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More videos from the last Ancestral Health Symposium at Harvard have been posted. Below are some of the latest releases. The stand-out video in this batch is the nutrient density one by Matt Lalonde. You may be familiar with the ANDI score that Whole Foods uses. That index rightly gives colorful vegetables high marks but, because the inventor of it (Dr. Furhman) still thinks fat from animals is bad, he scored animal products very, very low. In his system, kale gets 1000 while beef gets 21! Beef is so much more nutrient dense than kale that it would be actually quite funny if people weren't depriving themselves of healthy foods because of it.

In general, nutrient density works like this:

Grains (very poor nutrient levels) --> vegetables --> animal protein --> animal organ meats

Each step up has 5x to 10x more nutrients than the previous step, depending on the nutrient. In this ranking, oysters and liver are two of the most nutrient dense foods we can eat. This accords entirely with the research done into what hunter-gatherers eat (and historically ate). If you look at the top ten foods on the ANDI score, you won't see any animal products, which is, well, slighly ludicrous since meat is so high in nutrients.

I had high hopes for Dr. Attia's video but was disappointed because we can't see his slides. I've corresponded with him on the topic and if I can get his slide deck I will post it in a future newsletter (there was a technical glitch with it). If you want the very quick overview of the mess we've created with cholesterol (and why you should most likely stop worrying about it), see Chris Kresser's excellent post on the topic. Here are all of his writings on the topic of heart disease; well worth the time!

• Nutrient Density: Sticking to the Essentials, Mathieu Lalonde, PhD.
• Reality of Ruminants & Liebeg's Barrel Examining New Conventional Wisdom, Peter Ballerstedt, PhD.
• The Straight Dope on Cholesterol, Peter Attia, MD
• Law and Behavioral Biology Research: Kinship Foster Care as a Case Study, David Herring, JD

Big Picture

Taking on the prison problem | Resilience, February 25, 2013

The Shale Phenomenon – Fabulous Miracle with a Fatal Flaw | ASPO-USA, February 25, 2013

Time To Stop Monsanto And The US Supreme Court | The Automatic Earth, February 26, 2013

Financial

9 Ways the Sequester Will Affect You | Daily Finance, February 26, 2013

What Could Go Wrong with the Housing Recovery in 2013? Plenty | Of Two Minds, February 27, 2013

Practical Preparation

Green Housing: In Buffalo, It's Not Just for Rich People Anymore | Yes, February 15, 2013

What goes around comes around or the importance of composting toilets | Transition Network, February 20, 2013

Make a human-powered, MacGyver-style emergency cell phone charger | Treehugger, February 26, 2013

Environmental News

Study: Climate Change May Dry Up Important U.S. Reservoirs Like Lake Powell And Lake Mead | Think Progress, February 25, 2013

Pesticides are killing off America’s birds | Grist, February 26, 2013

Rice paddies synergise with fish farming | SciDevNet, February 27, 2013

Health

Body Fatness and Cardiovascular Risk Factors | Whole Health Source, February 19, 2013

12 Healthy Ways to End the Day | Mark's Daily Apple, February 21, 2013

Organic tomatoes are healthier for you, researchers find | Grist, February 25, 2013

Paleo Craziness: What’s With This Carbofastcycliccoffeeloading Thing?? | Robb Wolf, February 27, 2013

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