You can listen to/watch the interview here.

Although early studies showed that saturated fat diets with very low levels of PUFAs increase serum cholesterol, whereas other studies showed high serum cholesterol increased the risk of coronary artery disease (CAD), the evidence of dietary saturated fats increasing CAD or causing premature death was weak.

The evidence was weak because the anti-fat hysterics relied on teleoanalysis: saturated fat raises cholesterol (in some people) and cholesterol is associated with heart disease, therefore saturated fat must cause heart disease.  Bad logic leads to bad theories.

Numerous reports and reviews in recent years have begun to call the perceived pernicious effects of dietary saturated fatty acids (SFAs) into question.

And yet few of those reports have changed the thinking of your average health reporter … not to mention the goofballs who write those annoying Eat This, Not That books and articles.

The purpose of this review is to summarize the scientific understanding as it relates to dietary fats in health and disease, particularly with regard to the innocuous nature of SFAs and the physiological effects that have implicated PUFAs in numerous disorders and diseases. The role of dietary fats in cardiovascular disease (CVD) and many other diseases is complex, yet there is a powerful inertia that has allowed the saturated fat doctrine to endure.

I don’t think powerful inertia is the correct phrase here. More like powerful vested interests.

Human food preferences tend to favor foods with both fats and sugars, which complicates any attempts to correlate saturated fats with disease.

Well, that should complicate any attempts at correlation, but the geniuses at the American Heart Association and other promoters of arterycloggingsaturatefat! hysteria found a simple solution: if people who eat saturated fats mixed with sugars get heart disease, blame the fat. (After all, you can’t blame sugar and still put your seal of approval on boxes of Cocoa Puffs.)

Because dietary saturated fats do not promote inflammation, it may be wiser to minimize omega-6 PUFAs and consume more SFAs to reduce various types of inflammation.

But … but … but the American Heart Association says corn oil is good for you.

Investigators often seem to have a particular bias against saturated fats.

That’s a polite way of saying “Scientists are freakin’ liars.”

Campaigns were waged against tropical oils (palm and coconut oils) in the early 1980s because of their high levels of SFAs, even though palm oil contains about as much MUFAs acids as SFAs and has an ample amount of PUFAs to keep serum cholesterol low …. Claims that tropical oils with a high SFA content increase the risk of CAD lack clear scientific evidence to that effect. Indeed, countries with high intake of tropical oils have some of the lowest rates of heart disease in the world.

Quick, somebody call The Guy From CSPI. He was behind those campaigns waged against tropical oils, which caused coconut oil to be replaced with trans fats – which he declared safe at the time. Given the success (ahem, ahem) of his campaigns, I’d like him to comment on that last paragraph.

Many of the shorter chain fatty acids found in milk fat and coconut oil have beneficial health effects. The shorter chain SFA in milk (C4–C12) are not only metabolized rapidly for energy in infants, but have been found to have important antiviral, antimicrobial, antitumor, and immune response functions. Lauric acid, which is present in milk and the most abundant fatty acid in coconut oil, is effective in preventing tooth decay and plaque buildup. Diets rich in coconut oils have also been shown to lower other risk factors for CAD, such as tissue plasminogen activator antigen and Lp(a).

Aren’t you glad the USDA has decided kids in school can’t drink whole milk, but sugar-laden skim milk is fine and dandy?

It should not be surprising that substitution of carbohydrates (starches) for saturated fats in the diet has relatively little effect on serum lipids. Excess carbohydrates are converted to fats for efficient energy storage, and the human body synthesizes primarily SFAs from excess carbohydrates, although MUFAs are also formed. Consequently, from a physiological viewpoint, there is no reason to believe that replacing fat in the diet with carbohydrate at a constant caloric intake will improve the serum lipid profile significantly. Indeed, a low-fat, high-carbohydrate diet causes an increase in serum triglycerides and small, dense LDL particles, which are more strongly associated with CAD than serum total cholesterol or LDL-C.

So skip the bacon and eggs and eat your Cheerios. The American Heart Association says those processed grains are good for your heart.

The meager effect that saturated fats have on serum cholesterol levels when modest but adequate amounts of polyunsaturated oils are included in the diet, and the lack of any clear evidence that saturated fats are promoting any of the conditions that can be attributed to PUFA makes one wonder how saturated fats got such a bad reputation in the health literature. The influence of dietary fats on serum cholesterol has been overstated, and a physiological mechanism for saturated fats causing heart disease is still missing.

No, no, no … I’ve heard nutritionists, doctors and dietitians on TV insisting that thousands of studies prove that saturated fat causes heart disease. Thousands!

It is time to reevaluate the dietary recommendations that focus on lowering serum cholesterol and to use a more holistic approach to dietary policy.

Well, the USDA dietary experts reevaluate their dietary recommendations every five years. Then, acting like the division of Monsanto the USDA has become, they recommend even less natural saturated fat and more mutant grains. But give them another 50 years or so, and they may actually pay attention to the science.

And another 50 years after that, the American Heart Association may do the same.

My mom and nephew just left today, so I’m busy catching up on stuff I’d normally do on weekends. Seems like a good time to post the roast of the speakers for this year’s low-carb cruise.

As usual when I’m both the performer and the tech crew, I had equipment issues. I tested my microphone level in the afternoon, but with amplified speakers going during the performance, the sound became a bit distorted and my mic picked up the room echo. Last year’s video was relatively crisp; this year’s was fuzzy and wavy, despite using the same camera. So I cut in the slides for most of the presentation. (The slides start changing after my opening monologue.)

With all that explanation out of the way, here’s the roast.

Toward the end, you’ll see a photo of Jimmy Moore in an SS uniform, which actually drew a gasp or two from the crowd. I guess most of them weren’t aware that Jimmy was accused (by stupid people) of being a Nazi some months back. Too much of an inside joke, I guess.

Two days later, she found another chicken in the same condition.  Then another three days after that.  Some kind of predator had discovered our flock and was climbing over the fence to help itself to chicken dinners.  Our original flock of 10 was down to seven.

Our nearest neighbor, who knows a lot more about the local critters than I do, told me when you find a headless chicken, the most likely culprit is a raccoon or a possum.  A fox was also a possibility, but foxes tend to kill every chicken in the barn, even if they only eat one.  Ours were getting mauled one at a time.

I must confess, I didn’t know raccoons attacked other animals.  The girls have a story book with a raccoon on the cover, and darned if it doesn’t look cute and harmless.

I put a light out by the chicken barn so I could see, then spent three nights sitting in my car nearby with a .22 in my lap, listening to audiobooks (very quietly, with earbuds) until 1:00 a.m.  I don’t know if the predator was scared off by my presence or just wasn’t hungry, but nothing approached the chicken yard during my vigils.  I saw what looked like a possum slinking through the grass one night, but it was too far away to be sure, and since it didn’t come anywhere near the barn, I didn’t want to take a shot.

I was worried that the predator would finish off the flock while we were gone for the cruise, so I bought a spring-door trap and set it by the chicken-yard on the day Chareva’s parents were due to arrive.  (They stayed at the house while we were on the cruise to look after the girls, the chickens and the dogs, bless them.)  I didn’t keep watch that night, figuring abandoning my in-laws to sit outside with a rifle might give them the impression I’m rude and ungrateful, if not borderline psychotic.

Sure enough, the next morning I looked out my bedroom window and could tell the door on the trap had sprung shut, although I couldn’t see what I’d captured.  By the time I showered and dressed, Chareva’s father had already taken a walk outside and informed me there was a raccoon in the trap.

Chareva’s mother is an animal-lover – she feeds a raccoon that hangs around their property in Chicago.  She asked if I could possibly drive the raccoon somewhere and let it go.  I told her what our neighbor told me:  those things will find their way back and go after your chickens again.  At the very least, it’ll find someone else’s chickens and kill them instead, which isn’t exactly a neighborly way of ridding yourself of a predator.  She understood.  Since they were all planning on going shopping, I said I’d take care of business while they were out.

When I first approached the raccoon in the cage, it was docile and kind of cute.  Gulp.  Then as I got closer, it began hissing and raging and baring its teeth and banging around inside the cage.  Thanks, Rocky Raccoon.  Now I’m seeing the predator that ripped the heads off my chickens.  That made it easier to pull the trigger.  I dumped the carcass in an overgrown area near our property, figuring the local coyotes or carrion birds will take care of it from there.

Our neighbor had warned me that there could be a family of raccoons nearby, so I re-set the trap before we left for the cruise.  Knowing her parents wouldn’t want to shoot the next predator, Chareva gave them our neighbor’s phone number.  (He had kindly volunteered his services if need be.)

When we returned from the cruise, we learned that the trap had captured a large possum the night before.  I don’t know for sure that the possum was after our chickens, but at this point I pretty much have to assume that any chicken-killing species that gets caught in a trap near the barn was looking for a chicken dinner.  Chareva’s parents called our neighbor, who came over and did the deed.

On a more positive note, we have a rooster now.  He’s not one we’d want to mix with our hens, so his job is to walk around the land and eat bugs, which he seems happy doing.  He’s especially fond of patrolling the area near the creek.

We got him from yet another neighbor who knocked on our door and asked if we wanted a rooster.

“Is there a reason you don’t want him?”

“Yup.  He’s mean.  He attacks my other chickens.  If you want him, you can have him.”

“Our hens are inside a fence, but if he gets in there and attacks them, he’ll probably end up in a soup pot.  Are you okay with that?”

“I’m fine with that.  We just need to get rid of him.”

The rooster has his own food and water inside the fence where we raised guinea fowl in our failed free-range guinea experiment.  He has no interest in staying inside the fence during the day (he climbed out immediately), but if he’s smart, he may spend his nights in there to avoid the coyotes that killed our guinea fowl.

If not … well, like I said, life in the country isn’t always pretty.

UPDATE:  Nope, the rooster wasn’t so smart.  While writing this post on Saturday morning, it occurred to me that I wasn’t hearing the rooster announcing his presence outside.  “Hmm, it’s quiet out there …. too quiet.” So the girls, my visiting nephew and I took a walk around the pastures.  We found a pile of feathers, then found some bones nearby.  The local coyotes can thank us for yet another tasty meal.

On their web site, they recommend consuming less than 1,500 mg of sodium per day.  That’s been their position for years.  Since the average American consumes more like 3,500 mg of sodium per day, that means the AHA is telling us to cut our salt intake by more than half to avoid hypertension and, by extension, heart disease.  (We’ll come back to that “by extension” part.)

The AHA certainly isn’t alone in pushing this advice.  The Guy From CSPI has been on an anti-salt jihad for decades, the USDA Dietary Guidelines call for low-salt meals (the USDA compels schools to comply with that advice), and of course Hizzoner Da Mayor in New York City used the coercive power of government to impose his beliefs about the benefits of sodium restriction on food manufacturers.

So how do you suppose the anti-salt hysterics would respond to a big ol’ government-sanctioned study that says they’re wrong?  I’m pretty sure you can guess.  Let’s look at some quotes from a New York Times article titled No Benefit Seen in Sharp Limits on Salt in Diet:

In a report that undercuts years of public health warnings, a prestigious group convened by the government says there is no good reason based on health outcomes for many Americans to drive their sodium consumption down to the very low levels recommended in national dietary guidelines.

Those levels, 1,500 milligrams of sodium a day, or a little more than half a teaspoon of salt, were supposed to prevent heart attacks and strokes in people at risk, including anyone older than 50, blacks and people with high blood pressure, diabetes or chronic kidney disease — groups that make up more than half of the American population.

But the new expert committee, commissioned by the Institute of Medicine at the behest of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said there was no rationale for anyone to aim for sodium levels below 2,300 milligrams a day. The group examined new evidence that had emerged since the last such report was issued, in 2005.

“As you go below the 2,300 mark, there is an absence of data in terms of benefit and there begin to be suggestions in subgroup populations about potential harms,” said Dr. Brian L. Strom, chairman of the committee and a professor of public health at the University of Pennsylvania. He explained that the possible harms included increased rates of heart attacks and an increased risk of death.

Say what?  A low-salt diet may increase the risk of heart attacks and death?  You mean the AHA is recommending we reduce our salt intake to a level that may be dangerous?  Well, take a peek at some of the evidence Dr. Strom’s committee considered (the bold emphasis is mine):

One 2008 study the committee examined, for example, randomly assigned 232 Italian patients with aggressively treated moderate to severe congestive heart failure to consume either 2,760 or 1,840 milligrams of sodium a day, but otherwise to consume the same diet. Those consuming the lower level of sodium had more than three times the number of hospital readmissions — 30 as compared with 9 in the higher-salt group — and more than twice as many deaths — 15 as compared with 6 in the higher-salt group.

Oh, dear.  In a randomized study, the Italians who reduced their sodium intake to levels that are still slightly above what the AHA recommends had more than double the death rate.  Pass the salt shaker, please, and let’s read on:

Another study, published in 2011, followed 28,800 subjects with high blood pressure ages 55 and older for 4.7 years and analyzed their sodium consumption by urinalysis. The researchers reported that the risks of heart attacks, strokes, congestive heart failure and death from heart disease increased significantly for those consuming more than 7,000 milligrams of sodium a day and for those consuming fewer than 3,000 milligrams of sodium a day.

Got that?  The death rate was higher for people who consumed less than 3,000 mg of sodium per day – and the AHA recommends cutting even that level of consumption in half.

So what about the higher death rate among people who consumed more than 7,000 mg per day?  Well, I can think of a couple of possibilities.  Perhaps that much sodium (double the average intake in the U.S.) truly is dangerous.  On the other hand, that’s a LOT of salt to sprinkle on your grass-fed beef, pastured eggs and spinach, so perhaps people who consume that much sodium are the same people who eat a lot of processed food — in all its sugar-and-flour-laden glory.  A super-high sodium intake could just be a proxy for a bad diet in general.

So why might too little salt in the diet be dangerous?  Read on:

There are physiological consequences of consuming little sodium, said Dr. Michael H. Alderman, a dietary sodium expert at Albert Einstein College of Medicine who was not a member of the committee. As sodium levels plunge, triglyceride levels increase, insulin resistance increases, and the activity of the sympathetic nervous system increases. Each of these factors can increase the risk of heart disease.

“Those are all bad things,” Dr. Alderman said. “A health effect can’t be predicted by looking at one physiological consequence. There has to be a net effect.”

Dr. Alderman, if memory serves, once warned that a national effort to force us to consume less sodium would be a giant, uncontrolled experiment that could have unintended negative consequences.  Kudos to him.  We all know what happened with the giant, uncontrolled experiment to remove saturated fats from our diets and replace the calories with grains and vegetable oils.

Anyway, now that a committee created specifically to study the effects of sodium has said there’s no evidence to support pushing low-salt diets on us, let’s see how the people pushing low-salt diets on us are handling the bad news:

Bonnie Liebman, director of nutrition at the Center for Science in the Public Interest, an advocacy group that has taken a strong position against excessive salt consumption, worried that the public would get the wrong message.

“It would be a shame if this report convinced people that salt doesn’t matter,” Ms. Liebman said.

Allow me to interpret Ms. Liebman’s statement:   We’ve been trying to scare people about salt for decades, so it would be a shame if people interpreted a report saying that their current level of salt intake is fine to mean “our current level of salt intake is fine.”

The American Heart Association agrees with her. Dr. Elliott Antman, a spokesman for the association and a professor of medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, said the association remained concerned about the large amount of sodium in processed foods, which makes it almost impossible for most Americans to cut back. People should aim for 1,500 milligrams of sodium a day, he said.

“The American Heart Association is not changing its position,” Dr. Antman said.

Of course you’re not changing your position, Dr. Antan.  That would require you to admit you’ve been wrong for decades.  I’m guessing you’d rather rip your own ears off than do that.

The association rejects the Institute of Medicine’s conclusions because the studies on which they were based had methodological flaws, he said. The heart association’s advice to consume 1,500 milligrams of sodium a day, he added, is based on epidemiological data and studies that assessed the effects of sodium consumption on blood pressure.

I’ve seen the AHA’s explanation of how the epidemiological evidence supports their position elsewhere.  Here it is in a nutshell:  studies show drastically reducing salt intake can slightly reduce blood pressure, and high blood pressure is associated with heart disease, so that proves reducing salt would reduce heart disease.

If you’re a frequent reader of this blog, you recognize that (ahem, ahem) logic for what it is:  teleoanalysis.  We can’t prove that A causes C, but if we can link A to B and B to C, we can say A causes C.

High blood pressure is indeed associated with heart disease, but that doesn’t prove high blood pressure causes heart disease directly, and it certainly doesn’t prove that restricting salt would prevent heart disease.  As Dr. Richard Johnson has demonstrated in several experiments, hypertension can result from an excess intake of sugar.  It could be that sugar raises blood pressure and also causes heart disease by damaging the endothelial layer in our arteries.

If too much salt causes heart disease and restricting salt therefore reduces heart disease, we should see that relationship directly, not through goofball teleoanalysis.  But we don’t:

The Institute of Medicine committee said it was well aware of flaws in many of the studies of sodium, especially ones that the previous Institute of Medicine committee relied on for its 2005 recommendations. Much of that earlier research, committee members said, looked for correlations between what people ate and their health. But people with different diets can differ in many ways that are hard to account for — for example, the amount of exercise they get. And relying on people’s recall of how much salt they consumed can be unreliable.

The committee said it found more recent studies, published since 2005, that were more careful and rigorous. Much of the new research found adverse effects on the lower end of the sodium scale and none showed a benefit from consuming very little salt.

Although the advice to restrict sodium to 1,500 milligrams a day has been enshrined in dietary guidelines, it never came from research on health outcomes, Dr. Strom said.

Anti-salt hysteria was never based on studies of actual health outcomes.  Neither was anti-fat hysteria.  Yet the American Heart Association pushes both … along with sugary, grain-based cereals that almost certainly do actual damage to our health.

I don’t expect the AHA to ever change its position – on anything – no matter what the evidence.  As I said during a Q&A session after a speech when someone asked me how we can get the AHA, or the USDA, or the ADA to change their positions on diet:  my goal isn’t to change their minds, because I don’t believe that’s possible.  My goal is to make them irrelevant by convincing people to ignore them.

So let’s ignore them.  Pass the salt, please.

You can listen to the interview on his podcast page, or on his iTunes podcast channel.

I noticed our podcast on iTunes is rated “Clean,” so I guess Jonathan didn’t ask my opinion of the USDA.

As I sit here writing, my house is gently rocking on the waves.  At least that’s how it feels, which is what a week on a cruise ship will do to you.  I once worked a five-week standup comedy gig on a Norwegian Cruise Lines ship, and when I walked ashore, I wanted to get back on the ship so the sidewalk would stop swaying under my feet.

Anyway, it’s good to be home.  The cruise was a blast (more on that shortly) and Chareva and I certainly enjoyed taking a break from parenthood and hanging out with other adults, but I really miss the girls when I’m gone for more than a few days – which is the reason I stopped doing comedy on cruise ships in the first place.  (When you call home and find out your daughter has been crying and asking when Daddy’s coming back, it sort of takes the fun out of the job.)

Before I get to the cruise report, I want to give a shout-out and a big thanks to The Older Brother for once again taking over the Fat Head chair while I was gone.  I enjoyed reading his posts and your comments.  He turns 56 on Thursday, so wish him a good one and 56 more.

The Sixth Annual Low-Carb Cruise festivities began on Saturday night with the pre-cruise dinner and roast at the Doubletree hotel in Houston.  This was Chareva’s third low-carb cruise and my fourth, so running into so many people we’ve gotten to know over the years felt very much like a class reunion.  I also enjoyed meeting people I “know” (Dr. Jay Wortman, Jonathan Bailor, Rocky Angelucci) but have never previously met in person.

I haven’t checked the audio and video on the roast yet.  If all is well, I’ll upload it later.  This year’s group was significantly smaller than last year’s, so there was less of that comedy-club-crowd energy in the room, but it was still fun.

We set sail on Sunday, which means we met our dinner-table companions for the week that night.  The gentleman in the upper left and the woman in the lower right are a married couple from Finland.  The cruise was a total surprise to her.  She only knew they were visiting New York City (which they did) until they boarded a plane for Houston instead of heading home.

He developed an interest in diet when he was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis and was told nothing could be done about it besides taking medication.  Guess what?  He doesn’t take medication now.  He avoids grains and eats plenty of meat, eggs, seafood, butter and vegetables.  (Amy Dungan and her family were also at our table, but ate at the buffet on several nights because the kids – not surprisingly – weren’t especially interested in having dinner with a bunch of us old fogies.)

I have no idea what Chareva was saying to amuse our friend from Finland in this picture.  She may have been describing how she plans to kill her first chicken.

Monday and Tuesday were at-sea days, so that’s when we attended lectures by the speakers.  All the speeches were recorded and will be available online later, so I won’t bother trying to describe them.  The only disappointment was that Robb Wolf had to cancel because his mother became very ill shortly before the cruise.

I enjoyed the lectures as always, but the real appeal of the low-carb cruise for me is the socializing.

The extremely tall man on the left in the picture above is Dr. Andreas Eenfeldt from Sweden.  If you don’t already read his Diet Doctor blog, you should.  To the right is Dr. Jay Wortman, the driving force behind the excellent documentary My Big Fat Diet. The adorable child with the huge blue eyes is Dr. Wortman’s daughter Isabel, who quickly became a celebrity on the cruise.  She’s articulate, extremely bright, and perhaps the most even-tempered three-year-old I’ve ever met.  She happily sat through all the lectures and the two-hour dinners with adults … never complained, never whined, just kept herself amused the whole time.  Dr. Wortman attributes her good nature to a high-fat /whole foods diet, and I’m sure that figures into it, but I suspect the fact that he’s a patient and doting father plays a part as well.

The happy couple above is Jonathan Bailor, author of The Smarter Science of Slim, and his lovely wife Angela.  Based on our email exchanges, I already suspected Jonathan is blessed with a great sense of humor, and I was right.  He’s quick-witted and fun to be around.

As on previous cruises, our group mostly hung around the piano bar at night.

Now, when you hear “piano bar,” you probably imagine a nice, quiet place to enjoy a drink and some conversation, right?  Nope.  Someone at Carnival seems to believe that if you’re not in your room, you want to be subjected to loud music.  Every single bar on the Carnival Magic has a loud guitar player, loud piano player, a DJ, or a band.  We all crowded into an area of the piano bar that extends out into the hallway, as far from the (not especially talented) piano player/singer as we could get, only to find that Carnival also had speakers in the ceiling above us – just to make sure we wouldn’t miss Hotel California played on a piano.

I went to the bar and explained that we were all sitting way over there specifically to avoid the noise.  I had to talk to two different people, but finally got them to shut off the speakers above us.  That meant we could talk without actually yelling into each other’s ears. Fortunately, we’ll be on a different ship next year – perhaps one run by a cruise director with the good sense to provide at least one lounge where people can talk without shouting at each other.

On Wednesday, we docked at an island off the coast of Honduras and attended a wedding.  Yup, a wedding.  On last year’s cruise, two of our British friends, Chris and Ailsa, became engaged.  (She was genuinely shocked when he popped the question at dinner.)  They were officially married in a civil ceremony in England just before this year’s cruise, but had the “celebration wedding” on Wednesday at a beach resort.

I’m sure you recognize the guy with Chareva in the photo above.  Since last year’s cruise, Jimmy has lost close to 80 pounds while putting on 16 pounds of muscle, which means he’s dropped nearly 100 pounds of fat.  He looks like a new man.

After the wedding brunch, a large group of us went zip-lining in the jungle.  That’s the bride and groom in the second picture below with Chareva and me, about to have an interesting wedding day.

If you’ve never been zip-lining, here’s how it works:  the guides strap you into gear that looks like it belongs in a bondage flick.  Then you hike up to a platform suspended high above the jungle.  Then the guides clip the bondage gear onto cables above your head.  Then you ignore every instinct for self-preservation bred into you by millions of years of evolution and jump off the platform.  Then you trust the bondage gear to hold your weight while you slide ridiculously fast down the cable to another platform that’s suspended from a tree by cables and sways when you stand on it.  This is, you understand, intended to be fun.

I’m afraid of heights but went zip-lining anyway because Chareva told me I was going zip-lining anyway.  I wasn’t actually afraid I’d fall and die.  People go zip-lining all the time and live to tell about it.  I was mostly concerned that I’d go zipping off a platform and end up treating the rest of the wedding party to my third Scream Like A Girl incident.  (You can read about my first two Scream Like A Girl incidents here.)

My nerves were jumping and my palms were sweating, but I knew I couldn’t back out when I saw this:  Mary-Clare, who happens to be sixty-seven years old, went zipping out there with no apparent fear.  (She zipped solo a few times before the guides decided to start accompanying her.)

We zipped down 12 lines altogether, and I actually started to enjoy myself after the first four.  That’s because it took me four trips down the lines to figure out how to stop turning in the air and ending up zipping backwards.  There I am, afraid of heights to begin with, sailing high above the jungle at what feels like 60 mph, facing the platform I just left, having no idea where the next platform is or when I’m scheduled to collide with it, just hoping and trusting that the guide responsible for catching me isn’t about to make what baseball scorers call “an unforced error” … or merely thinking to himself, “I wonder what would happen if I let one of these funny-looking foreigners crash into the tree?”

On Thursday, the ship was docked at Belize City.  I’ve seen it before and had no desire to see it again, so we stayed on the ship and mostly hung around with other low-carb cruisers.  On Friday, Chareva and I wandered into Cozumel, where she bought souvenirs for the girls while I pretended to be interested in the souvenirs she bought for the girls.  (I’m not an enthusiastic shopper, to put it mildly.)

Jimmy Moore and I continued our cruise tradition of singing Elvira in the karaoke bar one night, and on another night we added Margaritaville to our repertoire.  That was pretty much it for karaoke.  The Carnival Magic, unlike other ships we’ve been on, tends to have karaoke at odd times – like during dinner.

Saturday was another at-sea day.  Robb Wolf was scheduled to speak, but since he had to cancel, we had two Q&A sessions with the speakers instead of one.  As always, I was impressed by the both the questions and the answers.  People in this group read a lot, listen to a lot of podcasts, and ask sophisticated questions.

Before the last night’s dinner, there was a cocktail party for our group.  The pictures below are from the party.

The woman with Chareva and me above is Laurie Rosen, one of the friends we look forward to seeing every year, even though she says “aboot” instead of “about.”  (Those wacky Canadians all seem to do that.)

The gentleman with me above is Rocky Angelucci, author of the excellent book Don’t Die Early.

That’s me with Dr. Jay Wortman, Dr. Dwight Lundell, and some goofball behind us.

For the record, the hat wasn’t my idea.

The woman farthest to the right is Dietitian Cassie, one of the speakers for the week, and probably one of the few dietitians in the country who tells her clients to skip the grains and eat plenty of good quality fat.

After the party, we had our last dinner on board, then headed up to the piano bar for a last evening hanging out with old and new friends.  Speaking of which, one new friend deserves special mention — because by the end of the week, we’d concluded she may be Chareva’s separated-at-birth, long-lost sister.

Denise Cripps (both pictures above) and Chareva were born three days apart.  They’re both bright, pretty, dark-curly-haired, talented women who had the good sense to marry old guys they met while working temp jobs.  (Both old guys also couldn’t believe their luck and were therefore slow to pick up on hints of romantic interest.)  They’ve both worked as substitute teachers.  They have the same laugh.  They share many of the same interests.  As they were sitting together in the piano bar one night, chatting like BFFs, Dr. Andreas Eenfeldt looked at them and said, “You two are like …uh … not triplets.  The other word.”

“Twins?”

“Yes, twins.”

Denise was also responsible for the perhaps the best line of the cruise.  I’m a night-owl and Chareva isn’t, so on some nights she went to sleep while I continued socializing with our fellow cruisers.  Denise and I ended up leaving the piano bar together late one night and walked to the elevators, where we ran into a handful of people from our group.  They told us they were on their way to some other late-night activity.

“Well, we’re heading off to bed,” Denise answered.

And just as it struck me how that reply could be interpreted, she whirled around and said, “Not together!”

Good times.

Hope to see you all on next year’s cruise.

Well, this has been awhile in the making, but some friends, relatives (including Tom and Chareva), and I finally went all in on grass-fed beef. As in, not just buying grass-fed beef, not just knowing where your food is coming from, but in your grass-fed beef coming from your own beeves. “Beeves” is what us rancher types call more than one cow.

By ranch, I mean we’ve got two head. Meet Tartare and Royale:
 

 
This all started well over a year ago. In talking to Linda, who has the farm where I get my raw milk, I had talked up Joel Salatin and the whole intensive grazing/high density/rotational grazing approach. She has a few dairy cows on several acres, with part of her pastures segregated and rented out to a traditional rancher who brings cows in the Spring to pasture during the year, then takes them back and puts them on grain in the Fall for market.

She said if I found a grass-fed calf or two, I could pasture them with her cows. In the meantime, she’d started to put fences in to accommodate a rotational system.

As I said, that was over a year ago. It turns out you can’t just go down to the mega-mart and find a pasture-fed calf. I asked anybody selling grass-fed beef if they sold calves, but nobody had “extras.” Between demand increasing, the seasonality of calving, and last year’s drought preventing herd growth, there just weren’t any to be found.

A couple of months ago, one of the people I’d been talking to since last Fall suggested I contact Jerry Pierson, who raises some grass-fed cows in addition to his “day job.” Jerry turned out to be as nice and eager to help a “newbie” as everyone else I’ve talked to, and did think he might sell a couple. It took a couple of weeks to coordinate a visit (he’s about 45 miles away), figure out pricing, etc. then another month waiting for the rain and Jerry’s schedule to clear up enough to deliver them.

I went down to “help” — which pretty much meant staying out of the way. Cows are pretty easy to herd if you’re patient and know what you’re doing. Here’s Jerry making it look easy:
 

 
We stopped at a scale on the way to Linda’s so we could figure the weight, then took a slow 60 mile ride through the country to deliver next year’s steaks to their new home:
 

 
Cows are herd animals, and they and Linda’s cows immediately headed towards each other to make each others’ acquaintance.
 

 
When Jerry stopped on the way back to weigh the empty rig, I got a bit of sticker-shock. Neither one of us, especially me, had much experience, but the guy at the scale had looked in the trailer when we stopped and he guessed them at around 600 or 650 pounds each. It turned out they were actually around 870 pounds each.

That meant writing a bigger check today, but it also likely moved the anticipated date to put them in the freezer up from Fall 2014 to Spring 2014 or maybe even late this Fall.

It’s a learning experience, and I’m looking forward to that as much as our very own grass-fed beef. I’ll keep you posted. In the meantime, remember — never approach a Bull from the front, a Horse from the rear, or a Fool from any direction.

Cheers!

the Older Brother

I meant to get this out yesterday, but spent a good chunk of the day in my basement with the shop-vac and floor squeegee keeping water moving towards the drain. Just one of those things when you live in the Midwest and have 7 or 8 inches above average rainfall for the year.

Anyway, I figured I’d share my notes from last week’s IDPH meeting before heading back downstairs to do battle with Mother Nature. (Note: as one of my buddies from the Power Squadron says — “water always wins — that’s why there’s a Grand Canyon.”)

Angel Smith, who originally tipped me off to the Illinois Department of Public Health being on the move to “regulate” raw milk out of existence, has already posted her notes from the meeting here.  She also links to a three-part series in The Prairie Advocate – here — that has more detail and history.

Here are my observations:

Firstly, and most encouraging, was how many people showed up.  I mentioned that in the last post, but I don’t recall ever being in a room where almost everyone in the audience (probably 120-140) seemed to be thinking the same way as I was.  Weird, really.  Good weird.  It couldn’t have felt very comfortable for the 10 or 15 members of the Raw Milk Steering Committee who thought they were just going to have a couple of meetings on the regulations that the FDA was paying them to “write,” then move on.

Which brings up one of the first exchanges; this one between Molly Lamb, Chief, Division of Food, Drugs, and Dairy (the person in charge of this circus, whose salary is around $77,000 a year) and Donna O’Shaughnessy, the raw milk producer who primarily instigated this revolt among the serfs:

Lamb (after Donna refers to the Raw Milk Steering Committee):  …I don’t know why you keep referring to this as the Raw Milk Steering Committee.  There’s no such thing.  This is the Dairy Subcommittee of the Food Safety Advisory Committee.

O’Shaughnessy:  Because that was the title of the two emails you sent me when I asked about these meetings.

<insert cricket chirping sound here!>

… The meeting  started with the obligatory “rules of order” and agenda, which is of course all done via Power Point Presentation and delivered by the person who was probably really responsible for actually doing all of the work, Steve DiVicenzo, Public Service Administrator.  Such service to the public being remunerated at a salary of over $100,000 per year.  This included the ground rules, making specific note that although the meeting was being conducted in public, the only people who could/would be speaking during the meeting — outside the 30 minutes set aside for public comment — were  the committee members.

[I mention the salaries in case anyone is wondering how to get $9 billion behind on your bills, $70 billion on your pension liabilities, and an even bigger number no one will say out loud on your unfunded health care obligations.]

After a couple of slides on the origin and history of the committee, Ms. Lamb asked if everyone knew how a regulation comes into existence and then clicked to a flow chart slide with about forty boxes titled something like “How a Regulation is Made.”  This is like the old “How an Idea Becomes Law” from your old civics class, which is complete b.s. because there’s no boxes for “lobbyists”, “vested interests”, “campaign donors”, or “tragedy stampede.”

The first one was “determine that a change or new regulation is needed” and went on from there.  She jumped to the box about meetings and hearings and blah, blah, blah, and was five minutes and about 1 & 1/2 rows into the five or six rows on the slide, which she assured everyone was actually kind of a condensed version.

I was looking at the pen I’d brought thinking “if I turn this around and jamb it into my eye socket really fast, maybe I’ll die before I feel anything.”  But I was also thinking, “why in the hell doesn’t anyone ask how they got past the first box — who decided they even NEED a new regulation?!?”

Then, one of the raw milk producers who had been added after Donna started inquiring raised his hand and said “you didn’t explain why or how the decision was made that we even need a new regulation — how did that happen?”

Then, the whole room erupted in cheers.  I slowly put my pen down and decided that it was going to be a good day.

Ms. Lamb: Um, well we decided.

Producer: How?

Ms. Lamb: Well, let’s move on…

At some point either right before or after this, Ms. Lamb helpfully pointed out (again, backed up with an authoritative Power Point slide) that since the Department had been statutorily given the authority to regulate dairies, and since there were currently no rules regulating raw milk, that meant that raw milk was really illegal. The slide literally had “no rule = illegal” on it.

This is the bureaucratic mindset at its very base: until a bureaucrat passes a rule that says you have their permission to do something, it’s illegal.  She said this with a smile like that was going to clear things up, and let people know they were just trying to be helpful by passing some rules.  She seemed to be a bit surprised by the (politely contained) expressions of outrage and incredulity from the crowd.

There was also this:

Producer: So, your directive is to regulate dairies?

Ms. Lamb: Yes

Producer: But the regulations define a “dairy” as an operation that collects milk from farming operations for processing and wholesale and retail sales.

Ms. Lamb: Yes

Producer: So, since that definition means none of us are dairies, you shouldn’t be regulating us.

(audience: applause)

And this:

Producer (addressing Larry Terando from the FDA): Why are you on this committee?  The FDA has a position that all raw milk is always bad and has made it illegal to sell across state lines.  Therefore, all raw milk transactions are intrastate and there is no federal issue here.

(Audience: applause)

Ms. Lamb: He’s here as an expert…

Terando:  Because all raw milk is hazardous, so since it can occur in multiple states we have a federal interest.

The correct answer is that the FDA is financing this whole thing, so they get to call the shots.  Mr. Terando apparently had a busy schedule as he did not return to the meeting after the lunch break.

Another question — I can’t recall if it was from Donna or one of the other new folks on the committee:

Producer: Why did you send a memo to the state legislative committee with these proposed rules in it before we even had this meeting?

Ms. Lamb: Oh, those aren’t really proposed rules.  That’s just like a status report of what we’ve been discussing.

Producer: Well, since you sent that before any raw milk producers or consumers were put on the committee, and since many of the statements are incorrect, can we send a new memo with correct information and let them know there is disagreement on the proposed rules?

Ms. Lamb: Well, since that’s just a status report we really don’t need to do that.

When they got to the part of the agenda labeled “Epidemiology,” another IDPH expert got up.  She introduced herself (forgot her name, so I don’t know how much that pays) and started with her section of Power Point slides.  She was promptly interrupted:

Producer: How long have you been with IDPH?

Epidemiologist: I’ve been here twelve years (I may be a bit off on this –jn)

Producer: What is your degree in?

Epidemiologist: I have a Masters degree in Public Health Administration

Producer: So, you’ve studied a lot of food-born illnesses and outbreaks?

Epidemiologist: Yes.

Producer: How many raw milk outbreaks or illnesses have you studied?

Epidemiologist: Well, I’m not sure specifically raw milk related.

Producer: Is that because there haven’t been any in Illinois while you’ve worked here?

<insert cricket chirping sound here!>

I’m not sure what a Masters degree in Public Health Administration really prepares you for, but apparently it’s not the evaluation of epidemiological data.  It seemed to be maybe a G.E.D. level in “Google,” because her presentation consisted of a few slides of “studies” showing — wait for it — correlation! — between food born illnesses and states with raw milk; and one with a recap of dairy related outbreaks where “raw dairy” accounted for a majority of the “All Dairy” category.  This probably would’ve played well for the average audience, but it was the equivalent of trying to lecture a room full of Fat Heads (which this kind of was) on the evils of Saturated Fat while citing the Seven Countries Study and then doubling down with the China Study.

Even one of the Big Dairy folks couldn’t let these go, and stepped up to the plate:

Dairy rep: That study has already been challenged. Two-thirds of the illnesses — including the only two deaths –attributed to raw dairy  in that report  were directly attributed to “bathtub cheese,” where Hispanic people have made their traditional queso cheese using raw milk [probably illegally from dairies before the pasteurization process -- not actual raw milk producers -- jn].  It was undoubtedly contaminated in the cheese making process or subsequent handling.

Epidemiologist: Um, well, yes, some people do have different opinions.  My next slide relates to cheese!….

That may have been my personal favorite.

Once they got to the part where they were supposed to discuss actual rules — now just “suggestions for discussion,” mind you — it was exactly what you’d expect.  A bunch of rules related to massive, highly automated, feedlot-style operations that may have value in that environment, but completely non-scalable down to the level of someone or a family personally running a pastured cow dairy operation.  Even things like chill tanks would cost thousands and thousands of dollars.  And lord help the person who takes that fresh milk into their own kitchen and puts it in the fridge until their customer stops by.  No sir, separate milking parlors, chill rooms, etc. etc.  With the further caveat that no more than 100 gallons of raw milk could be sold a month.  When the producers hoo-haa-ed that one especially, one of the bureaucrats said — I swear to God, months in and ready to pass  rules on this that would put most of the producers in the room out of business –   “well, we weren’t really sure how many gallons a month you folks usually produce.”

The answer, in case you get asked, is that 100 gallons is about maybe  1/2 down to about 1 full cow’s production for a month.  So if you have one healthy dairy cow, during the productive season, you’ll be throwing half of Bessie’s milk away!

That’s mostly what I recall from the official meeting, somewhat in that order.  After lunch and moving to a room big enough to hold all the folks there to defend their rights to healthy food, they did allow over a half hour for public comments.  They used as a list the folks who’d submitted written comments.  Several spoke, all of whom I pretty much agreed with.  Angel actually got the last word, and did a great job relating how poor health impacted her military career and that raw milk was a key component of rebuilding her health.

The real standout was a women named Penny Gioja (again, thanks to Angel for taking way better notes than me!), who recounted having run an in-home day care for several years before the regulatory cost and paperwork led her to move on, then her family being talked into selling eggs at a local farmers’ market until they were told of a couple more licenses they’d need to purchase that made it economically unviable, and now looking at having to decide whether they should just leave the state.

Then she got wonderfully animated and told the panel that if the IDPH’s mission was really — as they had asserted — to protect the health and nutrition of Illinois citizens, she wanted them to enforce the same rules for people who sold Coke, Pepsi, Mountain Dew, and Monster Drink, which have well-documented poor health impacts — they could only sell 100 gallons a month, they couldn’t advertise, they could only put it in the customers’ own containers, and it could only be purchased on the vendors’ premises.  That rocked the house.

That pretty much wrapped the day.  The committee had a few more housekeeping items, like setting the next meeting and such.  Everyone broke up and started heading for the doors to return home.

I’ve heard from a couple of folks who think the regulators got an education on raw milk.  A lot of informed, passionate, motivated people showed up to stand up for things people just took for granted a generation ago.  The bureaucrats also accidentally put over 120 of those people in contact with each other, many of whom (like me) didn’t know there were so many more of us out there, not alone. Maybe the bureaucrats would change things up substantially.  Maybe even remove impediments to raw milk while setting a few common-sense protocols, as it fits in with the buy local/real foods programs the state and others talk up.

I’m guessing they’ll lay low for a few months or more, and then pass pretty much all of those rules as is, maybe without the 100 gallon limit.  Or maybe they’ll bump the limit to 500 gallons.  But they didn’t learn anything, and they’re there to pass those rules.

It’s what they do.

Still, it was a pretty good day in the sausage factory.

Cheers!

the Older Brother