Dear Reader,

Welcome to Yummy Lummy. Yummy Lummy is a blog for people who live alone and are keen to cook meals for one.

I also share my opinions on topics others may (or may not) be interested in. With my recent change in diet (SAD→CSIRO TWD→LCHF), the blog’s emphasis is shifting to my opinion on some food and non-food-related topics.

I cite most journal articles or books I’ve read and mentioned. You can see the citations at the bottom of the post.

You can skip the introduction and jump to the recipe if you don’t care to read my views.

Introduction

I hope you’ve had a good week. I was meant to be in Geneva (Ville de Genève) this week for a meeting. I ended up attending virtually. It worked out that I could complete my normal work and attend the Geneva-based meetings from 1800 to 0200 AEDT for two nights. I was tired by the end of the week. It almost felt like I had jetlag without any jet travel.

The photographs below are from trips to Geneva I’ve made in past years for work.

Now that I can walk more with my cane, I’ve been able to visit the supermarket and purchase one or two items that I can carry home with one hand. I’ve also been able to visit the seafood shop so I can purchase wild-caught salmon rather than farmed salmon.

I was hoping to purchase a rugby league ball, however, the only ones on sale were for teams I do not support.

With more movement, my anorexia (loss of appetite) has lessened, and I’ve been eating more and gaining weight.

What have I been watching?

Senate estimates (Supplementary Budget estimates)

Three times a year, Australian senators ask questions of senior officials in Australian Government departments in formal hearings at Parliament House.

Years past, I’ve sat at “the table” and answered questions posed by senators. These days, my betters appear, and answer questions posed by senators.

It’s an important opportunity in our democracy for questions to be asked in a public forum and for the government of the day to reply via its public servants.  

What have I been reading?

Red meat intake and risk of type 2 diabetes in a prospective cohort study of United States females and males (Gu et al., 2023)

I saw some popular news services report on a paper recently published by the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. The authors of the paper advise that red meat may raise the risk of developing Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus (T2DM). Most news services did not cite the publication, so readers had to rely on journalists to interpret the journal article. When I’ve looked at some of the journalists doing the reporting, it’s not clear they have a critical approach to examining data.

Most media accounts do not provide an analysis of the paper in sufficient detail. The general reader will take away a message that eating red meat may cause T2DM. In my opinion, this is an inaccurate interpretation. This journal article raises some questions.

For example:

• The journal article is observational and, therefore, cannot claim causation.
• The studies assessed by the authors used food recall questionnaires, which ask participants to remember and record what they have eaten over various intervals, ranging from a couple of weeks to a couple of years. It’s difficult to believe that all the participants remembered accurately the food they consumed, including the amount of food.
• The studies used by the journal paper authors include sandwiches and lasagne as red meat. I suggest the bread and pasta are the problem and not the meat.
• Red meat has negligible carbohydrates and likely zero glucose, so how can it contribute to T2DM?
• The absolute risk is minuscule, while the relative risk looks impressive. This style of presentation is a confidence trick of epidemiology.
• Body mass index (BMI) isn’t adjusted because the authors claim BMI is higher due to red meat consumption. Yet, the BMI could be higher because associated carbohydrate consumption (the accompanying food with meat like potatoes and sweetened drinks) was higher. For example, someone who consumes too many meat pies will become clinically obese compared with someone who eats scotch fillet (ribeye) steaks without the pie casing and the flour for the gravy. I think it’s the carbohydrates contributing to an increased BMI and the T2DM rather than the red meat per se.
• The journal article also suggests that women eat more red meat than men. I don’t know about that.

My concern is that meat eaters who are obese should be compared with 1. low-carbohydrate, healthy-fat meat eaters and 2. those who adhere to a standard American (or Australian) diet. If such a study was done, I’d expect negligible T2DM in the low-carbohydrate healthy-fat meat eaters compared with the other two arms of the study.

If the raw data were examined again, I expect lean red meat eaters would not feature in terms of any possible association with T2DM.

The Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health is known for its plant-based preference. You can find a page titled “Why plant-based diets are good for human and planetary health” on their website. The page shares how one of the school’s professors was a co-author of the EAT-Lancet Commission guidelines, which are mostly plant-based.

The school also advocates for Meatless Mondays (—or more). I might change to Salmon Sundays and Meat-filled Mondays to keep the alliteration.

Do you have days of the week dedicated to a specific meal?

Blood glucose monitoring devices: current considerations

This Australian Prescriber article (Sly & Taylor, 2023), provides an easy-to-read and relatively comprehensive overview of the available blood glucose monitoring devices in Australia.

The authors conclude that continuous monitoring is recommended for persons with Type 1 Diabetes Mellitus and those with T2DM who need daily insulin.

Some Yummy Lummy readers are interested in diabetes mellitus and continuous glucose monitoring (CGM). I hope this article is of interest.

Do you continuously monitor your blood glucose?

Is snoozing losing? Why intermittent morning alarms are used and how they affect sleep, cognition, cortisol, and mood (Sundelin et al., 2023)

As part of my daily trawl through the “medical news”, this article piqued my interest. It used the term chronotype, which I’d not come across before. It refers to a person’s natural inclination for sleep at certain times. I came across this website, which describes the various chronotypes. I’m a lion 🦁 who tends to be a dolphin 🐬

Apparently, using the snooze button on your alarm clock or smart device is not a bad thing for many people.

What’s your chronotype?

The Importance of Dietary Carbohydrates in Human Evolution (Hardy et al., 2015)

The authors (one of whom is based in Sydney at the University of Sydney) propose that plant foods having high quantities of starch were essential for the evolution of humans. They acknowledge that earlier studies have highlighted a shift from plant-based to primarily meat-based diets as critical in developing the brain and other human traits. The authors argue that digestible carbohydrates were also necessary to accommodate the increased metabolic demands of a growing brain.

Furthermore, they describe the role cooking played in improving the digestibility and palatability of carbohydrates. The authors propose the auxiliary role of salivary amylase in increasing the importance of starch in human evolution following the origins of cooking. They say salivary amylases are ineffective on raw crystalline starch, but cooking substantially increases energy yield and glycæmia.

This paper, argues against a core tenant of people advocating for a low-carbohydrate healthy-fat way of life. (Noakes, 2023)

What have I been listening to?

I haven’t been listening to much because of the meetings in Geneva and watching Senate estimates hearings.  

Recipe

I went for a wander through a supermarket and saw this pork loin roast and thought it would make a great meat source for this weekend and for lunch meat this week.  

Equipment

• Slow cooker
• Air fryer

Ingredients

• Pork loin
• Beef, chicken, lamb, and pork stock — you can use any meat-based stock for this. You could also use a plant-based stock or a meat and plant stock. I’m using this because it’s what I have at hand.

Instructions

1. Place the meat and the stock into the cooking vessel.
2. Slowly cook for six hours.
3. Remove the meat and place the roast on a tray and into the air fryer for 20 minutes at 160 °C (320 °F).
4. Set aside a part of the pork for dinner, put the rest into a container, and refrigerate. The pork can be used for lunches during the week.
5. Filter the cooking liquor and keep it as the perpetual master stock.
6. Serve the pork with vegetables or eat them alone. If you’re following a carnivore diet, just the pork will be more than sufficient to satisfy your hunger. If you’re low-carbohydrate, healthy-fat eating, the meat and some plant-based real foods like avocado, leafy green leaves, olives, and tomatoes are a good combination. If you’re not concerned with carbohydrates, stewed apples and sauerkraut would go well with the roast pork. If you’re vegetarian or vegan, this pork won’t be suitable.
7. Always give thanks to the Lord.
8. Eat with whatever implements you prefer. This includes your fingers.

Thoughts on the meal

If you like pork with a good amount of fat, you’ll like this roast.

The loin isn’t a tender cut of meat, even when it’s slowly cooked. The fat meat was tender, but the loin meat was a little dry. Overall, the slices of pork loin roast were good and coupled nicely with the cabbage and sour cream.

Do you like pork? What’s your favourite cut of pork, and how do you cook it?

Disclaimer and comments

This post and other posts on this blog do not constitute medical or health advice. I’m sharing my personal experiences from my lived experience. My opinions remain mine.

References

Gu, X., Drouin-Chartier, J.-P., Sacks, F. M., Hu, F. B., Rosner, B., & Willett, W. C. (2023). Red meat intake and risk of type 2 diabetes in a prospective cohort study of United States females and males. The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, S0002916523661192. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ajcnut.2023.08.021

Hardy, K., Brand-Miller, J., Brown, K. D., Thomas, M. G., & Copeland, L. (2015). The Importance of Dietary Carbohydrate in Human Evolution. The Quarterly Review of Biology, 90(3), 251–268. https://doi.org/10.1086/682587

Noakes, T. (2023). Ketogenic: The science of therapeutic carbohydrate restriction in human health. Academic Press, an imprint of Elsevier.

Sly, B., & Taylor, J. (2023). Blood glucose monitoring devices: Current considerations. Australian Prescriber, 46(3), 54–59. https://doi.org/10.18773/austprescr.2023.013

Sundelin, T., Landry, S., & Axelsson, J. (2023). Is snoozing losing? Why intermittent morning alarms are used and how they affect sleep, cognition, cortisol, and mood. Journal of Sleep Research, e14054. https://doi.org/10.1111/jsr.14054

Who to follow.

Zoë Harcombe, PhD

If you’re interested in food and nutrition, I suggest following Zoë at her website and on X (nee Twitter).

Dr Harcombe reviews published nutrition articles and provides a critical analysis of the quality of the data and the recommendations and/or conclusions of the authors.

Zoë describes herself as “…a real foodie first and foremost. I’m passionate about real food. What do I mean by that? Oranges grow on trees; cartons of orange juice don’t. Fish swim in the sea; fish fingers don’t. Cows graze in a field; Peperoni sticks don’t. Hopefully, you’ve got the idea. Food should come from fields, not factories.”

Legend

BMI = Body mass index.

CGM = Continuous glucose monitoring.

CSIRO TWD = Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation Total Wellbeing Diet.

LCHF = low-carbohydrate healthy-fat eating.

Red meat = is the meat of mammals, which includes pork.

SAD = Standard Australian diet (rich in carbohydrates, poor in healthy fats, and heaving in processed and ultra-processed products).  

T2DM=Type 2 diabetes mellitus.