Ze Meatblog

2002-10-22T20:52:00.000-04:00

For years diet doctors have criticized Americans for yo-yo dieting. But looking at the protein advice given by nutrition specialists over the past year or two, it seems instead that it’s the experts who’ve been bouncing back and forth with no clear advice for confused consumers.

Hmmm...

J.

2002-09-10T22:54:00.000-04:00

FOXNews.com

U.S. to Move Central Command HQ to Qatar

It's getting closer. They're based in Florida.

J.

2002-09-08T14:24:00.000-04:00

Saudi Arabia energy oil information

With one-fourth of the world's proven oil reserves, Saudi Arabia is likely to remain the world's largest oil producer for the foreseeable future. During the first 10 months of 2001, Saudi Arabia supplied the United States with 1.6 million barrels per day of crude oil, or 18%, of U.S. crude oil imports during that period.

Let's see. 1 million barrels a day from Russia. Get 600,000 barrels a day from Iraq. And suddenly, SA doesn't have nearly as much money coming in.

Poor babies. They might have to put their Wahabbi exports on hold.

J.

2002-09-07T21:55:00.000-04:00

CBS News | Air Patrols Resume Over NYC And DC | September 7, 2002 09:41:20

Officials hadn't planned on starting the patrols again until next week's 9/11 anniversary, reports CBS News correspondent Jim Stewart. They’ll continue indefinitely.

But Stewart says the early resumption may be related to U.S. intelligence and law enforcement agencies detecting increased "chatter" or communications among known al Qaeda operatives.

One senior official described the chatter to Stewart as "terrorist electronic and internet intercepts," some of which are in the form of morale boosting messages such as, "Stay tuned. Good news is on the way."

Much of the increased chatter is taking place in Afghanistan and began to spike in volume earlier this week. It suggests an impending attack against the U.S. or its allies, but contains no specifics, the officials say.

Time to watch, and wait. Be aware...

J.

2002-08-17T13:00:00.000-04:00

Haven't updated in a week - things have been pretty busy. Weight's dropped a bit - hovering around 210.

This morning - two cheesy hot dogs & coffee.
Lunch, beef jerky, water, two ice cream bars.

2002-08-10T23:01:00.000-04:00

8/10 - Saturday

Breakfast: Coffee & Cheesy hot dog.
Lunch: Hot dog, Mr. Pibb, oatmeal rasin cookie.
Dinner: Basil Lamb w/vegetables.
Snack: Chocolate cupcake...

Was very patient today. Went to the base, went car shopping. Napped for a half-hour.

2002-08-10T22:58:00.000-04:00

8/9 - Friday

Usual breakfast, lunch was .4 lb meat and cheese. (Why .4 lb? Well, I can select what I want at the sandwich bar, and pay 28 cents an ounce. .4 lb feels like enough - though don't ask why I feel that way.)

Dinner - pork ribs and coleslaw, with blueberry cake. Yum!

I don't seem to be sleeping as much. I don't get sleepy until almost midnight or one.

2002-08-10T22:55:00.000-04:00

8/8 - Thursday

Usual breakfast, usual lunch of .4 lb meat and cheese.
Dinner was Pizza, with blueberry cake for dessert. Had two slices of pizza.

Felt hungry about two hours after dinner.

2002-08-07T09:19:00.001-04:00

Wednesday: Cheesy hot-dog, coffee.
Snack: egg, muffin,
Lunch: vienna sausage, beef jerky
Dinner: Mongolian Beef, about a pint of it.
Tomato juice, about 25 ounces

Feeling pretty good and patient today. It's odd how my mood seems to change with what I'm eating. Food affects mood, or mood affects the foods I choose? Hard to tell.

2002-08-07T09:19:00.000-04:00

Tuesday: Breakfast was cheesy hot dog, coffee.
Lunch : Egg and muffin, two QT hot dogs, hold the buns.
Dinner: Tenderloin steak and chile relenos. Little bit of beans, little bit of rice.

Cheerful today. Good weather too.

2002-08-05T09:51:00.000-04:00

Monday - breakfast was a muffin, egg. Coffee.
Lunch - .4 lbs meat and cheese.
Dinner - honey baked ham, some beans, some macaroni salad, key lime pie. Yum!

Overall mood, pretty good.

2002-08-04T07:48:00.000-04:00

Breakfast: 1.5 cheesy bratwursts, leftover coleslaw. Coffee. Feeling kind of hungry this morning, but I've had enough to eat and I'm not really hungry - more on the order of "I could eat more if it was there."

Lunch - cheeseburger patty and top half of the bun (Microwave cheeseburger - the bottom of the bun was so hard I couldn't bite through it.)
Snack: brownie
Dinner: Two hot dogs, cheeseburger patty, baked beans, macaroni salad, key lime pie.

Weekly weigh: 212 - Maybe. The scale has been fiddled with by Aaron, and I've tried re-zeroing it several times with no luck. High reading fo 218, low of 210. I decided to buy a digital scale, and that's saying 212.5 consistently, so I'll restart the clock with that as a baseline weight.

Sigh. Gotta love it...

2002-08-04T07:40:00.000-04:00

In case you're wondering why non-meat related articles show up here on occasion -

I use Blogger.com to do my blogs. It works pretty well, but there's a little utility you can download so yoiu can highlight things in Internet Explorer and then save them more or less directly to the blog. I've got three mainline blogs, milblog, oilblog, and meatblog - and the utility has a dropdown list so I can select which blog I want to put something in.

Meatblog is the first on the list. And often I forget to change which blog the item goes into, with the result that something Mil related goes into Meatblog. I usually catch it pretty fast, but sometimes it may be a day or more before things get filed away properly.

So if something doesn't seem to fit it's not because you're in the wrong blog - I just forget sometimes to designate which blog I want it to go into.

J.

2002-08-03T13:16:00.000-04:00

Breakfast: 1.5 cheesy bratwursts, leftover corn. Lot's-o-coffee.
Lunch: 2 oz beef jerky, 'Grandma's" home-style oatmeal-raisin cookie. (calories 360, carbos 60 g., for your info.) Shortly after eating it, I was trying to type and having massive spelling errors. Couldn't get my fingers to work correctly, for some reason. I've been typing long enough - should know where the keys are by now, shouldn't I?

Snack - chocolate brownie around 5.

Dinner was a feast, aroudn 6:30. Roast pork loin, roughly 8-10 ounces, large pile of sauteed squash, chocolate sacher-torte for dessert, with extra chocolate. Yum!

Feeling pretty good today - despite some bad news at the base (relating to my 'career' in the Reserves, not overall military related). Life goes on...

2002-08-02T20:32:00.000-04:00

I forgot to eat breakfast today.

Yeah. Missed it completely, and didn't even realize it. I had some coffee (w/cream & sugar) - and since I normally eat breakfast in the car (hey, it doesn't require much coordination to drive and eat a hard-boiled egg at the same time, though I unwrap it and the muffin at a stoplight) I packed up and got on the road as usual.

And hit every green light between here and the office. Go figure. Threw me off my schedule completely.

So, I forgot to eat breakfast. I started feeling a bit hungry around 12 - got some roast beef, turkey, and cheese at the cafeteria, and got a large bottle of water (1.5 liter). Around 4 I went to Aldi's - but I was feeling a bit depressed. Bought some stuff for the upcoming week, including a large bar of chocolate and some brownies. Got home and had about an ounce of chocolate and one of the brownies - and I was feeling better about a half-hour later. Felt even better after dinner at 7...

Today's food:

Breakfast: Coffee
Lunch: .6 lb cheese, turkey, and beef.
Snack: Beef Jerky
Snack: Chocolate & brownie
Dinner: Two cheesy bratwursts, big mound of veggies, coleslaw, chocolate.

Mood: Slightly depressed around 4 to 6. Picked up Aaron, felt a lot better after that.

2002-08-01T23:40:00.000-04:00

Ah, breakfast. For variety, leftovers from 7/27, the chicken & bacon dish w/peppers and onions. Also muffin, and egg and coffee.
Lunch: 7 oz. roast beef and cheese. Water.
Snack: 1 oz. jerky, water.
Dinner: Waffle House cheesesteak omlet, with jalapenos, and some grits and a slice of toast.
Late night snack - cherry fruit pie.

If I don't list a beverage, figure I had water. BTW, the jerky I'm eating is Jack Link's brand, and it's a lot better than other stuff I've tried. Tillamook jerky wasn't very good. And those little strips you pay 25-50 cents for? Forget it... Spend a bit more, get good stuff, because if you don't like it - you won't eat it.

Mood today - I was getting a bit hungry around 6:30, before dinner. But it passed. I'm still wondering about all this stuff - it actually seems to be working...

J.

2002-07-31T22:40:00.000-04:00

The message that started it all.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

What if It's All Been a Big Fat Lie?

This is what my mother taught me 40 years ago, backed up by the vague observation that Italians tended toward corpulence because they ate so much pasta. This observation was actually documented by Ancel Keys, a University of Minnesota physician who noted that fats ''have good staying power,'' by which he meant they are slow to be digested and so lead to satiation, and that Italians were among the heaviest populations he had studied. According to Keys, the Neapolitans, for instance, ate only a little lean meat once or twice a week, but ate bread and pasta every day for lunch and dinner. ''There was no evidence of nutritional deficiency,'' he wrote, ''but the working-class women were fat.''

By the 70's, you could still find articles in the journals describing high rates of obesity in Africa and the Caribbean where diets contained almost exclusively carbohydrates. The common thinking, wrote a former director of the Nutrition Division of the United Nations, was that the ideal diet, one that prevented obesity, snacking and excessive sugar consumption, was a diet ''with plenty of eggs, beef, mutton, chicken, butter and well-cooked vegetables.'' This was the identical prescription Brillat-Savarin put forth in 1825.

Got a problem with the midnight munchies? Maybe you need to reconsider what you've been stuffing your cake hole with. Cut out the massive carbos, cut back on the sugared drinks - start up with the eggs & bacon and steak. It's not the fat that makes you fat - it's the carbos along with it..

The FDA thinks it's a bad idea. Take a look at the food guide here, and then read the article here. You'[ll need to log onto the NY Times web site, but if you don't already have a login you can use SP500AM as the ID, with SP500AM as the password. (Hey, I try to be full service...)

Considering the way government's been going with some of their pronouncements, maybe the pyramid should be inverted? At least, the idea should be examined with the same sort of scrutiny reserved for Enron or Worldcom. If carbos do make you fat, the food pyramid is a guaranteed way to the next larger pants size.

And I, for one, am tired of it. Pass me a steak, and keep the potato!

J.

2002-07-31T22:35:00.000-04:00

Breakfast: egg, muffin, coffee, some "Cinnamon Crunch" cereal. (The stuff was real sweet, I sampled it as I was getting Aaron's bag ready.)
Lunch: can vienna sausages, beef jerky. (I've got the cans in the car - but just no time today to get to something better for lunch.)
Dinner: Heaping pile of vege-all, leftover pot roast and steak, a hash-brown patty, and ice cream cake for dessert.

Again, okay mood-wise until about an hour after the dinner, noticed I was getting grouchy.

Still not hungry, but I think I'm getting some indications that my body would like more bulk & fiber. (We won't talk much about what those particular indications are, just that I'm taking a dump every two or three days now instead of daily as usual. Understandable, since I'm on a low-residue diet.) Also, my skin seems a bit oiler. God, I hope I don't break out in zits.

2002-07-30T14:40:00.000-04:00

Breakfast: slice of cheese, egg, & muffin - and coffee.
Strip of jerky.
Lunch: 9 oz. roast beef, turkey, & cheese. Water.
Dinner: 4 slices pot roast, carrots, small potato, ice cream.
Snack: Chocolate cupcake.

Attitude change this evening, after dinner, around 9:45 or so. Got rather impatient with Aaron - didn't need to be. (Sigh) Potatoes & ice cream, maybe? (Didn't have snack until about 5 minutes ago.)

Other than that, the day went well. Feeling pretty good, but I'll be going to bed soon.

2002-07-29T22:45:00.000-04:00

Breakfast - slice of cheese, egg & muffin. (See a pattern here? )
Lunch: McChicken Sandwich, hold the bun. Fruit & Yogurt cup. 3 strips jerky, water. A bit shakey around 12, when I ate.
Snack: Strip of jerky, cookie (at Kroger)
Dinner: 8 oz steak, big pile of green beans cooked in ham base, carrots, small nuked potato. Dessert was that pineapple yogurt pie Sue made.

I was feeling pretty full at dinner - ate half my steak and thought: "Well, I'm not hungry..." but I ate a bit more of it anyway.

The slight shakiness worries me a bit. Low blood sugar right before lunch, even though I wasn't hungry? (And I wasn't - it was more a "Time to eat, and there's a McD's" thing than anything else.)

Well, we'll see how the week goes.

J.

2002-07-28T15:54:00.000-04:00

Weekly Weigh: 212.

This was AFTER breakfast (two eggs, 8 small sausage links, coffee.)
Lunch - one chicken nugget, one french fry, Dr. Pepper. (Hey, I wasn't hungry, but snagged a couple of bits from Aaron's kid's meal.)

Snack - around 2:30 - one cheezy hot dog, cup blueberry yogurt, chicken wing. Coffee.
Dinner: Pork chop & egg dinner at IHOP. 3 eggs with cheese, two smallish pork chops. Came with three pancakes and hash browns, ate one pancake and a bit of the potatoes.

Note - I got a little bit "empty feeling" around a half-hour after eating. Went away after about an hour, and now (4+ hours later) I still feel full.

If I'm down to 209 at the end of next week, I'll consider this diet a liveable one. This is the first decline I've seen in my weight in a couple of years.

I guess it's the fat that's doing it - keeping me from feeling like I need to scarf down a bag'o'chips to satisfy myself. It's odd, not feeling hungry.

J.

2002-07-27T10:24:00.000-04:00

Breakfast - leftover pork (umm, w/lots-o-fat), mashed potatoes, coffee.
Lunch: Two chocolate cookies. strip of beef jerky, water.
Snack: Chicken wing
Dinner: margarita, hicken & bacon dish w/peppers & onions. Little bit of rice & beans on the side.
Slice pinapple/yogurt pie (Sue made it and didn't copy the recipe, darn it) w/whipped cream.
Chocolate cupcake.

Feeling full, not hungry. Even after breakfast at 6 AM, I wasn't really hungry when I ate the two cookies (large soft ones) at about 1.

I think the biggest thing is the lack of hunger I'm feeling. There's no urge to snack between meals, and the meals are smaller now. There may be something to the low-fat diets causing obesity through increased hunger. Tomorrow's the weekly weigh - I'll let you know how it goes.

2002-07-26T22:22:00.000-04:00

Usual breakfast - hot dog, muffin, egg, coffee.
Lunch was 3 strips of jerky, liter of water, ounce of cashews.
Snack of a liter of water and two strips of jerky around 3.
Dinner - beef stew (heavy on the beef), two Grands biscuits, yogurt w/strawberries.
Friday night splurge - Hostess apple pastry.

I'm still feeling full - or not hungry. Dinner could have waited quite a bit - it wouldn't have bothered me. Even when I was eating the apple pie, I was thinking "I don't really want this, but it tastes good."

One of the biggest problems with dieting, I think, is that after you get in a routine you want some variety in what you're eating. And that's a bit hard to do with a carnivore's diet. So tonight, the biscuits and apple pie. But the meat - the meat is good...

2002-07-25T14:56:00.000-04:00

Today's menu...

Cheesy hot dog, muffin, egg, coffee
Coffee
8 oz. roast beef, ham, and cheese
Payday bar
1 oz cashews.
Half oz. jerky
8 oz pork roast, small helping mashed potatoes, green beans.
Chocolate cupcake.

I'm feeling full - or rather, not hungry. Eating more out of the "scheduled time to chow down" thing than actual hunger. I think if nobody reminded me, I'd miss dinner w/no problem.

Slept well last night, to bed around 11:45 Let's see if I can make it 11:30 tonight...

2002-07-24T12:07:00.000-04:00

The MSNBC Diet & Nutrition front page.

Enjoy

J.

2002-07-24T11:55:00.000-04:00

Here's the Mayo Clinic food pyramid. Notice anything odd about it?
Click HERE

That's right - it doesn't base the pyramid on starches.

2002-07-24T11:46:00.000-04:00

Wednesday, 24 July

Muffin, egg, coffee, strip of jerky.
Bit peckish around 10:30, drank a glass of water.
Tired today - MUST start getting to bed before midnight.
McChicken sandwich (hold the bun) around 12:45, and one of their yogurt parfaits. And jerky.
Two strips jerky around 4:30.
8 oz beef, small serving peas, small serving carrots & potatos, cup blueberry yogurt.

A bit irritable tonight, probably because I'm tired. Definitly an early night, surfing to the contrary....

2002-07-24T11:44:00.000-04:00

The skinny on good fats

The debate over what is the best diet has been ongoing for decades. It's an evolving science that keeps researchers busy and consumers confused about the best way to lose weight.

An article in Sunday's New York Times Magazine highlighted some renegade thinking where dietary fat is concerned.

CNN Medical Correspondent Elizabeth Cohen discussed the implications Monday with CNN anchor Kyra Phillips

As I've said to the left on this blog, you need to look at how your body's reacting to the foods you eat, and also use some common sense. Read as much as you can about what you're interested in doing, and PAY ATTENTION TO IT!

Here they're saying that there's good fats and bad fats. Dietary evidence SEEMS to bear that out, but how much of it is a continuation of "There's bad fats out there" which started the low-fat craze of the '80s?

It's a puzzle, isn't it?

2002-07-23T22:19:00.000-04:00

Tuesday:

Muffin, hot dog, egg & coffee.
Hungry around 1, had two hot dogs (no buns) donut, water. Should have left off the donut.
Snack around 4:30, 2 oz jerky.
Dinner - Ceasear Grilled Chicken Salad, bit extra chicken from Aaron. Couple of waffle fries.
small brownie
two chicken wings

Overall mood good - significant downswing when I ate the donut. Not irratable, not impatient.

So far, so good.

2002-07-23T09:18:00.000-04:00

1956 - Basic Four Foundation Diet
Four food groups: milk and milk products (2 or more servings a day); meat, fish, poultry, eggs, dry beans and nuts (2 or more servings a day); fruits and vegetables (4 or more servings a day); and breads and cereals (4 or more servings a day).

1979 - Hassle-Free Diet
Added another group to the Basic Four: fats, sweets and alcohol (moderate use).

1980 - 2000 Dietary Guidelines for Americans
The guidelines cover six food groups: breads, cereals, rice and pasta (6 to 11 servings a day); vegetables (3 to 5 servings a day); fruits (2 to 4 servings a day); milk, yogurt and cheese (2 to 3 servings a day); meat, poultry, fish, eggs, dry beans and nuts (2 to 3 servings a day); fats, oils and sweets (sparingly).

Year: 1956 1979 1980

Meats 2+ 2-3
Milks 2+ 2-3
Veggies 4+ 5-9 (Combined fruits & Veg.)
Grains 4+ 6-11
Fats & Sweets Moderate Sparingly

Total: 12+ servings 15+ servings

Hmmm. Food for thought, perhaps?

2002-07-22T10:07:00.000-04:00

Monday, 22 July

Blueberry muffin, hard-boiled egg. Beef jerky, coffee.
Lunch was at a Mongolian BBQ buffet. Chicken, crab, bacon, vegetables, beef, and a cookie. And tea.
Slightly tired around 3, likely due to staying up till 1 AM surfing last night.
Dinner was moderate serving (half of what my wife had) 'inside out stuffed peppers', a slice of bread, and blueberry yogurt.
Cheesy hot dog (140 calories, 110 from fat) as a snack around 9:30.

No munchies today. Good attitude, though a bit tired. I'll sleep well tonight.

2002-07-22T00:10:00.000-04:00

Sunday, 21 July

Breakfast: 8:30 : Two hamburger patties, two eggs, one slice bread.
Not hungry until 4, had slice of cheese.
Dinner: 6:30 : roast beef, 8 oz or so, carrots, potatoes.
Dessert: caramel yogurt.

Plenty of energy, no shakiness, not irritable or impatient.

Weight: 215

Let's see how the week goes....

2002-07-22T00:05:00.000-04:00

Saturday, 20 July

Breakfast cereal & milk (Honey Crunch & Oats.) Felt kind of loggy, and hungry soon after.
Had two bratwursts & ketchup @ 2 or so.
Mocha Freeze from QuikTrip was irresistable.
Had cheese at a friend's place.
Chik-Fil-A dinner - Ceasear Grilled Chicken Salad, bit extra chicken from Sue and Aaron. Couple of waffle fries.
Chocolate cupcake when home.

Overall mood, pretty good. Odd feeling after eating cereal, though. Not really irritable or impatient.

2002-07-21T23:57:00.000-04:00

I've been looking over a lot of stuff on the net - from vegetarian stuff to Atkins. And the conclusion I've come to is this:

To some people (indeed, to most) diet is more of a religion than anything else.

I've seen reports by vegetarians that feel worthless because they 'failed' to be strict vegans. I've seen folks reporting health problems yet persisting in their diets, under the impression if they could just be 'purer' or 'stricter' in their observances, the health problems (such as receeding gums, mood swings, hypoglycemia and the like) caused by their diets would disappear.

Great googlie mooglie, folks - does vegetarianism cause brain damage or something? Does it shut down rational thought? If something IS NOT WORKING for you, why on earth would you keep doing it to the point where it ruins your health? Is dietary orthodoxy important enough to kill yourself over?

I looked for links showing that eating meat is bad for you. Aside from a lot of PETA inspired junk, or other Vegan stuff, I wasn't able to find much. Listen, I'm able to look at stuff and evaluate whether it's bullshit or not. The internet makes it really easy to fact-check what you find on virtually any subject, and if your primary references are to sites proclaiming "Meat Is Murder", or PETA, then the credibility is gone as far as I'm concerned.

I'm trying an experiment. I'm increasing my meat (and fat) intake, and lowering my carbohydrate intake. I can already see a difference after about a week. I can feel a difference when I slog down a cup of breakfast cereal, and it's not fun. Anyway - enough on this. I'll be doing a log of what I'm eating, and how I'm feeling. And, also, if I lose weight.

If you want to try this yourself, go right ahead. But use common sense. If it's NOT working for you - don't do it!

J.

2002-07-13T14:20:00.000-04:00

What if It's All Been a Big Fat Lie?

This is what my mother taught me 40 years ago, backed up by the vague observation that Italians tended toward corpulence because they ate so much pasta. This observation was actually documented by Ancel Keys, a University of Minnesota physician who noted that fats ''have good staying power,'' by which he meant they are slow to be digested and so lead to satiation, and that Italians were among the heaviest populations he had studied. According to Keys, the Neapolitans, for instance, ate only a little lean meat once or twice a week, but ate bread and pasta every day for lunch and dinner. ''There was no evidence of nutritional deficiency,'' he wrote, ''but the working-class women were fat.''

By the 70's, you could still find articles in the journals describing high rates of obesity in Africa and the Caribbean where diets contained almost exclusively carbohydrates. The common thinking, wrote a former director of the Nutrition Division of the United Nations, was that the ideal diet, one that prevented obesity, snacking and excessive sugar consumption, was a diet ''with plenty of eggs, beef, mutton, chicken, butter and well-cooked vegetables.'' This was the identical prescription Brillat-Savarin put forth in 1825.

Got a problem with the midnight munchies? Maybe you need to reconsider what you've been stuffing your cake hole with. Cut out the massive carbos, cut back on the sugared drinks - start up with the eggs & bacon and steak. It's not the fat that makes you fat - it's the carbos along with it..

The FDA thinks it's a bad idea. Take a look at the food guide here, and then read the article here. You'[ll need to log onto the NY Times web site, but go to Hotmail and set yourself up a bogus e-mail account to use as a spam trap if you're concerned about giving out an address.

Considering the way government's been going with some of their pronouncements, maybe the pyramid should be inverted? At least, the idea should be examined with the same sort of scrutiny reserved for Enron or Worldcom. If carbos do make you fat, the food pyramid is a guaranteed way to the next larger pants size.

And I, for one, am tired of it. Pass me a steak, and keep the potato!

J.