Over at the ZIOH forum a member by the name of Ken, whom I'm lucky enough to have comment here, brought up the idea of dry aging meat for a more robust taste.

From Ken and the other forum members, I learned that when dry aging beef we want to accomplish two things; evaporate the moisture from the muscle (creating a greater concentration of flavor) and instigate enzyme break down, leading to more tender beef.

Things get very interesting several pages in the thread when Delfuego chimes in. Before I start putting words in their mouths, lets read the exchange.

Delfuego To Ken - "Thanks so much for all the info on dry-aging! Tried it with pemmican and have been very impressed with the results! Right after your first few posts on the process I thawed out 3 large primal rounds and set them on racks in our frig. I watched as the outsides of the roasts dried out - so far so good, after all I was going to eventually dry the meat for pemmican!

My main interest was toward the inside of the round - was it breaking down enough? I was hoping for lots of enzyme action and a noticeable effect on the muscle tissue. I wasn't disappointed! After the roasts had sat for three weeks, I sliced up 2 of the rounds and to my utter delight the meat was absolutely breaking down - so much so, that the thinner slices weren't able to hang from the wooden skewers I use in my pemmican light box dehydrator! This once tough, heavily muscled, thickly fibered roast had deteriorated to next to nothing!

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I must apologize for the lack of commenting & posting recently. Besides my rambling about all things nutrition, I participate in the musical supergroup Beta Wolf. What does it take to involve yourself in such a project? Do you like driving to LA? Do you want to sleep less at night? Would you like to have the equivalent of four girlfriends, which are actually dudes? If you answered yes to any of these questions, you need to start a band.

All joking aside, we've been working extremely hard creating new content in preparation for the free release of our six song EP. I've spent sometime putting together a new website and I would love to share it with you guys. We have some really cool HD videos up, as well as a free live version of the song 'Undertow' available for download.

If you're a fan of melodic rock, you're going to like it.

Check it out and tell me what you think!

Is there anyone reading that has not experienced the pure dread of waking up in the middle of the night with a knot in your leg that feels like the size of a basketball?

My experience is as follows:

Cramps weren't around during the day time, but loved showing up at 3-4am. Waking up - gasping for air - I would grab whatever leg was spasming and immediately leap out of bed to my feet. I would describe the pain as having felt like someone jabbed a knife in my calf and began to twist.

My nightly routine to counter these attacks was to hobble around for 10 minutes until they were gone. Once the cramp finally did go away, it was a toss up if I would wake up again from another cramp. It sucked.

Until now I thought this phenomenon was just part of the acclimation period to a very low carbohydrate diet (VLC) or carnivorous diet. My goal for this post is to garner some thought on the idea that cramps are related to a much bigger problem, a lack of hydrochloric acid (stomach acid).

Hydrochloric acid (HCL) is secreted in response to the food we eat, specifically protein. HCL in large is responsible for the energy intensive task of breaking down protein as well as promoting the absorption of many key vitamins and minerals. HCLs other duties include maintaining the acidic pH of the stomach and warding off bacteria, fungi and pathogens.

When we're low in stomach acid we're opened up to bacterial overgrowth, lowered resistance to infection, and high probability of nutrient malabsorption. If that wasn't bad enough, when the stomach lacks acidity, food will not be emptied into the duodenum for further digestion. Half digested food is now sitting in the stomach, fermenting, causing inflammation, stress and potentially causing acid reflux symptoms.

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Updated on Friday, January 15, 2010 at 3:22PM by Danny Roddy

Let me kick of this post by saying that I'm a huge fan of Mark Sisson. I've linked to his site many times, I tell friends of mine that are looking to get into nutrition to visit his site (not mine) and have found him to be quite enjoyable on his numerous podcast interviews.

That's why it's disheartening that in his latest post, he included me in his article to cast doubt upon the efficacy of carnivorous diets.

Mark posted a link to the disturbing picture of my leg that I shared with the world. If I can sum up the whole post in a sentence or two; I was experiencing some kind of deficiency, that was later cured when I ate a higher volume of food (pemmican).

When you experiment the way I do, you're bound to run into a few road blocks. I work through them, I learn and I'm a better man at the end of the day.

My beef with Mark's article is… why chose me? Mark mentions one real life carnivorous eater in his article that happens to be myself. When the reader clicks on the link to my weblog they are greeted with a disgusting picture of my leg with ZERO context. The achievements made by all stars: Charles Washington, Lex Rooker, and Joe Andersen; all would have been better choices to represent what a carnivorous lifestyle can do. Highlighting me, someone that has been diagnosed with mercury and lead poisoning might not be an honest inquiry to the actual legitimacy of carnivory.

While the start of this weblog was to champion the zero carb lifestyle, it has blossomed into more of an open ended experiment guided by what works, and what doesn't. I've never claimed to be a success story, but only that a carnivorous diet has changed my life for the better. The deterioration of my leg in that photo was a small price to pay to win back my hair, good sleep, reduce my stress level, and increase my libido.

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I'm not sure there's a day that goes by that I don't tackle the question of how to improve upon my pemmican production. Considering most viewers of this site are interested in the same topic (here and here), I thought it would be beneficial to share some more tips that I've gathered over time.

Dehydrating The Meat

I believe the dehydration process to be the biggest factor affecting the outcome of the taste of pemmican. I've found that higher temperatures (115F-120F) cause pemmican to have a "jerky-like bite". Daredevil friends of mine that have taste tested this type of pemmican find it to be a lot more agreeable than pemmican dehydrated at lower temperatures. I would guess that the "jerky-like bite" adds a salty taste that is missing from meat dehydrated at lower temperatures.

Meat dehydrated at lower temperatures (95-110F) has what I would describe to be a mellow, more subtle taste. After much experimentation, I've found that I favor lower temperatures for producing pemmican. It takes a few more days to finish the drying process, but I find the mellow taste to be easier to eat; bypassing the sometimes harsh taste of pemmican dehydrated at higher temperatures.

Keep in mind this is purely a taste issue! Try both and see what you prefer. Above all else, make sure the meat is dry enough to snap in half and contains no moisture.

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Believe me when I say that I am truly grateful for Lex Rooker's friendship. Besides being a totally wicked dude, Lex always has great insight on whatever struggle I may be going through at the time.

When Lex saw pictures of my leg he graciously offered to supply me with meat as well as an invitation back into the wonderful world of raw paleo. Never being one to turn down free meat, I obliged and a few days later Lex dropped off a weeks worth of his patented mix of Slanker's high fat ground beef and pet food.

The ground beef is standard fair, but the pet food is where things get interesting. Slanker's website states that the mixture consists of trimmings from various beef cuts, heart muscle, jaw muscle, a little organ meat, tongue, plus a relatively small quantity of liver, kidney, and spleen. I'm excited to evaluate how I respond, given that I've only had rendered fat and powdered lean meat for almost a year.

Having had Lex's daily food before, I can say that I really dig the taste of raw meat. Having said that, the added pet food takes some getting used to, but I'm always up for experimentation. Does this mean I'm now RAW ONLY, NO PEMM ALOWED? Of course it doesn't, whether it be an all beef tongue diet or an all pemmican diet, I will always err on the side of how I respond and feel.  

Thanks again Lex!

More pictures after the jump. 

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The only other pemmican I've ever had the luxury of trying was Lex Rooker's. Lex's pemmican is unbelievably good. I would describe the taste and consistency as bold and hearty. Unlike most other pemmican enthusiasts, Lex doesn't grind the meat too fine, there are often large chunks of dried jerky in the finished product. Lex also prefers to use straight suet, which holds up well under different temperatures, and pleases me since I dig the candle wax texture.

Just recently Delfuego, a gentleman that has been eating an all pemmican diet for the last 7 years, announced that he would be selling off a stockpile that he had laying around. When I read this on the ZIOH forum I immediately rushed over to a computer so I could take advantage of Delfuego's offer.

Delfuego shipped out the pemmican almost immediately and it came a few days later. Delfuego's pemmican is excellent. I won't lie, It took a little getting used to, but at about the third day I was consuming ~18 ounces per day. His pemmican differs from Lex's and mine by the dry meat being pulverized into dust. This gives the pemmican an almost candy bar like chew, it's quite good.

In keeping with my commitment to being a good weblogger, I took pictures when Delfuego's shipment arrived. Enjoy, thanks again Delfuego!

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A few forum members have pointed out that very low carbohydrate diets cause an elevation in reverse T3 (inactive T3 thyroid hormone). Apparently this is the reason everyone MUST EAT 50 grams of carbohydrates a day.

I will state here, I am not an expert and I don't pretend to be. My point of interest is that zero-carbers have a high success rate. The proclaimed crashing of the metabolism due to elevated rT3 does not jive with the real life results. I also reject the idea that low-carbers need to take thyroid pharmaceuticals to be healthy.

Here is a snippet of the study that's being tossed around.

Starvation has a profound effect on thyroid function, causing a decrease in serumT3 concentration and a reciprocal increase in rT3 level. These changes are due to aselective inhibition of the 5’-monodeiodination of iodothyronines by peripheral tis-sues. Reduction in carbohydrate intake rather than total calorie deprivation appearsto be the determinant factor. These alterations in thyroid function are believed to re-duce the catabolic activity of the organism and thus to conserve energy in the faceof decreased calorie intake. Chronic malnutrition is accompanied by similar changes.Overfeeding has opposite although transient effects.

But wait, there's more.

To evaluate the effect of caloric restriction and dietary composition on circulating T3 and rT3 obese subjects were studied after 7-18 days of total fasting and while on randomized hypocaloric diets (800 kcal) in which carbohydrate content was varied to provide from 0 to 100% calories. As anticipated, total fasting resulted in a 53% reduction in serum T3 in association with reciprocal 58% increase in rT3. Subjects receiving the no-carbohydrate hypocaloric diets for two weeks demonstrated a similar 47% decline in serum T3 but there was no significant change in rT3 with time. In contrast, the same subjects receiving isocaloric diets containing at least 50 g of carbohydrate showed no significant changes in either T3 or rT3 concentration. The decline in serum T3 during the no-carbohydrate diet correlated significantly with blood glucose and ketones but there was no correlation with insulin or glucagon. We conclude that dietary carbohydrate is an important regulatory factor in T3 production in man. In contrast, rT3 concentration is not significantly affected by changes in dietary carbohydrate. Our data suggest that the rise in serum rT3 during starvation may be related to more severe caloric restriction than that caused by the 800 kcal diet.

What we have here is two seemingly good studies, in complete opposition of each other. The later was specifically conducted with individuals eating a zero carb diet.

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