Library: Nutrition Link Page

Websites and Collections

• Yummly: Yummly is an aggregator of recipes. I primarily use it for ideas: I can put in the ingredients I want to use, specify what cuisines, flavors, and more I'm looking for, and see a whole bunch of recipes that match. The site underwent some changes recently and is now more bloated and less helpful, but it is still better than any other alternative I've found.
• NutritionData: If I am trying to find out the nutrition content of something, this is the place I look. It doesn't just provide a few of the vitamins and minerals contained a given food, it lists them all, going into so much detail that you can even see how much of a specific amino acid is present.

Individual Pages and Essays

• Effects of cooking on vitamins: The charts presented here are the best I've found on vitamins, detailing what actually causes each substance to break down. Other charts on the website give actual numbers for different tested foods and are invaluable in balancing the various cooking methods.
• Safety for Patients With Celiac Disease of Baked Goods Made of Wheat Flour Hydrolyzed During Food Processing: A mouthful of a name, this study is one of the most important ever conducted on bread. It conclusively shows how people were able to survive—even thrive—on wheat for thousands of years: sourdough fermentation. A proper fermentation reduced the gluten in regular wheat from over 80,000 ppm down to 8 ppm, which is well below the threshhold for "gluten-free" and completely safe even for celiac sufferers. Thus, all the seemingly paradoxical evidence is now synthesized: gluten is indeed toxic to humans and it has never been a big part of successful traditional diets, not because people didn't eat bread, but because sourdough fermentation makes bread safe! This is why only traditional bread—sourdough—is promoted in the NKDG.
• Ketogenic diets and physical performance: This study details the high-fat Inuit diet and experiments related to it. Some of the more interesting lessons include the importance of protein restriction (too much protein causes serious health problems) and the necessity of an adaption period (after which a person will regain all the strength they had before transitioning to the high-fat diet).
• Rabbit starvation: While I am on the dangers of protein, this Wikipedia article seems apt. Despite being promoted as the macronutritional panacea, protein has the potential to be one of the most deadly sources of calories, if consumed as a very large part of one's diet.

Blog Posts

Perfect Health Diet

Perfect Health Diet, or PHD, is the most well-researched, comprehensive, and useful diet I've found; it is currently the main source of material for the NKDG. The blog itself is enlightening, but here is a key page that shouldn't be missed:

• The Diet: This is, as one might expect, a guide to their diet. Obviously, I have chosen to make correctly-prepared legumes and sourdough bread an important part of the NKDG and have to take into account the Orthodox teachings on fasting, but the imprint of their diet on my ideas should be obvious. I highly recommend their work to anyone interested in nutrition.

Mark's Daily Apple

Mark's Daily Apple is full of helpful nutrtion and lifestyle information; sometimes I spend a fair amount of time poking around the archives and gleaning useful insights from the postings. There are certainly some differences between his outlook and the principles of the NKDG, but Mark Sisson's humility, sense of balance, and eagerness to discern the truth all contribute to my recommendation of his work. Some of the posts that I like best are:

• Are Traditionally Prepared Grains Healthy?: This is a quick overview of the problem with [unprocessed] grains in the human diet. Of course, even Biblical civilizations have decided that it *is* worth the trouble to prepare grains correctly (like making sourdough bread), and the NKDG was designed with this in mind.
• 2 Minute Salad: Though I would probably not use chicken as the meat of choice, Mark's general idea of the 2 minute salad is solid and really highlights how easy it is to eat a fresh, balanced meal with very little time and effort. Take away the meat entirely and you have an essentially lenten dish—another spin on his salad that is also compatible with the NKDG. Either way, it's a good framework that helps keep a balance between raw and variously cooked foods.

Elsewhere on the Web

• Principles of Healthy Diets: This is the Weston A. Price Foundation's introductory booklet, and it doesn't pull any punches as it goes straight to the center of many dietary myths and gives a great overview of what healthy eating looks like. It introduces readers to traditional diets, the different types of fats, fat-soluable vitamins, and other topics which are vital to good physical health. While some of their advice is now known to be incorrect (e.g., over-emphasis of whole grains and prohibitions against white rice, microwaves, etc.), a lot of the material here went into the NKDG and it remains a recommended read.
• Top 10 Reasons To Eat Real Sourdough Bread — Even If You’re Gluten Intolerant: A less difficult read than the watershed scientific study on sourdough (above), it is full of reasons why sourdough bread is good for the body.
• Soaking Grains, Beans, Nuts and Seeds 101: I don't often soak produce myself—I buy forms that are already soaked and/or properly prepared—for the sake of convenience. But this is the guide I use when I do: it doesn't cover much in the way of advanced techniques or link to a multitude of peer-reviewed studies, but it does provide everything I need to know for a basic soak.
• Comparison of Vegetable Fermentation Methods: Fermentation is also something I also don't usually delve into myself but, once again, here is a simple, experience-based overview of many of the different fermentation methods.
• The Science Behind Sauerkraut Fermentation: A more intermediate-level guide to and examination of fermentation, sauerkraut is something I want to try to make myself. The conclusion, Sauerkraut Survivor – Final Report, is also worth reading, as it examines the various physical setups and clearly demonstrates which ones work and which ones don't.