Label Madness Monday: Oatmeal

It’s been a while since I posted a “proper” label takedown, so here’s my attempt at reclaiming my former glory. Today’s topic: oatmeal. I alluded to this in the post about granola, but oats have fallen victim to the same food processing and sweetening madness that have transformed other simple, nutritious, and wholesome whole foods into desserts so laden with sugar and vegetable oil that you wouldn’t even eat them for dessert, let alone breakfast. In their whole, unrefined state, oats are a decent carbohydrate source in the grain family. They have a fair bit of fiber and a not pitiful amount of vitamins and minerals. (Animal foods—such as liver—pack a much bigger nutritional bang for your buck, but if you’re inclined to eat grains and your individual carbohydrate tolerance allows for them, you could do a lot worse than old fashioned oats.) But let’s see what kind of health havoc happens when food processors get their hands on this humble traditional staple food of Ireland and Scotland.

Low-Carb Lemon Ginger Cheesecake Truffles

Watching your sugar intake can be a bummer sometimes. I mean, let’s face it; there are plenty of reasons most of us like sweet treats, and number one topping that list is that THEY ARE YUMMY. So what’s a low carb or Primal eater to do when that late night or not-so-late night sweet snack attack hits? You could dive head-first into the Oreos, but since none of you have Oreos in your house (right?), you could try today’s recipe instead. I have nothing against Paleo and Primal desserts that employ things like almond and coconut flour jazzed up with dates, bananas, maple syrup, honey, and the like (well, I do, but not much, and it’s a topic for a different day anyway), but there are low carbers among us who really need to be more careful about the amount of sugar we consume, whether it comes from regular ol’ white table sugar or organic, unsulfured blackstrap molasses delivered on the wings of unicorns. But just because we can’t down “Paleo brownies” or “Paleo banana bread” any more often than we used to inhale the conventional stuff doesn’t mean we’re left out in the cold when it comes to desserts.

Label Madness Monday (Sort of)

Sorry no label post today. Once in a while time gets away from me. But I didn’t want to leave you completely high and dry on the last Monday of the month, so here’s a quick laugh for ya.

I was at Whole Foods the other day, and as I was walking past the bakery section, I saw something out of the corner of my eye. Call it a Freudian slip, or, rather, a Freudian vision, or chalk it up to where my imagination was at the time, considering the immediate environment, but I am not kidding when I tell you I honestly, truly, thought this said “Blood Sugar Bomb.” I literally had to do a double take and that’s when I saw what the label really says:

Remember: Amy Berger, M.S., NTP, is not a physician and Tuit Nutrition, LLC, is not a medical practice. The information contained on this site is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any medical condition.

Digestion for (not-so) Dummies: Large Intestine, Pt.2

The large intestine. We meet again. As I mentioned last time, even though the large intestine is much shorter than the small intestine, apparently it’s still big enough to warrant more than one post. So here we are, tackling a few more issues before we’re officially done with digestion. Actually, we were pretty close to being done with digestion before we even got to the large intestine. Like I explained in the previous post, almost no further breakdown and absorption of nutrients occurs in the large intestine. Those are really the jobs of the stomach and small intestine. But there is some food breakdown here in the colon. We’ll get to that in a bit. Before we do, we’ve got some unfinished business on constipation from last week. (Get it? Unfinished business! Indeed, I’ll try to pepper part 2 of large intestine function with a little humor the way I did part 1. ‘Cuz let’s face it: poop jokes never get old. And with that in mind, let’s get started with “number two on number two!”)

Label Madness Monday: Funky Hash (No, not *that* hash!)

In the words of The Bangles, “It’s just another manic Monday.” So here we are, another week, and another label. Considering that one of my recent posts (about the large intestine) was longer than a blog post has any right to be, I’ll keep this one kind of short. What are we serving up today? That breakfast staple, that complete meal-in-one, that mix of protein, fat, and carbohydrate that any short order cook worth his salt could cook in his sleep: roast beef hash!