Another useless study

This time it's about reducing hypertension.
    Steven Chen from John Hopkins and a bunch of others put together a study not to figure out what kind of diet reduces hypertension, but looking for evidence to support the American Heart Association's sweetheart DASH diet.
    They had 459 subjects try one of three high-carb diets for 8 weeks (those numbers guarantee that chance has a big influence on the results). To no one's surprise, the DASH diet came in slightly ahead of the others. No one said anything about it being the best of a bad lot.
    Now the AHA can add another notch to DASH's headboard and heave a sigh of relief that the low-carb camel's nose remains outside the tent.
    Ref: Circulation online 31 August 2010

Eating Animals is Cheap

For the last two years I've been slowly cutting out everything but animal products. I'd been on a 25 gm or less track for ten years; then one thing at a time, the rest came off. Now it's meat, fish, eggs, cheese, period. Cream in my coffee, the odd garnish, but that's it.

    I'm in better shape than I've been since I was a lot younger. I'm wearing clothes I haven't been able to get into for over twenty years. 

    But the real bonus: a radically shrunken grocery bill. Part of it is reduced volume and no packaged goods. The rest is the "lean" craze that results in "not lean" being really cheap. A well-marbled steak that makes a big meal is only about $6 at the local grocer. I get lots of real butter (a third of a stick is fundamental to a lot of recipes), eggs to gently cook in it, cheeses of all kinds (the only expensive part of the diet),  a variety of fish fillets, and meat of every description. I eat chewy, greasy, buttery, delicious, for about $10 a day.

    And my blood glucose is so low that my doctor can't figure out why I'm not dead. Icing on the cake!