Seth’s blog

This sounds promising. I have read more words written by Vladimir Nabokov than by anyone else, by a large margin. A few days ago I was watching American Idol and thinking about how I have come to enjoy singing more because of the judges’ evaluations. It reminded me of reading Nabokov’s commentary to Eugene Onegin when I was in college. In his commentary, Nabokov passed judgment on many lines of poetry — “this is beautiful,” “that is awful.” Studying those remarks — what did he see? — made me read in a new way forever.

Any idea? Here is a helpful comment by SixtiesLibber on the SLD forums:

When you get your fasting blood sugar tested, it’s supposed to be below 100. And it should almost never go above 200. Well, I finally checked and found what what those numbers mean, that’s 100 milligrams per deciliter. That’s kind of a weird measurement but it’s actually the same as 1000 milligrams per liter or 1 gram per liter. In other words, normally your blood has only 1 gram of glucose (sugar) per liter. (A liter is almost the same as a quart.) Adults have something like 5 quarts of blood in their bodies. So at any one time you only have about 5 grams of glucose circulating in your blood. That’s the equivalent of about 1 teaspoon of sugar or one-third of a piece of “squishy white bread.”

Answer: Not many.

In the first experiment, I created a butter mixture with a random flavor and spread it on two pieces of bread, which I ate and rated.

To create the butter mixture with a random flavor, I took 1/2 stick of butter and heated it in a microwave until it was soft. Then I randomly selected four of the 11 Penzeys spice blends and mixed 1/2 tsp of each into the butter.

For each trial, I spread a thin layer of the butter on two pieces of the bread, which was at room temperature. I ate them in a minute or so. I rated how good they tasted on a scale where

90 = very good
80 = quite good
75 = good
70 = somewhat good
60 = slightly good
50 = neutral
40 = slightly bad

I’ve used this scale to rate food dozens of times. Sometimes the rating changes with successive tastes; if so, the assigned rating is the maximum.

After eating the bread I waited at least an hour before eating anything else or brushing my teeth in order to to eliminate interference from other smells.

I did no more than one trial per day. On most days I did a trial.

To find other posts in this series, use the Calorie Learning category.

Anonymous writes again:

I got caught in a nasty achilles lock the other day–it’s an MMA [mixed martial art] submission move–and while trying to escape, I accidentally dislocated my fibula at the knee. It made a LOUD popping noise, to the point where everyone in the gym stopped. It popped it back in immediately, and other than some instability, it felt OK. Thankfully there was a doctor there (by chance–he does MMA and was in my class). He spent like 15 minutes examining my knee and said that other than some stretched ligaments, it was fine. His quote (I’m paraphrasing):

“That’s amazing. You should need reconstructive surgery right now. I don’t know how that happened, you must have rubber ligaments.”

I told him about taking 4 tablespoons of flax seed oil every day, and he was shocked, and said he was going to research it to see if that could be why I got so lucky. Told him to Google you, it’s all there.

The injury happened Friday. Today (Tuesday) the doctor looked at my knee again in class, and he was amazed not only at the lack of swelling, but that I was able to roll today (not full speed, just lightly).

I have played sports my whole life and have had at least half a dozen various knee injuries. Things like minor cartilage tears, hyperextensions, strains, etc.–none that were this major (a dislocation of a bone at the joint). Of those injuries, I was out longer and recovered much slower than I have with this one. I know this isn’t proof of anything, and I don’t know how much the flaxseed oil has had to do with what happened, but even the doctor is shocked.

More about omega-3 and sports injuries here and here and here.

Addendum. He uses Whole Foods flaxseed oil without lignans.

Over at the SLD forums, Heidi555 posted these useful links:

1. Nose clipping ditto foods to extinguish cravings

2. Conditioning Appetite Suppression

3. Nose clipping lots of food really works – it’s easier!

This is about as far from the “losing weight is just a matter of calories in versus calories out” dogma as you can get. Last week at a dinner I sat next to a young doctor who said exactly that. I said nothing.

Thanks, Heidi.