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Fermentation (not alcholic....) of food.

Fermented food OK, as you may have noticed this blog is often just a record of things that I come across which I find interesting - generally in the area of fitness, conditioning and diet. Here is something I've been thinking and reading about a bit recently: the idea of fermented food - think yoghurt, kefir, sauerkraut, pickles - being uniquely healthy. I think I first came across this idea in Sally Fallon's book Nourishing Traditions , much of which is predicated on the work of Weston Price (who made an extensive study of traditional diets in the 1930s, diets unadulterated by modern processing and diets consumed in societies where there were few of the diseases of civilisaiton). Fallon has a good article on Lacto-Fermentation if you want to learn more. Stephan has discussed fermentation a bit on his blog : Healthy grain-based African cultures typically soaked, ground and fermented their grains before cooking, creating a sour porridge that's nutritionally superior to unf...
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Logical Fallacies and Exercise.

Good stuff - we are evolved for survival not truth..... these logical issues are really interesting to think through. I did 3 years of logic at university and there was some analysis of arguments like this. One thing I remember was this idea of the material conditional: if A then B, usually expressed s A=>B. For example if it is raining, the grass will be wet. One thing to be aware of though is that it doesn't go in the other direction: just because the grass is wet doesn't mean it is raining. You can't argue from the effect to the cause. Just because athlete X trains with plyometrics or bands or kettlebells or whatever doesn't necessarily mean that those things are responsible for his success or his physique.
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Eating at night is for fatties.....

I thought this was of interest. With all the usual warnings about association not equalling causation , Night Eating - defined as 25% of daily food intake after the evening meal and/or awakening at least once per week to eat - is much more common in the obese. I wonder is there is some relation here to Intermittent Fasting . Such behaviour removes even the short fast that is there for most after the evening meal. Prevalence of Night Eating in Obese and Nonobese Twins The aim of this study was to assess the prevalence of night eating (NE) and associated symptoms in a population-based sample of Swedish twins. A total of 21,741 individuals aged 20–47 years completed a questionnaire in 2005/2006. NE was defined as 25% of daily food intake after the evening meal and/or awakening at least once per week with eating episodes. The prevalence of NE was 4.6% in men and 3.4% in women. Among obese men and women, the prevalence was 8.4 and 7.5%, respectively. Men and women with NE had 3.4 and 3....
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General Conditioning, Specificity and Funcitonal training

There have been some great comments on this debate on recent posts. Please make sure that you read the comments if you are interested in this stuff. Thanks to everyone for their comments. In particular John Sifferman's comment pointing to his post: Specificity in Training - How much carry-over does weight lifting have in real life? Will your time under the iron help you on the field, on the mat, or in the ring? is really worth reading. I hope he doesn't mind re re-posting it here: I have read numerous studies that have concluded that specific weight lifting activities have very little, if any, carry-over to athletic activities. It sounds crazy, I know. Believe me, I was pretty skeptical when I started reading these research abstracts myself. How could getting stronger hinder an athletes performance? Isn’t it the biggest, strongest, fastest athletes that are always the best? These questions were racing through my mind, and I had to ask myself, “how much does my training he...
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