Mushrooms!

About a month ago I got an email, a newsletter, from a popular podcast host in his weekly "this is what I'm doing, this is what I'm buying" etc. He linked to a mushroom coffee that he had tried and liked... I was immediately curious. I come from a long line of mushroom hunters, in fact my paternal grandfather paid his way through college delivering 50 and 100lb blocks of ice and mushroom hunting. There's even a morel statue that is a family artifact. The company behind this curious creation is Four Sigmatic and they are some interesting Finns. 

The first product I tried was the Mushroom Coffee Mix in the above photo, pardon the less-than-professional photo but hey I wanted you to see that I really do buy and drink the stuff. Sadly my mug is empty as you can tell by the TARDIS being black instead of white (heat reactive!), but I'll probably make another mug here in a little bit. Mannnnnnn I LOVE this stuff. YES it tastes like mushrooms, it has a very very earthy taste so if you aren't a fan of mushrooms you aren't going to be a fan of this coffee.

The first thing I really like about Four Sigmatic's mushroom products is, some of the mushrooms are WILD CRAFTED! The rest are grown in mushroom farms that imitate natural conditions as much as possible. They then take the harvested fruiting bodies, dry them and then add them to tanks of boiling water for several hours to get a liquid. Once they have the liquid they move to using distilled alcohol to make the beneficial compounds more bioavailable and move along to evaporation tanks to get rid of the bulk of the water content before moving to a spray-dryer. Voila, you have a very pure mushroom extract powder which is then added to flavouring and/or other powders or herbs for their final products!

Yeah yeah, this sounds like an advertorial or something. Yeah yeah, I use an affiliate link when I link to their site. But no bull, I like this stuff. As I type this post I'm debating which products to order today that I haven't tried yet... I'm thinking I'll go for some of the evening/sleep/anti-stress blends. 

Go get your own mushroom coffee or other products at Four Sigmatic's web store!

Stop saying sweet potatoes are more nutritious than white potatoes!

I get tired of seeing the Paleo community go

“Oh sweet potatoes brah like they are way better than white potatoes, like grok man he only ate sweet potatoes and white potatoes are just the devil! Like uh I saw that they have more of them nutrient things and are healthier for you and just better, sweet potato with butter, sweet potato with cinnamon, sweet potato sweet potato sweet potato!”

I do not care for the taste of sweet potatoes at all, nor do I care for people making claims that have zero basis in reality. Yes, white potatoes are nightshades and a small portion of the population has negative reactions to nightshades... I suspect somewhere, somewhen an individual that had a legitimate nightshade issue found that when they switched to sweet potatoes from white potatoes they had some of their health issues vanish and then someone else saw it and was like "oh man sweet potatoes!" and then another and another and another... and this white potatoes developed a stigma.

The Paleo community is starting to come around to white potatoes with more and more people being adventurous and returning to them, finding they don't have issue with them as they suspected. Still, at least once a week I see someone on a forum or Reddit or a blog demonize white potatoes with comments like "sweet potatoes are more nutritious!" well... why don't we actually take a look at the numbers, because... you know... SCIENCE.

	Sweet Potatoes 200g	White Potatoes 200g
kcals	160	281
fat	0g	0g
cholesterol	0mg	0mg
carbohydrates	41g	64g
dietary fiber	7g	6g
sugars	13g	4g
protein	4g	6g
Vitamin A	38433IU	29.9IU
Vitamin C	39.2mg	37.7mg
Vitamin D	-	-
Vitamin E	1.4mg	0.1mg
Vitamin K	4.6mcg	8.1mcg
Thiamin	0.2mg	.01mg
Riboflavin	0.2mg	0.1mg
Niacin	3mg	4.6mg
Vitamin B6	0.6mg	0.6mg
Folate	12mcg	114mcg
Vitamin B12	-	-
Pantothenic Acid	1.8mg	1.1mg
Choline	26.2mg	43.1mg
Betaine	69.2mg	0.6mg
Calcium	76mg	29.9mg
Iron	1.4mg	1.9mg
Magnesium	54mg	80.7mg
Phosphorous	108mg	224mg
Potassium	950mg	1626mg
Sodium	72mg	20.39mg
Zinc	0.6mg	1mg
Copper	0.3mg	0.4mg
Manganese	1mg	0.6mg
Selenium	0.4mcg	1.5mcg
Fluoride	-

Wait, what? I thought sweet potatoes were so much more nutritious than white potatoes?!?! You're telling me the only thing sweet potatoes has over white potatoes is considerably more vitamin A but white potatoes have more of several other minerals/nutrients/vitamins. Fancy that. Now stop saying sweet potatoes are more nutritious.

Cacao, the pineal gland and crazy dreams

So lately I've been looking into ways to 'decalcify the pineal gland' with the presumption that the pineal gland is your third eye and what not. There are lots of blog posts and articles about this across the web and well... you'll have to decide for yourself the validity of them. Being a spiritual person myself I tend to believe it. That being said I've been using a lot of the compoudns alleged to decalcify/activate/whatever it. I'll do a more detailed post on that in the future but for now I want to talk about Organic Raw Cacao Powder

I've been using Navitas Naturals Organic Raw Cacao Powder by simply putting a tbsp or two in a mug of warm water and drinking it like coffee or hot chocolate (mind you, I really love high cacao % dark chocolates, yeah a lot of people are going to complain it's bitter but I love the taste).

I had been using the other various compounds that allegedly decalcify the pineal gland before adding this to the mix, when I did I had a big coffee mug of it an hour before bed the first night. Man oh man, one of the most vivid (and craziest) dreams I've ever had that had all kinds of stuff screaming out from my subconcious that I'll be trying to figure out for a long time I imagine. Every day since I've just been having it in the morning as one would have coffee, although I will note it's had me a bit spacey during the day at work so you might not want to drink it at work (or hey, maybe you might haha)... but every night I've continued to have rather vivid dreams that have a semi-recurring theme. Some of the most vivid dreams in my life, and I'd really like to hear from YOU folks if you try this too as I'm curious if others start experiencing more vivid dreams (or a higher frequency of dreams).

As far as helping to decalcify the pineal gland, I mean there is no way for me to tell that... your pineal gland is small and I'm not cutting in to my brain to find out, however raw cacao does have numerous beneficial compounds such as: theobromine (a natural stimulant, non-addictive), studies suggest it helps your brian create/release anandamidewhich gives a euphoric effect, contains various minerals like magnesium/sulfur/zinc/iron/copper/potasseum/manganese, has various polyphenols that act as antioxidants, a host of B vitamins, oleic acid, fiber... basically it's a 'super food'... that just happens to make me have awesome dreams.