Food quality, dietary habits, and health
POSTED BY: SIGNYM
UPDATED: Wednesday, August 26, 2026 20:31
VIEWED: 4780
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Okay, prolly an enduring point of curiosity for people interested in their health.
High carb/ low fat?
High protein?
Low carb/ high fat?
GMOs?
Organic, or not?
Grazing, or limited time-window eating?
Low salt? Unrestricted salt?
Plant oils or full-fat dairy?
Complicated by the fact that humans are NOT THE SAME. Some will do better on one kind of diet than someone else.
*******
I bring this up because, in researching vitamin D, I came across vitamin K2.
NOT vitamin K (now called K1) which is found in leafy greens and promotes blood clotting. (Therefore, people on blood thinners have to be very consistent how much leafy greens they eat every day.)
Vitamin D helps people absorb calcium ... it shepherds calcium thru the gut and into the bloodstream. It also helps shepherd calcium into tissue, including ... but not limited to... bones. Overdose of vitamin D can lead to too much calcium in the blood, and calcium deposition in places where you don't want it ... like kidneys, muscles, and blood vessels.
So, what about K2? (There are, btw, MANY forms of vitamin K2, which are all based on a quinone backbone.) As it turns out, it's vitamin K2 that specifically puts calcium into bones, and helps prevent calcium deposition into arteries. The FDA didn't even start analyzing for K2 until 2006 because it was only recognized recently
And vitamin K2 comes from ANIMAL sources (for the most part) and some fermented foods.
It seems that K2 is formed when gut bacteria (or fermentation bacteria) act on vitamin K1, converting it to multiple forms of K2.
But there must be vitamin K1 in the animal feed, or K2 will not be created
So the usual animal feed ... corn, soy, hay, and (sometimes) alfalfa... even organic feed... is typically deficient in K1, meaning that any resulting meat or milk will be deficient in K2. This applies even to chickens which, in the wild, would be eating bugs which eat greens.
Cows, sheep, goats etc must be GRASS FED to have sufficient quantities of K2.
I sometimes wonder if the reason WHY we are urged to eat a large amount of vegetables (and some fruit) is because the animals that we eat are themselves on a deficient diet.
A co-worker of mine, from Ethiopia, commented that they (the Ethiopian community) used to wonder why beef fat here was so white, because in their country, cows eat grass. And eating grass, they pick up a lot of omega-3, carotenoids and luteins and vitamin K1 and a whole bunch of other compounds we probably haven't figured out yet which make them better nourished and therefore better nourishment.
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About nothing in particular ...
There's a type of European-style (cultured) butter one can only get in very, very limited places, and which you can't find a mention of on google(duckduckgo). (I know, I've been looking for it on and off for years to try to figure out what makes it so special. It is VERY tasty, fwiw.). Anyway, one of its characteristics is that, iirc, it's pretty pale. Maybe part of the tradition is that it comes from hay-fed (winter) cows, when milk is scarce.
Pale butter, like white bread, for some reason has been favored as superior in many European cultures. Maybe it's b/c pastured, grass-fed, yellow (spring, summer, and fall) butter and coarse whole-grain flour were more plentiful, and cheaper, and more and easily available, and therefore plebeian. It's the whole scarcity = high class thing. (Also see the theory of beauty as being the markers of anyone who doesn't have to work for a living.)
In any case, do you remember the story Heidi (1881)? About a sickly girl sent to live in the the Alps with her grandfather(?), eating coarse bread and home-made butter, and romping up and down through the mountains? Apparently the connection even back then between fresh, whole, natural food, clean outdoors time, and exercise, with health was made. Given the centuries of favoring anything in short supply as 'special', and therefore expensive, and therefore high class, I wonder how radical the book was for its time.
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"Cultured butter" (European-style butter) is made from cultured milk.
"Back in the day" when there was no such thing as refrigeration, when waiting for the cream to rise the milk would begin to clabber (ferment).The action of that fermentation was to increase the amount of acetal, which is (or was) the "butter flavor" in "butter flavored" popcorn.
As an aside, acetal, as the artificial flavor, causes irreversible and sometimes fatal lung fibrosis when breathed. There was a man who LOVED butter-flavored pocorn, and he would pop 6-9 bags a day, breathing the scent in deeply from each freshly-popped bag. He developed lung fibrosis. But food-processing people who work with the stuff also develop lung fibrosis. The food-processing people are looking deeply into what they can use BESIDES acetal in their flavors which depend on "butter", like "buttered caramel" or "buttered rum". I learned this when we used to have to screen cleaning products for "toxic compounds", and those with complex fragrances were a real headache because my brain would trip on certain molecular shapes and I'd think HOLY SHIT! only to look it up and find it was a "natural" flavor or fragrance. A lot of them really do look toxic. Maybe they are!
Anyway, about cultured butter ...
Quote:
What Is Cultured Butter?
September 23, 2013 // by Kara Young
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Cultured butter is made in the European-style with pasteurized, fresh cream in a churn just like regular sweet cream butter, but with one additional, very important step.
How it's made
After pasteurization, our expert butter makers carefully add live bacterial cultures to our fresh Vermont cream. The cream rests in a vat, where it thickens and develops wonderfully tangy flavor notes of buttermilk and hazelnuts.
This is the source of the flavor difference between cultured butter and sweet cream, or American-style butter. After the fermentation, the cream is churned into butter.
Making cultured butter is much like making wine, you want to ferment your cream like your grapes, slowly, to produce the best aromas. The longer you culture — the better.
The hallmark of Vermont Creamery’s cultured butter is its butterfat content, which is higher than the American legal standard of 80%. We craft two formats of cultured butter: 82% sticks and 86% rolls and baskets.
https://www.vermontcreamery.com/cheese-and-butter-blog/what-is-culture
d-butter/
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake
#WEARAMASK
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But if you're looking for grass-fed butter, supposedly that's Kerrygold.
Now, if they would only make cultured butter from grass-fed milk!
My mind is like a gumball... it rolls around picking up useless facts and trivia. If I could only remember the important stuff!
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake
#WEARAMASK
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Quote:Prefer non-GMO, if can be avoided.
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Okay, prolly an enduring point of curiosity for people interested in their health.
High carb/ low fat?
High protein?
Low carb/ high fat?
GMOs?
Organic, or not?
Grazing, or limited time-window eating?
Low salt? Unrestricted salt?
Plant oils or full-fat dairy?
Complicated by the fact that humans are NOT THE SAME. Some will do better on one kind of diet than someone else.
*******
Organic is preferred, but sometimes can't find.
"high protein" seems to be inconsistent meaning. Normally I don't need with current usage.
no-salt.
Full Dairy except some cheeses (not american cheese or other cheese food)
eating when available, or when hungry.
I do have a Diet plan which I call The Transition Diet. Does anybody recall if I have already discussed or explained it here?
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Kerrygold (unsalted) is the only butter I buy, and it sure tastes cultured! And it's the closest thing I could find to that specialty butter you can only get in a very few locations.* But I've been buying it long enough to detect that every block isn't the same as every other block. Some are more yellow, some paler. Some have more of that butter flavor, some less. Some have more tang, some less.
* Chicago used to be one on them. I'm not sure if it still is. Once when flying from LAX to ORD there was SUCH a bad fog we couldn't land. I should have known something was amiss when we circled over downtown Chicago and the only thing I could see from horizon to horizon was the sun coming up over a solid fog, and the Sears Tower the only landmark sticking up. Anyway, as we were literally over the runway and coming down, I was watching the runway get closer, and I was thinking ahead to getting my bags and transport to downtown ... and I noticed the runway getting further and further away instead. WTH? We got diverted to St Louis. Where we sat. In the jet. Not at a terminal, but at some godforsaken part of the airport. With no power or air or lights. First there were bad thunderstorms over Chicago. Then the international flights were shepherded in ahead of everyone else between the thunderstorms. Then our crew timed-out after 10 hours and we had to deplane. Then there was a rumor that there was another flight to Chicago and we all scrambled aboard that one. Where we sat. For hours. Then, trailing in a whole line of planes, we made it to the takeoff position at the end of the runway, and it was speeding up faster and faster and faster and getting ready to take off ... and the pilot slowed it down and announced the flight was canceled due to bad weather in Chicago. So we taxied back to the terminal. Where we sat. For more hours. I was concerned that crew was going to time-out as well. Then we FINALLY took off for Chicago and landed successfully. We were joking that it would have taken less time if we'd gotten a taxi and just drove to Chicago from St Louis.
A four hour flight became a 20 hour flight from hell.
So anyway, by the time we made it to the hotel it was really late. The kitchen was closed. But they allowed us to sit at a table and served us some courtesy food - rye bread and butter.
And I remember, after not having it for so many years in LA, eating it and thinking - THIS is the taste of HOME.
And having a lot of sympathy for expats and immigrants. Doing everything in a new culture, in a new language ... and without the flavors you know and love.
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Quote:No explanation that I recall. What IS the transition diet?
Originally posted by JEWELSTAITEFAN:Quote:Prefer non-GMO, if can be avoided.
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Okay, prolly an enduring point of curiosity for people interested in their health.
High carb/ low fat?
High protein?
Low carb/ high fat?
GMOs?
Organic, or not?
Grazing, or limited time-window eating?
Low salt? Unrestricted salt?
Plant oils or full-fat dairy?
Complicated by the fact that humans are NOT THE SAME. Some will do better on one kind of diet than someone else.
*******
Organic is preferred, but sometimes can't find.
"high protein" seems to be inconsistent meaning. Normally I don't need with current usage.
no-salt.
Full Dairy except some cheeses (not american cheese or other cheese food)
eating when available, or when hungry.
I do have a Diet plan which I call The Transition Diet. Does anybody recall if I have already discussed or explained it here?
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake
#WEARAMASK
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Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:Quote:No explanation that I recall. What IS the transition diet?
Originally posted by JEWELSTAITEFAN:Quote:Prefer non-GMO, if can be avoided.
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Okay, prolly an enduring point of curiosity for people interested in their health.
High carb/ low fat?
High protein?
Low carb/ high fat?
GMOs?
Organic, or not?
Grazing, or limited time-window eating?
Low salt? Unrestricted salt?
Plant oils or full-fat dairy?
Complicated by the fact that humans are NOT THE SAME. Some will do better on one kind of diet than someone else.
*******
Organic is preferred, but sometimes can't find.
"high protein" seems to be inconsistent meaning. Normally I don't need with current usage.
no-salt.
Full Dairy except some cheeses (not american cheese or other cheese food)
eating when available, or when hungry.
I do have a Diet plan which I call The Transition Diet. Does anybody recall if I have already discussed or explained it here?
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake
#WEARAMASK
The Transition Diet was originally intended to bridge the vast differences between the standard American Diet (coffee, donut, cigarette for breakfast, skip lunch, McDonald's for dinner) and most of the specialty of focused Diet Plans, which have more structure and generally assume a better schedule than most folk have.
But so many people (mostly women) started losing so much weight just from it, and they never bothered moving on to the other Diet Plan they had intended.
Let me see if I can recall all of the details. I will likely forget a few.
The general way this works is that it is intended to make a person wake up hungry, so they will eat a large breakfast - and then have the whole day to burn off all the calories. Lunch should also not be skimpy. If you wake up hungry, you probably lost weight while you slept. If you wake up not hungry, your probably packed on some fat cells while you slept. For many sudden dieters, the shocking transition of going to bed hungry defeats their plans of dieting. If somebody cannot get to sleep at night (like due to hunger), this destabilizes the body metabolism, and is also unhealthy.
A. Breakfast. Eat what you want, as much as you want. If you eat a whole cake, fine. Do that enough times, you will tire of cake. This both takes away the denial problem, and helps you realize you really don't like cake/chocolate/fudge/donuts/etc THAT much.
B. Same. Your lunch break may restrict how much time you can spend anyhow.
C. Determine your bedtime. More than 4 hours before you go to bed, same as A & B. If you eat pasta, suggest you do some dancing or exercise afterwards. But most working folk are not going to be able to have a big dinner and still clear 4 hours before bed. Others who do are likely not looking at Diet Plans to manage their bodies.
For the midnight cravings, fresh fruits or veggies may be inconvenient or impractical. Get some canned items you can talk yourself into - peaches, oranges, beets, whatever seems interesting, keep them in your cupbord during this Diet.
D. 4 hours before bedtime. Only the following items, as much of them as you want. This includes midnight snacking, cravings, nervous/anxious hunger.
1. Any salad except pasta. Lettuce, chicken salad, egg salad, fruit salad, potato salad, etc. Any toppings you want on your lettuce salad.
2. Any fruits, fresh or canned.
3. Any Vegetables, fresh or canned, cooked.
4. Any nuts, including cashews.
5. Any potato form, except chips (deep fried). Baked, hashed, scalloped, whatever. Any toppings on them.
6. Popcorn, with any toppings.
7. Any soups.
8. Any meats as sole entrees. Meat dishes with pasta, bread, etc. not included.
Now, obviously, your romantic dinners will not fit this schedule. Any reasonable person knows that skipping one or two nights per week of your diet will not h
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Plant oils or full-fat dairy?
When I read the ingredients are oil, oil, oil, oil, oil, oil, oil, and less than 2% oil (or grease), then I recognize that my poop chute does not need any extra lubrication.
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Quote:Yep, makes sense. But it is far more food than I can eat and not gain weight. I DO restrict my before bedtime eating, but alos restrict my eating throughout the day.
The Transition Diet was originally intended to bridge the vast differences between the standard American Diet (coffee, donut, cigarette for breakfast, skip lunch, McDonald's for dinner) and most of the specialty of focused Diet Plans, which have more structure and generally assume a better schedule than most folk have.
But so many people (mostly women) started losing so much weight just from it, and they never bothered moving on to the other Diet Plan they had intended.
Let me see if I can recall all of the details. I will likely forget a few.
The general way this works is that it is intended to make a person wake up hungry, so they will eat a large breakfast - and then have the whole day to burn off all the calories. Lunch should also not be skimpy. If you wake up hungry, you probably lost weight while you slept. If you wake up not hungry, your probably packed on some fat cells while you slept. For many sudden dieters, the shocking transition of going to bed hungry defeats their plans of dieting. If somebody cannot get to sleep at night (like due to hunger), this destabilizes the body metabolism, and is also unhealthy.
A. Breakfast. Eat what you want, as much as you want. If you eat a whole cake, fine. Do that enough times, you will tire of cake. This both takes away the denial problem, and helps you realize you really don't like cake/chocolate/fudge/donuts/etc THAT much.
B. Same. Your lunch break may restrict how much time you can spend anyhow.
C. Determine your bedtime. More than 4 hours before you go to bed, same as A & B. If you eat pasta, suggest you do some dancing or exercise afterwards. But most working folk are not going to be able to have a big dinner and still clear 4 hours before bed. Others who do are likely not looking at Diet Plans to manage their bodies.
For the midnight cravings, fresh fruits or veggies may be inconvenient or impractical. Get some canned items you can talk yourself into - peaches, oranges, beets, whatever seems interesting, keep them in your cupbord during this Diet.
D. 4 hours before bedtime. Only the following items, as much of them as you want. This includes midnight snacking, cravings, nervous/anxious hunger.
1. Any salad except pasta. Lettuce, chicken salad, egg salad, fruit salad, potato salad, etc. Any toppings you want on your lettuce salad.
2. Any fruits, fresh or canned.
3. Any Vegetables, fresh or canned, cooked.
4. Any nuts, including cashews.
5. Any potato form, except chips (deep fried). Baked, hashed, scalloped, whatever. Any toppings on them.
6. Popcorn, with any toppings.
7. Any soups.
8. Any meats as sole entrees. Meat dishes with pasta, bread, etc. not included.
Now, obviously, your romantic dinners will not fit this schedule. Any reasonable person knows that skipping one or two nights per week of your diet will not help you lose week rapidly, but your results are in accordance with your adherence. Not too complicated.
The idea of these items before going to sleep is that they provide nutrients, vitamins, minerals, some protein, but not excessive calories just before you become dormant and unable to burn them off. If you wake up hungry, you were successful. The heavier stuff needs 4 hours or so to burn off or pass through - you don't want cake and frosting sitting in your gut while you sleep all night. Popcorn and potatoes are included because they generally fill you up faster than you can really stuff yourself with.
I hope I remembered it all. Does that make sense?
As people get older their metabolism slows down, growth hormone reduces, and activities might be limited by arthritis or other health issues. Also, men have a natural advantage in that they tend to build muscle while women put on fat.
So makes sense for some, but not for everyone and prolly not for elder
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