I have been doing this for some time mainly because the pasty burger buns no longer appeal to me. Lately I have started politely asking for a price reduction based on the idea that it takes less preparation time and is less costly to serve the burger ingredients loose on a plate than to assemble them in a bun. I don’t push the issue. But some restaurants have actually agreed with me and reduced the price of the burger. I can’t see any downside in asking.

When asked questions like this, I always turn to the USDA database of foods, which is the database that virtually everyone writing nutritional programs or writing nutritional content books uses. It is the source. It is free.

The total carb content of an ounce of dry roasted, salted peanuts is 6.1 gm. The fiber content is 2.3 gm per ounce, leaving a net of 3.8 gm net carb per ounce. You could eat about 3 ounces of peanuts and stay within your 10 net carb range, but you would be throwing back just about 500 calories.

Sounds good, but I don’t know if I could take to eggnog (or avocado nog) in the summer.

MD makes hers (it seems) with a brandy and whiskey combination. I’m going to get her to use Jameson this year.

Dr Eades could you please comment on the above. This issue keeps coming up as does the claim that eating protein stimulates the secretion of insulin, therefor protein is essentially the same as carbohydrate implying there is no valid reason to reduce carbohydrate consumption.

I have come across research that found that protein is not converted to sugar. As for protein stimulating insulin secretion, this is true. But as you have pointed out protein also stimulates the secretion of glucagon (which carbohydrate does not) and it is the insulin:glucagon ratio that counts.

When I have taken blood glucose readings at half hour intervals after eating protein my BG actually decreases. I am not suggesting that consuming protein in excess of what s needed is a good thing. However, I am concerned that the claim that half of protein is converted to sugar is influencing diabetics on LC diets to eat far less protein than they require.

On a related vein is the statement I keep coming across the advice that diabetics should keep the consumption of fat, especially saturated fat, low because fat causes insulin resistance and even type II diabetes. With this advice guess what diabetics will increase.

Ranchers are apparently greatly amused that confused yuppies are willing to pay a huge premium for beef that skips the most expensive part of growing them!

I admit an ignorance to the actual raising of grass-fed vs grass-fed, grain-finished beef. I probably should look into it a little more closely.

I used a Mexican blend of cheese. I think it’s cheddar and colby with some Mexican spices.

Be sure to use a cooking spray on the pan or tin before filling with the egg mixture.

Vadim, you may have 1 sip of Jameson’s. If you don’t like it, leave the rest for Dr. Mike and me!

Any particular cheese to use?

Copied that recipe going to try it soon.

See here:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081205/ap_on_bi_ge/farm_scene_cow_tax_2

And here:

http://sparkasynapse.blogspot.com/2008/12/more-on-epa-tyranny.html

Watch the price of your food soar.

The price tag for the whole global warming fiasco will be incalculable.

I just have to comment on the diet for a healthy planet thing… I have a PhD in environmental biology and although I am not convinced global warming is bunk, I can tell you for absolute certain that a lot of the hysteria associated with global warming is PURE bunk. (And I believe the political solutions being touted to global warming are also pure bunk and decidely harmful.)

Most of the criticisms of eating meat are criticisms of the modern feedlot system, not meat eating as it could or should be. Even Michael Pollan (I am SO tired of hearing people wax on about how wonderful his ideas are) is disappointingly deluded on this point and somehow thinks meat would become more expensive if it were all grassfed. (I suspect his conclusion is not rationally but emotionally based, because he thinks it is a problem that some of us are eating so much as 8 oz. steak per day. Oh, the horror.)

Let’s look at the facts. The tiny country of New Zealand provides enough grass fed lamb to feed itself and much of the rest of the western world that eats lamb. 70% of its land is devoted to farming. Lamb from Australia and NZ runs around $5-6 per pound. By the way, New Zealand is FREE of farming subsidies and the farmers there are much better off for it. As far as the United States goes, you can get a whole side of grass fed beef for about $5.00 per pound in bulk with a range of everything from hamburger to prime steaks. That’s a very good price considering grocery store prices. I can get grass fed buffalo roasts in Costco for $5 per pound. Funny how this grassfed system is economically sustainable all on its own with no subsidies when massive amounts of subsidies are poured into the feedlot system (under the form of grain subsidies and pollution control money for feedlots).

Now consider, as Dr. Eades notes from another commenter above, that all kinds of marginal grassland could be used to feed livestock. Hell, every backyard in America could theoretically be used to grow a vegetable garden and feed the inhabitants for an entire year. Surely not everyone wants their lawn turned into a garden but the fact remains that it would actually be profitable to rent your yard to someone who wants to garden it and a good profit could be made off of such gardening. From my own personal experience i know that a 7500 sq. ft. garden can probably yield around $2000 in produce in one summer… if you don’t end up just giving the stuff away.

Anyway, it is a complete myth that we somehow don’t have enough land to grow food, or meat, for everyone. It’s absurd. If the commodity crop subsidies were eliminated, farming would eventually largely return to pastured livestock, cheap grains would not be dumped on the world market, and poorer foreign nations would also see a return to more natural systems of farming and they would be healthier for it, too, not to mention less reliant on the west.

I’m sure Eades will address this in greater detail, Caleb, but I just wanted to add my voice to the objections of these simplistic pseudoscientific arguments. It goes without saying, as said above, that asking people to subsist on a diet that promotes ill health, a grain-based agricultural system that poisons the entire Gulf of Mexico and makes shrimp fishing there impossible (not to mention our rivers), is UNsustainable.

Brilliant comment, Monica. Thanks for submitting.