From Wikipedia:

Gout is a medical condition that usually presents with recurrent attacks of acute inflammatory arthritis (red, tender, hot, swollen joint). It is caused by elevated levels of uric acid in the blood. The uric acid crystallizes and deposits in joints, tendons, and surrounding tissues.

I have heard that the pain experienced during an episode of gout is akin to having someone walk on your eyeballs. Sounds like some pretty serious stuff if you ask me.

We have all probably heard that gout is brought on by consuming too much red meat and alcohol. This misconception has been around for well over 100 years and just won't go away. This past Christmas, while enjoying a delicious feast of prime rib roast and wine with our extended family, someone chimed in, half joking, that we were all going to get gout. Where did this faulty science originate?

The faulty logic comes from the following: There is a protein compound known as purines that is found in every cell of your body as well as virtually every food; meat having the highest concentration. When these purines are broken down by your cells, uric acid is produced. If we go back to the definition of gout, we will see that gout is caused by elevated levels of uric acid in the blood. At first glance this seems to be solid science, but the problem is that the production of uric acid doesn't necessarily result in an elevated level in your blood.

If you're a little confused, think about this in terms of cholesterol. If you eat a lot of dietary cholesterol, that will not, in and of itself, have a direct effect on the level of cholesterol in your blood. This is because your body auto-regulates itself and slows down its own production of cholesterol if you are eating plenty of it. Back to uric acid, a high purine diet will have a negligible effect on uric acid levels in the blood because the kidneys increase their excretion of uric acid.

So what causes uric acid levels to increase? I know this will shock you, but like the other diseases of civilization, insulin resistance, hyperinsulinemia, and fructose are to blame. When one is insulin resistant, uric acid excretion by the kidney is decreased. Therefore, anything that raises insulin levels would in turn raise uric acid levels and cause gout.

Whereas glucose indirectly increases uric acid levels by decreasing uric acid excretion, fructose has a more profound, double whammy effect by not only increasing uric acid production, but by also reducing the excretion of uric acidy by the kidney.

Why then has the sugar/fructose hypothesis been ignored by the masses? It all comes down to money. In the 1960s, shortly after the formation of this hypothesis, allopurinol, a drug for curing gout, was discovered and funding for nutritional research was cut-off. Why spend time and money researching something that they could now cure?

Even more frustrating is a 2004 article in the New England Journal of Medicine by Walter Willett, Gary Curhan, and their Harvard colleagues reporting that men with gout seemed to eat more meat than healthy men. In it, Gary Curhan admits that he might have once known that fructose raised uric acid levels, but that it had slipped his mind. He also acknowledged that he never knew that sucrose was half fructose! Remember, this guy is regarded as the ultimate authority on gout. The establishment can truly be a scary thing.

To sum this all up, if someone you love is suffering from gout, have them avoid sugar, especially fructose, while still enjoying the oh so delicious rib eye steak.

I picked this wonderful book up several months ago and learned quite a bit when it comes to cooking with fat. What I am going to share with you today is the recipe for Bacon Mayonnaise (p. 101):

• 1 egg yolk
• 3/4 tsp Dijon mustard
• 1 tsp freshly squeezed lemon juice
• Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
• 1/2 cup liquid bacon fat

Combine the egg yolk, mustard, and lemon juice in the small bowl of a food processor or in a blender and process to mix. Season with salt and pepper.

Have the bacon fat liquid, but not hot. With the machine running, gradually add the bacon fat until the mixture starts to stiffen and emulsify, about 2 minutes. Once it starts to emulsify, you can add the fat more quickly. If the mayonnaise is too thick, just blend in 1 teaspoon of boiling water to thin it. Taste and adjust the seasoning.

I made this the other day and it was actually quite tasty. My only recommendation is to be sure to let the bacon fat cool before adding it to the mixture. If the fat is too warm still, it will not emulsify properly and you will have runny mayonnaise.

There have been a couple studies getting some attention lately. Here is a quick rundown:

In a study, recently published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, Dr. Krauss and his team concluded:

A meta-analysis of prospective epidemiologic studies showed that there is no significant evidence for concluding that dietary saturated fat is associated with an increased risk of CHD or CVD. More data are needed to elucidate whether CVD risks are likely to be influenced by the specific nutrients used to replace saturated fat.

Also in the news, is a new article in Men's Health. Here is Dr. B G's summary of the article: Krauss is in the HOUSE: 'Low-fat Message Was a MISTAKE'

I leave you with a quote from Petro Dobromylskyj:

There is a general feeling in THINCS and the Nutrition and Metabolism Society that 2010 could be a good year for saturophiles and the rest of mankind too of course, should they care to listen.

Meat On!

The one thing I question. It lists fatty meats as foods to avoid. Such as T-bone, ground beef, bacon etc. Convince me these are ok in the paleo diet, especially the grass fed variety? Love me some good t-bone so I really want to be convinced.

Heath, as well as many others, asked the above question after picking up a copy of The Paleo Diet for Athletes. This is one of the reasons why I no longer recommend that anyone read The Paleo Diet or any of Dr. Cordain's other books. Instead, I now point people to The Primal Blueprint, Trick And Treat, or Good Calories, Bad Calories when beginning this way of eating.

Getting back to the original question, the reason you are continuously told to avoid red meat and its fat is because of the Diet-Heart Hypothesis which gained popularity in the 1950s thanks to Dr. Ancel Keys. It was hypothesized that eating saturated fats (i.e. red meat) would increase one's total and LDL cholesterols and in turn increase one's chances of heart disease. This is simply untrue.

The problem is that over the course of a few decades the Diet-Heart hypothesis became accepted as fact without the proper science to back it up. The scientific method was completely ignored and fraudulent practices reigned supreme. If you are wondering 'why' or 'how' this would happen, hang around and we'll hit on that again in the near future. For now, just know that it probably had something to do with money.

What I'm trying to say is that you should stop fearing red meat and high cholesterol. If you want to be healthy and disease free, ditch the grains and sugars while embracing red meat and it's high levels of saturated fat. Let the uninformed masses continue to pay a premium for the low-fat meats and be thankful that we don't have to pay as much for the life promoting cuts

Here are Dr. Uffe Ravnskov's 8 facts on cholesterol:

1. Cholesterol is not a deadly poison, but a substance vital to the cells of all mammals. There are no such things as good or bad cholesterol, but mental stress, physical activity and change of body weight may influence the level of blood cholesterol. A high cholesterol is not dangerous by itself, but may reflect an unhealthy condition, or it may be totally innocent.
2. A high blood cholesterol is said to promote atherosclerosis and thus also coronary heart disease. But many studies have shown that people whose blood cholesterol is low become just as atherosclerotic as people whose cholesterol is high.
3. Your body produces three to four times more cholesterol than you eat. The production of cholesterol increases when you eat little cholesterol and decreases when you eat much. This explains why the ”prudent” diet cannot lower cholesterol more than on average a few per cent.
4. There is no evidence that too much animal fat and cholesterol in the diet promotes atherosclerosis or heart attacks. For instance, more than twenty studies have shown that people who have had a heart attack haven't eaten more fat of any kind than other people, and degree of atherosclerosis at autopsy is unrelated with the diet.
5. The only effective way to lower cholesterol is with drugs, but neither heart mortality or total mortality have been improved with drugs the effect of which is cholesterol-lowering only. On the contrary, these drugs are dangerous to your health and may shorten your life.
6. The new cholesterol-lowering drugs, the statins, do prevent cardio-vascular disease, but this is due to other mechanisms than cholesterol-lowering. Unfortunately, they also stimulate cancer in rodents, disturb the functions of the muscles, the heart and the brain and pregnant women taking statins may give birth to children with malformations more severe than those seen after thalidomide.
7. Many of these facts have been presented in scientific journals and books for decades but are rarely told to the public by the proponents of the diet-heart idea.
8. The reason why laymen, doctors and most scientists have been misled is because opposing and disagreeing results are systematically ignored or misquoted in the scientific press.

Here are several other sources that address this very topic:

Whole Health Source
Manninen Nutraceuticals: Finland's Authority on Human Performance
The Cholesterol Myths
New cholesterol guidelines for converting healthy people into patients
THINCS: The International Network of Cholesterol Sceptics

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-F4t8zL6F0c[/youtube]

The New York City health department has released a nauseating video in an effort to prevent people from drinking sugary beverages. The video was posted Monday on YouTube.

A man opens a soda can and pours the liquid into a glass. It's actually a mess of goopy fat.

When he tries to drink it, he ends up with fat globs on his face.

The message: Drinking just one can of soda a day can add up to 10 pounds of weight in a year.

Health Commissioner Thomas Farley says sugary drinks are a large part of the obesity epidemic.

A 2007 health department survey found that more than 2 million New Yorkers drink at least one sugar-sweetened beverage each day.

Avoiding sugary beverages is definitely something we encourage at the Fort. Remember though that the zero calorie alternatives aren't any better for you. Stick to eating your calories and drinking your water for the best health. Oh, and did anyone else notice the sneaky dairy industry and their low-fat milk in the final frame?

What do the rest of you think of ads like this? Love them? Hate them? Post your thoughts to comments.

• 1 can of Thai Kitchen coconut milk
• good size scoop of Thai Kitchen red curry paste
• several shakes of the "21 Seasoning Salute" from Trader Joe's
• 1 cup of organic vegetable broth from Trader Joe's
• 1 pound of raw shrimp from Trader Joe's (wild caught)

I made a quick lunch for Jennie and myself today which took about half the time it takes to get a Broccoli Beef from Panda. Don't let the simplicity of this dish fool you though. It was both very hardy as well as delicious.

To replicate this creation, combine the coconut milk, curry paste, and seasoning in a pot over low heat and warm until the curry paste mixes completely with the coconut milk. Add the vegetable broth and shrimp and simmer for 3 or 4 minutes. Enjoy!

Next time, I am going to try taking the tails off before cooking and dicing the shrimp. I figure this will make the dish more like a soup and a LOT less messy to eat.