Author: Henry Barnard

I am a voracious reader and also enjoy writing. I often have a very different point of view than the popular one. I do see value in debate, and thought it might add to the public debate on controversial issues if I were to express my contrarian opinions. I also started keeping my poems recently (I've written little pieces my whole adult life but never kept any); and I've been a photographer now for over 25 years. So I will be adding an occasional poem and hopefully interesting photograph to the blog along the way, just to spice things up.

Homemade Jelly

Made my homemade jelly last night.  Better than store bought for a number of reasons — no added cane sugar and mine includes omega 3 fats from chia seeds, which don’t really have much taste.  You put chia seeds into water and they swell up and create a dough-like substance that’s sticky.  Then you buy frozen fruit.  I like the organic strawberries/banana blend.  Put the frozen fruit into the chia seeds mixture and crush with a potato masher. You have your jelly with no added sugar, all the natural fiber from the strawberries and bananas, and the healthy boost from omega 3 fat.  So much better than store bought, which has no omega 3 fat, is usually loaded with added sugar (usually sugar cane), and has all the fiber stripped away. 

Gut Health

Calorie Deficit Days

I have been doing OMAD for 3 years, but I also do 3 calorie deficit days a week. One moderate deficit, one medium, and one large. My usual day calorie-wise is 2100 calories. The way I do the one large calorie deficit day is that I wait until very late in my eating window to have that one meal, and that one meal is unusually high in protein and fat and therefore very satiating. That one meal can be 1000 calories, but because it is late in the day and very satiating, that’s it for food for that day, which translates into a 1100 calorie deficit. I was wondering if anyone else does calorie deficit days, and, if so, how they go about it — what their strategy is?

Anti-Inflammation Cocktail

Fiber and Your Health

The cause for poor health produced by the American diet is pretty clear. Most Americans do not eat enough fiber to satisfy even the minimum requirement, even though the American standard is set very low at 38 grams per day for men and 25 grams for women (aboriginal communities can eat up to 100 grams of fiber — personally, I think the standard for men should be 75 to 100 grams per day).

What happens when you don’t get an adequate amount of fiber from a diverse group of plant foods is that you undermine the good bacteria in the gut. These bacteria produce the metabolites or short-chain fatty acids (SCFAs) that help to maintain the lining or barrier of the intestines as well as the blood/brain barrier of the brain.

If those SCFA are not produced in adequate amounts, this leads to the leaky gut syndrome in the intestines and permeability in the brain’s blood/brain barrier. Once this happens, you get toxins, pathogens, etc. escaping into the blood vessels from the intestines and into the brain through the blood/brain barrier, leading to widespread inflammation and ultimately, if chronic, various autoimmune diseases.

It all starts with inadequate fiber in the diet. That’s the underlying cause. There is no mystery to it. (Note: Using fiber powder is by no means an equivalent substitute for getting your fiber from actual plant foods.)

Anti-Inflammation Cocktail