Weight training in old age may be more important than aerobic exercise in order to preserve muscle — unless you want to turn into a feeble oldie.
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.
Americans and Food
A vegan restaurant opened on the busy main street in my town. Amazingly healthy and nutritious menu — I was amazed at how good it was. But they lasted only 6 weeks. I hardly saw any customers inside that whole time. Just as I was about to go in and have my first meal there, they closed for good.
A month later, another restaurant there. This one the standard cheesy burger type place with lots of fried foods, probably fried in those terrible seed oils. Place is packed every day. Some days, there’s a line outside to get in.
Tells you everything you need to know about Americans and their eating habits. Americans don’t have a clue about food or nutrition. You can draw the same conclusion looking at their carts at checkout at the supermarket — garbage. No question where heart issues and autoimmune issues and obesity epidemic come from. It’s the food. All preventable.
No Hunger
I’ve been doing 20:4 intermittent fasting for several years now. It’s referred to as the “Warrior diet”. You become so fat adapted that you never experience hunger, as the body has ready access to using stored fat through ketosis.
Even when I break the fast at 11 am, I could easily walk away from eating anything. You just don’t feel the type of hunger you felt before you became so fat adapted. It’s remarkable.
Color
I’ve noticed that a person’s color preferences are heavily influenced by their hair color.
For instance, blondes have a natural inclination toward blue, while red heads (who often really have orange hair, although a minority have actual red hair) have a natural inclination toward brown.
Aggressor
The aggressor with regard to the Ukraine proxy war isn’t Russia, but US/NATO. Russia is just defending itself against this stealth invasion by Europe.
If anything, we owe Putin a debt of gratitude for the restraint he has shown. Otherwise, we would all be in basements waiting for the missiles to fall.
This proxy war is just more insane and counterproductive US foreign policy. After Iraq and Vietnam, I guess we should expect this — foreign policy that makes no sense and that is not in our interest.
Dish Detergent
Now they are pointing out that dish detergent leaves a residue of chemicals on the plates, silverware, etc. that is extremely harmful to humans and causes inflammation. So they encouraging people to wash all dishes and silverware with tap water before use to get rid of this harmful residue.
I’ve never ever used dish detergent for this very reason. It occurred to me very early on that one would be digesting some really crazy chemicals from the residue from dish detergent. I have always just washed everything with tap water, which is also not a complete solution as tap water without a filter will have chlorine that negatively impacts your microbiome.
Sometimes, there is no good solution.
Censorship
What is shocking to me is how quickly social media organs like Facebook and Youtube and many others caved to government pressure to censor anything that was anti-Woke. The First Amendment Right to freedom of speech was of no importance to these organizations.
Cudos to Elon Musk for purchasing Twitter and restoring it to free and unhindered expression. He did this not because it was a good business decision, but solely for that admirable political goal, which clearly bucks the trend of all the other social media organs to adhere to the censorship endorsed by the illiberal Biden administration.
Nevertheless, the last 4 years shows how easily and quickly our First Amendment right can be taken away.
Poison?
Processed food is poison is an exaggeration, but not by much. The thought that occurs to me though is that the food industry could actually make very healthy processed foods but they don’t, and I’m not sure why because I would think there would now be a real market for healthy processed foods as more and more of the public have become conscious about what is healthy for them and what isn’t. So one would think a processed food with healthy ingredients without crazy additives would be a real seller.
War
Have any of all the wars produced anything good? Yet mankind is addicted to war.
Food Order
An interesting question is whether there is any advantage in eating the macronutrients — fat, carbs, protein — in any sequence?
There is a lot of evidence that having fat in one’s meal aids the digestion of various vitamins and minerals. Without the presence of fat, these nutrients are digested, but not as well as they would have been had there been some fat available.
Fat also has no impact at all on insulin, and if you eat a meal that includes some fat, the carbs, which will spike insulin, will spike it much less severely because of the presence of fat. You do want to lower insulin spikes as much as possible.
There is also a good deal of evidence that protein is very satiating, and also slows down digestion because the protein compounds require a lot of work by digestive enzymes to break them down, which is a good thing.
So on balance, eating fat/protein at the start of a meal would appear to be the best strategy, and nothing fills that bill better than a handful of mixed nuts — high in both fat and protein. Perhaps you should start all your major meals with a source of fat/protein like nuts to improve your digestion.
Henry's Views 