Who wants a Georgia Peach when you can be Jersey Fresh?

One of the most amazing things about living in the Garden State is the bountiful produce to be found here! Beginning in May, farmers markets and road side stands start to burst with life and the bounty of the first crops. Until you've lived outside the Garden State, you don't realize how lucky you actually are!

New Jersey has more than 9,500 farms state wide on more than 725,000 acres. In addition to corn, tomatoes, soybeans and other vegetables, New Jersey produces five major fruit berry crops including apples, blueberries, cranberries, strawberries and peaches.

New Jersey ranks 4th in the nation for peach production. So why buy a Georgia peach when you can get a Jersey peach right in your own back yard?! Gloucester County alone grew 36 million pounds of Peaches in 2007. Peaches come into season in Jersey July through September. They sweeten the air in the farmers market with their delicate sent luring customers in for their first bite of summer. By the time mid-August rolls around you will be able to find delicious and ripe Jersey grown peaches every farmers market in the state.

Peaches are more than just a summertime treat, they're a guilt free dessert that pack a nutritional wallop! Peaches are rich in Vitamin A which has been shown to prevent cancer. Research even suggests that peaches have good to excellent antioxidant activity, some antimicrobial activity and good to excellent tumor growth inhibition activity. Since Apples officially don't come into season until September, fill your summers up with a peach a day to keep the doctor away! They are comprised of more than 80 percent water and are a good source of dietary fiber, making them good for people trying to lose weight. Peaches will also help with that healthy summer glow. They're packed with antioxidants that help make the skin healthy and also add color to the complexion.

To enhance your peaches and cream complexion after a long day relaxing at the shore, try 3HealthyChicks Peach and Strawberry Facials Mask.

Ingredients

1 ripe Jersey Peach
2 ripe Jersey Strawberries
1 tbsp honey
1 tbsp oatmeal

Pit and dice the peach. Then mash the peach and strawberries to a creamy pulp. Add a tablespoon of honey and a tablespoon of oatmeal. If the mixture is a bit too thick, add a few drops of water to form a thin paste. Apply to skin and let it sit for 10 minutes. Rinse well with cool water.


Peach peels exfoliate gently and contain large amounts of alpha-hydroxy acids. The natural exfoliation removes dead skin cells and speeds up cell renewal, leading to healthier skin tone. It softens wrinkles, sun spots, age spots, blemishes and unclogs pores leading to a healthier and brighter skin tone. Oatmeal is hypoallergenic and it helps to soften skin. Clinical studies have shown that oatmeal healps to heal dry, itchy skin. This mask will calm your skin and leave you with a beautiful, hydrated glow.

FiveFingers in the Alpine Lakes Wilderness

I recently bought a pair of Vibram FiveFingers Sprint (pictured). They're minimal, lightweight shoes with "toes". They're designed to mimic barefoot walking as closely as possible, while protecting the feet from punctures and abrasion. The soles are thin, flexible and offer no padding whatsoever.

I've always been a barefoot walker, because our feet evolved to be nude (or close to it). Besides feeling amazing, walking barefoot allows the body to express proper biomechanics. My feet have become tougher over time, but I still can't handle a rough trail barefoot.

When I first put the FiveFingers on, my initial thought was "these don't feel as much like being barefoot as I wish they did". Simply having something between your skin and the ground makes your feet much less sensitive. But I got used to them quickly, eventually using them for my parkour training.

I had a few converstions with my parkour instructor Rafe Kelley, during which I realized I had to re-teach myself how to walk and run correctly. Rafe is well-versed in natural human movement due to his background in MovNat, gymnastics, martial arts, strength training, parkour and anthropology. Modern shoes allow us to walk and run in a way that our bodies did not evolve to tolerate. The padding in shoes allows us to take large steps, in which we overshoot our center of gravity and contact the ground in a jarring manner. It also allows us to strike with our heels when we run, which is not comfortable when you're barefoot.

I took the FiveFingers on a 13-mile hike in the Alpine Lakes wilderness with a few friends last weekend. The Pacific Northwest has to be one of the most beautiful places in the world. I was expecting to use the shoes for a few miles and then swap them for my lightweight hiking shoes (Inov8 Flyroc trail runners). The beginning of the trail was really rocky and I thought I was going to have to take them off in the first few hundred yards. Surprisingly, my feet adapted, and although the trail stayed rocky, it became fairly comfortable by the time we had walked a mile.

I found myself thinking about Rafe's advice, and taking smaller steps that strike closer to my center of gravity. Although my strides were shorter, I had no trouble keeping up, and in fact going up the hills was remarkably easy. We gained 3,000 feet of elevation but I never got winded. I had to pay close attention to foot placement, which kept me from looking around much but was actually kind of fun.

After a few miles, I switched to my hiking shoes, with the idea that I should switch before my feet really started to hurt, rather than after. I immediately noticed that going up hills was harder, especially on my calves. My feet felt more cumbersome as well.

Here's me foraging for mushrooms on the trail. This is Laetiporus sulphureus, also known as "chicken of the woods". It's widely eaten in this area. However, my mushroom guide All That the Rain Primises, and More, had this to say about it:

"If you eat and enjoy this moushroom, always cook it thoroughly and do not serve it to lawyers, landlords, employers, policemen, pit bull owners, or others whose good will you cherish!"

I didn't take my chances. If you're going to pick wild mushrooms, make sure you know what you're doing and carry a regional identification guide. "I recognize them from China/Russia/Europe" kills several people a year in the Pacific Northwest. If you're experienced, this area is a mushroom bonanza. I can't set foot outside without stepping on a king bolete (porcini, cep) in the fall.

I ended up switching back to the FiveFingers for the majority of the hike, about 9 miles of it. The soles of my feet were a bit sore by the end (due to stepping on sharp rocks for miles), but my joints and muscles felt remarkably good! I had no joint pain or muscle tightness. I also felt pretty energetic. This was a big surprise, since I haven't done much hiking this year. The next day, my calves were sore, but that was it.

All in all, I really like the FiveFingers. I can wear them in places that require shoes, yet remain nearly barefoot. One potential drawback is the price-to-durability ratio. They cost me $80 and I don't expect them to last a year. That being said, I'm putting a brutal beating on them. Parkour training destroys shoes. The rubber seems to be excellent quality (which you'd expect from Vibram), but it's thin and it has cuts in it for flexibility and grip, which will lower its lifespan. The upper is simply a piece of stretchy fabric that tears easily. I'm willing to deal with the durability issues because the advantages outweigh them [update- several FiveFingers wearers have commented that they actually last a surprisingly long time. See comments].

Ischemic Heart Attacks: Disease of Civilization

Or, more precisely, disease of industrial civilization.

The scientific literature contains examples of cultures that don't suffer from the chronic non-communicable diseases that are so common in modern societies. Much of what I've read indicates that heart attacks are practically unique to cultures that have adopted industrial foodways and a modern lifestyle, being infrequent or entirely absent in those that have not.

I recently came across an incredible paper from 1964 in the American Journal of Cardiology, titled "Geographic Pathology of Myocardial Infarction", by lead author Dr. Kyu Taik Lee (Am. J. Cardiol. 13:30. 1964). This was published during a period of intense research into the cardiovascular health of non-industrial cultures, including Dr. George V. Mann's famous study of the Masai.

The first thing Lee and his colleagues did was collect autopsy statistics from San Francisco and Los Angeles hospitals. They analyzed the data by race, including categories for Caucasian-Americans (white), Japanese-Americans, Chinese-Americans, and Filipino-Americans. All races had a similar incidence of autopsy-proven myocardial infarction (MI = heart attack), including both silent (healed) and fatal MI. For comparison, they included a table with autopsy data from hospitals in Tokyo, South Japan and North Japan. I'm including the data from Tokyo in the graph because it's also an urban environment, but the finding was the same in all three regions. Here's what they found, by age group: The Japanese had a very low rate of MI compared to both Caucasian-Americans and Japanese-Americans. The rate of MI in Caucasian-Americans and Japanese-Americans did not differ significantly. Thus, location but not race determined the susceptibility to MI.

Next, the investigators collected autopsy data from hospitals in New Orleans, again divided by race. This time they exained Caucasian-Americans and African-Americans. Both groups had a very high rate of MI, as expected, although the African-Americans had a lower rate than Caucasian-Americans. They also collected data from autopsies in Nigeria and Uganda for comparison. Here are the data for men: And for women: Again, location but not race largely determined the incidence of MI. MI was extremely rare in the African autopsies. Here's what they had to say:

There was only 1 case of healed myocardial infarction among over 4,000 adult autopsies in the Uganda series, and only 2 cases of healed myocardial infarction among over 500 adult autopsies in the Nigerian series. In the New Orleans Negro series the occurrence rate was far greater in every sex and age group than in either one of the Negro series in East and West Africa.

Over 4,500 autopsies and not a single fatal MI. If this isn't worth studying, what is? These data should be part of first-year training in medicine and health programs.

To satisfy the skeptics, Lee and colleagues imported hundreds of hearts from consecutive autopsies in Albany (USA), Africa, Korea and Japan. They had an American pathologist analyze them side-by side to eliminate any diagnostic bias. Here's what they found:

In the African Negro series no infarct was found in any age group [out of 244 hearts, 39 over 60 years old]. In the Korean series there were only 2 cases of myocardial infarction [out of 106 hearts] and they were both women... In the Japanese series there were 8 cases of myocardial infarction in 259 hearts. All were men...

In the American sample, nearly 40% of the hearts of men and women over 60 showed signs of MI. The findings of the American pathologist confirmed the international autopsy data, showing that diagnostic bias did not contribute to the results significantly. They also took measurements of the thickness of the coronary artery wall, an index of atherosclerosis. They found that the Americans had the most atherosclerosis, but all cultures had some degree of it and there was overlap in the amount of atherosclerosis between samples. This led the investigators to state:

Myocardial infarction and coronary thrombosis are almost nonexistent in Uganda and Nigeria, and the amount of coronary arteriosclerosis is significantly less in Africans than in whites. However, in the two groups there was some overlapping in the degree of arteriosclerosis. No Africans had infarcts, but some had the same or a greater degree of coronary arteriosclerosis as a few whites who had myocardial infarctions. One explanation for this may be that some difference in clotting or clot-lysis mechanisms is present in the two groups. In a previous study, we showed that the incidence of thromboembolic phenomena in the pulmonary circulation [blood clots in the lungs] was low in East Africans as compared with Americans.

Now, the authors' conclusions:

These data strongly suggest that among the Orientals the environmental factor is playing a major role in the etiology of myocardial infarction and coronary thrombosis. If the genetic factor is an important one, those Orientals who moved to this country many years ago or who were born in this country should still maintain their low occurrence rate of myocardial infarction at least to some extent, and one would not expect to see similar occurrence rates of myocardial infarction in Orientals and whites as old as 50 to 59 years... As with the Orientals, this suggests that for Negroes in the United States environmental factors are more important than genetic factors in the etiology of myocardial infarction.

Africans in Africa and Japanese in Japan = low incidence of MI. Africans, Japanese and Caucasians in the US = high and similar incidence of MI. Genes only influence a person's susceptibility to MI when they live in an environment that promotes MI. Otherwise, genes are basically irrelevant.

What do the traditional diets and lifestyles of Japan and Africa have in common? Not much. Even within Nigeria, the diet varies from heavily starch-based (root vegetables, soaked/fermented non-gluten grains, beans, plantains) to mostly reliant on high-fat dairy and meat. In fact, I believe it's the wrong question to ask. A better question is "what do we eat/do in the US that traditional Japanese, Koreans, Chinese, Polynesians, Melanesians and Africans don't"? For starters, none of them rely on industrial vegetable oils, sugar and wheat to nearly the same extent as modern America. Their food is generally prepared at home using wholesome ingredients and traditional methods.

They probably get more exercise than Americans, even if it's only walking in Tokyo or domestic tasks for women in parts of Africa. Traditional Africans surely get more sunlight and thus more vitamin D. I can't imagine life is less stressful in Tokyo than in San Francisco or Los Angeles.

I really like this study, and I think these graphs should be disseminated as much as possible. I've prepared high-resolution versions in JPEG, Powerpoint and PDF formats. E-mail me (click on my profile for the link) if you would like a copy. Let me know which format(s) you want.

Cleave and Yudkin on Fats

Drs. T. L. Cleave (1906-1983) and John Yudkin (1910-1995) were two diet-health researchers who believed that refined carbohydrate-- and particularly refined sugar-- are behind many modern health problems. They made their case in the scientific journals, as well as in books aimed at the general public. They were also witheringly dismissive of the idea that animal fats could be behind the coronary heart disease epidemic of the 20th century. I'm going to post a few quotes of theirs that I'm particularly fond of, relating to this. I'll start off with a few oldies but goodies from T. L. Cleave's The Saccharine Disease, page 100:

Those who incriminate animal fats in raising the blood lipids and causing coronary disease would have us stop eating the fats that we have been eating from immemorial time, such as the fat found in meat and in the butter and cream derived from milk, and eat instead a whole lot of new oils, mainly expressed from vegetable seeds, many of which oils are alien to us.

From pages 100-101:

The keeping of flocks of sheep, herds of cattle, and other domestic animals, in order to provide a continuity of meat and milk, started with neolithic man many thousands of years before the Christian era... To these fats we are therefore well adapted, quite apart from man, as a hunter, being well acquainted with the fat of animals in evolutionary times far more remote than the neolithic ones.

From page 101:

Contrast with these ancient fats the new oils, mainly expressed from vegetable seeds. Not only are many of these seeds not a natural food for man (e.g., cotton seed and sunflower seed-- and incidentally the sunflower does not even come from the Old World, as we do in the British isles, but from the New), but also the oils expressed from many of them never existed in any quantity before the invention of the modern hydraulic press or the new solvent procedures, and consequently were scarcely eaten in this country before the introduction of margarine, circa 1916, during the First World War. Evolutionarily these oils make us not so much men as the equivalent of a flock of greenfinches, and the evolutionary incongruity is heightened by the fact that the coronary explosion amongst us, as will be seen later, came in since the introduction of just these oils at the period stated, though in margarine they are often saturated by a stream of hydrogen.

Now for a little John Yudkin. From "Dietary Factors in Arteriosclerosis: Sucrose" (Lipids 13(5):370. 1978):

In principle, it is very doubtful that one can in any way profoundly modify the diet of any species, including Homo sapiens, without introducing some hazard. The consumption of large quantities of PUFA [polyunsaturated fat] has been made possible only by the very recent development of sophisticated techniques of cultivating oilseeds, and extracting and refining vegetable oils. Before such techniques were available, these oils made only a small contribution to our diets, as they still do in the poorer countries. We cannot ignore the evidence that the large amounts widely recommended nowadays as a preventive of CHD can produce undesirable effects, such as increasing the risk of gallstones and possibly of carcinomatous changes in the skin. On the other hand, the reduction of the high amounts of sugar that we now consume is not known to be accompanied by any hazard.

Drs. T. L. Cleave and John Yudkin: making sense since 1936.