I’ve been in a bit of a fugue lately between jet lag, ten times zones and west to east, tripled with intestinal troubles coming out of Kenya and (which in my mind led to) a nasty head cold. Through all of this, and being upside down on the clock, I decided it was time to write. The result was several hours at the keyboard leading to a very long piece, knowing all along it was too long to be publishable. It was suggested I break it down into shorter pieces, which is where I am at this morning. I am fully recovered now, sleeping on the clock (up at 4:30 AM, but that is just my age) and head, sinuses and lower regions all operating as proscribed.
The United States and other places (Mexico for one) are in crisis brought about by bad eating habits that lead to obesity and diabetes. I’ve long known a cure for both but run into obstacles getting the information out. These are created in large part by two factors that interfere with simple nutritional eating: Television (and media in general), and professional nutritionists.
With the news media, it’s largely ignorance, as people who write TV shows or sit at desks and read teleprompters don’t generally know what they are writing or talking about. There’s a background assumption at work, and this assumption, initially just ignorance, is now promoted by the Climate Change crowd, that a diet based on animal fat an protein is bad and leads to heart attacks and heart disease. At the Paris Olympics last summer they drove athletes nuts promoting vegetarian meals, claiming that they are a worthy substitute for animal fat. The athletes, where possible, brought in their own dietary choices.
Watching TV shows I often think this misinformation is deliberate. For instance, The Pitt, set in an emergency room in Pittsburgh, crossed me. It stars Noah Wyle, who from 1994-2009 played Dr. John Carter on the TV series (inspired by Michael Crichton) ER. I only watched two episodes and trailed off when in one they did an elaborate flashback scene of a quarantined area where scores of patients were on respirators and slowly dying of Covid. This is deliberate misinformation, but I see the role of entertainment in large part to be reinforcement of the lies told by regular news media.
Covid was not real, there were no quarantined areas, and the people who died suffered two causes: 1: The normal attrition of elderly people suffering from pneumonia, diabetes, influenza and colds who die annually from those causes, coupled with 2: frightened health care providers scammed into thinking there was a real virus afoot that would infect them if they did not engage in heroic efforts to intubate people having respiratory issues and “testing positive” for Covid, an essential part of the hoax.
That latter part, intubation, resulted in a spike in deaths in April of 2020, caused by the health care profession. Intubation is not a minor treatment, and most older people so treated did not survive. Unintentional infliction of death is legally known as “manslaughter,” and can result in jailtime, and this is what our health profession was doing in the early days of Covid.
Aside from the Covid hoax, so massive in scale and so long planned in advance that they might have been researching it on fake surface of the Moon in 1969, there is a regular flow of bad dietary information given to us by news and entertainment media along with the ones who raise my level of agitation to new levels every time I encounter them, professional nutritionists. They hand out bad dietary advice like candy at Halloween.
The initial impulse that led to my writing in the wee hours was called “Carbs Can Help You Lose Weight – Here’s Why,” an article in Epoch Times dated February 14, 2025 by Zena le Roux, said to be a “… health journalist with a master’s in investigative health journalism and a certified health and well ness coach…”. Her profession has been under fire and is now firing back, aka “doubling down”.
There’s been a tidal change in the past ten years as people have fled the regular college-trained nutritionists in favor of what they call “fad” diets, otherwise known as normal eating. In the 1970s and 80s the food pyramid came into vogue, as illustrated below:
At the top are sugary snacks, to be avoided, I agree. Beneath that on the second level, are meat, fish, cheese and dairy. Below that are fruits, vegetables, and on the bottom a cornucopia of crackers, grains, breads and cereals.
This pyramid is what I would call the origins (or at least enhancement) of our health crisis of obesity and diabetes. While sugary snacks are indeed a problem, this image has foods that are very bad for us (grains and cereals etc.) on the bottom and food that are very good for us (meat, dairy, cheese) at the top, to be avoided.
Back to the article by le Roux, below is the picture that currently accompanies it:
It is hard to tell whether she is eating Rice Crispies or oatmeal, but understand that she is following current dietary advice that has not changed since the 1970s and 80s, to avoid what is good for us and indulge in what is not.
I will stop there.
Piece of Mindful 
Rarely do I defend the ignorant, but I must in this case.
I have mentioned that I follow Vanderplanitz – primal. A bit extreme some might say ; necessary says I.
I am a life-long accomplished athlete – let me tell you what an absolute BITCH it was and is dropping my life-long tasty “foods”. My discipline is high, yet I drop back to chocolate and (not completely banned) nuts. Wifey can cook, old style and old school… I smell that and see that. Always a casual drinker, alcohol is mostly poison to us. Caffeine: incredibly bad.
The common man is bombarded relentlessly with all manner of promotion of what we know as poison. The common man is busy – even if you throw away the wasted time on phone and shite media, many have multiple jobs. We all say: “The information is at their fingertips”, which is literally true – but they have other priorities, namely: surviving (such as it is).
The vast majority of us have been conditioned with these “foods” for decades, centuries even – generations for sure. [I] find it difficult to transition to a true healthy diet; I can only imagine how hard it may be for that common man. Something I rarely do: tread lightly, but it seems appropriate for this issue.
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First, diets have not changed so much as having been hijacked. When I grew up in the 50s dinner always consisted of a meat dish along with a vegetable, maybe potatoes as a vegetable, and milk. People did not eat out much, maybe mom and dad would go out on special occasions, but entire families did not saddle up at the restaurant.
I remember specifically in the 80s or 90s (as I bought in) that meat was to be avoided and carb-centered meals encouraged, hence pasta dishes over meats. Thereafter followed the diabetes and obesity crisis. Other factors: fast food such as French fries and pizza.
So I am not suggesting we change so much as return to normal eating, back to a time when people ate chicken, skin and all, a fat feast that did not cause any health issues or weight gain.
In your case, and this was common chatter in the 90s at least, athletes did what was called “carboloading”, or chowing down on a complex carb the night before an event, like spaghetti. It takes the body a day to convert complex carbs to simple carbs, so that when the marathon (or altitude hike on your case) is going on, you have fuel as needed.
For me, though I do not do your extremes, I have always found a meat-centered diet enough to keep me energized on long hikes or climbs. The body converte fat to energy easily, with the exception of extreme events like distance running, where there is this thing called “the wall”, where the body is slow converting fat to energy after a long carb burn.
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Just briefly Mark, I noticed you have not mentioned the actual poisoning of our foods. I don’t believe the issue is sugar or fat or protein etc. I think it’s poisons.
There are both ‘natural’ and ‘artificial’ poisons in our foods (and elsewhere in life). The body can process some of these. Of the rest some get stored in the liver and fat. Once the liver is full we need to store things like retinoids in the fat. So the body puts on more fat. Mostly these poisons are concentrated in what we call processed foods (or of course supplements)
If the body takes a serious toxic shock (like an injection or ingestion of various poisons) the liver can sometimes be forced to dump some of these toxic substances such as retinoids (as retinoic acid) into the body before they are properly prepared for storage or disposal. Sometimes this can cause catastrophic damage to organs.
Never trust the alternative media or health it is just the next wrong path to go down. Always whenever possible go back to first principles.
Poisons are poisonous and must be processed or stored too much and ….
I would suggest exercise is so effective because it increases our bodies capacity to process toxins. Try acidosis training and see how quickly your body adapts to processing the toxic by products of running fast. With this sort of training your body gets a chance to adapt.
Toxins are a part of life and we should not be too scared, the body does a good job of processing most of them.
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Thats a very interesting take. I truly do believe in the power of exercise to keep the body cycling through materials as often as possible.
Why? Partly because i have get vigorous exercise almost every day, since i was 5 or so. Mostly cycling to tax the cardiovascular system, and walking as much as possible. Why do i think that is healthy? Because i am 54, feel great, do carry extra pounds of fat, as some have noted the American lifestyle of long hours of work leaves little time for optimizing the food you eat. I do ingest things like caffeine and alcohol in modest amounts. When I was an elite amateur bicycle racer i never got sick. And now the last time i was really sick was about 5 years ago. I believe that is in part because every morning between 6-7AM i go for a 45 minute trail walk, outside, in all weather.
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I agree, interesting take. Anybody you would recommend on this topic?
I mainly just take walks, although sometimes with pretty strenuous hills. Should probably add in some sprinting or short runs though.
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I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, “turn that pyramid upside down”
‘You’ll get better results with a chalice than with a blade.’
~R. Langdon (not really)
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If you want to know if you can “live off the land” without animals here’s your proof it’s not possible. A bunch of rich kid dumbass transcendentalists tried, and after 7 months almost starved to death, and ended up crashing in Emerson’s basement after this disastrous experiment. This is next to my house
Fruitlands (transcendental center) – Wikipedia
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I will type my comments in italics, this is found in the wiki entry:
Fruitlands residents began their days with a purging cold-water shower and subsisted on a simple diet containing no stimulants or animal products. They were vegans, excluding even milk and honey from their diets. “Neither coffee, tea, molasses, nor rice tempts us beyond the bounds of indigenous production,” Lane wrote. “No animal substances neither flesh, butter, cheese, eggs, nor milk pollute our tables, nor corrupt our bodies.” Diet was usually fruit and water; many vegetables—including carrots, beets, and potatoes—were forbidden because they showed a lower nature by growing downward.
Not exactly the brightest bulbs in the pack.
Fruitlands members wore only linen clothes and canvas shoes; cotton fabric was forbidden because it exploited slave labor and wool was banned because it came from sheep.. Bronson Alcott and Lane believed that animals should not be exploited for their meat or their labor, so they used no animals for farming. This arose out of two beliefs: that animals were less intelligent than humans and that, therefore, it was the duty of humans to protect them; and that using animals “tainted” their work and food, since animals were not enlightened and therefore unclean. Eventually, as the winter was coming, Alcott and Lane compromised and allowed an ox and a cow.
So animals aren’t enlightened, but these dudes are? I say it’s the other way around.
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This story, which reassures me that we’ve always been this crazy, ought to be expanded on, as it rings down through the ages, and reflects poorly on Emerson, and also Thoreaux … Henry David had some nice insights (each man living a life of quiet desperation) but a college professor told us that Emerson’s wife grew tired of Henry’s shadow darkeming the tracks as he regularly made his way to their house for dinner.
Care to write more? You’ve got a small forum here at your disposal.
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Mark, thanks for the invite. I have been studying Thoreau and Emerson since high school. They were my hero’s so to speak then, especially reading Walden and Self Reliance had a big impact. And I found the Transcendentalist philosophy alluring.
But in learning more history over the years the myths disappear.
It would take too long for me to list everything I know about these 19th century movements, suffice it to say I am very familiar with those two authors, Brook Farm, and the Shakers. There is a Shaker settlement in my town also. Brook Farm is another utopian experiment gone bad – Emerson and Hawthorne figure in prominently in that story.
Brook Farm – Wikipedia
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As is my wont, I will digress and post a cute story on Jesse Eisenberg. Getting Polish Citizenship for a movie. Good for him!
US actor Jesse Eisenberg gets Polish citizenship
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Also Sambo gets $100 million salary. Bet you’re jealous. If you’re dumb enough to believe this crap.
Stephen A. Smith’s reported $100 million payday is a lesson in knowing your worth
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Since this is a topic about health, I will post my observations here. What I have noticed is the professional class in America has turned into total needle-loving junkies. When I was young, it was a pejorative to call someone a drug addict. Now, what is someone who obsesses over getting shot up with the latest vaccine, and forcing their children, and others, nothing but a zombie drug addict?
These idiots obsess over getting every vaccine from their doc at their yearly “checkups”. It’s quite sick how hard the docs push vaccines, with no good reason. My co-workers had no issue with their PCPs having them get a tetanus vaccine, as useless as tits on a bull, after only 6 years vs the recommended 10 year interval, to be EXTRE-SAFE. Because they are retarded. A nasty and completely useless vaxx.
Next they love Botox injections, another deadly toxin, in quarterly intervals.
Last, I overheard some rich bitches saying how their friend turned a miscarriage into a culture of stem cells, to smear on her face to moisturize it. If you have seen the film Brazil, you know the type of person I am referring to.
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I was watching 1923 the other night … my days start very early and I drift off to sleep each night watching some godawful drama (lately I have taken to Good Eats with Alton Brown, a nice diversion). In 1923 a resident at the Dutton home has suffered a wolf bite, and the doctor from town and his team hold her down forcibly to inject her in the stomach with Pasteur’s poison, 29 more to follow. She resists, and because of this, SHE’S the crazy one! The idea pushed here by Taylor Sheridan is that these were the dark ages of modern medicine, and that a better remedy for rabies would arrive – not the unvarnished truth that we were entering those dark ages and that vaccines would soon enough be a curse on all of humanity.
Just two items, tetanus and rabies, are easily enough explained. Each involves a deep wound, difficult to keep clean and more so when home remedies could not do a good job of deep cleaning. Bacteria would thrive there in the absence of oxygen, and nasty infections would follow. This led to the mythology that some mysterious pathogen was attacking us from the netherlands of darkness. It was prime proving grounds for vaccines.
At our local pharmacy they are pushing vaccines, “free” to us all (heavily subsidized) and we do not know their true effect nor the malevolent intent behind it. Any fool can deduce that autism is a byproduct of vaccines, and maybe this heavy cloud of stupidity that sits arounf the table at each family meal, if that is done anymore, pushing Covid and asymptomatic disease. It is true what Harlan Ellison reminded us, that the two most common elements in the universe are hydrogen and stupidity.
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I had a strange revelation late last week while doing the required cyber-security training. one thing that has always puzzled me is that spam emails almost always have misspellings. This makes no sense, except when you invoke the concept that the swindled have entered into an agreement to be fleeced, and hence have no rights, so to speak.
To back up, email and text based scams are over 25 years old now. And a common theme, especially in the past, was poor spelling. Which can be easily corrected by a spellchecker. So therefore this implicates scams were allowed, tolerated, and even officially promoted, against the old, and stupid, who fall for the schemes.
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NPR has run some ridiculous stories recently about busts or investigations of online scam mills or farms.. something about the scammers shanghaiing great masses of displaced people, or some sort of unfortunates, and putting them to work this way. Sounds like a goofy cover for something else more like you suggest.
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That is really funny you mention this. I don’t know the veracity of these stories, but I can imagine they are likely true – based on my more recent experiences with advanced scammers (such as on linkedin who setup fake accounts).
In Laos, in the golden triangle area where Laos, Thailand, and Burma meet, there is an autonomous Chinese area where they have casinos, and walled off hotels with hookers and ostensibly Asians with multilingual skills who have been kidnapped are forced to attempt to scam Americans, and others. My Chinese friends say Facebook is full of these stories where Chinese Americans are kidnapped in Thailand and moved to these compounds in Southeast Asia. I believe there is some truth to it, but it’s likely exaggerated also. Partly to keep the keep the Chinese out of Thailand. Why? My feeling is the Europeans/Bankers want to keep Thailand under their control, and keep the Chinese in line. Because there are so many Chinese, and they tend to love Thailand because of the freedom and great food, to keep them out of there as much as possible .
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The reason I believe this is real is there are youtube videos by people who went to this chinese autonomous zone, and it is a real, very sketchy place.
Also a co-worker from South Korea told me his story of when he visited North Korea. It’s as dystopian as you can imagine. He went on a trip to a holy mountain in N. Korea, where they were very limited in where they went. He said the all the slopes going up to the mountain were completely denuded of trees, which he was told they did so “escapees” cannot hide and can be found easily. Only the mountaintop had trees, where they were allowed to visit. So North Korea likely is used as a scam center, walled off from the world, as a massive slave state, next to the slave state of China.
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Thanks, I had not heard of that. And I agree, there could well be some (or much) substance to elements of the NPR story. I should have said, probably more than meets the eye, than the way they framed it.
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Ray – What do you think the role of Thailand is geopolitically – vis a vis the US, China, the bankers, etc? It’s kind of interesting to me because that’s where Yves Smith of NakedCapitalism chose to relocate to after leaving the US. She has a background working for the biggest wall street banks and consultants when she was younger. Her site now is ostensibly very counter to the drift of big finance for the past few decades especially. (Her real name is Susan Webber.)
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Thailand best I can guess is a very reliable manufacturing center, and pleasure palace for the elite. A tropical paradise with a virtually unlimited supply of nice people. They are kept in their place by poor education and virtual anarchy – there really are no laws when it comes down to it, money and influence can get anything done.
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Based on my Isreali friends the Jews love Thailand especially, because it the most tolerant place I know of for religion. So the natives really have no idea what anti-Semitism is. However there is a widespread antagonism towards Africans.
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Thanks for your reply. I guess tropical paradise and friendly people (and not being the US..) could be what attracted Yves..
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I need to add an article from Wapo, the worst of the worst for mainstream media sources. I have email subscriptions to a few of these mainstream rags for my daily dose of humor.
This one fits in with Marks nutrition theme: looking at ultra-processed snacks for the “healthiest options”. Last year I virtually eliminated snacks from my diet. If you need to eat snacks between meals there’s really something wrong with you or your diet. It just takes willpower to go at least 6 hours between eating. No one needs snacks, they really are just slow acting poison. Anything that comes in a wrapper, as a rule of thumb, isn’t food.
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We analyzed dozens of ultra-processed snacks. These are the healthiest options.
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“Ultra-processed” is the buzz right now, and nutritionists are using that term to deflect from the basic notion of a good diet, minimize carbohydrates, both simple and complex, and eat fat and protein. Each snack they describe (I avoid all of them anyway) is said to be bad for us due to sodium, saturated fat, and sugar.
I like salt, I like fat of all kinds but find animal fats to be the most satisfying. I avoid sugars. I limit carb intake to 30 grams per day or less. In early April I am going in for a physical, my first since 2018. My weight is under control, I don’t drink and my BP is generally in the 125/65 range. I do like sweet drinks, like Sparkling Ice, and wonder how the artificul sweeteners affect me.
I will report back, honestly, on the outcome.
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Mark, although it can’t hurt, in theory, to go for a physical, for the sake of the readers here I will note what you need to watch out for and guard against.
First, I last had a physical in 2019. I called this year, for the sake of my parents, and tried to get an appointment for a physical. I was told my PCP no longer had me as a patient, a small clinic in my hometown, because I hadn’t been back in 5 years. As of that point, I decided to give up on the idea of physicals and just monitor my own health, and get care if and when I deem it necessary.
That said, the primary reason for PCPs is to get you on a drug, especially if you are older like us. Statins and blood pressure drugs are pushed hard. And then the vaccines. They will push very hard for you get updated on vaccines. Finally, the cancer screening. They will screen you for all sorts of cancer, a real Russian roulette.
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Thanks, good advice. The doctor I will be seeing is someone I like, and he knows I don’t do vaccines and only take one drug, and that only occasionally, Temazepam, for sleep. I have to see him twice yearly to renew that prescription. He’s someone I can converse with, as he runs monster races like Tour du Mont Blanc (finished 26th two years go) and last year a 100 mile race, Sunlight Basin in northern Wyoming near Yellowstone. My late older brother was and my son is a marathon runner, each qulifying for Boston. So, we can always chat about that. Last year he tried to get me to vaccinate for tetanus. I declined. He knows I quit doing physicals in 2018 when I was to be sent to a urologist for a slightly elevated PSA. I told him I had read the book written by the man who discovered the Prostate Specific Antigen, and who recommended that we ignore the PSA test. (The Great Prostate Hoax by Richard Albin). I think I will be OK.
When I did that exam in 2018 the physician and a medical student both strongly urged that I get vaxxed for this and that, and I turned then down.
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https://jonrappoport.substack.com/p/thinking-about-kat-timpf-and-her-cancer-diagnosis
Carbs are so yesterday… There is now a stage zero of cancer. Like in “You don’t have it, but you do.”
All of us, I assume with a little advance, logically have a stage zero of cancer. It only makes sense.
Thank god, “they” in quotes have the remedy. Sure, vaccines. AND amputation. Like in : vaccines + amputationZ. Of as many organs as necessary, that are diagnosed with a cancer that isn’t, without quotes, irony or sarcasm : the terrifying cancer that isn’t.
As usual, some will laugh. Perhaps we should decapitate these psychotic nazis depression sufferers, and people lacking in enthusiasm in general. It would be wise to also bomb Earth’s core to prevent future attempts to bomb it, the WW3 that wasn’t. If it can save just one life.
Did they pay that woman to advertise her breasts amputation or was she just happy with the silver medal of feminine castration after Angelina Jolie ? Oh, nevermind.
This year 2025 will go flying. And anyone with influence should push full throttle, because even for moron humans, this is too frigging stupid to drag a lot more. After all (the list is grotesque), we have finally reached the year of the stage zero of cancer. That’s a huge achievement. Hard to surpass. The Covid really looks like a benign shit now, doesn’t it ? Even the globo-climachange, for Frankenstein’s sake.
Will there be a human to collect that “cancer stage zero” Nobel Prize or a motorized shopping cart maybe ? Bumping against an empty podium, with the level of the water rising. Your next series on your anal pod, with an entire casting of so brave decapitated breastless actors !
We will never reach 2026. Cancer stage zero, hilarious !
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