PaNu - The paleolithic nutrition argument clinic

[cjppjc]

Re: PaNu - The paleolithic nutrition argument clinic

I wouldn't want to cross one of those cows. Even the cows on my dad's farm, a half century ago, didn't look like those of today. The udders are bigger today.



By the way -- that "cow" in your post above is a "bull" ;). Even these days, bulls can be mean. Never turn your back on one, even if it has acted like a docile cow for many years. Bulls flip things (like 200 pound humans) into the air with their horns just for the fun of it.

Your post reminded me of a time about 10 years ago. I had to cross a farm on foot. An average sized bull was there. The farmer kept saying don't let him know your afraid. Yea ok. Anyway, every 20 or so paces the bull would look at me and drop its head a little. The farmer had a small thin stick with him, and would swat the bull on the head every time. I kept wondering why the bull didn't just end the charade.

[raja]

Re: PaNu - The paleolithic nutrition argument clinic

Well let's see:

Ancestral corn vs. modern corn



Looks a bit different to me.

How about wheat?



Again, not so similar.

Oh, but your cows are the same?

Do they look like this?



Not too meaty. And pretty mean.

Do they look as different as this?





And, as far as the bull, take away the hump and the extra neck flesh, which is a question of breed differentiation . . . and, yes, it looks similar to mine.

[rogermexico]

Re: PaNu - The paleolithic nutrition argument clinic

I'm interested in optimizing health and weight loss, rather than things like body building, which I'm sure adds a completely different perspective. I'm targeting lower levels of insulin, glucose, triglycerides and LDL, and higher levels of HDL (basically, reversing/preventing metabolic syndrome, aka Syndrome X).

I'm simplifying, but it seems like the main health benefits of exercise are increasing insulin sensitivity and decreasing stress hormones. And since ketones are the body's preferred fuel, you want to end up with a metabolism that readily releases and burns fat, rather than stores it.

From that perspective, if you exercise after eating, when the body has been flooded with insulin, which is metabolizing carbs into fat which gets stored in adipocytes, wouldn't it make it more difficult to simultaneously release the required fatty acids that you really want the body to use as fuel?

If anything, wouldn't it be better to eat after you've started to exercise, when muscles are more receptive to using glucose directly, without insulin?

Also, isn't there some trick with caffeine that you can use to clear triglycerides from the blood? I've heard some runners do that before a race, but I don't know the details.

I am not ignoring your question about fasting exercise - I want to give a more measured response later.

You are on the right track for sure - exercise with low insulin levels and more of the hormones antagonistic to insulin and you will improve the efficiency of fatty acid metabolism, burn more fat in preference to glycogen and promote anabolic effects (muscle building and strength)

As a practical matter, your ability to tolerate hard physical work (farming in new zealand?) and being food deprived or tired generally will improve.

My Navy Seal collaborators are currently documenting significant improvements in a variety of performance parameters using fasting workouts.

[rogermexico]

Re: PaNu - The paleolithic nutrition argument clinic

The juice that I get from running organic veggies through my fancy Green Star twin gear juicer probably did not exist in that particular form in paleolithic times either. But I am confident that juice is healthy stuff.

Hello Bovine cow

The health effects of juicing depend on what you put in the juicer, but in general you will be increasing the glycemic index* and perhaps the total bioavailable carbohydrate load by juicing. Therefore, almost anything you put in the juicer will raise your insulin levels more than the same food eaten solid.

Orange juice is about as healthy as coca-cola. Carrot juice would be much better than orange, but not as easy on your pancreas as eating solid carrots.

* I am not a believer in using glycemic index for weight control generally. Glycemic load is more useful, but both of these imprecise measurements are completley obviated by simply limiting carbohydrates. If you are consuming less than 100 g /day of carbohydrates, whether you juice it or not is not that important.

[ThePythonicCow]

Re: PaNu - The paleolithic nutrition argument clinic

Hello Bovine cow

The health effects of juicing depend on what you put in the juicer, but in general you will be increasing the glycemic index* and perhaps the total bioavailable carbohydrate load by juicing. Therefore, almost anything you put in the juicer will raise your insulin levels more than the same food eaten solid.

That makes sense. Thanks for the comment.

Most of what I put in the juicer is veggies. Basically, I go to the organic veggie section of the grocery story and get one of everything that looks good, such as spinach, cilantro, parsley, a carrot, onions, garlic, tomatoes, broccoli, ..., and blend them altogether, as part of a larger smoothie concoction that also has fruits, oils (coconut, cod liver, flax, ...), an egg, and some spices. I have always hated veggies, and this is the first way I've found that ends up with my eating them daily. Any self respecting cook from the old school would run in horror from my kitchen ;).

I presume that juicing veggies not only makes the carbs more available, but also makes other nutrients in them more available. Like cooking, juicing makes the veggies more easily digested. However juicing sharply increases the ratio of nutrients consumed to bulk consumed, whereas cooking loses some nutrients.

Or at least that's the theory.

[Sharky]

Re: PaNu - The paleolithic nutrition argument clinic

The best proxy for low blood glucose levels we have is Hemoglobin A1c and this is strongly predictive of future mortality.

Can you say anything more about this? Is it also true for non-diabetics? Is there a threshold effect, or does the correlation hold throughout the range? If you know of any links to supporting research, I would be interested in reading more about the details.

I am not ignoring your question about fasting exercise - I want to give a more measured response later.

No problem. Thanks for the wonderful info you've already provided; it is very much appreciated!


In the first post in this thread, you mentioned using a better form of oil. I agree that's important, but the reason why is also interesting. As you've pointed out, it's not the issue of saturated fats that's the problem. Trans fats can interfere with the body's ability to burn fats as fuel, so that's one issue (margarine, etc). Equally important, though, is the presence of medium chain triglycerides (MCTs), which can directly flow into cells and be used as fuel, without the requirement for carnitine. MCTs also don't get stored as body fat. If you consume more than your body needs, they are just excreted. Coconut oil, for example, is 50% MCTs. Butter has about 5%.

BTW, are you aware of the research that supports being in ketosis as a part of cancer treatment? The working theory is that flooding cells with glucose (the fuel they used in a fetal state) eventually forces them to un-differentiate, which is when they turn cancerous. Removing or severely restricting glucose can then allow them to re-differentiate. Alkaline cancers live on glucose, so at a minimum, lower levels can help limit their growth rate.

Ketosis is also useful in treating congestive heart failure. Since ketones are the heart's prefered fuel, it's possible to improve heart ejection fraction by 30% (!) within a few hours of ketone injections.

There can be other benefits as well: lower pain levels, improved cognitive function, and of course lower triglyceride levels.

[Guest]

Re: PaNu - The paleolithic nutrition argument clinic

I have always hated veggies, and this is the first way I've found that ends up with my eating them daily.

PythonicCow - crack open a Tuscan cookbook, or regional cookbooks from all over Italy (ditto France!) and there are recipes for all vegetable dishes that would make any meat eater think they died and went to heaven. I'm talking about a serious cookbook, that assimilates all the recipes handed down in 300 years.

Hundreds of heavenly full fledged meals in their own right, with all the vegetable fat you can stomach. Anyone raised in the US, with a "natural taste bud" attuned primarily to American cuisine, more often than not will automatically relegate the great wealth of vegetable dishes in the world to a "necessary corollary of meat".

The vegetable based culinary culture of half the world is littered with collections of recipes that can nurse a sickly person back to health. They are that nutritious. World is littered with them. A diet of those vegetable dishes alone can support humans in great style for a decade, while someone eating solely meat or solely grains would quickly sicken.

Not exactly hardship duty either. To give a sense of the pedigree of this option, some of the old Italian and French traditional vegetable recipes find their way routinely onto the menus of five star restaurants around the world. The chore of eating vegetables for health is transformed into a tantalising of your tastebuds such that you might conclude you had gone to the most sybaritic upper gallery of heaven.

In contrast, Paleo Nutrition concludes that we must reconstruct the basic theory about what constitutes the core of nutrition.

I enjoy eating meat. I am not a vegetarian. But it's possible the range of nutritionally derived endemic illnesses which so preoccupy American doctors are very well addressed already, and with a surprising bit of sophistication as a bonus, by the sensible vegetable based cuisine that is extant in many parts of the world. It begins with culture, and old civilisations. Superbly healthy diets are already fully elaborated in many world cuisines. It only finds it's "bookend" so to speak, in modern medicine.

[rogermexico]

Re: PaNu - The paleolithic nutrition argument clinic

BRIEF NOTES ON HBA1c, BLOOD GLUCOSE AND HEALTHY FATS

Can you say anything more about this? Is it also true for non-diabetics? Is there a threshold effect, or does the correlation hold throughout the range? If you know of any links to supporting research, I would be interested in reading more about the details.

I need to give credit where it's due, so please credit Peter's blog to alerting me to some of these studies and the two graphs that followed were made by him. No affiliation, he's just another low-carb blogger who is an expert on biochemistry : http://high-fat-nutrition.blogspot.com/

First Graph: Shows a steep linear increase in coronary heart disease events with increasing HBa1c levels. (All cause mortality also showed a linear increase, but as you might expect, not quite as steep -for mortality the RR was 1.24 per unit of 1.0 HBA1c increase in men and 1.28 in women.)

Lesson: Limit your carbohydrate consumption



Second Graph: The same graph with total cholesterol and LDL levels added.

Lesson: Eat plenty of healthy fats and forget about these measures of cholesterol




Here is the abstract:

Ann Intern Med. 2004 Sep 21;141(6):413-20.
Association of hemoglobin A1c with cardiovascular disease and mortality in adults: the European prospective investigation into cancer in Norfolk.

Khaw KT, Wareham N, Bingham S, Luben R, Welch A, Day N.
University of Cambridge, School of Clinical Medicine, Medical Research Council Epidemiology Unit, Addenbrooke's Hospital, Cambridge, United Kingdom. kk101@medschl.cam.ac.uk.
BACKGROUND: Increasing evidence suggests a continuous relationship between blood glucose concentrations and cardiovascular risk, even below diagnostic threshold levels for diabetes. OBJECTIVE: To examine the relationship between hemoglobin A1c, cardiovascular disease, and total mortality. DESIGN: Prospective population study. SETTING: Norfolk, United Kingdom. PARTICIPANTS: 4662 men and 5570 women who were 45 to 79 years of age and were residents of Norfolk. MEASUREMENTS: Hemoglobin A1c and cardiovascular disease risk factors were assessed from 1995 to 1997, and cardiovascular disease events and mortality were assessed during the follow-up period to 2003. RESULTS: In men and women, the relationship between hemoglobin A1c and cardiovascular disease (806 events) and between hemoglobin A1c and all-cause mortality (521 deaths) was continuous and significant throughout the whole distribution. The relationship was apparent in persons without known diabetes. Persons with hemoglobin A1c concentrations less than 5% had the lowest rates of cardiovascular disease and mortality. An increase in hemoglobin A1c of 1 percentage point was associated with a relative risk for death from any cause of 1.24 (95% CI, 1.14 to 1.34; P < 0.001) in men and with a relative risk of 1.28 (CI, 1.06 to 1.32; P < 0.001) in women. These relative risks were independent of age, body mass index, waist-to-hip ratio, systolic blood pressure, serum cholesterol concentration, cigarette smoking, and history of cardiovascular disease. When persons with known diabetes, hemoglobin A(1c) concentrations of 7% or greater, or a history of cardiovascular disease were excluded, the result was similar (adjusted relative risk, 1.26 [CI, 1.04 to 1.52]; P = 0.02). Fifteen percent (68 of 521) of the deaths in the sample occurred in persons with diabetes (4% of the sample), but 72% (375 of 521) occurred in persons with HbA1c concentrations between 5% and 6.9%. LIMITATIONS: Whether HbA1c concentrations and cardiovascular disease are causally related cannot be concluded from an observational study; intervention studies are needed to determine whether decreasing HbA1c concentrations would reduce cardiovascular disease. CONCLUSIONS: The risk for cardiovascular disease and total mortality associated with hemoglobin A1c concentrations increased continuously through the sample distribution. Most of the events in the sample occurred in persons with moderately elevated HbA1c concentrations. These findings support the need for randomized trials of interventions to reduce hemoglobin A1c concentrations in persons without diabetes.

The correlation holds for nondiabetics and is independent of smoking.
The second chart shows how total cholesterol and LDL are unrelated to mortality, while HBA1c is strongly predictive. This is an observational study, but is well done and powerfully suggestive, as well as being 100% compatible with the carbohydrate hypothesis as elaborated by Taubes (and promoted by me and others as well)

Low HBA1c is an indicator of low much glycosylation is happening in your body. Glycosylation is the attachment of glucose molecules to proteins. It is one of two general pathologic mechanisms behind the carbohydrate hypothesis and how it causes disease - it is an overt cause of pahology in Type II diabetes - related to microvascular angiopathy, diabetic retinopathy causing blindness, neuropathy, autonomic instability, etc. Glycosylation of unsaturated fatty acids (think excess 0-6 acids in grains and corn fed beef) probably contributes to atherosclerosis and a variety of degenerative diseases. Fructose is a monsoaccharide sugar (in fruit, sucrose and HFCS) that seems particularly to promote glycosylation, and perhaps atherosclerosis in addition to having other nasty metabolic effects on triglyceride levels, etc.

The second general class of mechanisms is the results of high insulin levels.

High carbohydrate intake > high blood glucose levels > high insulin levels

Both glucose and insulin effects relate to carbohydrate consumption, subject to mitigating factors I have mentioned before. Ceteris paribus, the more carbohydrates consumed, the higher the glucose levels, the higher the potential for glycosylation.

In turn, the body's attempt to maintain glucose homeostasis requires higher insulin secretion. Insulin secretion is a signal to store fat, and slow the metabolism and is likely related to development of the high profile diseases of civilization including metabolic syndrome, atherosclerosis, alzheimer dementia, and cancer (including especially adenocarcinomas that arise from glandular tissue in organs like colon, breast, prostate and lung -the most common cancers).

There is probably a synergistic effect involving both glycosylation and insulin effects in many of the diseases of civilization I have mentioned, and I am coming to believe that gluten grain consumption has factors that potentiate these insulin and glycosylation effects, in addition to accounting for the huge variety of autoimmune disorders I have hinted at, and probably adding some immune system related cancers as well.

In the first post in this thread, you mentioned using a better form of oil. I agree that's important, but the reason why is also interesting. As you've pointed out, it's not the issue of saturated fats that's the problem.

Saturated fats are good - they are less susceptible to oxidation as they are saturated with protons - they lack the oxidizable double bonds that polyunsaturated fats have. They are also good to the degree they substitute for polyunsaturated fats and, especially, carbohydrates in the diet. They are emphasized in step 2 because increasing saturated fat consumption is the best way to reverse the USDA food pyramid advice - substituting saturated fat calories for carbohydrates is the most effective step you can take after you stop drinking sugar pop.

The other part of "better oil" is later on where you start adjusting your 6s and 3s by eliminating seed oils. Seed oils are an industrial product that exaggerate the already non-evolutionary amounts of 0-6 PUFA fatty acids we get from eating grains. When you use a press and chemical processes to efficiently extract large quantities of oils from seeds like corn, rape, safflower, cotton, etc. you are adding high quantities of oils that have the same unfavorable ratios found in seeds. (See 6s and 3s and the logic of grain avoidance) Instead of the desirable 2:1 ratio, your diet becomes 15:1 or higher. The 0-6 fats compete with 0-3 fats at enzyme sites, making you effectively 0-3 deficient, with consequent immune system effects and the 0-6 fatty acid themselves, as they are polyunsaturated, are more susceptible to oxidation which encourages ahterosclerosis.

Monounsatured fats are good. Incidentally, the evolutionary source for monounsaturates was found in the fatty bone marrow of mammals. They did not extract it from olive oil.

Trans fats can interfere with the body's ability to burn fats as fuel, so that's one issue (margarine, etc). Equally important, though, is the presence of medium chain triglycerides (MCTs), which can directly flow into cells and used as fuel, without the requirement for carnitine. MCTs also don't get stored as body fat. If you consume more than your body needs, they are just excreted. Coconut oil, for example, is 50% MCTs. Butter has about 5%.

Contrary to popular impression, trans fats are indeed found in nature. If you eat ungulates like cows, you get about 1-1.5% of the fats as trans fats. Remember, the O-6 polyunsaturated fatty acid I worry so much about in excess is Linoleic acid, which is still an essential fatty acid -you will die if you don't get it in your diet. So it's not hard to imagine that although trans fats are found in food, eating hydrogenated vegetable oil like crisco, (which used to contain quite a bit of trans fat because it is made via artificial esterification of vegetable oils) can screw up your metabolism as well.

It is amusing that in new york city a porterhouse steak now has banned chemicals in it.

Regarding MCTs, these are all saturated fatty acids that are found in coconuts, human, cow and goats milk in varying degrees, very high in coconuts as you point out.

They differ in their metabolism in that they enter the portal venous system from the gut rather than requiring bile salts, chylomicrons and the thoracic duct, etc. They are, in that sense, "easier" to digest.

If you eat food with MCTs, they will be oxidized and used as fuel just like any other TG. If you add MCTs to your diet and as a consequence are liberating fewer fatty acids from your own fat stores, you will lose less weight - its not going to be like eating olestra. I have read of various alleged metabolic advantages to MCT, but I am not sure how important they are. The main benefit of MCTs is that they are healthy saturated fats - they are not magic and I think lowering your carb consumption and raising your total healthy fat consumption is going to matter much more.

BTW, are you aware of the research that supports being in ketosis as a part of cancer treatment? The working theory is that flooding cells with glucose (the fuel they used in a fetal state) eventually forces them to un-differentiate, which is when they turn cancerous. Removing or severely restricting glucose can then allow them to re-differentiate. Alkaline cancers live on glucose, so at a minimum, lower levels can help limit their growth rate.

Yes. My hypothesis is that ketosis or near-ketosis is a feature of the EM2 (the evolutionary metabolic milieu). Cancer cells, as dedifferentiated mammalian cells, are dependent on glucose for their metabolism. It is only logical that in addition to cancer being promoted by high insulin as I discussed above, low insulin and less availabilty of glucose will put malignant cells at a disadvantage. I believe it is likely we will eventually fiind that cancer is prevented by the near ketogenic state, and so may be ameliorated by it as well. There are anecdotal reports, but we cannot view this as proven. Of course try getting big pharma to fund a study that only requires you to not eat bread.

Ketosis is also useful in treating congestive heart failure. Since ketones are the heart's prefered fuel, it's possible to improve heart ejection fraction by 30% within a few hours of ketone injections.

Actually long chain fatty acids are the preferred cardiomyocyte fuel. There is also anecdotal evidence for improvements in a variety of neurodegenerative disorders with ketogenic diets, including alzheimer dementia and parkinson syndrome. If nothing else, this may be a clue that these diseases may be related to deviation from the EM2 (high glucose levels, etc.)

[Sharky]

Re: PaNu - The paleolithic nutrition argument clinic

Thanks for the great info.

First Graph: Shows a steep linear increase in all cause mortality with increasing HBa1c levels.

Lesson: Limit your carbohydrate consumption

28.jpg

Very interesting. It looks like reducing your HbA1c from the top of the normal range (around 5.9%) to the low end (4.0 to 4.5%) might reduce your cardiac risk by as much as 50%.

Second Graph: The same graph with total cholesterol and LDL levels added.

Lesson: Eat plenty of healthy fats and forget about these measures of cholesterol

29.jpg

The second chart shows how total cholesterol and LDL are unrelated to mortality, while HBA1c is strongly predictive.

In fact, low cholesterol may be more of a risk factor than high cholesterol, as mentioned elsewhere on the same blog you referenced.

Another side-note: one benefit of eating a diet with plenty of animal products, as you've mentioned, is getting adequate B-12. One effect of having enough B-12 is lower homocysteine levels, which also reduces the risk of vascular disease.

The main benefit of MCTs is that they are healthy saturated fats - they are not magic and I think lowering your carb consumption and raising your total healthy fat consumption is going to matter much more.

Sure. My point was only that if you have a choice of oils, that the MCT-rich ones have some benefits. Flax oil and fish oil, on the other hand, in spite of being rich in Omega-3's are much too unbalanced to be usable for the long-term.

Actually long chain fatty acids are the preferred cardiomyocyte fuel.

My understanding is that ketones will be used more readily if they are present, even though long chain FAs generate most cardiac energy in most people. That seems to be one of the reasons for the body's natural increase in ketones during CHF. Are you saying that's not correct?

There is also anecdotal evidence for improvements in a variety of neurodegenerative disorders with ketogenic diets, including alzheimer dementia and parkinson syndrome. If nothing else, this may be a clue that these diseases may be related to deviation from the EM2 (high glucose levels, etc.)

Cool. I watched a talk the other day where the speaker argued that many cognitive dysfunction / dementia problems may be related to insufficient cellular energy production, which can be alleviated in the brain when it's able to use ketones instead of glucose as fuel. Here's a link to the talk, if you're interested, which also touches on several of the other points we've discussed here:

http://smartlifeforum.org/wiki/2009/01

[*T*]

Re: PaNu - The paleolithic nutrition argument clinic

PythonicCow - crack open a Tuscan cookbook, or regional cookbooks from all over Italy (ditto France!) and there are recipes for all vegetable dishes that would make any meat eater think they died and went to heaven.

PythonicCow, forget the cookbook, just go to Tuscany for a couple of weeks in the countryside. :p

[Andreuccio]

Re: PaNu - The paleolithic nutrition argument clinic

7 Fruit is just a snickers bar from a tree. Stick with berries and avoid watermelon which is pure fructose. Eat in moderation.

I've been thinking about this line quite a bit since I read it. If I ever were to adopt Roger's PaNu diet, I'd have to cut back on fruit. I had always thought pretty much all types of fruit were good for you, and I enjoy eating it.

On the other hand, if I don't go on the diet, I'm seriously considering bumping up my consumption of Snickers bars.

[BadJuju]

Re: PaNu - The paleolithic nutrition argument clinic

PythonicCow - crack open a Tuscan cookbook, or regional cookbooks from all over Italy (ditto France!) and there are recipes for all vegetable dishes that would make any meat eater think they died and went to heaven. I'm talking about a serious cookbook, that assimilates all the recipes handed down in 300 years.

Have any specific cookbook recommendations?

[Prazak]

Re: PaNu - The paleolithic nutrition argument clinic

Have any specific cookbook recommendations?

The best cookbook I own (and I own quite a few) is Sicilian Cooking, by Carmelo Sammarco. Picked it up in the lobby of the Museo Archeologico Regionale in Palermo a couple years ago and have used it at least once a week ever since. It's got everything one could love about fresh Mediterranean cooking, including simplicity.

An excellent and accessible French cookbook, albeit written by an American expat who's lived there for decades, is The Paris Cookbook, by Patricia Wells. It's also a nice tour through my favorite city's culinary lay of the land.

[BadJuju]

Re: PaNu - The paleolithic nutrition argument clinic

Thanks, Prazak!

[Guest]

Re: PaNu - The paleolithic nutrition argument clinic

Badjuju -

Here's the chef and cookbook author I was referring to. I just spotted your question now. Some of his recipes are a bit involved for day to day cooking - but if one of his cookooks becomes a lifelong companion in your kitchen, over the years you can gradually explore his ideas. He is not just a chef, he's a cooking historian, digging around 500 and even 1000 years into Italy's past for very old traditional food preparations. A fascinating gastronomic journey of exploration.

I have nothing against Roger's thesis on grains being allergens for some peoples - but in large *alternate* regions of the world and across time, that's apparently not been the case. Something like diabetes was in fact very low in Italy at any time prior to the 1980's-1990's relative to it's neighbors, and extremely low relative to today's epidemic rates. So for this reader, the thesis seems to be missing something, or "ignoring the large anomalies".

Grains elimination may even be very good as a therapeutic treatment for many inflammatory diseases, but it's universality as a condemned segment of the food pyramid appears a notably fragmented thesis applied worldwide and across time. Another lingering question is whether balanced and culturally wise nutrition was in fact present in all the statistics cited of soaring illnesses - which this thread's thesis attributed solely to the grains.

Anyway even just for learning to make some all vegetable dishes that taste like a five star restaurant entree, there are plenty of vegetable dishes in Bugialli's cooking to mine for ideas - and if you only learn how to prepare a few of those, you'll impress the heck out of the lady of your dreams who you invite home for one of your masterfully prepared dinners!

Above all as *T* hinted at, when you approach nutrition with reverence and simple joy for the high art in the very old traditional recipes, one dividend that appears out of that is the discovery of many recipes that are unbelievably delicious, while also extremely nourishing and nurturing to one's health. Keep it real simple and just mine one or two of these books for the vegetable dishes and they will tempt your palate so much that reducing meat consumption comes very easily.

Some recipes are simpler, and others more complicated to prepare. You can find the simpler recipes just by glancing at the preparatioin instructions and collect just two or three you may like. No need to get complicated at all.

Buon appetito!

____________

	BUGIALLI'S ITALYFOODS OF SICILY AND SARDINIA THE BEST OF BUGIALLI Introduction FOODS OF TUSCANY BUGIALLI ON PASTA FOODS OF ITALY CLASSIC TECHNIQUES OF ITALIAN COOKING THE FINE ART OF ITALIAN COOKING

from: The Best of Bugialli

1994, New York, Stewart, Tabori & Chang

Introduction

BY GIULIANO BUGIALLI

What is "best" about this selection of my recipes? I would be a strange parent to prefer them to others -- equally close to my heart -- but over recent vears, these are the ones that consistently prove to be the most popular and practiced. Included here, you will find recipes from my former books, the Foods of Italy and Foods of Tuscany, as well as from the many cooking classes -- held in both my New York and Italian (Cooking in Florence) schools -- and numerous demonstrations I give each year. Previously unpublished recipes are gathered from all over Italy -- from Friuli in the extreme north to Sicily in the extreme south, with specimens from Emilia-Romagna, Calabria, Puglia, Tuscany, Campania, Lazio, Veneto, Lombardy and Piedmont. For the most part, I've excluded recipes that -- little-known when I first published them -- have become almost omnipresent. Fortunately, Italy possesses a culinary history of unfathomable depths. Great dishes have come to us from the Italian Renaissance, the wide array of regional cooking and from the alta cucina, cultivated in the old aristocratic courts, which absorbed vast traditions of ancient and medieval cuisines. What determines an authentic or classic recipe? One approach, used by some cookbook authors, is to rally and edit recipes solicited from restaurants throughout Italy. Although this may seem logical, these recipes are often either watered-down versions to fit an individual restaurant's needs, or altogether misleading -- restaurateurs may deliberately omit ingredients so as not to give away their secrets. When I research the origin and evolution of a dish, one source is not enough. I compare documented recipes (as early as the 14th century) with the many oral versions handed down from one generation to the next within a region's long-native families. Through this process, I believe the essence of a particular dish -- its ingredients and preparation -- is most fully revealed. For me it is important to use these authentic ingredients and to eschew "creative" changes which bastardize the purity of the dish. For instance, I would never use corn starch in an Italian dessert because it is unknown in Italy. Most real Italian ingredients are now available abroad although it sometimes requires a little effort to obtain them. Occasionally, I give preference for an ingredient which is truly hard to Find, but in such cases I do offer a second choice. My experience over some twenty years has been that many ingredients which were not imported when my earliest books were published are now easily available. It is really worth it not to take the easy way out; your reward is a more delicious dish. Luckily, in addition to its best-known elements, authentic Italian cooking uses many ingredients not usually associated with it. The delicious Polenta taragna is made with buckwheat flour, as well as cornmeal, and served with a pork stew. Agnello alle erbe employs lambchops marinated in a variety of herbs and served with fresh horseradish. And barley, used whole -- such as in the wonderful Fagioli ed orzo (bean-barley soup) included here -- has a long history in Italy where it was first used by the Romans as a polenta and later, during the middle ages, when it was finely ground to make bread. This collection offers a representative sampling of all the courses offered during the Italian meal: antipasti, first courses (fresh and dried pastas, soups and risotto), main courses (fish, meat and fowl), vegetable courses which are full-fledged dishes -- not just side dishes -- and a variety of desserts. Although some of the recipes are quite fashionable at the moment, I have not tailored them to fit contemporary trends. Italian cooking preserves an age-old instinct for healthy eating through the use of many grains and vegetables and lighter fish and meats served in moderate quantities. Herbs are used extensively and even the most typical ones are unusually employed. In this collection: fresh sage forms the entire base for the batter cake, Salviata, fresh fennel bulbs are used to season the potatoes for Patate con finocchio, uncooked celery and herbs flavor the hot pasta in Sedanini alla crudaiola in salsa piccante, and the pasta in Pasta alle erbe alla napoletana cooks in an exquisitely herbed sauce. Flat breads called "focacce" have become exceedingly popular, and may be made of either potatoes or flour. I offer Focaccia di patate, a delicious bread stuffed with spicy peppers from Southern Italy. Other pepper dishes, so associated with all regions of Italy, include a spicy Peperonata all'arrabbiata from Rome and Pollo ai peperoni al forno in which the peppers dissolve to become sauce for the chicken. You will find a rare recipe from Livorno, the coastal city known for its fish soups, for Cacciucco con battuto alla livornese made with a variety of fish, shellfish and chopped vegetables. Fresh fruits are customarily served for dessert in Italy, while the more elaborate treats I present are more likely to be eaten only after special holiday meals in cafes. Three of my favorites are Dolce di caffe' made of ground nuts, flavored with espresso and topped with coffee zabaione, Torta di ciliege, the wonderful cherry cake, and Limoni in forma, individual molded timbales of lemon. It has been rewarding to introduce so many people to the authentic Italian cooking in my classes. I hope the dishes in this book will reach an even greater group of food lovers. I try to give you, in all of them, my best. Giuliano Bugialli, May 1994