Mark Your Calendar

I have lots of stuff going on in November, so get out your planner, phone calendar, iPad or whatever you use to track your schedule and pencil me in for one or many of the following events - starting next Monday on November 7th.

Paleo for Peformance


Monday November 7th, 8pm
Crossfit Delware Valley


Join me and Larry Palazzolo at Crossfit Del Val for a workshop on how eating Paleo benefits your health and your perforamance. If you can't make this session, look for one in December at Crossfit KoP - we'd love to see you there!


Cost: $15 for Crossfit King of Prussia or Crossfit Del Val members -- Free for Crossfit Del Val Elements participants


Cost: $25 for Guests








How to eat like our ancestors -- Learn about the Paleo diet and its benefits


Sunday November 13th 4:45pm

StillPoint Yoga Studio - King of Prussia, PA

Join me and Larry Palazzolo at StillPoint Yoga studio (inside of SWEAT Fitness) and Lululemon for a trunk show and learn about the Paleo diet and it's benefits.


Cost: FREE!

Eating for Performance


Tuesday November 15th 7:30pm
Lululemon Athletica in Wayne PA


Join me and Larry Palazzolo at Lululemon in Wayne for a workshop on how eating Paleo benefits your health and your perforamance. Bonus: you have a chance to win some cool lululemon grear or a health coaching session with Laura or Larry. Also enjoy some Paleo friendly refreshments and snacks. We hope to see you there.


Cost: FREE!







The Supplement Mystery

Monday November 14th, 7:30 - 8:30pm
Crossfit King of Prussia 


Learn what supplements you should consider taking a Crossfitter, What supplements are beneficial to everyone, How and why to use things like whey protein, and get some of your supplement Questions Answered. If you have something specific (especially if it's obscure) please submit questions to Laura in advance.



Cost: Crossfit Kop Members $10 / Non-Members $15


To sign up, email me, show up the night of, or purchase through Crossfit KoP Mind Body.

Interview with Philadelphia CowShare

I've had many great experiences with Philadelphia CowShare, in fact they have been providing me with my supply of grassfed meat for the past 6 months thanks to a 1/8th share and a 1/16th - I shared 1/8th with someone else!

Eating higher quality foods and especially ones that are local is high on my list of things to do to be healthier. I love the variety of what you get with the CowShare program and it's affordability. To learn more about this awesome company that connects people with locally raised grassfed beef, I reached out to Jessica Moore, owner of Philadelphia CowShare.

 What is Philly CowShare?
Jessica Moore (JM): Philadelphia CowShare is a business that specializes in locally, sustainably raised animal proteins. We support great farms by buying their meat and delivering it to the people who want the benefits of buying directly from farms and the convenience of home delivery.


What areas do you serve?
JM: We deliver to the larger Philadelphia Metro Area including roughly 25 miles from City Hall and 75 miles from Lancaster County. We can deliver to areas slightly outside this boundary for an extra charge.


Are you at farmer’s markets?
JM: Philadelphia CowShare isn’t currently operating at any farmer’s markets; most Philadelphia-area markets prefer to have farmers selling directly to consumers. Since we partner with farmers who would rather farm than market and sell, we don’t get the chance to sell at most markets. You can sample a selection of our cuts at some neighborhood markets including Milk and Honey, Fu-Wah, and Mariposa in West Philly and Green Aisle Market in South Philly.


Why should I use Philly CowShare?
JM: There are many reasons our customers buy our CowShares. It is a convenient way to get great tasting, healthy and lean, grassfed beef. The beef goes from the farm to the butcher and is then delivered directly to you. The bundle of beef, called a “CowShare”, is designed for seasonal cooking. Eaten 2 lbs per week, an Eighth CowShare will last roughly 6 months. Our method of packaging the beef also uses the entire animal, reduces waste, and promotes conscious eating. In addition, the money you pay for your beef stays in our region and supports the local economy.

How are your cows raised?
JM: All our cows are raised on pasture and do not receive growth hormones, steroids, or antibiotics. The farms use grazing techniques such as rotational or intensive grazing to promote healthy weight gain from the cow’s natural diet. In the winter months, cows eat hay that is often produced right on the farm. Just as we must manage our health, a beef cattle farmer must manage the health of the soil, promoting rich, nutritious grass growth and the health of the animals grazing the land. The location of the farm and the weather have a lot of influence on the techniques a farmer uses to raise cattle.

New Paleo Resource: Eat to Evolve

I'd like to introduce those of you that live in the Philly or Main Line Area to a new local Paleo resource, Eat to Evolve.  For those of you that are Paleo or thinking about going Paleo this could be a great resource for you.  Eat to Evolve focuses on delivering high quality Paleo meals to your door - so for those of you that want to try Paleo but can't cook or don't have the time...this could be the perfect solution for you.

Roger Dickerman is owner and trainer at the "anti-gym" Relentless Fitness Studio located in Center City Philadelphia on 10th Street between Locust and Spruce.  Roger is passionate about fitness and about the fuel that you put in your body to create optimal fitness.  His passion is contagious, and when you talk with him and work with him you'll feel the energy and passion that he has to help you reach optimal health.  He believes that you are in control of you, but realistically wants to help you reach that best version of you through training and diet. He had a vision to help make Paleo Foods more accessible and easier to find in the main stream.  He partnered with JPM Catering and Main Line Delivery to bring his vision of accessible Paleo food that can be conveniently delivered to your door! 

Check out my interview with Roger sharing more about what Eat to Evolve is, and be sure to check out their website.

What is Eat to Evolve in 25 words or less?

RD: Philadelphia-based healthy fresh food delivery service emphasizing freshness, quality, and taste. Customers place orders by Thursday to receive food for the entire week on Monday.

Take a look at some of our foods pictured here:

You've Got Questions....I've Got Answers

Thank you all for the questions that you submitted, here is the first round of answers - please feel free to continue to post more and I'll pull them through into a future post.

Laura - Hey, I've got a question for ya! I have been doing a 21 day challenge of strict paleo and while it's been going really well, I have found that I am craving gum. I can't seem to shake this and have been giving in to it. I am chewing like 6 to 8 pieces of gum a day. I am assuming it's because I am craving sugar? Thoughts?? -- Melinda

Healthy Living Principle #4 - Kick the Sugar

Sugar is everywhere in the Standard American Diet, pretty much anything that comes in a package has sugar added to it somewhere.  Do you check nutrition labels before you buy things, I advise you start doing it immediately if you don't.  You'd be surprised where sugar is hidden - in your favorite jar of tomato sauce, most salad dressings and marinades, that quick go-to meal from Trader Joe's that you just have to saute... the list goes on and on, and the sugar isn't only in things that you think of as sweet like cakes and cookies. 

What's so bad about sugar anyway? I've done a few in-depth posts on sugar which you can read here: Sugar, It's not that sweet and Fructose, the not so innocent sugar.  Here are some highlights from those posts, and some facts about sugar to help you understand how you process sugar when you eat it, in any form.

Healthy Living Principle #3 - Think Seasonally



Flickr: All rights reserved by fatboydon

To follow up Healthy Living Principles #1 and #2, #3 is Think Seasonally. What does "think seasonally" mean?  When you are choosing your fruits and vegetables, choose the majority of what you're eating based on those foods that are in season where you live.  Some foods are in season "year round" so feel free to enjoy them year round When you eat seasonal foods, they are more likely to be locally grown (since the food is in season where you are) and picked closer to their peak of ripeness verses picked early and ripened with gas or have color added so that the food looks more appetizing.  When you are eating foods that travel less distance, and that are picked closer to their peak you are getting a more nutritious product, and increasing the nutrients for your dollar.  Another great thing about eating seasonally is that it tends to be cheaper: blueberries are less expensive in July when they are in season and you can get them from New Jersey (for those of us on the East Coast) verses in January when you have to eat ones that are imported from a warmer climate where they can still be grown.  On that note, foods that are seasonal and local travel less, so in addition to generally being more nutritious and less expensive they are also better for the environment (less travel to get to you) and can help support your local farmers.



How do you know what foods are seasonal, the easiest way is to go to a farmer's market, find one local to you today here and see what they have.  Most farmer's markets source their products from LOCAL farmers, which means that you'll be getting seasonal produce.

Paleo in US News Report

Ok I'm a little late to the table on this, but I still wanted to share some of my thoughts.  US News released a report ranking the Best Overall Diets and the good news is that the Paleo diet is included on the list.  The bad news is that it's last...my blink reaction to the list is that I want to see the ranking criteria.  Any study or report that includes the Slim Fast Diet and Medi Fast Diet (which feature consuming fortified supplements instead of eating actual food) on the list of the best diets automatically raises a flag for me. 

The Top 20 Best Diets....according to US News:
1. DASH Diet
2. Mediterranean Diet
2. TLC Diet
2. Weight Watchers Diet
5. Mayo Clinic Diet
5. Volumetric Diet
7. Jenny Craig Diet
8. Ornish Diet
9. Vegetarian Diet
10. Slim Fast Diet
11. Nutrisystem Diet
12. Vegan Diet
13. South Beach Diet
14. Eco Atkins Diet
14. Zone Diet
16. Glycemic-Index Diet
16. Medifast Diet
18. Raw Foods Diet
19. Atkins Diet
20. Paleo Diet

What Does Healthy Mean?

One question I frequently get asked is "Is this healthy?" -- Which I actually find a difficult question to answer. I usually want to respond with, it depends... which is not what the person asking me the question is expecting to hear.  

For example, last week I was at a team event where we were traipsing around Philadelphia on an adventure scavenger hunt. One task on our quest for points was to find a healthy snack and take a picture of the team enjoying it. We ducked into a small convenience store in Old City, and some members on the team grabbed two granola bars listed "high in fiber" and we snapped a picture -- so that's a healthy snack, right? Back to my initial gut response to the question, it depends...


The definition of what is healthy depends, in some ways, on what you individually are doing with your food and lifestyle choices, what your current state of health is, and what your health goals are. However, there are some universal principles of healthy living that can apply to everyone - regardless of what type of food choices you follow - strict Paleo, Vegetarian, Macrobiotic, Raw foodie, Mediterranean, South Beach, or one of many other combinations and your current state of health (e.g., perfect health, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, an autoimmune disease, etc). I would like to share 10 Principles of Health with you as things that you can incorporate into your life to improve your overall health - no matter who you are.

Getting rid of sandwhiches...

Jennifer Fugo at Evolving Well wrote a great blog post called Death to the Sandwhich that I think is incredibly relevant to the readers of my blog as well.  Check out her post and let me know what you think, its funny that one of the first questions I get when I mention what I eat and don't eat is, what do you eat for lunch!  My husband took turkey roll-ups - turkey lunch meat wrapped around spinach and sliced peppers, to work for lunch and got some questions about what the heck he was eating and why didn't he have bread along with his turkey meat.  So as Jen asks at the end of her post - if you're eating Paleo or Primal, do you miss eating sandwhiches?  What are you eating instead?

Food as Medicine

"Let food be thy medicine and let thy medicine be thy food" Hippocrates

The idea of food as medicine has been around since ancient times, its funny how today we've completely disassociated the idea that food makes you feel good or bad, and that food has a direct impact on our health and how we feel everyday. 

Have you considered how foods make you feel - does caffeine perk you up but then make you jittery?  When you eat a donut or a big bowl of pasta do you feel good afterwards? How about more subtle things, like when you eat dairy do you experience that your skin breaks out a few days later, or that you wake up the next morning and are more congested than usual?  Food directly impacts how we feel and directly impacts our health.  Experimenting with how foods impact your body is a great way to determine what you want to eat for your optimal health.  Personally I think that whole foods make me feel best, and I've found that I operate and feel much better when I eat clean.

Check out this article, Spices and herbs that promote longevity on how spices and herbs can help improve your health.  One of my goals is health and longevity - e.g. to live a long time and be healthy for that time.  I'm always looking for ways to increase my longevity, like reducing stress and inflammation and varying my workouts.  I know that food directing impacts how you feel, but hadn't thought about things like spices and how they can help.  A few I found interesting in the article are that cinnamon can help lower blood sugar and that in addition to anti-nausea properties, "ginger is also thought to relieve the aches and pains of arthritis, headaches, sore muscles, and menstrual cramps." 

What new spice or spices are you going to add to your food? 

The Buzz Around Resistant Starch

Over the past few weeks I've seen this idea of "Resistant Starch, RS" in a variety of places - a friend at the gym told me that they saw it on TV and Rachel Ray was talking about how amazing Resistant Starch is, Health Magazine's Carb Lover's diet is based on the concept of RS, and then another friend sent me this Yahoo article, 8 reasons carbs can help you lose weight. I read through it and was appalled, here are the 8 reasons and my take on them.

1. Eating carbs makes you thin for life - they cite research that "the slimmest people also ate the most carbs, and the chubbiest ate the least"  There are no facts at all on how this study was set up, I don't trust it.

2. Carbs fill you up - they claim carbs are an appetite supressant, I don't agree.  Fat and Protein have much higher saitey and trigger leptin, the hormone that tells your brain that you're full.

3. Carbs curb your hunger - "According to researchers, when dieters are taken off a low-carb diet and shifted them to an approach that includes generous amounts of fiber and Resistant Starch foods, something wonderful happens: Within two days, the dieters' cravings go away" -- I don't even know where to start with this, what cravings, how low carb are the dieters, really 2 days and cravings go away - no credibility here.

4. Carbs control blood sugar and diabetes - Um no, controlling your blood sugar controls insulin which relates to decreased insulin sensitivty (this is bad).  The less insulin sensitive you are, the higher your risk of type 2 diabetes.  Fat and Protein have a much lower impact on blood sugar than carbs do and do not contribute to blood sugar spikes -- therefore not negatively impacting insulin sensitivity. So I don't agree that carbs can control your blood sugar or diabetes - since they cause decreased insulin sensitivity and blood sugar spikes.

5. Carbs speed up metabolism - article claims that RS speeds metabolism by not depleting muscle mass, but protein is the real muscle builder in your body so not sure about this claim, I don't think they have much to base this statement on.





6. Carbs blast belly fat - carbs are stored as fat when eaten in excess of immediate energy needs (hint this is easy to do when eating large amounts of carbs).  Belly or Abdominal fat specifically is also sepcifically a stress/cortisol issue which doesn't really tie back to carbs at all, I don't agree with this one either.

Fructose, the not so innocent sugar

I've talked previously on the blog about sugar and how your body processes it.  Now I want to cover why Fructose, a specific type of sugar is particularly bad for you.  This all stems from the principal that all calories are not created equal when we are trying to fuel our body.  If you already subscribe to a Paleo/Primal lifesyle this concept probably makes sense to you.  If not you may assume that the key to weight loss and overall health related to Calories In - Calories Out , if you take in more calories than you burn you get fat, if you take in less calories or burn more calories than you take in, you lose fat.  A few "experts" on the all calories are not created equal subject are Gary Taubes who wrote "Good Calories, Bad Calories" and just released a new book which is a sequel to Good Calories, Bad Calories that is more digestible "Why we get Fat, and what to do about it" along with Dr. Robert Lustig whose lecture, Sugar: The Bitter Truth which was published on YouTube made a huge splash.

So losing fat isn't as easy as calories in being lower than calories out.  You need to take a look at what you're eating as well as how much.  As a nation Americans are getting fatter - on average we Americans weigh 25 more pounds than we did 25 years ago (~1985).  How are we gaining all this extra weight, beacause we're eating more and too much of the wrong stuff.  And the reason why we are eating more than we need, its because we are increastingly Leptin resistant. Leptin is the hormone that tells your brain that you are full and you don't need anymore food to fuel your body. When you are Leptin resistant, that means that your brain doesn't respond as well to the leptin signals, meaning that even though you have enough food for fuel your brain doesn't register that I'm full signal and you still feel hungry, so you eat more than you need. What causes the letpin resistance in your body - one thing is the processing of fructose in the liver. If you look at what the extra calories are in today's diet, it is generally in the form of added carbohydrates.  In the 1990s when the nation started following the high carbohydrate and low fat diet have essentially doomed ourselves to a diet that will make us fat through the increase in carbohydrates in our diets.

   Did you know that 1 soda a day (additional 150 calories) is an additoinal 15 pounds of fat per year that is added to your body.

Americans today eat/consume a whopping 141 pounds of sugar per year!

Pre and Post Workout Foods

What am I supposed to eat after I work out, what about before I work out? I've gotten a few questions about recommendations on what to eat after you work out.  Figuring out what to eat after a workout is not as easy as "have a protein shake." It's actually a bit of a tricky question to answer, but inevitably it boils down to the "It depends on who you are, what your goals are, and what kind of workout you just did."  Frustrating I know.  The who you are part plays into what you're currently doing with your food. If you are a Paleo follower or eat a Standard American Diet (SAD), what you look to eat after working out may be a little different because you have a different selection of foods to choose from. You also need to work with something that you like and will actually consume after working out.  The recommendations that I have below are primarily Paleo, because I think that you should focus on eating real food as much as you can.  Feel free to read within the guidelines and make substitutes based on what you currently eat within your diet.

So before you can figure out what you eat before or after working out, you first need to figure out what your goals are, for this  post I'm going to cover the following 3 goals:

Goals

1. "Lean out" - Primary Goal is fat loss

2. "Get 70s Big" - Primary Goal is to gain a lot of muscle quickly

3. "Just to Recover" - Primary Goal is to heal your body you can workout again tomorrow

In addition to identifying what your goal is, you also need to consider what your workout will be.  How long is the workout?  Are you doing a Brick training session of bike and run for +2 hour as part of your triathlon training program? Completing a 2m leisurely jog?  6 sets of 400mrepeats with 3mins rest in between?  A relaxing yoga class? The type of workout you do also plays into what and how much pre and post workout food you need in order to fuel your body throughout that workout and then what you need to eat after you're finished.  Another factor to consider during longer workouts is if are planning to consume any fuel - dried fruit, salt, gu, etc. while completing the workout - you want to account for that in your fueling and refueling plan. 

To Grill or Not To Grill?

One of our favorite ways to cook is on the grill, so when I read Lights Out: Sleep, Sugar, and Survival by T.S.Wiley and Bent Formby found a statement about carcinogens in barbecued meats I was pretty sad.  I gather a lot of my Paleo nutrition information from a combination of Internet and printed sources, and decided to try my luck at submitting a question to Robb Wolf's weekly podcast.  This podcast is a little geeky, but I find it fascinating (which probably makes me a little geeky too) and it has really helped increase my knowledge quickly since the podcast covers such a wide variety of questions.  If you're looking for an easy way to learn more about the pseudo-nutrition science of Paleo foods download some of Robb Wolf's podcasts and start listening to them when you're commuting, doing something mundane like checking all of your friends facebook statuses, or running 12 miles - whatever fits best into your schedule.

Here was my question to Robb and Andy, it was asked as #9 Grilling Meats in Episode 51:

I just finished reading Lights Out: Sleep, Sugar, and Survival by T.S.Wiley and Bent Formby and have a question about a statement they made related to barbecued meats:

On Page 176 it says "The average serving of barbecued or burned meat imparts to you an amount of cancer causing particles equivalent to what you would get from smoking 250 cigarettes"

I understand the burned meat part, but what do they mean by barbecued?  I'm asking because I grill most of my meats/seafood for dinner - fish, steak, chicken, pork, turkey - it all tastes better on the grill.  Does grilling your meats- as long as you don't burn them or cook them to death - create the same carcinogenic compounds that they state in the book?  Since reading this I've been more cognizant of not eating any part that's burned but do I need to stop grilling too?

To hear Robb's response to my question, click here and fast forward to about 34:30.  I'm pretty proud that I asked a question that Robb has been dreading for years, the guy is a smart guy and gets TONS of questions! 

And the million dollar question, after hearing Robb break down the science of carcinogens and grilling meats what will I do, will I stop grilling?  In short no, I will make sure that I don't eat burned meat or burned anything for that matter and am going to grill less often - instead of grilling everything I'll mix in baking things in the oven and I'm even thinking about getting a pressure cooker and maybe a bamboo steaming basket for meats.  This is an instance where you can drive yourself crazy, but like Robb said, eating grilled burned meats even if they have some carcinogenic properties is still better than eating a bagel!

Another Option for a 30 Day Contest

Looking for a different twist on a clean food challenge? Mark Sission (from Mark's Daily Apple) announced today the start of his 30 day Primal Challenge - this is similar to the Whole 9's Whole 30 program but may be something that is a little appealing to you. Check out his blog post that he released today for the details - oh and he's giving away prizes!

Mark's Daily Apple 30 Day Challenge

A few additional things I'm incorporating into my 30 day per Mark's recommendations:
1. Eating Clean and Organic as much as possible
2. Getting adequate sleep - going to bed earlier
3. Intellectually challenge myself - through getting more blog posts research and posted in September

Eating fat doesn't make you FAT

Contrary to popular belief, eating fat doesn't make you fat.  The current nutritional buzz is focused on eating low fat foods, for every full fat food there seems to be a reduced fat, low fat, or fat free version of the same thing.  As a nation we are afraid of fat, yet still have sky high obesity and diabetes levels.  What if eating fat doesn't actually make you fat...

Now for a little science - you need a little science to back things like this up! Many clinical studies have been run trying to prove the fat-lipid hypothesis, which basically states that eating fat (particularly saturated fat) makes you fat, and eating cholesterol raises your cholesterol and both lead to heart disease and obesity.  Nutritional studies are difficult to implement because there are so many variables; however, time after time the fat-lipid hypothesis has been tested and has failed to show a correlation between eating fat and blood serum cholesterol levels and obesity rates.  The notion that eating fat makes you fat and eating foods that contain high cholesterol make your cholesterol rise seems to make sense, so when Americans were contracting heart disease at alarming rates in the 1940s and 1950s the Federal Government decided that they needed to do something for the greater good of the American population.  This resulted in the birth of the USDA Food Pyramid and nutrition guidelines.  The trouble is that through conjecture, they defined the rules of the USDA Food Pyramid and began to stress a low fat diet without determining that a low fat diet could actually solve the heart disease issues. 

It's all in the hormones...

What's on your summer reading list?

In need of a good book that could actually make you healthier?  Here is a list of recommendations and books that I've read that have contributed to my nutrition knowledge base.  If you want to learn more try out some of these books.

What to start with (not as science-y, e.g. you don't have to be geeked out on this stuff to find these books interesting and useful):

• The Primal Blueprint: Reprogram your genes for effortless weight loss, vibrant health, and boundless energy - Mark Sisson
• Real Food: What to Eat and Why - Nina Planck
• The Paleo Diet: Lose Weight and Get Healthy by Eating the Food You Were Designed to Eat - Loren Cordain

Want to learn more about where your food comes from, why food quality matters, and the state of food in America today:

• Food Inc.: A Participant Guide: How Industrial Food is Making Us Sicker, Fatter, and Poorer-And What You Can Do About It - Participant Media **Note this is also on DVD
• In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto - Michael Pollan
• Food Rules: An Eater's Manual - Michael Pollan (a supplement to In Defense of Food)
• The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals - Michael Pollan

 Want to learn more (you're getting geeked out on nutrition):

• Lights Out: Sleep, Sugar, and Survival - T. S. Wiley
• Good Calories, Bad Calories: Fats, Carbs, and the Controversial Science of Diet and Health - Gary Taubes
• The Paleo Solution: The Original Human Diet - Robb Wolf (currently pre-order only)

I've read all of the books listed here, and am currently about halfway through Lights Out and a third of the way through Good Calories, Bad Calories.  I have Robb Wolf's book on pre-order and am excited to get it soon!

Going Against the Grain

Over the past year I have discovered that "common knowledge" and "conventional wisdom" on food, nutrition, and fitness often steers us in the wrong direction and the things engraved into our brains about what we think is healthy is most often based on myth. Through my research into food and fitness I have developed a new perspective and outlook on life - one that I've found tends to be a bit controversial and different from others at times. . . or in this case Against the Grain.

My involvement in Crossfit lead to me learning about how to eat for performance, which soon developed into a new nutrition hobby. I've become really involved and dedicated to doing Crossfit - a type of workout focusing on constantly varied functional movements: lifting, gymnastics, running, rowing, and body weight exercises. I have been learning about how what I thought was healthy - running long distances, eating low fat foods, not eating red meat and butter - actually isn't and why. It’s been an eye opening experience to learn the science behind exercise and nutrition: learning how and why you should get stronger, how your body actually processes food at a macro nutrient level (fat, protein, carb), and how foods that I had traditionally avoided actually positively impact your overall health and well being.

Every chance I get, I have been trying to share my perspective and learning about food and fitness with my friends, family, and co-workers hoping they wouldn't tag me as being too crazy. I wanted to start this blog to share what I've been learning, why I do the things I do, and to help guide other people as they are trying to navigate through all of the information that they think is fact and why you shouldn't blindly follow what THEY say:the food pyramid, what you learned in high school health class, paid health claims on packaged foods, things you read in magazines...

I hope you find my blog interesting and helpful, and that it sparks your curiosity and has you considering why you should consider going 'Against the Grain' too.