fossil fuel inputs, and our methods should support complex, resilient ecosystems. The exact methods used will have to change around the world—it should come as no surprise that a solution suited to the Mongolian steppe is likely to look different from one suited to the interior of the Amazon—but interventions should be critically assessed with the criterion of energy inputs versus outputs in mind. 3. Recommended dietary practices and food production methods must consider the limited window humanity has with regards to topsoil. There is little debate that should topsoil largely disappear, so shall we. 4. While we are considering biodiversity, it behooves us to also value cultural diversity. The current monocrop industrial food process has effectively crushed traditional food systems, replacing them both at the production and consumption levels with what is arguably a less diverse, less nutritious diet. Is it reasonable for a few wealthy, largely white vegan-centric activists to push a global food agenda that would make verboten every other food system on the planet?

Fossil fuels come from “ancient” carbon that has been locked underground for millions of years, and when it is extracted, it’s adding new carbon to the atmosphere, which lasts thousands of years. In the case of cattle, they are transforming existing carbon, in the form of grass and other fibrous materials, into methane as part of their digestive process. Methane is then belched out, and after about ten years is broken back down into water and carbon dioxide molecules. The CO2 and H2O are cycled back to grow more grass, and the cycle continues.

According to a paper published in the Journal of Animal Science, in presettlement America, methane emissions were about 82 percent of current emissions from farmed and wild ruminants.

Prior to 1999 there was a strong relationship between change in atmospheric methane concentrations and the world ruminant populations. However, since 1999 this strong relation has disappeared. This change in relationship between the atmosphere and ruminant numbers suggests that the role of ruminants in greenhouse gases may be less significant than originally thought, with other sources and sinks playing a larger role in global methane accounting.

“The team showed that about 17 teragrams per year of the increase is due to fossil fuels, another 12 is from wetlands or rice farming, while fires are decreasing by about 4 teragrams per year. The three numbers combine to 25 teragrams a year—the same as the observed increase.”

The real benefit in lab meat is the fact that it’s a highly technologically driven food. As Sarah Martin, assistant professor with the Department of Political Science at Memorial University of Newfoundland, pointed out at the Future of Protein conference at the University of Ottawa, to grow lab meat you need cell lines, cell culture media, scaffolding and structuring, and bioreactors—all these things that can be patented. If the lab-meat folks can get the public to accept it as an alternative to meat, then they will own the lucrative intellectual property license on this technique.

So while they did a full life cycle analysis on livestock, they did not do the same for transportation, unfairly leading the public to think that animal agriculture is worse than the transportation industry.

As ruminant animals, cattle can’t handle a diet of 100 percent grain (sometimes referred to as “concentrates”). In fact, an overexposure to grain in too short a time can be fatal for a cow. Ruminants need a lower concentration of grain to keep them healthy, so most cattle, sheep, and goats’ diets come from pasture, hay, cornstalks, and other “crop residues.”

Contrary to what many people imagine, cattle do not spend their entire lives on a feedlot eating grain. Even typical (feedlot) cattle live the first half to two-thirds of their lives on pasture, eating grass and other forage. Some cattle can graze leftover cropland like cornfields that have been harvested, converting cornstalks and other crop “residues” into beef, with the added benefit of fertilizing that field with their manure as they clean up the field.

Unless they are “grass finished,” beef cattle will spend the last four to six months at a feedlot where they’re harvested at around eighteen months of age.

The amount of feed needed for an animal is called the feed conversion ratio. A recent life cycle analysis calculated that the amount of grain required to produce one pound of boneless beef is 2.6 pounds. The ratio of pork is about 3.5:1, chicken 2:1, and many farmed fish like salmon are 1.3:1.

Over their life span, typical cattle only get 10 percent of their diet from grain.3 This means that about 90 percent of the feed for beef is inedible by humans.

As prolific reproducers and fast weight gainers that provide tasty meat and fat, pigs have been an important source of nourishment for many cultures. Ironically, one of the only foods common to all “Blue Zones,” areas noted for significant health and longevity, is pork. In more densely populated areas, pigs lived closer to humans as “garbage disposals” that literally ate our waste. Yes, sorry to gross you out, pigs can eat human poop. In fact, in China and Korea a family of four humans could feed four young pigs on around four and a half pounds of human waste and eight ounces of garbage each day.7 Pigs played an important role in medieval Paris for, of all things, sanitation

There is no evidence that feeding pigs, and even chickens, our leftover properly treated food waste, is unsafe.

You would need to eat about six hundred calories worth of beans and rice (two cups of black beans and a half cup of brown rice) to get the same amount of protein you can get from only 160 calories of beef (3.5oz of sirloin),

Moreover, using ruminants to graze down cover crops and then later crop residues can eliminate the need to use herbicides. Their manure is fertilizer, which helps activate the soil biology and reduces the need for external sources of nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium, the three main components in chemical fertilizers.

What about the Amazon rainforest that’s being burned down for cattle? We have an extensive blog post by Lauren Manning that addresses this specific topic. In short, we obviously don’t condone the burning of rainforest specifically for grazing. But that’s not really what’s happening. The US currently does not accept beef imports from Brazil, so protesting the burning of the Amazon by not eating beef would do nothing. This is a policy issue, not a cattle issue. See www.sacredcow.info/blog/the-amazon-fires-are-a-policy-issue-not-a-livestock-issue-heres-why.

Additionally, properly managed cattle (and other ruminants) increase benefits of green water by enhancing the ability of the soil to retain water. Interestingly, this is accomplished primarily because there’s more soil carbon in well-managed pastures. The rainwater associates with the carbon and minerals in the soil, making more of it available longer and thus facilitating more grass growth.

In a brittle landscape, rainfall is able to penetrate the top layer of soil only when there is sufficient microbial activity underground. Luckily, cattle and other ruminants can help keep grasslands healthy by biologically breaking down plants, enhancing water retention and carbon sequestration. Their manure is only “waste” when it’s highly concentrated, not when the animals are managed well.

Amid these calculations, we think it should be noted that the nutrition in grass-finished beef is far superior to rice, avocados, walnuts, and sugar. A pound of rice requires about 410 gallons of water to produce. Avocados, walnuts, and sugar have similar water requirements. Globally, 30 percent of groundwater intended for crops is used by rice, followed by wheat (12 percent), cotton (11 percent), and soybeans (3 percent).

Of all antibiotics produced in the US, 80 percent are given to livestock and poultry,13 the majority of which (90 percent) are not sick animals—rather, the antibiotics are intended to marginally improve growth rates and prevent sickness.14 Up to 75 percent of these antibiotics pass through the animal and into the environment unchanged.15 Antibiotic resistance in humans is a massive public health concern, and this is exacerbated, in part, by their broad use in livestock. By contrast, when livestock are given a healthy environment and low stress, they don’t need to be given preemptive antibiotics, which can dramatically cut down the incidence of antibiotic resistance.

Perhaps the most pressing problem for sustainability, regardless of whether we are discussing the potential role of animals in a food system or appropriate measures to address climate change, is that the vast majority of Westernized populations have become divorced from nature. We see nature as a place to visit, not a system we are a part of. Because of this, many people simply can’t come to grips with the idea that death is inevitable, unavoidable, and important for new life. Many think any death is wrong.

British philosopher David Pearce sees the natural world as a terrible place begging for the hand of man to set it right. He sees predatory animals as victimizing their prey, and the scales of justice may only be set right once all predators have either been eliminated or genetically and neurologically reprogrammed to no longer eat other animals. Although his position has not garnered wide support, it illustrates that even the most highly educated among us have become so divorced from the natural world and so afraid of “suffering” that we can be tempted to seriously propose the end of life on earth just to avoid it.

If you want kale, you should be open to the notion that animals should play a role in the food system, and that we may need to eat more animals, not fewer. This scenario means we will maximally capture solar energy in the form of plants, and the animals convert that energy into good soil, fertilizer for other plants, and healthy nutrients for people—in a word, life.

We recognize that this is already a long and technical book, but physicist Jeremy England makes an important point in a recent paper. He argues that the purpose of life is to enhance entropy, or the relative disorder in the world or universe.4 This may be an unsatisfying case for the more spiritually minded, but it has profound implications regardless of one’s religious stance. In the short term, life works against entropy by harnessing the energy around us (mainly from the sun, although a few systems on the ocean floor exist largely independent from this system) and creating more life. This is called a nonequilibrium process (or nonequilibrium thermodynamics, for the technically inclined), and this concept makes the case that we’d do well to foster as much of this nonequilibrium process as we can. What does this mean in practical terms? Encourage as many plants as possible to harness as much sunlight as possible. Have as many animals as possible consuming both plants and animals. Encourage this system to be as diversified and resilient as possible. In short, this looks like a lot of grass and grazing animals; it does not look like row crops as far as the eye can see, all dependent on unsustainable synthetic chemical inputs. If we pause for a moment and imagine an earth without humans, or the earth before humans, both these scenarios involve a remarkable amount of life. And death.

This is an interesting conundrum. On the one hand, some in the antimeat scene suggest that humanity is a blight unto the earth, yet these same people make the case that the more like “us” an organism is (sentience), the more unethical it is to eat it.

Plants, they argue, do not respond like humans or animals do to “pain,” so it is ethically acceptable to eat them. But there’s a fallacy lurking in this position, since plants do in fact respond to attempts to eat them, via chemical warfare and warning neighbors. Trees can “talk” below ground through fungal networks

Milk, raw meat, blood, and honey are the traditional food of the Maasai of Kenya and northern Tanzania. They eat few to no vegetables. In fact, two-thirds of their diet comes from animal fats (yet they have low rates of heart disease).

The Bible tells us that humans have been given dominion over animals (Genesis 1:26) and after the flood, “Every moving thing that lives shall be food for you” (Genesis 9:3). “For one believes that he may eat all things: another, who is weak, eats herbs” (Romans 14:2).

Contrary to what many assume, about 75 percent of Indians eat meat, and in some states it’s close to 95 percent. Although the state religion is not officially Hinduism, many would like to see it become that. A ban on beef is really a ban on Muslims; scapegoating the cow is just sleight of hand for attacking Muslims.

A diet high in refined grains (e.g., processed foods) is the biggest nutritional contributor to diabetes in China.

According to the Food and Agriculture Organization, rice, corn, and wheat make up more than 50 percent of our food, and 75 percent of our diet comes from only twelve crops.

An interesting case study of what happens when meat and fat are replaced with processed foods is that of the native Arctic population called the Yamalo-Nenets. Owing to several changes in their environment and lifestyle, their diets have shifted drastically to include cheap, highly processed carbohydrates like packaged noodles, whereas before they ate few carbohydrates and relied on fat and meat as their primary calorie source. With this change, there have been staggering increases in obesity and chronic diseases never before seen in this population that traditionally ate mostly venison and fish.

In northern Quebec, government officials said they worked closely with the Nunavik to develop a culturally appropriate food guide. One look at the “food igloo” inside the Nunavik Food Guide (written by Canadian dietitians) says so much about how wrong we are. It would be hard to illustrate a more perfect metaphor for the entire nutrition debacle. They’re advised to eat seven to ten servings from the “vegetables, berries, and fruit” group, and this includes orange juice, bananas, watermelon, and grapes. In the guide, Raisin Bran is on the list of recommended grain products to be consumed six to eight times a day. Way up at the top of the food igloo, in the smallest category, are the foods most traditional to their culture—and the guide recommends these be eaten just two to three times a day.5 The Nunavik Inuit Health Survey 2004 shows that approximately 60 percent of the adult population is overweight or obese, which was a sharp increase over the previous survey conducted in 1992. Their intake of traditional foods, obtained by fishing and hunting, declined to only 16 percent of energy intake in 2004, compared to 21 percent in 1992. Iron deficiency anemia affects over half the nonpregnant women in Nunavik. The iron status of women of childbearing age and pregnant women is also considered at a critical level, and this can lead to significant developmental issues with babies. Interestingly, in the guidelines they’re told in one sentence to purchase lean meats like chicken and turkey but then are also told that seal meat (which is definitely not low in fat) is one of the best sources of iron.

One study of 245 children in ten communities of Nunavik showed that although traditional foods contributed a very low percentage of their total intake (only 2.6 percent), those who consumed these foods, which were mainly caribou and Arctic char, were significantly more nourished, and at the same time, they consumed fewer total calories and carbohydrates.

Malnutrition in “less-developed” areas of the world is a reflection of ecologically degraded agricultural systems as well as dysfunctional governments. Hunger is largely a political issue, not a food production issue. When people have better access to land, loans, and markets, we all win. The organization Heifer International is a great example of what could be done to address global hunger.

Check out Diana’s book The Homegrown Paleo Cookbook for a full guide to growing (and cooking) your own healthy food.

In addition to diet, there are quite a few things you can do in order to improve your health. Getting adequate sleep is probably the most important factor. Even on a perfect diet, if your sleep isn’t dialed in, your brainpower will suffer and excess weight can be an issue. Movement, as I’m sure you know, is also really important to overall health, as is time in nature, having meaningful relationships with others, and having a “why.” A reason to get up in the morning, for something larger than you, is an important factor in longevity. This might mean your children, a hobby, your work, or some other passion.

Make sure you’re getting enough high-quality protein from animals. As we laid out in the nutrition section, most people benefit from about twice the RDA of protein, which is about 1.6 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight.

As we’ve said, that’s the bare minimum to avoid disease, so go ahead and multiply it by 2 again to aim for your protein goal.

Eggs from pastured chickens are actually worth the extra money because their fats are significantly better than industrially raised chicken eggs; however, eggs are not as high in protein as you might think, at only six grams per egg.

Another common ingredient in sausages and other processed food is “hydrolyzed vegetable protein,” which means gluten.

To cook, use clarified butter,* ghee, tallow from grass-fed cows, bacon fat, and lard from pastured pork. Olive oil is great for salads and low-heat cooking, but saturated fat is ideal for high-heat cooking.

In general, the darker the color, the more nutrient dense the vegetable is, but that’s not to say that cauliflower and mushrooms aren’t also great choices. Some of the most nutrient-dense vegetables include asparagus, broccoli, spinach, kale, watercress, sauerkraut, chard, and red bell peppers.

You can buy sheets of organic nori to use as wrappers for “sandwiches” and dulse or kelp flakes to sprinkle in soups and stews.

Carbohydrates do have benefits such as lowering cortisol (stress), fueling highly glycemic workouts (like CrossFit), and acting like a prebiotic in your intestines (by feeding your good bacteria). Those with diabetes or other blood sugar regulation issues generally do better initially with lower carbohydrates, but some folks thrive on a higher intake of tuber-based starches and seasonal fruit.

Although they are a really great source of nutrients, nuts and seeds are very calorically dense and easy to eat in excess, especially when salted. Also, the proper way to prepare raw nuts is to soak and then dehydrate them before eating, which few people have the time to do.

Avoid these for the next thirty days. Enjoy natural sweeteners like honey or maple syrup sparingly after your thirty-day challenge.

When shopping for condiments, avoid added sugars and impossible-to-pronounce chemical additives

Watch out for hidden ingredients, like wheat in soy sauce (you can find coconut aminos at many natural grocery stores or online, which tastes like soy sauce).

For the thirty days of your challenge, avoid all grains and legumes (like quinoa, wheat, barley, lentils, and black beans). One big reason to avoid grains in general are because they’re nutrient poor compared to organically grown roots and tubers.

Sweet potatoes, and vegetables in general, are also a fantastic source of fiber.

This is because, generally speaking, grains are grown using large-scale monocrop methods. Looking at sustainability, as well as the nutrition factors, it just doesn’t add up for humans to be eating a grain-heavy diet. Legumes at least fix nitrogen and improve soil quality, and on our farm we do plant them as a cover crop to reduce soil erosion and increase soil nitrogen when a field is fallow.

Grains and legumes affect people differently. Some have clear gastrointestinal autoimmune reactions to gluten. Others get rashes, headaches, indigestion, or “brain fog.” The truth is, they are not as nutrient dense as other sources of starches, such as roots and tubers, and actually contain antinutrients that can block absorption of vitamins and minerals. We’ve found most folks feel much better when they eliminate gluten and other grains from their diet. After your thirty-day Nutrivore Challenge, if you feel that you’d like to occasionally consume them, make them part of your 80-20 lifestyle, keeping them in the 20 percent. Record how you feel after reintroducing them and note any digestive or functional changes happening in your body after consumption.

However, traditional testing for celiac only screens for antibodies to alpha-gliadin and transglutaminase-2, but there are multiple components that are not tested for, and which can cause reactions. This is why some people who have tested negative for celiac disease feel better when they are gluten-free. So, while you may be one of the people who feel little difference in your digestive system when you eat bread, gluten could still be wreaking havoc on your system and decreasing the absorption of nutrients.

Ideally, you should pull out all dairy for your thirty-day Nutrivore Challenge. If you would like to reintroduce it after that period, record how you feel. In some people, dairy can cause acne or stuffiness, whereas in others digestive issues are the problem. Plain whole milk yogurt, crème fraîche, and raw-milk cheeses from grass-fed cows are a great source of fat-soluble vitamins and naturally occurring trans-fatty acids such as CLA (conjugated linoleic acid), which can help regulate glucose levels.

Though some have had great luck with fasting, one meal a day, and other types of eating windows, if this is all new to you, a great starting point is the following: 3 meals a day Protein: the size of your palm, about 4–8 ounces, depending on your size and need Nonstarchy vegetables: piled high on your plate Starchy vegetables: athletes, the equivalent of about two small/medium sweet potatoes a day; nonathletes should start with about one. 1 tablespoon or so of healthy fat (salad dressing, butter, avocado) Snacks: if necessary, have a handful (not a 5lb bag), of nuts and a piece of fruit

Make a list of ten meats, ten veggies, ten fats, ten herbs and spices, and ten other components like fruits and nuts. If you take one item from each of these columns, combine them and consider that a meal, you have ten thousand meal options. If that was one meal a day, you would potentially not see the same meal for twenty-seven years.

By focusing on what you can eat and not what you’re removing, the opportunities for meals are virtually endless. Here’s a sample:

Cian Foley, who is a champion of the Don’t Eat for Winter diet. The idea is that carbs alone or fat alone are not necessarily going to spark overeating. However, the magical combination of carbs plus fat seems to be an unnaturally winning combination to our brain’s circuits. Most hyperpalatable junk food is this combo—think about potato chips. It’s hard to overeat plain boiled potatoes, but fry them in a vat of oil and many people can crush a whole bag in one sitting.

Your best bet to improve your ratio of omega-3 to -6 is to remove foods with lots of omega-6 from your diet (generally this means highly processed foods) and eat a diet that is filled with lots of seafood and vegetables.

Try to shut down the kitchen by about 7:00 pm or even earlier. Studies show that late-night eating is more likely to lead to weight gain, and that front-loading your calories is a good idea. The idea is “breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince, dinner like a pauper,” which seems to be the opposite of how many Americans eat.

Some complain that there’s not enough peer-reviewed research backing up the type of system we’re advocating for, but we know of many farmers changing over to regenerative agriculture and saving their farms and their health. Many of these regenerative pioneers are featured in the film Sacred Cow.

The row-crop-centric food system proposed and embraced by academia, media, and government is now, and will be, owned by a few gargantuan multinational corporations. These all-powerful entities will control every feature of our lives by controlling the molecular basis of our lives: food. People who live in Ecuador will feel the pressure of rich bureaucrats in Europe and the US who have decided “what is best for everyone.”

The problem is not technological, moral, or even genetic (although some hardwired human tendencies do pose challenges in all this). Our problem is one of perspective. If there is a human failing, perhaps more dangerous than any other, it is the predilection toward superficial, black-and-white, good-versus-bad simplifications of processes that are infinitely complex. We convince ourselves we can control the world when in fact our best effort, and only real hope, is to act as stewards. We need to shift from seeing ourselves as separate from and above nature to seeing ourselves as beings participating with and loving our planet—not just because of what it can provide to us, but because the world in itself is magnificent and complex. Humanity cannot defy the laws of nature, but we are also different from any other organism because we CAN change our perspective.

Links

• We have a long, detailed blog post taking a critical look at amino acids in plant foods versus animal foods at https://www.sacredcow.info/blog/are-all-proteins-created-equal.
• We have outlined in chapter seventeen what our recommendations are for an optimal diet template, but for a deeper dive on nutrient density, comparing meat-rich, omnivore, and vegan diets, please visit https://www.sacredcow.info/blog/what-if-we-all-went-plant-based.

artigo do The Guardian https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/jun/19/why-you-should-go-animal-free-arguments-in-favour-of-meat-eating-debunked-plant-based

# Wired to Eat (Robb Wolf)

Os pilares de uma vida plena

Saúde alimentar, comunidade, exercícios, bom sono. Em conjunto estes são os pilares de acordo com Wired to Eat, um livro que tenta apresentar de maneira irreverente descobertas a respeito da alimentação moderna que pode estar causando surtos de doenças imunodeficientes como diabetes e alzheimer. A premissa está firmada em detalhes ocultos como nossa flora intestinal e como alimentamos as bactérias que queremos que floresçam. Mas não é só isso. O autor apresenta uma nova forma de criar uma dieta personalizada baseado em uma pesquisa que revelou que diferentes pacientes reagem à mesma forma de alimentação de formas diferentes. Por isso ele adota em seu livro uma limpeza corporal de 30 dias seguido por sete dias de experimentos com diferentes tipos de carboidratos cuja reação no corpo será medida pelo índice glicêmico no sangue, obtido pelo uso de medidores para diabéticos, hoje amplamente acessíveis, o que é um misto de ironia com satisfação usar a mesma ferramenta de pessoas doentes para entender nossa dinâmica digestiva antes de nós nos tornarmos os próximos (há espaço também para os que infelizmente já se encontram em algum quadro de diabetes, pelo que entendi).

Clippings

Through an interesting set of circumstances, which you’ll hear about later in the book, the idea of a Paleo or ancestral diet made its way onto my radar, and out of abject desperation, I tried this seemingly wacky way of eating. This decision saved my life. All my health problems resolved in a matter of months. I shared this transformation with my doctors, including my gastroenterologist, rheumatologist, general practitioner, and therapist, all of whom said, “It’s great that you’re doing better, but it has nothing to do with your dietary changes.”

In recent studies, hundreds of people were fed a variety of foods and their individual blood glucose responses were tracked over time. To everyone’s surprise, there was not a one-size-fits-all “best diet,” but rather massive variation, from person to person and in the types of foods each individual reacted favorably or negatively to.

Understanding how we are wired to eat will remove the morality and guilt often associated with attempting dietary changes.

Using the science of epigenetics, we will understand that our genes are not our destiny.

By altering our sleep, food, exercise, and social connections, we will shift all the factors governing our metabolism in a way that makes success easy. Additionally, we will lean heavily on the latest behavior change insights, which support the idea that we are not all the same. Some people will find success by abstaining from certain trigger foods. Others will be able to moderate their intake of (rather than avoid completely) certain foods. After reading this book, and doing a little self-experimentation, you will know which strategy will work best for you. Once appetite and blood sugar are in check, you will find it easier to lose weight and prevent or reverse a number of health problems, ranging from obesity and diabetes to heart disease and neurodegenerative diseases like Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s.

We don’t “cheat” on our food. We do not need a “healthy relationship” with our food. We simply need to understand that there are consequences to our food choices. The mind-set surrounding the “cheating” mentality is almost a guarantee of failure and puts the focus in the wrong place, when the real problem is most likely a lack of love and connection. Now is the opportunity to change our minds and our lives.

Living in close proximity to larger numbers of people as well as animals appears to have posed a significant immune challenge for our early agricultural ancestors. Reliance on starchy, low-nutrient foods such as grains also appears to have posed a significant challenge with regard to growth and nutrient deficiencies.

Anthropologists have estimated that hunter-gatherers walked 5 to 10 miles most days.

Social isolation is recognized as a huge stressor and appears to be a key piece of addictive behavior, including overeating.

If there is one “simple” trick that will make better eating easy, it is fixing the neuroregulation of appetite.

We have complex systems that monitor how much food we have taken in versus how much energy we have expended. Additionally, our body-fat level is monitored. These variables, which consider both our short-term and long-term energy status, determine our neuroregulation of appetite.

Even if a plant tastes good to us, we will become bored of the food at some point because there are still toxins in things as benign as apples, carrots, and blueberries if we overeat them.

The second reason for palate fatigue is somewhat the opposite of avoiding toxins and relates to optimizing nutrient intake in the form of vitamins, minerals, and other food-based nutrients such as polyphenolics (one of the likely health-promoting elements in chocolate and green tea).

This is likely due to the fact that humans cannot consume more than about 35 percent of their calories from protein before suffering from protein toxicity.

Fiber-rich carbohydrates tend to be the next most satiating, as they effect changes to the stomach’s mechanoreceptors, which communicate to the brain that we are filling our stomach.

As we will see, some of these satiety studies look only at the short term (hours) when considering the satiety effects of various foods. This may be a bit misleading, as the effects of hormonal dysregulation and overeating play out over days, weeks, months, and years. Fat does not cause much stomach distension, but it is calorically dense and triggers the release of hormones that provide satiety over the longer haul.

(...) junk carbs from the diet, which can hijack the neuroregulation of appetite and make us feel hungry.

Anthropologist Jared Diamond makes the point that abandoning the hunter-gatherer life-way was perhaps the greatest mistake made in all of humanity.

His reasoning is controversial but compelling: These new agriculturalists suffered a number of health problems unique to their new way of living. The accumulation of “stuff” allowed for the development of class structures and large-scale exploitation of people and the environment. Our path out of Eden has brought us to a literal existential crisis in which we now have the technology to destroy not only ourselves but most of life on the planet we call home.

What on earth do sickle cell anemia and malaria have to do with health, weight loss, and food? Let me ask you a question: Is there any moral failing with people who have sickle cell anemia? No, clearly not, at least not due to the genetics which produce that condition. But the same processes that developed sickle cell anemia were at play in wiring our genetics to eat more and move less. You cannot moralize our desire to “eat all the food” any more than one could make a credible argument to lambast folks with sickle cell anemia. When faced with a stress, our species can adapt (like in the case of malaria), but it takes time and the adaptation comes at a cost. If, however, the rate of change is sufficiently rapid, we may not be able to cope effectively. This is the salient point of the discordance theory. Our genes are not identical to those of our hunter-gatherer ancestors; there are changes like sickle cell anemia and lactase persistence (the ability to digest the sugar found in milk), but these changes are incomplete in that some novel foods, like refined carbohydrates, still give us problems.

This phenomenon has been well documented for decades and is called the dessert effect. Simply put, this is the observation that someone may claim to be full after a meal, commenting, “Oh, I cannot eat another bite!” only to eat much more than a bite once the dessert tray comes out. This is just the short-term effect of hyperpalatable complex foods.

Serotonin gets a lot of airplay in the media due to its use in antidepressants such as Prozac (which increase the levels of serotonin in the brain), but dopamine is the key player in the hedonic (reward) centers of the brain and in drugs such as caffeine, nicotine, and cocaine.

The people who figured out this game, the people who ate more and moved less, are the folks we call ancestors—the ones who didn’t die.

Depending on the structure of a given protein, it can be easier or harder to digest. This is an important point we will consider when we look at food intolerances and food-borne immune responses such as celiac disease.

For our purposes, we just need to be aware that carbs can come in the form of sugar, starch, or fiber and that depending on the makeup of a given food (its relative mix of sugars, starch, or fiber), it can create vastly different blood glucose responses.

Our knowledge of digestion in general and our unique response to carbs in particular will influence our food choices to affect weight loss and improve our health.

For some folks, simply seeing or smelling a dessert (or a damn tasty meal) can cause the release of insulin, which is a key hormone in health and body fat levels.

The stomach is really a marvel of biological engineering, as it is host to an environment so acidic (the pH of the stomach should be around 2 to 2.5) that it can dissolve metals.

This highly acidic environment begins the process of protein digestion in earnest, while starch and fat digestion will ramp up once we hit the small intestine.

The contents of the stomach squirt into the small intestine and a number of processes occur simultaneously, including important roles by the pancreas and the gallbladder. Ideally, at the end of the process, carbohydrates in the form of starch are reduced to sugars (mainly glucose), while proteins are degraded into amino acids.

In this stage, the proteins and carbohydrates can be absorbed at the intestinal wall and enter the circulation for a trip to the liver and eventually into the body, where they may be stored or used as energy or building blocks for the growth and repair of our bodies.

Two critically important features of our digestive tract are structures called villi and microvilli. These finger- and hairlike structures increase the surface area of the gut, thereby increasing its ability to absorb nutrients, and play a crucial role in the digestive process.

If the gut lining is not fully intact, amino acids and sugars can still be absorbed (albeit inefficiently), but fats will not be absorbed. This can be a serious problem, as a remarkable number of nutrients—antioxidants, beta-carotene, etc.—can only be absorbed by the body when eaten with fat (a fact those preaching low-fat diets often overlook).

Undigested fat that makes its way into the large intestine and colon can have…”remarkable” consequences. The medical term is diarrhea, but around the Wolf household we like to call that “disaster pants.”

In general, we see more absorption occur in later sections of the small intestine. The consumption of highly refined foods can alter this process, causing more nutrients to be absorbed early and effectively starving the gut bacteria later in the GI tract.

Undigested fiber and a wide variety of starches called resistant starch are the primary food source for our gut bacteria. The bacteria ferment these starches and fibers, producing certain vitamins and a not insignificant amount of short-chain fatty acids, which not only feed the cells of the gut but can also make their way into our circulatory system and play a role in our own energy needs.

Problems in the digestive process (such as low stomach acid) can leave large intact food pieces present in the “southbound” regions of the GI tract, and this can stimulate the growth of bacteria that are not benign to our health.

(...) bacteria growing in the wrong places (as happens when we eat large amounts of refined carbs, which stimulates the growth of bacteria inappropriately in some places and starves bacteria in other regions).

Hormones are chemical messengers released into the circulatory system by specific glands or tissues.

When a hormone has bonded to its receptor site, we generally see a change in DNA expression in a given cell, which means we will see changes in how certain proteins are produced within the cell, and this is how we change our physiology.

When our cells do not respond properly to insulin (insulin resistance) our blood sugars tend to rise too high after a meal.*1 The unfortunate side effect is that blood sugars tend to then crash to abnormally low levels, leaving us shaky, hungry, and irritated, what I and others have taken to calling “hangry” (hungry + angry = hangry).

In general, carbohydrate releases the largest amount of insulin on a calorie-by-calorie basis, with protein releasing (generally) less insulin and fat releasing a relatively small amount.

There are some exceptions to this, as certain proteins and amino acids do stimulate the release of large amounts of insulin.

Glucagon is insulin’s counter hormone. Released by hunger and also by protein, it is able to convert proteins in the body to glucose via a process called gluconeogenesis.

In short, insulin helps to store nutrients in the body, while glucagon helps to liberate those fuels.

Adrenaline is released under a number of circumstances: physical (or psychological) threat, physical activity, and hunger

(...) adrenaline increases blood glucose levels by stimulating the liver.

It’s important to note the sensitivity hormones have for their receptors, as many of the pathologic conditions we will consider have, at their core, a state of resistance on the part of the hormone’s desired action.

When insulin goes up after a meal, it begins effecting metabolic changes, and one of those changes is a decrease in the number of insulin receptors. This is a normal process unless insulin becomes chronically elevated and the individual’s body greatly reduces the number of insulin receptors and thus becomes insulin resistant.

This process of down regulation or resistance can happen with any hormone and is again part of the feedback loops that keep our physiology working effectively.

(...) the action of glucagon on insulin sensitivity is an interesting case in point: glucagon tends to increase insulin sensitivity.

You simply need to know that in the insulin-resistant state in which glucose levels are elevated, increased glucagon levels do play a part in attempting to improve insulin sensitivity

Cortisol has a number of functions, including aiding in blood sugar control and modulating inflammation and immune response.

Under normal circumstances, a relatively high level of body fat should suppress our appetite, while low levels increase appetite.

Calorie restriction or fasting appears to be quite beneficial, as some of our cells can sustain damage over time that induces a state called senescence. In this condition, cells are technically alive, but they are not behaving as they should. Under ideal conditions a cell that becomes damaged will undergo a process called apoptosis and do us the favor of dying and being recycled. In certain circumstances, however, these senescent cells can become cancerous and/or produce large amounts of inflammation, which increases our likelihood of a host of diseases, including cancer, cardiovascular disease, and neurodegeneration. If calorie restriction and/or fasting are of sufficient magnitude and duration, we enter a state called starvation ketosis, whereby our metabolism shifts from a primarily glucose-based fuel to being fueled by free fatty acids and ketones.

(...) most practitioners are unfamiliar with the difference between ketosis (induced by calorie restriction, fasting, or a low-carb, moderate-protein, high-fat diet) and ketoacidosis, which is a state of significantly elevated ketones generally seen in poorly controlled diabetics.

Excess fat increases the inflammatory signaling in our body, which, unfortunately, accelerates the cascade of problems related to elevated blood glucose. This is particularly true when fat is deposited in two key locations: the liver and around the visceral organs.

Elevated blood glucose can be toxic to the brain, kidneys, and capillaries. So in a fascinating adaptive response, our bodies convert the highly reactive molecule glucose into fat.

Although excess body fat can have problems of its own, elevated blood glucose can kill us quite rapidly.

The brain becomes leptin resistant and the muscles become insulin resistant. This fools the brain and the liver into believing we are starving.

Under normal circumstances, the mitochondria, and by extension our metabolism, should be very flexible in shifting between fat and carbohydrate as a fuel. Unfortunately, the damage created by the overfed state can impair our ability to use fat as a fuel source, which makes us all the more dependent on carbohydrates

“The Gut-Brain Connection, Mental Illness, and Disease: Psychobiotics, Immunology, and the Theory of All Chronic Disease,” was written by my good friend Emily Deans, MD.

Is what we eat inside or outside of our body? Seriously! Have you ever thought about this?! The answer to this question may seem obvious. Of course what I’ve eaten is inside my body. But the truth is that we have a tunnel from our mouth directly to our PEP (Posterior Exit Port), so the contents of that tunnel are in fact outside the body.

Here are some key observations that support the Hygiene Hypothesis: 1. The gut bacteria of non-Westernized populations appears to be quite different from that of most Westernized populations. Western populations have much less bacterial diversity in general and appear to be lacking a significant number of species common to non-Westernized populations. 2. Children in Westernized societies who are raised around animals and on farms appear to have a gut bacterial profile far more diverse than those who are not. Their microbiome may not be as varied as the one seen in non-Westernized populations, but is significantly different from that of individuals born and raised in urban settings. 3. The likelihood of the two aforementioned groups to develop allergies, autoimmunity, and inflammatory bowel issues is much lower than that of the folks with what we’d call “Western guts.”

Ancestral diets that are rich in a wide variety of fibers appear to provide a form of carbohydrate that is not broken down by the action of our digestive enzymes, but instead feeds the bacteria in our large intestine and colon. Bacteria convert certain types of fiber to short-chain fatty acids, which appear to play an important role in feeding the intestinal cells while also decreasing inflammation throughout the body. Additionally, and really to the point of the paper, cellular carbohydrate, like that found in fruits, vegetables, roots, beans, and whole grains are packaged in such a way that their digestion is slow, and this appears to “save” the carbohydrate for digestion later in the digestive tract. By contrast, refined carbohydrate alters the digestive system by encouraging the abnormal growth of bacteria in the small intestine (SIBO), while also encouraging the growth of pathogenic bacteria in the large intestine and colon.

Although less severe (at least initially) the development of SIBO and changes in our microbiota allow for abnormally large amounts of LPS to make its way into our circulation. While these levels are not as high as those seen in life-threatening sepsis, it establishes a chronic inflammatory state that increases risk for cardiovascular disease, neurodegeneration, and a host of other conditions.

Studies of Western versus non-Westernized populations show striking differences in not only disease rates and risks, but also levels of inflammatory markers and the hormones governing the neuroregulation of appetite. Ancestral diets show a remarkable spread in macronutrient profiles. Some are rather low carb, while others may be as high as 70 percent carbohydrate. This spread in macronutrients appears to have little if any impact on health so long as the foods are largely unprocessed and the carbohydrates come mainly from fruits, vegetables, and tubers.

(...) researchers have taken the gut biome from obese mice and inoculated lean healthy mice with the altered gut profile. The result? The healthy mice gained weight and became insulin and leptin resistant.

A grazing animal that consumes some ripe grain may in fact pass most of the seeds intact through its digestive system, and this is due in part to the enzyme inhibitors. This can be problematic as these enzyme inhibitors may negatively affect the digestion and absorption of other foods,

You can watch Dr. Wahls’s amazing TED Talk by searching for “Minding Your Mitochondria.”

Refined (acellular) carbohydrates appear to negatively alter gut bacteria, causing overgrowth in the small intestine (SIBO) while starving the bacteria in the colon and large intestine.

The infant gut is naturally permeable, which allows the large, intact proteins found in breast milk to make their way into the infant body, tuning the immune system and setting us up for success. Early exposure to foods other than breast milk dramatically increases the likelihood of allergies and reactivity to foods, as the highly permeable infant gut is ill prepared to deal with these novel foods.

If you make the study experience too difficult, people will opt out of the program. If researchers are overly ambitious in study design, they will never get funding. This is why so much of the published research is not particularly helpful: the studies are small and poorly designed.

The paper “Personalized Nutrition by Prediction of Glycemic Responses,” which appeared in the prestigious journal Cell, is one of the most important research projects in the past fifty years.

It’s perhaps worth noting that the two main variables that determine what foods work best for folks involved eating either more fat and fewer carbs or avoiding problematic foods.

In 1985, Dr. Eaton and his research associate Melvin Konner, PhD, wrote the groundbreaking review paper Paleolithic Nutrition: A Consideration of Its Nature and Current Implications.

It’s worth remembering that although modern degenerative diseases appear to be quite different (they affect different organs and systems), the root causes tend to be the same: poor blood sugar control, elevated insulin levels, systemic inflammation, and intestinal permeability.

The Paleo diet is much higher in magnesium than the modern diet, which physiologically appears to buffer the need for calcium.

(...) one of the first adaptive mechanisms our bodies shift toward to deal with the stress is to seek out any food, but particularly highly processed foods. We crave and tend to eat “bad” foods. This is a survival mechanism that bites us in the backside in our modern world.

That stress is a factor in both health and disease has been understood for more than seventy years, particularly after the work of Hans Selye, who developed the General Adaptation Syndrome (GAS) model of stress. In simple terms, the GAS model suggests that any organism that is subjected to a stress, be that physical, chemical, temperature, or psychological, will go through a predictable process of either adaptation or burnout

After our mid-thirties, we tend to start losing muscle mass, mitochondrial density, and mobility due to changes in our hormones, and also because we tend to become more sedentary.

Mitochondrial density is important, as this allows us to have a flexible, largely fat-fueled metabolism. As we lose mitochondrial density with age, our metabolism shifts more and more toward a carb-centric process.

Research has shown that short intervals can get you into fantastic cardiovascular shape while also increasing mitochondrial density.

What you are effectively doing here is sprint interval training. Research has shown that short intervals can get you into fantastic cardiovascular shape while also increasing mitochondrial density.

I have found incredible ROI in focusing on my sleep, reframing how I view stress, cultivating meaningful relationships, and following an approach to movement as detailed above. I get a lot done, I have the energy to get things done, and I enjoy the whole process immensely.

We’ve talked about Optimum Foraging Strategy, and how we are genetically wired to “eat more, move less.” If you really understand and embrace those realities, you are extremely close to liberating yourself from any type of morality or guilt you may feel around food. Perhaps that information, and the realizations that come from processing the implications, are enough for you. If so, fantastic. If not, if you still have this niggling sense that anything less than perfection with your food is failure…you have something else going on and it has nothing to do with food.

To this point, a quote from William Thomson, 1st Barron Kelvin (yes, as in kelvin the measurement), is educational, “If you cannot measure it, you cannot improve it.”

Many of these problems, although seemingly unrelated, have significant overlap. For example, if you are overweight, you are more likely to develop cardiovascular disease, neurodegeneration, or diabetes. Similarly, we have learned that autoimmunity has an element of intestinal permeability, but we also know that intestinal permeability impairs our insulin sensitivity, which increases our likelihood of weight gain, cardiovascular disease, and diabetes!

Let’s first look at some of the subjective signs of insulin resistance to see where you are on the spectrum. Do you find that you are extremely thirsty and need to pee “all the time”? Does your vision sometimes blur after a carby meal? • If you cut yourself, is your skin slow to heal? Do you generally feel fatigued or “foggy headed”? Do you feel hungry less than two hours after having a meal?

If we consume more calories than we need, we will tend to gain fat. If we are insulin sensitive, this fat will tend to be evenly distributed around the body. If, however, we are insulin resistant (for whatever reason—lack of sleep, stress, inflammation) and if those excess calories come in the form of refined carbohydrates, this fat tends to be stored around our internal organs and is called visceral fat.

In general, the hips are wider than the waist, so we should end up with a number less than one.

Elevated blood pressure (hypertension) is a common early indication of insulin resistance. As insulin levels increase, the hormone aldosterone is also increased. Aldosterone causes us to retain sodium, and the retention of sodium causes us to retain water.

Your blood pressure reading is composed of two numbers. The larger number (systolic) shows your blood pressure when your heart beats, and your diastolic, the smaller of the two numbers, is the pressure of your arterial system between heartbeats.

Looking at pre-Westernized populations it is not uncommon to see the norm nearly 20 points less than what is described for both systolic and diastolic blood pressure, often even less than this.

A diet with carbs set at a level that works for the individual causes rapid loss of water, which also brings down BP almost immediately. One of the criticisms of low-carb diets goes something like this: “Much of the weight loss is just water weight.” Yes, that’s true. The formerly insulin-resistant individual just peed out their heart and kidney disease risk, literally down the drain.

Blood pressure is one of the first things to improve with better diet and lifestyle, so this can provide you with a real sense of accomplishment early in your process.

The hemoglobin A1C shows the amount of advanced glycation end products that have accumulated on red blood cells over the past few months.

Folks eating a low-carb diet may see relatively high A1C levels, as their blood cells actually live substantially longer than when blood glucose levels are more elevated.

Fortunately, we do have a slick biomarker, in this case the advanced glycation end-product fructosamine, to validate if the A1C is the real deal or leading us down the wrong interpretive road.

The fasting glucose test is quite valuable, but stress or infections can skew the number upward, so we need to consider the context of that particular test. Unfortunately, this is also typically the singular test used to make a diagnosis of diabetes or prediabetes.

Here are what I’d recommend tracking: 1. A1C 2. Fructosamine 3. Fasting glucose levels

In addition to the tests listed above, I recommend tracking the following: 1. Total cholesterol, which will include HDL and LDL cholesterol 2. Triglycerides 3. LDL-P, which measures the number of LDL particles that actually carry your LDL cholesterol

Triglycerides are an indirect measure of insulin sensitivity and a direct measure of circulating blood fats. I’d like to see triglycerides at least below 100mg/dl and more in the 50 to 75 range.

HDL and LDL cholesterol are shuttled around the body inside lipoproteins (HDL-P, LDL-P) and when we look at lipoprotein numbers, we see a much better fit with cardiovascular disease potential.

There are many factors that can affect LDL-P numbers. Low thyroid, infections (gut permeability), and insulin resistance can all push numbers up.

This is a rare situation, but it does happen. Bringing down blood glucose from diabetic or prediabetic levels is clearly good. Reversing insulin resistance and inflammation while also increasing LDL-P levels is a less clear story.

Along with the lifestyle considerations of sleep, stress, and exercise, there are three primary dietary components we can control that govern our neuroregulation of appetite: 1. Protein 2. Fiber 3. Appropriate carb content

By paying close attention to our subjective measures of satiety, energy, and mental clarity, we can dial in the amount and types of carbs that work best for us.

Given all of the above, for the next thirty days, you will eat three meals per day (crazy, right?) built around the following: 4 to 6 ounces of protein at every meal (larger folks may do a bit more; smaller folks will likely stay on the lower side of that general recommendation) 75 to 150g of carbohydrates per day, from as wide a variety of fruits, vegetables, and roots as you can manage Added fat for flavor. Don’t be afraid of fat, but don’t drink it through a straw.

(...) herbes de Provence (savory, marjoram, rosemary, thyme, and oregano)

As you will learn in the meal plans, it’s wise to lose the arbitrary idea that there are certain foods that “must” be eaten for any given meal.

Hangry means we might not have our air/fuel mixture quite right yet. So before you reach for the snack, consider this: 1. Did you eat enough in total at your last meal? If you are a bit hungry but functional, you likely got the carb amount right but did not eat enough. 2. Did you eat too many carbs? If you are hangry, this is most likely the problem.

If we are insulin resistant, however, we do not seamlessly transition into ketosis, and the blood sugar crashes we experience are of a magnitude and type that are almost druglike. They are superphysiologic. Our brains do not like blood sugar swings, and the low blood sugar one experiences while insulin resistant produces a profound drive to “fix” the problem. This is “hanger.”

In my experience, sweetened beverages, be they artificial, natural, or supernatural, are “gateway drugs.” They contribute to poor compliance. So my recommendation is to avoid these items until you are at a point where you are happy with how you look, feel, and perform.

Your goal could be as simple as doing a short walk to your mailbox. Time that walk as you begin the program and just try to consistently improve on that time. Never been able to do a push-up or pull-up? Those are all worthy goals. When that goal gets too easy, pick a new goal. I’m okay with you picking more than one goal; just don’t overwhelm yourself when you’re getting started. What we are trying to do is give your brain that little cocainelike hit of dopamine we get from achieving a goal. I’m writing this book with a program called Scrivener, and I can set a little box in the corner with a daily word count goal. At the beginning of the day, the box is an angry red. As I make progress, it shifts to orange, then yellow, and I get to wrap up my day with a dopamine-gasm of a little green box telling me I’ve met my goal. It may sound lame, but it works! Similarly, if you see consistent improvements in your performance goal, it’ll help keep you in the fight.

If you are insulin sensitive (which can be determined by your fasting insulin levels, A1C, and a generally favorable waist-to-hip ratio), you will need to tweak the dietary plans toward more whole, unprocessed carbs and add less fat to your meals.

Bestselling author Gretchen Rubin provides some insight on this topic in her book Better Than Before, as she details that people tend to fall into one of two camps: abstainers and moderators. Abstainers need to steer clear of a certain food or behavior, like playing video games, or they tend to slide into unhealthy patterns. Moderators, by contrast, can take or leave a food or activity. This is a great book, and I can’t recommend it enough. Gretchen also has a fantastic website to support the book, which can help you figure out if you are an abstainer or moderator by taking a simple quiz.

Eating out with friends and family is a nice time to kick your heels up, but it’s easy for this to turn into a “hookers and cocaine” binge versus just having something a bit different than your usual fare. That said, here are some guidelines I’d like you to follow: 1. Stick with the program for at least thirty days. You can do anything for a month—hang in there, get amazing results, then make an informed decision about how tightly you want to run things in the future. You can easily build a meal compliant with the 30-Day Reset at just about any restaurant. 2. I generally recommend that you stay gluten-free both at home and when eating out. Every day there are more and more research articles indicating that this is a smart move for many people. Is it really a terrible prospect to have a chocolate torte or ice cream instead of a pastry? This is all I’m suggesting. Once you get through your thirty days, you can kick your heels up occasionally. But more often than not, go for gluten-free options. 3. If you eat out for most of your meals due to travel or not knowing how to boil water, clearly we need to modify this recommendation. If the former, let’s limit your heel-kick-upping to once per week. If you don’t know how to cook, the Food Matrix is an amazing resource for how to navigate that forgotten room of the house called “The Kitchen.” I think a lack of cooking knowledge, as well as the lack of desire to prioritize cooking at home, is a huge problem, as it tends to leave us earlobe deep in easily accessible, low-quality food. As much as I might finger wag about needing to fix that, I am aware of the social trend toward preparing and eating less food at home. I have spent upward of thirty weeks per year on the road, for years at a time, and all this really boils down to is making better choices. Even when my options are not great, I can make better choices. You can, too.

Sleep: Follow every recommendation from the sleep and stress chapter to the letter. If folks did just this, they would be amazed by how much better they look and feel. Food: Remove all liquid calories from your diet. Ditch the sugary coffee drinks, juices, and smoothies. Get a palm-size piece of protein at every meal and as many veggies as you can handle, and avoid white carbs. Potatoes, rice, and bread are the big no-no’s. Move: I don’t care what you do, just get out and move as much as you can, as often as you can. Get sun on your skin. If you follow these simple guidelines, you will make progress. Your palate will change and you will feel better.

Alternating hot/cold shower. I use this technique at home when I am very busy and my mind is racing. I’ll start with a hot temperature that is just at the level of my tolerance. I do hot for 10 seconds, then shift to cool/cold for 20 seconds. I will alternate back and forth five to ten times, finishing on cold. I then hop out of the shower, dry off, and barely make it to my bed before I pass out. This process appears to reset our circadian rhythm to some degree, which helps us to unwind and go to bed. It also facilitates reducing our body temperature, which is a key feature of sleep. If your room is chilly and dark, and if you are a bit cold after your showers, your bed will feel like heaven when you dive into it. Clearly, keep the “cold” portion reasonable. If you dump a bucket of ice water down your back before bed you may not sleep for a week.

Instead of putting info here that will be out of date well before the book is even published, I’ll direct you to robbwolf.com/​monitors to stay up to date on the best options.

You will: 1. Start by eating a food with 50g of effective carbohydrate. This is the whole meal. We do not eat other foods at this time, as we just want to track the effects of this singular food. 2. Track your blood glucose response two hours after your meal (just your carbohydrates test food) using your blood glucose monitor. This literally means eat your test food (meal), set a timer for two hours, then take a blood sugar test as per the instructions associated with your glucometer. Ideally, your blood glucose will be between 90 and 115mg/dl at that point. If it is higher than this range, I’d like you to retest that food on a different day at breakfast again, eating 25g of effective carbohydrate (just cut that original 50g portion in half). Retest your blood glucose response two hours after this meal. If it is still above 115mg/dl, then this particular food is likely not a good fit for you.

Given that you may be retesting a few (or several) foods, this may in fact be longer than a seven-day test, but within that time span you should have a better idea of the carbs that work for you. This process will let you know precisely how you respond to various foods and will allow you to find a per-meal carb load that works for you. In addition to the blood glucose response, I want you to be aware of subjective responses that may be a sign of intolerance or sensitivity (which could include skin issues or joint pain) to certain foods, such as clouded mental clarity, low energy, or “hanger” after a meal.

The information we gain about problematic food is also valuable beyond simple avoidance. Let’s say you don’t do well with bananas, but you really like those golden fruits. You could keep bananas mainly as a post-exercise carb source, as we tend to require less insulin to regulate blood sugar after vigorous activity.

It’s probable that once you have improved your gut health by sticking mainly with more favorable foods for three to six months, you may be able to better tolerate problematic foods. A bit later I make the case for retesting certain foods every three to six months as a type of mini reset. This may be a good idea for several reasons, not the least of which is reassessing your overall tolerance to both favorable and previously unfavorable foods.

I do not get all “hookers and cocaine” with my food very often. Maybe once per month I’ll have some gluten-free pizza or ice cream. Here is an important point: I just let these diversions from my normal eating happen. I do not plan these things out days or weeks in advance like a heroin addict getting ready to tie off for a hit. All that anticipatory stuff, the planning and scheming for the off-the-rails meal, plays into the neural wiring tied to addiction. Talk to a drug addict and they will tell you the anticipation and planning are often far better than the act/drug itself.

What I’d like you to do is get to a place where you can be out at dinner, a family function, or a cocktail party, and when pie, ice cream, or similar items are available, you can eat them and enjoy them and it does not matter one damn bit with regard to your health, psyche, or waistline. If the bulk of your meals are on point, your sleep is good, and you are active, these occasional dalliances will not matter.

My response to the people in this camp is this: you can have two meals per week to do with pretty much what you want. In theory we should be eating roughly twenty-one meals per week, so two meals make up 10 percent (well, technically 9.52 percent, but who’s counting, right?) of that, which means you are sticking to the plan about 90 percent of the time. As always, here are my caveats to this: I generally recommend that you stick to gluten-free options. If you are convinced gluten is not a problem for you, then by all means, include it, but as I’ve said many times in this book, I’m shocked by how many people do better without gluten. Know yourself. If this off-the-rails eating takes on the appearance of a college drinking binge in Tijuana, this is likely not a good option. You need to decide if the cost-benefit ratio is worth it to you. If you turn these events into the equivalent of the Kitchen Sink Challenge I described early in the book, consuming 8 pounds of ice cream in a sitting, we have a problem. I am not advocating that. Eat a portion that you’d be comfortable being filmed eating and having the footage placed on YouTube.

You need a strong “why.” You need a reason to make these changes and just keep doing them, even when your motivation is in the toilet. That may sound daunting, but it’s not. We are talking about one meal at a time, one day at a time. Instead of fixating on your whole life, just focus on getting the next meal right. You do not need a motivational speech to take your next breath, because it’s automatic. If you make this new way of eating and living automatic, it will be as effortless as taking your next breath.

Our distant ancestors embarked on an experiment of sorts in which they traded large guts like those seen in chimps and gorillas for smaller guts and larger brains (the Expensive Tissue Hypothesis).

Not every day was a success with regard to hunting or gathering. Because our brains are so large and metabolically active (only about 2 percent of our weight yet nearly 20 percent of our energy usage), food scarcity could pose a serious problem for our cognitive abilities, arguably the greatest asset humans have relative to other animals. If the brain can only run on glucose (as most health care providers claim), we must have a consistent supply of dietary glucose or we will “bonk” (experience serious cognitive problems due to low blood sugar) and cannibalize the proteins in our body to produce glucose for the brain, a process called gluconeogenesis. Fortunately for us, biology figured out an elegant solution to the problem of inconsistent food sources and a large, hungry brain in the form of ketosis.

Without sufficient glucose (or protein) to catalyze the metabolism of fats, we shift to a different process, ketosis, which solves several problems simultaneously. Ketosis takes the high-energy fat molecules stored in our bodies and converts them to a form that can fuel the heart, muscles, organs, and, perhaps most important, the brain. This provides an almost limitless supply of brain-friendly fuel in the form of ketones, while decreasing the need for our metabolism to use our muscles and internal organs to produce glucose.

Ketone bodies (beta-hydroxybutyrate and acetoacetate) are water soluble, which is why they are so effective at fueling the brain: they easily pass the blood-brain barrier. Entering ketosis under starvation conditions dramatically slows the loss of muscle and organ mass as the bulk of our energy requirements are met by converting our abundant fat stores into easily metabolized ketones. Additionally, we do not see cognitive impairment as the brain easily shifts to ketone use and this protects the brain from the ups and downs associated with a carb/glucose dependent metabolism. Many people (but not all!) experimenting with ketosis notice that cognition is “fantastic”

Ketones provide an alternate fuel for the brain and body while making small amounts of glucose from the glycerol backbone of triglycerides (fats). Ketosis also offers an amazing benefit in that it encourages our bodies to evaluate if the cells and proteins in our cells are healthy. Ketosis causes a low-grade stress (hormesis), which causes damaged or sick cells to die via a process called apoptosis. The constituents of these cells get recycled instead of becoming diseased. This helps us in two ways: it provides raw materials to help us during scarcity, and it eliminates damaged cells that have a high likelihood of becoming cancerous or diseased. Much of what we perceive to be aging appears to be an accumulation of damaged cells and cellular components. Intermittent ketosis, either by fasting or nutritional ketosis (a high-fat, low-carb, moderate-protein diet) appears to be an effective strategy to address this problem and may offer profound antiaging benefits.

Another common feature of aging is a loss of mitochondria, which can negatively impact our metabolism and may be a common problem in diseases ranging from cancer to autoimmunity to neurodegenerative disease. I don’t want to get too far into the weeds on this, but one of the benefits of ketosis is that it dramatically increases the mitochondrial density of our muscles and organs. More mitochondria means more energy.

While eating normal mixed meals, we tend to see virtually no ketone production. After an overnight fast, we see a small amount. Under the state of nutritional ketosis, we tend to see a range of 1 to 3, while an extended fast can produce ketone levels as high as 7 to 10. Ketoacidosis, by contrast, produces levels that are much higher than either fasting or nutritional ketosis. The medical community recognizes that blood glucose has healthy and unhealthy ranges, yet there is not the same awareness around ketone levels. Ketoacidosis is most common in poorly controlled diabetes cases, in which insulin usages does not match carbohydrate intake. This can dangerously shift the blood pH, leading to coma and possibly death. So I do not want to make light of the concerns medical professionals have on this topic, but it’s also time for them to not just “get through” their biochemistry, but to actually remember it. It is as unreasonable to equate ketoacidosis with fasting and nutritional ketosis as it is to somehow link normal blood glucose levels (in an insulin sensitive individual) with diabetes. Ketoacidosis is too many ketones; diabetes is too much blood glucose.

Although still a fringe research area, information about the ketogenic diet has exploded in recent years due to academic interest, but I must make the point: this interest was inspired by grassroots activism on the Internet. When researchers really began looking at the mechanisms of the ketogenic diet, they found that this way of eating: 1. Dramatically reduced insulin levels 2. Reduced and normalized blood glucose levels 3. Provided an alternate fuel for the brain (ketone bodies) 4. Stabilized electrical activity in the brain 5. Reduced inflammation

By understanding these mechanisms, researchers also began looking at a number of other conditions that might benefit from the ketogenic diet, including cancer, neurodegenerative diseases such as Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s, and diabetes.

In the 1920s, Otto Warburg observed that certain types of cancers shifted to a metabolism built exclusively from glucose fermentation. This is in stark contrast to most normal cells, which use the mitochondria to metabolize protein, carbs, and fat in a process called cellular respiration. It was theorized that mitochondrial dysfunction was the root of most cancers. This theory held sway until the characterization of the DNA double helix in the 1950s. At this time the metabolic theory of cancer fell out of vogue and we have spent the past seventy years looking at and treating cancer from a genetic rather than metabolic perspective.

If you are particularly interested in the history of cancer and the ketogenic diet, I recommend you read Tripping Over the Truth by Travis Christofferson.

There have been a few small studies in which individuals suffering from neurodegenerative disease were fed a low-glycemic-load diet supplemented with medium-chain triglycerides (MCTs). MCTs are interesting in that we tend to metabolize them preferentially and the result is an appreciable increase in blood ketone levels. This protocol has proven beneficial for certain neurodegenerative diseases, and research in this area is really ramping up. Additional tools that may prove helpful include ketone salts and esters. These substances can produce ketone levels that are quite high and simply need to be mixed with water to be consumed. While these are by no means cure-alls, they are nonetheless exciting opportunities for those suffering from these diseases.

(...) type 1 diabetes is an autoimmune disease that damages the beta cells of the pancreas, thereby halting the production of insulin.

There is clearly a deeper story here that no one has the answer to, but if your blood work shifts toward higher LDL-P while in ketosis yet normalizes on 100 to 150g of carbs per day, I think it’s safe to say the latter path is better for you.

I cannot recommend a ketogenic diet for folks who perform large amounts of high-intensity work.

In fact, folks diagnosed with SIBO are generally recommended to eat a low-carb diet to starve back the pathogenic gut bacteria, then they slowly introduce probiotics and quality carbs to feed the beneficial bacteria.

(...) it might be possible to provide the gut with adequate amounts of fermentable carbohydrates by eating prodigious amounts of vegetables, including onions, leeks, and garlic, all of which provide unique, low-glycemic-load carbs that can also feed the gut.

# Ajoomma - Uma Viagem Inesquecível

A confusão de idiomas e o Lost in Translation é a maior parte da diversão nesta comédia de situação onde uma senhora se vê perdida em um país estrangeiro sem meios de se comunicar com seu filho. Mas o filme perde muito tempo explicando como tudo vai acontecer, se esquece de respirar ou de contar uma história.

# Asciidoc the worst?

Tentei por um tempo assimilar a ideia de usar o formato asciidoc como o padrão para meu novo arquivo-fonte do blog e de futuros livros. O racional era óbvio: feito para a escrita de documentos mais complexos, Asciidoc seria uma mudança para longo prazo, muito mais robusta que Markdown e suas mil e uma versões.

No entanto, minha última leitura do padrão para começar a transformar o texto me fez realizar que este padrão está bem longe de ser adotado de fato. Ele é bom apenas na teoria, mas na prática todas ferramentas e ambientes usam Markdown como o idioma franco. Não exatamente à toa. Ele já estava sendo construído ao longo de milhares de mensagens na usenet antes mesmo do HTML ter sido criado. Ele é simples e pode ser implementado em apenas um arquivo perl (como foi no início). E ele está pronto para ter uma definição não-ambígua, o CommonMark.

O que ele não tem que é necessário para a construção de um livro são metadados, notas de rodapé e referências cruzadas para índices remissivos. A boa notícia é que isso nem é tão difícil assim de integrar graças à flexibilidade do uso de links:

# Asciidoc the worst?
[date]:# "2024-07-15"
[tags]:# "books"
Tentei por um tempo assimilar a ideia de usar o formato asciidoc como o padrão para meu novo arquivo-fonte do blog e de futuros livros.
Markdown já está pronto para ter uma definição não-ambígua, o [CommonMark].
O que ele não tem que é necessário para a construção de um livro são metadados (como a data e as tags vista acima), notas de rodapé <sup>[1]</sup> e [referências] cruzadas <sup>[2]</sup> para índices remissivos. A boa notícia é que isso nem é tão difícil assim de integrar graças à flexibilidade do uso de links:
[CommonMark]: https://commonmark.org/
[1]:# "Esta é a única maneira quase universal dessas notas em MD, mas até que não é tão ruim assim."
[referências]:#
[2]:# "A referência acima serve apenas para documentar o desejo de uma entrada em um índice remissivo com outras menções à mesma palavra."

As vantagens do Markdown como lingua franca ultrapassam em muito a teórica robustez de um padrão como Asciidoc que está muito longe de ser suportado amplamente. E há um motivo para isso: ele abrange muitas formas de estruturar texto e dá muito trabalho para textos curtos. MD acaba sendo um equilíbrio sensato entre o que é usado no dia-a-dia da comunicação textual da internet e alguma forma de escalar formatação e estrutura em textos maiores e complexos.

# Mielina

Quando nos esforçamos para aprender algo novo uma nova conexão sináptica é criada, uma nova "perninha" em um neurônio. Essa atividade comumente é cansativa, pois além de tentativa e erro, energia, tempo e repetidos esforços para construir um comportamento ou assimilar uma informação são necessários. A criação de apenas uma dessas perninhas já é um esforço significativo, aprender algo novo exige muitas repetições e muitas dessas perninhas se tornam mais fortes se coberturas de lipídios (gordura) forem construídas em volta, o que agiliza e potencializa o tráfego de elétrons. Este fenômeno realmente existe para cobrir os axônios, os canais de comunicação entre neurônios, fortalecido por repetição. Esses canais de gordura são chamados de bainha de mielina e acontecem naturalmente quando a pessoa está envolvida repetidamente na mesma tarefa, sem troca de foco, por mais tempo. O cérebro "entende" que o canal sendo criado é mais importante e constrói as estruturas de mielina que irá privilegiar e proteger o novo comportamento e informação em detrimento de outros caminhos.

# Mock de Timer em Moq

Acabou o dia e ainda não consegui terminar este mock dos infernos. Estou tentando criar o primeiro exemplo que usa dois wrappers nunca antes *mockados* (incluindo um timer), mas ficou faltando mockar o `System.Timer`. O teste já funciona, mas ele é obrigado a dar um *sleep* pra esperar o timer terminar.

O método que precisa ser testado é chamado como trigger deste timer. O teste constroi o objeto e chama um outro método de início que inicia o timer. O teste é quando o timer dispara a chamada do *callback*.

class A {
  init() {
    timer.init(callback);
  }
  callback() {
    // code to be tested
  }
}
Test() {
A a;
a.init();
}

Meu objetivo era que na chamada de `timer.init()` ele já rode o callback.

Mockar o timer foi a primeira ideia que me deram no stack overflow. Podem haver outras ideias. O cara do Stack Overflow falou que o timer do dotnet não dá essa flexibilidade, então teria que criar um adapter.

Daí eu achei um wrapper já no código e tentei modificá-lo, mas o evento contido no timer original não é acessível nem chamável e é preciso mexer nos paranauê do wrapper ou achar outro caminho.

Uma ideia que meu amigo Fábio deu seria ser um timer genérico e implementar o comportamento em cima dele, mas isso eu já tenho no codebase. O wrapper pode ser usado para isso (ou uma cópia dele). Eu parei justamente nessa parte, mas escrever o código com o a biblioteca Moq é que é o parto. Seus exemplos são para usos comuns e aparentemente mockar um timer não é um uso comum.

Esses resultados da internet me fazem pensar que estou indo no caminho errado (se não é comum, tá errado).

Fabio: Se ele é um wrapper por que você não faz a classe crua do zero onde fica tudo sequencial e passa ele para a classe final.

Caloni: Boa!

Você, caro urso, me deu uma ideia: simplificar a interface de start do `TimeWrapper` (esse é o nome da classe no basecode) e usar o resultado como uma implementação dummy, mas acho que já pensei num jeito de resolver que é ligeiramente diferente: ao final da tarefa ele chama um `timer.Restart` e daí é só ir acumulando estado.

Fiz desse jeito, que ficou bem tosco para falar a verdade, mas só de comentar na issue o TL já deu o toque pra funcionar direito. Tem que usar esta construção bizarra:

_timer.Raise(m => m.Elapsed += null, new EventArgs() as ElapsedEventArgs);

Com isso não precisa construir nenhuma classe e disparar o mock do `TimerWrapper` quando quiser.

A variável `_timer` no caso é um `Mock<TimerWrapper>` e o método `Raise` pode ser usado para disparar eventos. Isso resolve esta saga.

A próxima seria entender o que é necessário para que o Visual Studio pare de reclamar que `new EventArgs() as ElapsedEventArgs` pode ser null. Bom, ele pode mesmo. Porém, não tem como construir um `ElapsedEventArgs` sozinho no código. Ideias?

# Uma máquina bioquímica

"Seu corpo é uma máquina bioquímica, você pode produzir a química e o estado que você quiser, sem usar drogas, que viciam e danificam as células. Aprenda sobre respirações, meditação e outras técnicas para que você viva o estado que procura de maneira saudável, sem depender de nada ou de ninguém. Em frente meu amigo, tenho certeza de que o mundo voltará a ser colorido para você."

Rafael Leite (Xadrez Brasil)

# Why You Should Take Steps to Eliminate Grains From Your Diet

"So, how much carbohydrate should you eat? As a general rule, a healthy person can think of the answer to this question in this way: the quantity of carbohydrate consumed during a meal should be no more than what you need to replenish the glycogen stores in your liver and muscles, unless you are exercising immediately after a meal. Any excess carbohydrate that remains in the body is what your liver converts into triglycerides that get stored in your fat cells. When your fat cells are full, the excess glucose remains in your bloodstream. This means that if you tend to be sedentary, you don’t need many complex carbohydrates."

# Até que as Cores Acabem

Drama adolescente de gente com doença terminal. Casal fofinho e artista. Coincidências quase que ocasionais (como ambos serem artistas). O filme força vários momentos de choro livre, mas é incapaz de dar um passo além do drama dos moribundos. Todos em volta são compreensivos. Os colegas de escola se afastaram para ensinar pelo filme que isso não é bonito. O casal fofinho segura estilo novela coreana qualquer história subdesenvolvida como essa.

# A Arte de Ler o Tarô para Si Mesmo (Weber, Courtney)

Faz muito, muito tempo que não tenho contato com cartas de Tarô. Há muito tempo atrás eu aprendi a ler (sort of) as cartas e exercitava esta habilidade de amador para mim mesmo. Foi uma surpresa boa ver este livro disponível no Prime Reading, repositório de livros que você pode baixar gratuitamente dentro do plano da Amazon Prime. Estou lendo e a autora me parece muito mente aberta tanto para os ceticismos da época quanto para as diferentes interpretações do mistério que as cartas nos reservam. Sua visão e explicação da dinâmica das cartas, do leitor e do consulente são exatamente as mesmas que possuo. Houve identificação. Continuo lendo.

Clippings

As cartas de tarô modernas podem ser apenas camadas de celulose revestidas de uma película de plástico, mas contêm poder, porque este lhes foi outorgado ao longo dos séculos.

O tarô produz efeito porque reflete uma jornada humana longa e constante. Está decorado com personagens e situações familiares. Por intermédio deles, vemos a nós mesmos. Somos capazes de olhar para nossa vida diante de nós, da mesma maneira que um livro ilustrado sobre mitos e lendas pode descrever a história de um herói.

No entanto, com certa frequência (na realidade, em torno de 25% do tempo), o tarô me lembra de que é um farol para o desconhecido e pode nos dizer coisas que não tínhamos condições de saber antes.

O tarô é 100% exato o tempo todo? Claro que não! Mas também a previsão do tempo não o é. Assim como os padrões climáticos mudam quando afetados por ventos e marés, nosso destino é, de igual modo, influenciado pelas escolhas que fazemos.

Para quem deseja ler tarô para os outros, a autoleitura favorece uma relação mais profunda com as imagens, o que amplia nossa capacidade de ler para terceiros.

Há benefícios em ler as próprias cartas e em consultar outros leitores. O contato com outros leitores nos afasta dos nossos esquemas mentais. Aprendemos a respeito das cartas com as associações desses outros praticantes. A busca de orientação com diferentes leitores pode revelar percepções nitidamente distintas das nossas projeções pessoais.

O tarô e os espelhos desempenham o mesmo papel: refletem a verdade.

Tão importante quanto o baralho e o diário é seu senso de encantamento.

Ele parece vivo? As imagens falam em uma linguagem que faz sentido a você? Você admira seu trabalho artístico? Mesmo sendo novo, ele lhe parece familiar? Se a resposta a uma dessas perguntas for afirmativa, você encontrou o baralho apropriado para suas leituras.

Seja qual for o método que você adote, é recomendável sempre embaralhar as cartas antes de cada leitura.

Pare de embaralhar quando o baralho passar a sensação de “estar cheio”.

Se você preferir não ler cartas invertidas no momento, ou mesmo nunca, recomendo imbuir essa intenção em suas cartas enquanto as embaralha, para que “saibam” que você as virará para a posição correta ao distribuí-las.

(...) não há necessidade de ler cartas invertidas se elas nunca lhe dizem nada.

De novo, o objetivo não é prever o futuro com base em uma carta, mas descobrir as associações que o tarô estabelece com sua vida e para que o tarô aprenda as associações que você estabelece com as imagens oferecidas por ele.

As 22 cartas dos Arcanos Maiores representam os grandes mitos que levamos conosco.

Os mitos constituem a voz poética das experiências comuns da vida.

Os Arcanos Maiores representam pessoas fundamentais em nossa vida que nos influenciaram, bem como situações, lições, conflitos, escolhas e coisas boas que moldaram nosso modo de viver.

Embora o Louco seja, muitas vezes, representado com olhos arregalados e talvez desconhecendo o perigo (vacilando perigosamente à beira de um precipício na maioria das figurações), o Louco não é um idiota. Ele encarna o conjunto de olhos pelos quais o tarô é visto e é o principal receptor das experiências inerentes às demais cartas.

Uma das maiores dádivas do tarô é a forma de nos ancorar em nosso verdadeiro eu quando a vida começa a nos desviar do curso.

Podemos acreditar que sabemos certas coisas sobre nós mesmos, mas apenas em momentos da carta A Força conhecemos a profundidade da nossa determinação.

O comum entre os diferentes momentos Roda da Fortuna é que estes se baseiam em atitude proativa pessoal. A Roda simboliza não apenas mudanças para nós mesmos, mas também aquelas que escolhemos fazer.

O Enforcado simboliza o sacrifício como única escolha, implicando a humildade de aceitar que somos impotentes no contexto de dada situação.

Uma mensagem da carta A Morte é que, apesar de indicar uma perda em nossa jornada, ela não significa nosso fim.

Resumindo, o aspecto mais afortunado da carta A Torre é a oportunidade de reconstruir.

Pense em toda sua vida até este momento como uma longa viagem pelos Arcanos Maiores, com você como o Louco. No exercício a seguir, faça anotações sobre a forma que cada carta assumiu em sua jornada pessoal. Quem que participa da sua vida corresponde ao cenário? Como você descreveria essa pessoa e o papel dela em sua vida?

Neste exercício, faça o possível para identificar casos em que você foi um desses arquétipos a outra pessoa. Deixe de lado as preocupações relacionadas às projeções do ego. Outros talvez não a vejam em suas jornadas como você se vê, mas isso não é um problema. Faça tudo o que puder para tirar conclusões, sem se preocupar se o outro concordaria com sua avaliação. O objetivo último aqui é compreender melhor os dois lados dos Arcanos Maiores do tarô, e essas anotações são somente para você.

Trabalhando apenas com os Arcanos Maiores,

Pense em seu dia como uma jornada do Louco completa. Trabalhando apenas com os Arcanos Maiores, tire cinco cartas e deite-as em linha. Da esquerda para a direita, essas cartas representam: Manhã Meio-dia Início da tarde Fim da tarde Início da noite

Este exercício e o anterior podem servir muito bem como modelos de prática anual.

Trabalhando apenas com os Arcanos Maiores, tire ao acaso quatro cartas e deite-as em linha, com a face para cima. Da esquerda para a direita, o significado de cada carta é: O papel mais importante que você desempenha para outros. O papel menos importante que você desempenha para outros. Como você estimula os outros. Como você beneficia os outros.

Este exercício pode ser repetido a cada três ou quatro meses. Fazê-lo com mais frequência que isso provavelmente parecerá contraditório e pode causar confusão. Não se esqueça de fazer anotações e comparar novas leituras com as anteriores

Você definiria seu papel geral na vida atual como Rei, Rainha, Cavaleiro ou Valete? Seja o mais honesto possível. Não se subestime, deixando-se levar pela falsa modéstia, nem se valorize demais. Essa avaliação é só para você, por isso tenha toda liberdade de ser totalmente honesto sem que outros o questionem!

Toda carta invertida pode significar segredos;

Como regra geral, qualquer Rei ou Rainha invertida pode sugerir potencial muito maior que o desejado pelo consulente

As cartas femininas são, em geral, associadas a impulsos intuitivos, e assim uma carta invertida pode indicar uma advertência a prestar atenção a sentimentos um tanto negligenciados.

Se você fosse escrever um roteiro de sua vida até o momento, passado e presente, quem seriam os personagens principais? Em vez de relacionar os nomes, liste o papel que desempenham ou já desempenharam em sua vida.

Em seguida, separe do baralho as dezesseis cartas da corte e estude-as. Com base nas imagens delas, quais você associaria a essas funções?

Relacione dezesseis pessoas do seu passado. Se quiser, inclua pessoas do exercício anterior. Para este exercício, é preferível recorrer ao passado mais remoto, não ao mais recente, o que favorece uma perspectiva mais clara. Descreva brevemente o que essas pessoas significaram para você.

Enquanto o último exercício lhe propôs escolher deliberadamente cartas para associá-las a pessoas, neste você vai tirar uma carta da corte aleatória para cada pessoa relacionada.

Ao terminar, recolha as cartas e, em nova folha de papel, nomeie dezesseis pessoas de suas relações atuais. Como no primeiro exercício, faça algumas anotações sobre o significado dessas pessoas para você. Ao final, tire aleatoriamente uma carta da corte para cada uma delas. Anote as conclusões a respeito do significado da carta, como feito no primeiro exercício.

Há duas maneiras de criar seu código de personagem da carta da corte. Primeira: você pode observar as duas pessoas associadas a cada carta e refletir sobre o que elas têm em comum.

Há duas maneiras de criar seu código de personagem da carta da corte.

Primeira: você pode observar as duas pessoas associadas a cada carta e refletir sobre o que elas têm em comum.

A outra opção é apenas combinar todas as características de ambas as pessoas.

Defina seu papel nestes relacionamentos:

Nosso eu é fluido, e nossos papéis em relação aos outros sofrem alterações.

Defina seu papel nestes relacionamentos: Amigos. Parceiros românticos. Conhecidos. Estranhos. Como pai/mãe (ou padrinho, tia/tio etc.). Como criança, em relação aos pais biológicos ou adotivos. Família estendida. Comunidade local. Vizinhos. Legado – patronato ancestral ou herdado, como ancestrais biológicos ou adotivos, ou mesmo antepassados daqueles que exerceram a mesma atividade que você desempenha hoje. (Como leitor de tarô, todos os leitores de tarô do passado são seus ancestrais!) Trabalho – seu papel com aqueles com quem interage no emprego, voluntariado, atendimento em tempo integral a crianças ou idosos ou realização de tarefas escolares em grupo, caso seja estudante. Se você está atualmente aposentado ou desempregado, pense sobre seu papel ou seus papéis exercidos quando estava empregado. Em relação a figuras de autoridade. Como você mesmo sendo uma figura de autoridade. Autocuidado – quão gentil você é consigo mesmo? Como um obstáculo a si mesmo – como você se reprime? Sua saúde – e seu papel na manutenção dela.

Tire ao acaso uma carta da corte para cada um dos dezesseis papéis e faça anotações.

Ao explorar autoleituras com uma seção pouco conhecida do baralho, faça perguntas simples e evite, a princípio, aquelas que pedem apenas uma resposta “sim” ou “não”.

Em vez disso, faça perguntas mais orientadas à ação, como: “O que devo fazer sobre o assunto X?”.

Se uma carta da corte aparecer durante a leitura e você não tiver certeza se ela representa uma influência interna ou externa, tire uma carta esclarecedora dos Arcanos Maiores

Se os Arcanos Maiores representam passagens decisivas na trajetória da vida ou funções que assumimos, e as cartas da corte representam indivíduos, influências ou “máscaras” importantes com que nos deparamos em diferentes situações, os Arcanos Menores representam momentos e escolhas distintas, o que não significa que causem impacto menor que os Arcanos Maiores. Os Arcanos Menores refletem as nuances mais profundas da nossa jornada, revelando a profundidade de momentos comuns e a simplicidade de momentos mais incomuns.

O tarô precisa aprender seu sistema de associações, incluindo aquelas com números.

(...) a memorização de muitos dados impede o surgimento das mensagens intuitivas necessárias a uma autoleitura precisa.

Faça dos significados tradicionais seu vaso e solo para neles depositar a semente de suas interpretações. Os verdadeiros significados devem criar raízes, florescer e surpreendê-lo enquanto se expandem.

# From Mouth to Muscle: How Your Body Absorbs Protein

Não importa qual o tipo de proteína ingerida (e.g. colágeno) porque no fim das contas o sistema digestivo precisa quebrar em aminoácidos menores para a absorção pelo organismo e a remontagem de proteínas necessárias pelos mais diversos tecidos (incluindo os músculos).