HinesSight

LifeSource dumps my favorite veggie burger. I'm crushed.

It was the cheese that first set off the alarm bells in my brain. Up until then, my usual Tuesday afternoon grocery shopping at LifeSource Natural Foods had gone as it usually does. 

Uneventfully.

I had no clue that my vegetarian life would be upended before I reached the dairy aisle, my habitual final stop before heading to a checkout register.

Glancing at my list to see what my wife and I needed there, out of the corner of my eye I noticed that something had changed in the alternatives-to-meat section.

Cheese had taken over several feet of that section, oozing over from the already large cheese department to the right of it.

My sometimes still sharp senior citizen mind jumped to a logical conclusion: The cheese must have displaced some items in the eggs/alternatives-to-meat area.

Jumpy, but not yet panicked, I scanned the shelves for what I usually buy in that section.

Tofurky Treehouse Tempe? Yes, still there. Tofurky Plant-Based Chick'n Barbecue? Yes, still there. Hodo Tofu Veggie Burger? Oh, crap! It's missing!

I peered at the labels under some empty areas of the alternatives-to-meat section. None said "Hodo Tofu  Veggie Burger."

My life didn't exactly feel like it was slipping away. Just markedly diminished.

For the Hodo Tofu Veggie Burger is by far the best vegetarian burger I've ever eaten. And since I've been a vegetarian for over 50 years, I've eaten a heck of a lot of them.

I make a Hodo burger for lunch almost every day.

I love the taste. I love the simple ingredients: organic tofu, carrots, cabbage, onions, soybean oil, salt, dried shiitake mushrooms, garlic powder, white pepper. I love the nutrition facts: 200 calories, 9 grams of fat (just 0.5 grams saturated), 9 grams of dietary fiber, 19 grams of protein.

The Hodo Tofu Veggie Burger kicks the butt of every other vegetarian burger LifeSource carries, in my admittedly personal opinion.

If the Hodo burger was in a boxing match against, say, the LightLife burger that's still on the LifeSource shelf, the referee would stop the contest after the first round, declaring a knock-out. It not only tastes great, and has great nutrition, it looks great after being fried in a pan.

I don't put anything on the Hodo burger, just some salt. Ketchup disguises the taste of the burger, which is so good, I don't want anything coming between me and my beloved Hodo Tofu Veggie Burger.

That's why I stopped by the Customer Service desk at LifeSource and asked why it was discontinued. I didn't get an answer to "why," but was told that someone else also had asked about the Hodo burger, being disappointed that it wasn't available now.

When I got home, I sent a message to LifeSource via their web site. I expressed my dismay at their dumping such a fine upstanding veggie burger, while allowing lesser quality veggie burgers to remain.

It's been about a week. I haven't gotten a reply from LifeSource. 

I told LifeSource that Natural Grocers still carries the Hodo Tofu Veggie Burger, along with three other Hodo products such as the Chinese 5-Spice Tofu Nuggets that I like a lot. LifeSource how has no Hodo products.

Last Sunday I stopped by Natural Grocers, where I rarely shop, and stocked up on the Hodo burger. I also bought some other things that I usually get at LifeSource, as long as I was in the Natural Grocers store. 

I'll ask LifeSource again why they discontinued the Hodo veggie burger. I've bought so many of them over the years, it seems like I should learn this. Maybe the Hodo burger, being tofu-based, fell prey to what I consider an irrational fear of tofu by many people these days. 

Regardless, they'll have to pry the Hodo Tofu Veggie Burger out of my cold dead hands (leaving aside the question of who "they" is).

I just hope that Natural Grocers doesn't discontinue the burger -- which I doubt, since now they're the only place it can be bought in Salem.

Metabolism myths about diet, exercise, and weight loss

Science rocks. It's by far our best way of understanding reality. 

But most of us, me certainly included, often are prone to embracing folk wisdom rather than science when it comes to losing weight.

I'm six feet tall and 178 pounds at the moment -- though sadly, my long-term trend (I'm 72) has been to lose a bit of height and gain a bit of weight. 

Since I'd like to get to about 175 pounds and know how difficult it is for me to lose even a few pounds, I was eager to read the front page story in the February 27 New Scientist issue, "Metabolism Myths: Seven Things We Get Wrong About Diet and Exercise."

The author, Herman Pontzer, has impressive credentials. Here's the bio on his Amazon page.

How did the human body evolve, and how does our species' deep past shape our health and physiology today? Through lab and field research, I investigate the physiology of humans and apes to understand how ecology, lifestyle, diet, and evolutionary history affect metabolism and health.

I'm also interested in how ecology and evolution influence musculoskeletal design and physical activity. Field projects focus on small-scale societies, including hunter-gatherers and subsistence farmers, in Africa and South America. Lab research focuses on energetics and metabolism, including respirometry and doubly labeled water methods.

(He's written a recently released book, Burn: New Science Reveals How Metabolism Shapes Your Body, Health, and Longevity.)

These are the Seven Metabolism Myths in the New Scientist story, along with excerpts. Some surprised me. Some didn't. Bottom line: if you want to lose weight, likely you've got to reduce calories. There's no short cut.

Remember: the boldfaced headlines are myths. 

(1) Exercise burns through calories and boosts metabolism. It is the bedrock belief of pretty much every workout routine featured in magazines: exercise more, burn more calories. In the short term, it is correct – you burn energy while you are exercising, and if you start a new workout routine, you will burn more calories, at least in the beginning. But recent studies show just how dynamic and adaptive our metabolisms can be.

...Daily expenditures measured for participants in exercise studies routinely increase at the beginning of a new workout regimen, but those gains diminish over time. Their bodies adapt, so that within a few months, the daily energy they burn is only marginally higher, and sometimes exactly the same, as before they started working out. The boost is a bust.

(2) Exercise will make you lose weight. Even those who do manage to increase the amount of energy they burn through exercise typically still find it hard to lose weight. A recent review of 61 exercise studies, totalling more than 900 participants, lays out the grim evidence that will be familiar to many.

Weight loss often starts off well at the beginning of a new exercise regime, but it fades over time, so that a year or so later, the weight lost is a vanishing fraction of what we would expect from all the calories burned through working out.

...The reason for this is frustratingly simple: when you burn more calories, you eat more calories. You might not mean to, of course, but that is the problem. The complex systems working subconsciously to regulate your hunger and satiety do an exceptional job of matching energy intake to expenditure. 

(3) Your workout programme isn't succeeding unless you are losing weight. Not losing weight? Don’t give up! Exercise might not change the number on your bathroom scales, but that isn’t what it is for. Humans evolved as hunter-gatherers, and a heavy dose of physical activity was an inescapable part of the daily routine for more than 2 million years.

Our bodies are built to move, and there are good reasons why the Hadza avoid heart disease and diabetes, despite the fact that they burn the same amount of calories as sedentary people. Regular exercise keeps our hearts healthy, our muscles strong and our minds sharp, especially as we age.

Intriguingly, recent studies suggest that the metabolic adjustments that frustrate weight loss are a big reason why exercise is so good for us. My lab and others are working to track down the precise nature of these changes, but it seems our bodies respond to increased daily activity by reducing the energy expended on other tasks.

(4) Calories don't matter. Gaining weight is fundamentally a physics problem: when we eat more calories than we burn, those extra calories pile up as fat. Since it is futile trying to boost the energy we burn each day with exercise (or superfoods, or ice water, or the latest gimmick), the primary cause of being overweight or obese is clearly diet. We gain weight because we eat too much.

Yet counting calories has become passé. We are told it is the types of foods we eat, or the way that we eat them, that get us into trouble, and that the “calories in, calories out” view of the world is for suckers. Low-carb evangelists tout ketogenic diets – which rely heavily on fat, rather than carbohydrates – as a way to lose weight without cutting calories (some even claim you can eat more). Intermittent fasting fanatics promise much the same.

...If you are attempting to lose weight, the trick is to find a diet that you can maintain without feeling miserable. Foods high in protein and fibre tend to make us feel full. It also helps to avoid crash diets that can cause our clever, evolved metabolisms to hit the brakes and reduce daily energy expenditure.

(5) Humans evolved to eat a Paleo diet. Striving to eat the kinds of foods our ancestors ate makes intuitive sense. But emulating ancient diets, the idea behind the fashionable Paleo or “caveman” diet movement, in which people eat similarly to how our ancestors did in the Palaeolithic era, isn’t as straightforward as it might appear.

Cast your mind across the dizzying array of cultures on this planet, and consider the staggering variety of foods we eat. Clearly, there is no single human diet today, and it would be laughable to claim otherwise.

...Hunter-gatherer diets are (and were) just as diverse as diets in industrialised populations, with lots of variety among groups and through time in the proportions of meat and plants, fat and carbs. Some diets, particularly those of Indigenous people in the Arctic, are meat-heavy; others, especially in warmer climates, are plant-heavy. 

(6) A slow metabolism dooms you to obesity. Like most other biological traits, the amount of energy burned in a day varies from person to person. Daily energy expenditure in two people who are the same age and sex, and have the same lifestyle, can easily differ by 500 calories or more. Surprisingly, that variation in energy use doesn’t predict someone’s weight.

People with obesity have the same daily energy expenditure, on average, as those who are slim. That’s after accounting for body size, since a larger body tends to burn more calories per day simply by virtue of having more cells at work. If we don’t correct for size, people with obesity burn more energy. Weight gain and obesity aren’t products of a slow metabolism.

So why do some people find it easy to stay trim while others struggle? Although there is probably no single answer, a major factor seems to be the way our brains are wired. For most, weight gain comes on slowly over months and years, reflecting tiny errors in the regulation of energy intake.

The vast array of processed and engineered foods available to us overwhelms neural reward systems evolved to handle unprocessed wild foods. Our brains err on the side of overconsumption.

(7) Obesity and weight gain are a sign of personal failure. As powerful as our genes are, DNA isn’t destiny. Today’s gene pool is essentially unchanged from that of our great grandparents’ generation because genetic change is slow. They didn’t face a global obesity crisis. What’s different in much of the world is our environment, specifically our food environment – the access we have to specific foods.

In engineering our industrialised world, we have surrounded ourselves with foods that drive us to overconsume. The battle with obesity is often framed as a test of willpower, pitting the virtues of exercise and portion control against the vices of gluttony and sloth. New metabolic science says otherwise. Shops are stocked with ultra-processed foods, laden with added sugars and oils, symphonies of sweet and savoury that overwhelm our Palaeolithic brains.

...In wealthy countries, ultra-processed options often dominate the foods available in low-income neighbourhoods and those where the majority of inhabitants are from minority groups, contributing to inequities in health and nutrition. In low and middle-income countries, the growing dependence on ultra-processed foods has helped to fuel the global rise of obesity and related disease. 

Why eating at In-N-Out Burger is morally wrong

Today an In-N-Out Burger restaurant has opened in nearby Keizer, Oregon, sending waves of feverish delight through the taste buds of people willing to spend hours in line to buy the main food offering... dead cows.

I consider this to be morally wrong, having been a vegetarian for most of my life. So my objection isn't to In-N-Out Burger itself. What bothers me is that most Americans are so uncaring about the suffering they're producing by eating meat and fish.

Understand: there's a variety of good reasons to be vegetarian or vegan. It's a healthier way to go. It's better for the planet. But my main motivation when I became a vegetarian in college (I'm 71 now) was that I didn't want to kill conscious beings that suffer for no good reason.

If you've read this far, maybe you have at least a slight openness to that argument.

Perhaps you're an animal lover, with a dog and/or cat in your home that you are confident enjoys sensations, feelings, and such just as you do, albeit in different ways. You would feel bad if someone caused the family pet to suffer.

Well, cows have sensations and feelings also. And I'm going to present a scientist's arguments for why it is immoral to cause any living being to suffer or die without a good reason. 

(Since almost everybody in the United States doesn't need meat/fish to survive, killing animals for food isn't a good reason.)

Here's quotations from the final chapter of Christof Koch's book, The Feeling of Life Itself: Why Consciousness is Widespread but Can't Be Computed. Koch is the president and chief scientist at the Allen Institute for Brain Science in Seattle, following twenty-seven years as a professor at the California Institute of Technology.

My lifelong quest is to grasp the true nature of being... I now know that I live in a universe in which the inner light of experience is far more widespread than assumed within the standard Western canon. This inner light shines in humans and in the denizens of the animal kingdom, brighter or dimmer, in proportion to the complexity of their nervous system.

Integrated information theory predicts the possibility that all cellular life feels like something. The mental and the physical are closely linked, two aspects of one underlying reality.

...I want to end this book by moving from the descriptive to the prescriptive and proscriptive, to how we should think about good and bad and to a call to action.

Most importantly, we must abandon the idea that humans are at the center of the ethical universe and that we bestow value on the rest of the natural world only insofar as it suits humanity's ends, a belief that is such a large part of Western culture and tradition. We are evolved creatures, one leaf among millions on the tree of life.

...We must cure humanity's narcissism and our deep-seated belief that animals and plants exist solely for our pleasure and benefit. We need to embrace the principle that the moral status of any subject, of any Whole, is rooted in their consciousness, not solely in their humanness.

There are three justifications for being admitted to the privileged rank of subjects. I call them the sentience, experiential, and the cognitive criteria. 

Emotionally, we most easily resonate with sentience in others. We all have a strong instinctual reaction when we see a child or a dog being abused. We feel something of its pain; we empathize with it. Hence the moral intuition that any subject capable of suffering ceases to be a means to an end and becomes an end in itself.

Any creature that has the potential to feel distress has some minimal moral standing -- foremost the desire to be and the desire not to suffer.

...The experiential justification for the idea that species other than humans ought to be considered intrinsically valuable subjects is that any entity with an inner point of view is precious. Phenomenal experience is irreplaceable in a universe devoid of extrinsic purpose.

It is the only thing that really matters. For if something does not feel, it does not exist as a subject. A corpse and a zombie both exist, but not for themselves, only for others.

A third justification for this grounding is cognitive ability, having beliefs and desires, a sense of self, a sense of the future, of being able to imagine counterfactuals ("If I hadn't lost my legs, I could still climb"), the potential to be creative. To the extent that animals have such advanced cognitive abilities, they have rights.

However, I am against justifying moral standing purely on the basis of cognitive skills. First, not all humans possess such abilities -- think of babies, anencephalic children, or patients in a vegetative state or in late-stage dementia. Should they have lesser standing and fewer rights than able adults?

...Of these three justifications, sentience is in my view the most powerful one for why creatures that can suffer deserve special status. Because I can imagine myself being left alone, starved, or beaten, I feel sympathy or empathy with the other.

...The New Testament reminds us in Matthew 25: "Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me." The Czech writer Milan Kundera in his novel The Unbearable Lightness of Being generalizes this moral stipulation to all creatures:

True human goodness, in all its purity and freedom, can come to the fore only when its recipient has no power. Mankind's true moral test, its fundamental test... consists of its attitude toward those who are at its mercy: animals.

The Buddhist attitude toward sentience mirrors this view. We should treat all animals as being conscious, as feeling what-it-is-like-to-be. This must inform how we behave toward our fellow travelers through this cosmos, who are defenseless before our fences, cages, blades, and bullets and our relentless drive for Lebensraum. [living space]

One day, humanity may well be judged for how we treated our relatives on the tree of life.

We should extend a universal ethical stance to all creatures, whether they speak, cry, bark, whine, howl, bellow, chirp, shriek, buzz, or are mute. For all experience life, book-ended between two eternities.

Our favorite vegetarian "turkey" is Trader Joe's Turkey-Less Roast

Sorry, Tofurkey. Even though you're based in Oregon, where we also live, my wife and I have come to prefer Trader Joe's Turkey-Less Stuffed Roast to your Plant-Based Roast.

Having been a vegetarian for 50 years, I've tried every variety of fake turkey since they became available. Back in 2006 I bemoaned the loss of a Tofurkey competitor in "Now & Zen Unturkey has flown the coop."

What a Thanksgiving bummer! It looks like this beautiful creature is going extinct. Yes, this could be the last time a much beloved Now & Zen Unturkey graces our vegetarian table.

I had no problem buying this ungobbler a few days ago at LifeSource Natural Foods. But this disturbing page greeted me when I tried to access the Now & Zen web site. And the buzz over at Veggie Boards isn’t encouraging: Now & Zen is no more. Same message here.

Nor is there any cyberspace sign of Green Options, the company that reportedly bought the makers of the Unturkey.

I don’t believe it. In a world where there’s a jillion brands of cereal, how can we be left with only Tofurkey as a vegetarian alternative? The Unturkey kicks Tofurkey’s vegan butt. It’s chewier and has a remarkable crispy skin.

Over on MySpace Veronica isn’t happy about the demise of Now & Zen. Neither am I.

Tomorrow I’m heading to LifeSource to buy another Unturkey or two, if they still have any. I don’t want to have to go, well, cold turkey after we’ve finished eating what’s in the oven.

If there is a vegetarian god, hear my prayer: “Bring back the Unturkey. Quick! Definitely before next Thanksgiving. Put into some vegan entrepreneur’s mind the thought, Now & Zen’s products are too good to be lost. Yours in meatless devotion, Brian.”

Well, there must be a vegetarian god, since even though the Unturkey was never reincarnated, so far as I know, Trader Joe's has produced a meatless turkey that also kicks Tofurkey's vegan butt, for some of the same reasons.

The Turkey-Less Stuffed Roast, like the Unturkey, has a better texture than the overly soft Tofurkey. And I like the breaded crust of the Trader Joe's offering, though it doesn't mimic turkey skin as closely as the Unturkey did.

I bought three Turkey-Less Stuffed Roasts when I saw then in the refrigerated section of Trader Joe's recently. They're a seasonal item, sadly, so I stock up on them while they're available. 

One advantage of the Turkey-Less Stuffed Roast is that it doesn't come in the annoying plastic wrapping which "graces" the Tofurkey. I always had trouble getting that wrapping off. Of course, any vegetarian turkey is going to be hugely less time-consuming to prepare than a real turkey.

Last night I preheated our oven to 375 degrees, got out the defrosted Trader Joe's Turkey-Less Stuffed Roast, placed it on a baking pan, draped some aluminum foil over it loosely, and 45 minutes later had a tasty main course for our Thanksgiving dinner.

I did baste it with two tablespoons of olive oil mixed with 1/4 teaspoon of smoked paprika, an option described in the cooking directions for a Stuffed Roast that's cooked with vegetables. My wife and I ate quite a bit of the Stuffed Roast last night, had it again for dinner today, and there's still enough for at least one more meal for the two of us.

I do have a Tofurkey in the freezer that I bought at Salem's LifeSource Natural Foods this month, since I wasn't completely sure that Trader Joe's would carry the Turkey-Less Stuffed Roast again. But they did. I'm leaning toward cooking the Tofurkey when my vegetarian daughter and granddaughter come to visit us in late December. 

They'll enjoy it, as will I. However, I'll be thinking, "The Trader Joe's Turkey-Less Stuffed Roast is better."

I love LifeSource, but recent changes are disappointing

This is a "tough love" blog post, because I've shopped a lot at LifeSource Natural Foods ever since it opened way back when. Three or four times a week I go there.

But changes LifeSource has been making cause me and my wife to be a bit less satisfied with the store.

I readily admit that those changes probably are profitable for LifeSource. However, they go against the grain of my longtime vegetarianism -- which began about 50 years ago while I was in college.

(Along with other students of a crazed Greek yoga teacher, we started the second health food store in San Jose, California in 1970.)

Basically, I think LifeSource is going overboard on the "natural" part of its name to the detriment of "health." Natural foods aren't always healthy. And some healthy foods aren't completely natural. 

Here's some specifics of what concerns me about the direction LifeSource is going. Again, I'm speaking as someone who hasn't eaten a bite of meat or fish since 1968, and is pretty well informed about nutrition.

Deli offerings. In the early days of LifeSource, they almost always had tofu and brown rice in the deli/takeout section of the store. Now, macaroni and cheese (full-fat variety) is common, while tofu and rice have almost completely disappeared. When I asked about this a few months ago, I was told that many people nowadays believe they are allergic to tofu.

But I doubt that's the whole story.

Now I'm much less likely to get something from the deli/takeout section, even though I peruse it often. My suspicion is that LifeSource has learned what their customers are most willing to buy, even if that isn't the healthiest food to eat.

OK. The market has spoken. That's capitalism.

However, it leaves health-minded vegetarians like me and my wife without the choices that we used to enjoy. Even the walnut loaf that was common in the deli last year has been missing for quite a while. But chicken breasts are a daily feature, I'm pretty sure.

Which gets me to...

Meat has multiplied. In the early days, I believe LifeSource had nothing with meat in it. Then warning signs appeared: "contains meat." Eventually there was a small meat section. Now there's a really big meat section. 

I understand that most people believe that meat can be part of a healthy diet. In small doses, I agree.

However, even if meat is "natural," that doesn't make it healthy. Or good for our planet. There's much evidence to support the contention that being a vegetarian or vegan is both healthy for people and for the environment. 

Almost every story about global warming that I read in one of the science magazines I subscribe to says that raising animals for food is one of the most carbon-intensive things that humans do. Thus eliminating meat from one's diet is one of the best actions an individual can engage in to reduce carbon emissions -- along with not flying.

As the meat section at LifeSource has steadily enlarged, other areas of the store had to be reduced. Such as...

Alternatives to meat have dwindled. Back when I became a vegetarian, there were no meat substitutes like there are today. No veggie burgers. No flavored tofu or tempeh. You had to make your own vegetarian meals, being careful to find good sources of protein.

LifeSource used to have many varieties of tofu and tempeh. Now that section has dwindled considerably in size. I used to enjoy the teriyaki tempeh strips as an alternative to tofu, both of which are alternatives to meat. Now I'm pretty sure there is only unflavored tempeh at LifeSource.

And shockingly, today I went to get a package of "beefless ground beef" for the vegetarian tacos I'm about to make for dinner, but found that apparently LifeSource no longer carries this vegetarian staple. So I drove back to Trader Joe's, where I'd already shopped before going to LifeSource, in order to get some.

Other items are lacking. I suppose most people feel aggrieved when a store stops carrying a favorite item, wondering how the heck someone decided to discontinue this marvelous product. That feeling just has been happening more frequently with me at LifeSource. 

As noted above, meat alternatives are becoming less common, while meat items are becoming more common.

The bread section seems smaller now, with fewer whole wheat varieties that we much prefer, though I could be wrong about this. Not a big deal, but today I also saw that one of our favorite jams, Oregon Growers strawberry rhubarb, was no longer on the shelf, with another brand seemingly replacing it. 

And rather strangely, when I tried to custom order a case of Loma Linda Little Links from LifeSource, rather than getting it via Amazon, at first I was told that they don't carry anything from Loma Linda because it doesn't meet their standards.

I don't know what the offending ingredient in Little Links is: corn oil? hydrolyzed soy protein?

Regardless, I can guarantee that Little Links are considerably healthier than lots of items sold by LifeSource. But while my custom order was taken, I never got it, so I had to resort to getting my Little Links via Amazon.

I'll end by noting that LifeSource Natural Foods still is a big favorite of ours. It's a very pleasant place to shop, with friendly employees and a great selection of items.

Not as cheap as Fred Meyer and other stores that carry organic items (LifeSource's prices for organic raspberries are much higher than Fred Meyer, for example), but my wife and I are happy to pay a bit more to support Salem's premier locally owned natural food store.

And we appreciate the 10% senior discount. 

We just wish LifeSource would tilt a bit back in the direction of "health." It's hard for me to believe that I'm the only LifeSource customer longing for tofu and brown rice to return regularly to the deli/takeout section. Doesn't have to be there all the time, of course.

But once in a while would be nice. (Note: my wife just told me that she bought tofu from the Deli section at lunchtime recently. I usually go to the store in the evening, and I don't recall seeing tofu available in the Deli for many months, if not years.)

How to make Crock Pot Pot with coconut oil

Knowing what my interests are, a friend just sent me a link showing how to make a cannabis edible out of ground marijuana buds/leaves and coconut oil -- with a crock pot.

Since edibles and extracts can't be legally purchased here in Oregon by "recreational" users until late in 2016 (currently only those with medical marijuana cards can buy these products), this is a way to make your own. 

I'll also share a video that extols the benefits of coconut oil in cannabis cooking. Put on your apron and fire up the crock pot!