The Illusion of Nutrient-Dense Food

“Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food.“ - Hippocrates

In my wayward vegetarian days, before finding Weston A. Price and eventually Paleo, I ate my fair share of faux food:  soy ground beef crumbles, egg substitutes made from tofu, heart-healthy margarine, and my favorite, seitan (pure wheat gluten).  For those of you that don’t know what I am talking about, check out this 30 second “public service announcement” from Ron Swanson of NBC’s Parks and Recreation.

Do You Have a Healthy Heart?

photo credit: ekgtrainingonline.com

Most everyone knows that a low resting heart rate is a positive indicator of a healthy heart, one that is capable of moving blood around the body in an efficient manner [1].  In fact, some world-class athletes, Lance Armstrong for example, have resting heart rates as low as 32-34 beats per minute where the average person is more likely in the 60s or 70s.

However, resting heart rate is only a small part of the story (as I have recently discovered).

“When you lose flexibility and responsiveness, you die.  Perhaps the most spectacular example of this is heart-rate variability, i.e. the amount by which the heart rate alters from beat to beat.  This is, possibly, the single most sensitive indicator of a healthy heart, and a loss of beat-to-beat variability is one of the most powerful single indicators of the risk of dying of heart disease.”  From The Great Cholesterol Con by Dr. Malcolm Kendrick

Carrboro, Are You Trying To Become Cary?

 Regular readers (especially non-local ones), please excuse the interlude.  This post is a copy of a letter I have submitted to The Chapel Hill News opinion page.

On Saturday, February 26 Carrboro leaders plan an all day design workshop to look at “commercial land uses and additional residential density on selected tracts of the Northern Study Area.”

Now, I am sure that we can all agree that Carrboro needs to expand its tax base and shift from a residential property tax model to one that is supported by local business.  But how is racing northward to rezone property in the Northern Transition Area along Old NC 86 going to help that effort?  Will creating more shopping experiences away from downtown Carrboro help downtown businesses grow and prosper?  Not likely!

Every week last fall and winter I drove to downtown Durham to advise fledgling high-tech companies on how to grow their businesses and create high-paying jobs.  Given the huge daily outflow of talent from Chapel Hill/Carrboro to RTP, doesn’t it make more sense for us to find ways to encourage more of these folks to build their businesses locally?  It would not be hard to create an environment that was attractive to these businesses, but it would take imagination.

In my opinion, Carrboro and its elected leaders would be wise to pursue a strategy of bringing in a more diverse business community rather than following the suburban-sprawl model of Cary (unless that is your vision of Carrboro’s future).

Update:  The Chapel Hills News published my letter.

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