Obligate Carnivore

A couple of weekends ago I attended a seminar with Sally Fallon. She gave a weekend-long talk covering many topics, such as the problems with vegetable oils and the cholesterol myths, the work of Weston Price and traditional diets, and how to incorporate traditional foods into your life. Seeing as I quote her every other blog entry and have read a tremendous amount of her work, I was definitely the choir she was preaching to. Still, it was nice to have someone talk me through the chemistry of lipids and I found her tips on cooking and meal planning to be very useful. I would highly encourage anyone to go and hear her speak if she comes to town.

One of the new things I learned was the term Obligate Carnivore. This term is often applied to cats because they need to get their calories from meat. It refers to an animal that eats virtually nothing but meat. Sally used it to describe people who cannot be vegetarians. I suppose that Obligate Omnivore would be a more accurate description of such people, but for now I will stick to Obligate Carnivore, because I think it drives the point home.

I’ve known for many years now that I cannot maintain my health without eating animal products. Sally Fallon explained that depending on one’s ancestry it is possible to have more or less of the enzymes that allow nutrients to be extracted from plants. She gave Indian people as an example of a population who often has higher levels of the enzymes necessary for eating a plant based diet. People from coastal regions tend to have less of this enzyme.

One example she gave is the enzyme called Delta-6-Desaturase (D-6-D). This enzyme is essential for the elongation of essential fatty acids (EFAs). I wrote in a previous blog entry about the inadequacy of flax seed oil as a source of Omega-3 fatty acids and I’m actually going to quote myself (heh),

“Flax seed oil is rich in the omega-3 oil alpha-linoleic acid (ALA), but lacks the other Omega-3's eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) or docosahexaenoic acid (DHA). Our bodies, especially our brains, have an absolute need for EPA and DHA. This means that we cannot function without these fats. It is possible, in a healthy body, for to be converted into EPA or DHA, but not in the amounts that are necessary to maintain optimal functioning…”

This is where D-6-D works its magic, which I unfortunately do not know the intricacies of. What I do know is that it plays a crucial role in transforming into the longer EFAs: EPA and DHA, of which our body has an absolute need. OK, I’m straying dangerously into chemistry that I have only a very weak grasp of, so I'm going to quit while I'm ahead.

The point of all of this is that some people really do have an absolute need to eat a lot of meat, and some people really can live on a diet with a higher ratio of vegetables. I find this reassuring in the face of vegan propaganda that asserts that meat-eaters just lack willpower or compassion. Essential fatty acids are only one example of the plant sourced nutrients that must be converted before they can be used; some other examples are Vitamin A and taurine, and I am willing to guess that there are a lot more. Our bodies all work differently and therefore our ideal diets will vary. An ethical diet must have enough flexibility to keep its adherents in good health, something that I believe veganism to utterly fail at.

Creme Brulee

I am way overdue for a new post. Unfortunately, I had computer mishaps with my last two blog posts. I am trying to rewrite what was lost. In the mean time, my adventures with raw milk continue...this time in the luscious form of creme brulee!

It is amazing to me how different real raw milk is from the pasteurized product. My family and I were out of town recently and were unable to get real milk and so we went for the next best thing: unhomogenized pasteurized milk. While the cream on the top was tasty and comforting, the milk just wasn't the same. Within a day of opening it, the milky bits stuck to the glass at the top of the bottle, had already developed a rank smell that seemed particulary unappetizing, as I have grown accustomed to the milder, cheesy smell of aging real milk. As I've said before, raw milk does not go rotten the way pasteurized milk does. I would never ingest pasteurized milk that is past its prime; as we all know, it's disgusting. Instead of becoming foul, raw milk begins to ferment. This is presumably how all of our favorite fermented dairy products (cheese, yogurt, kefir, sour cream) came to exist. People let their milk get old and depending on where in the world the were and what kind of container it was being stored in, it turned into one of many fermented dairy products. People began to select the ones that tasted better and they propagated them thus nurturing the cultures (strains of bacteria or yeast or both) that we use today.

Before we went out of town I had bought a half gallon of cream for several specific cooking projects. I didn't get to all of them before we left and my partner, who is passionate about not wasting food, was starting to drop some hints about his feelings on the unused quart of cream. Having read this article, I assured him that it would be put to good use. I told him that I was going to make creme brulee. I don't think he believed me, but I actually did make it. The cream was definitely not "sweet" anymore, but there was not even a hint of sourness in the finished product. This is a wonderful recipe; the level of sweetness was perfect (meaning not very sweet at all). Also, the cream I used had not been particularly well separated, so it was a good bit more milky than ideal, but it still formed a delicious custard. I imagine that this recipe could also work reasonably well with whole milk, let me know if you try it.

Here it is:

Creme Brulee with Soured Cream!

Serves 8

1 quart heavy, soured raw cream
8 medium egg yolks
1/2 cup Rapadura
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
8 rounded teaspoons Rapadura or Sucanat

Heat cream gently with vanilla but do not let it boil. Beat egg yolks with Rapadura or Sucanat until smooth and well blended. Beat vanilla and hot cream into yolk mixture. Pour into 8 4-inch ramekins (about 3/4 cup per ramekin). Set dishes in very shallow pans of warm water. Bake 45-60 minutes in a 300-degree oven until custard sets and forms a a crust on top.
Let custards cool, cover lightly with waxed paper and chill 4 hours in the refrigerator. To serve, sprinkle 1 rounded teaspoon Rapadura or Sucanat over the top of each. Place under the broiler until the sugar melts, being careful not to burn. (It melts very quickly!) Let the casseroles cool and then return to refrigerator until melted sugar forms a crust. Serve very cold.

Taken from here. Enjoy!