Recent Reads – February 6, 2011

Here are a few items that caught my eye during the past week:

• For a bit of inspiration, take a look at Dave Parsons’ story at Mark’s Daily Apple.   Below are his before and after photos (16 months apart).

• Dr. Kurt Harris at PaNu wrote an interesting post a couple of years ago called Eliminate sugar and refined carbohydrates like wheat flour.   For the average American, 22% of daily calories come from sugar and HFCS and 30% comes from wheat flour.

Unbelievable!  What a waste of an opportunity to eat something nutritious.

• The USDA has updated its dietary guidelines again (amazing what a room full of bureaucrats can dream up). 
  • For a thorough but simple overview of the changes, check out this post by Stephan Guyenet.
  • For the geeked-out, uber-detailed, smack down version, check out Denise Minger’s post.

 

•  Finally, if you would like to make progress like Dave Parsons, don’t emulate these folks who ran in the annual Krispy Kreme Challenge (over 5000 people entered).

Things I have Been Reading

In preparing posts for my blog, I spend a good amount of time reading and researching around the internet.  Rather than write about everything I read, I plan to occasionally provide links to posts that catch my eye.  Below are a few from the past week that you may find interesting:

1. I highly recommend Dr. Kurt Harris’s blog covering all aspects of paleo nutrition.  Here is an overview post for Getting Started. 
2. Dan Matesz at Primal Wisdom has a great post about Primal Diet on a Shoestring: a Nutritionally Complete, Inexpensive, Low Carbohydrate Meal Plan.
3. Mark Sisson, author of The Primal BluePrint, has a post about how more-and-more people are using mail-order blood tests.  Take a look at Doctors as Middlemen?
4. For those of you that want to get a better understanding of the science of obesity, check out How Does a Cell Avoid Obesity? at Perfect Health Diet.
5. Finally, I found Ned Kock’s post on Compensatory Adaptationto be very enlightening.