The end of an era and the start of a new chapter

Well, there had to come a point when I pulled my finger out, pulled up my socks and opened my laptop to finally write a blogpost.I know I've been utter pants over the last few months.It's not as though I've had no news to share. I've probably had too much and I never even blogged about the impromptu moment I asked the legendary Michael Parkinson about his rubbish.But now that the school holidays are upon us, this is the first occasion I've had to properly slow down since September last year and stay at home instead of gallivanting around the country.And this holiday feels like a period of transition in more ways than one.On a personal level, our youngest has just left primary school and is getting ready to start middle school in September.  Yes, that little man who was only 3 when I started...

Read more »

Could grain-fed beef liver be particularly nutritious?

var citeN=0; There is a pervasive belief today that grain-fed beef is unhealthy, a belief that I addressed before in this blog (citeN=citeN+1;document.write(Number(citeN))1) and that I think is exaggerated. This general belief seems to also apply to a related meat, one that is widely acknowledged as a major micronutrient “powerhouse”, namely grain-fed beef liver. Regarding grain-fed beef liver, the idea is that cattle that are grain-fed tend to develop a mild form of fatty liver disease. This I am inclined to agree with. However, I am not convinced that this is such a bad thing for those who eat grain-fed beef liver. In most animals, including...

Read more »

How can carrying some extra body fat be healthy?

var citeN=0; Most of the empirical investigations into the association between body mass index (BMI) and mortality suggest that the lowest-mortality BMI is approximately on the border between the normal and overweight ranges. Or, as Peter put it (citeN=citeN+1;document.write(Number(citeN))1): "Getting fat is good." As much as one may be tempted to explain this based only on the relative contribution of lean body mass to total weight, the evidence suggests that both body fat and lean body mass contribute to this phenomenon. In fact, the evidence suggests that carrying some extra body fat may be healthy for many. Yet, the scientific evidence...

Read more »

An illustration of the waist-to-weight ratio theory: The fit2fat2fit experiment

var citeN=0; In my previous blog post, I argued that one’s optimal weight may be the one that minimizes one’s waist-to-weight ratio. I built this argument based on the fact that body fat percentage is associated with lean body mass (and also weight) in a nonlinear way. The fit2fat2fit experiment (citeN=citeN+1;document.write(Number(citeN))1), provides what seems to be an interestingly way to put this optimal waist-to-weight ratio theory to test. This is due to a fortuitous event, as I explain in this post. In this experiment, Drew Manning, a personal trainer, decided to undergo a transformation where he went from what he argued was his fittest...

Read more »