Is Your Extra-Virgin Olive Oil Really a Virgin?
From the Oh great – here’s another thing to worry about department: Connecticut just passed a law to ensure the purity of olive oil after finding other oils, including soybean and peanut oil, posing as extra virgin olive oil.
Here’s an excerpt:
In April 2007, FDA investigators and U.S. Marshals seized more than 10,000 cases of olive oil from storage facilities in New York and New Jersey. It turned out that tins labeled as extra virgin contained mostly soybean oil mixed with low grade olive-pomace oil. The seized products had an estimated retail value of more than $700,000.
Here’s the link to the original article.
I trust Costco – where I buy my extra virgin – to ensure they provide quality products. For example, they only sell vitamins that are USP verified. I hope their commitment to quality extends to their oils.
Exercise Questions
I did not exercise yesterday, and it bothered me a bit because I want to keep this up – I think it’s important to regularly exercise and I need to incorporate this into my life. As this is the first real effort in years, I’d like this to stick – I don’t think I can wait another handful of years to get started.
So this morning I went to the gym much later than previous days – about 8:30am. It somehow seemed easier. I read my book, and the 20 minutes seemed to go by quicker – and the speed – 2.0 miles per hour seemed somehow slower.
As I had had coffee prior to exercise, I took my heart rate while exercising just to see if it was higher from the exercise.
Surprise surprise – it was lower – hovering around 100 – the highest it went was 103.
The last 5 or 6 days I was using the treadmill, my heart rate was hovering between 110 and 115.
So…what’s going on here? Did I actually condition myself enough to get my heart rate lower by 12 points under similar stress in less than a week? Did getting a bit more sleep – maybe 7 hours – have something to do with it? Did the coffee have some sort of counter-intuitive effect? Can this be accounted for as a normal fluctuation?
The last – some normal fluctuation – is the one that makes the least amount of sense. All the other times I did my mile on the treadmill, the pulse was always in the same range as mentioned above – this was the first change.
Interesting…I wonder what the heart rate will be tomorrow?
Eats
Being on vacation, I got up late – 6:15am. Had 16oz coffee with cream, and nothing else until I had another cup around 11:30 – not from some real craving as much as a luxury to enjoy on a day off.
Finally got hungry around 1pm. In the kitchen I found some hard-boiled eggs and some cut up celery – at least it looked like celery. My thinking ran: if you put diced celery in tuna salad, why not egg salad?
So I conjured up the following:
- 2 hard-boiled eggs
- cup of cut up celery or other crunchy mild-flavored vegetable
- salt
- pepper,
- Djion mustard
- 2 tablespoons mayo
Mix and eat.
I ate about half of this – one of the members of the Low Carb Confidential Taste Panel came along and ate the other half – I suppose it tasted OK. We ate this on pork rinds.
When that was done, I was still hungry, and I thought of the comment left me – eat as much as you want as long as it’s low carb (that was more or less what he said). I don’t necessarily believe that – I think there’s a component of portion control necessary for weight loss, especially as you get older, and especially if your body is already well acclimated to a low carb diet – but the thought allowed me to eat more, so it was a handy excuse to have one of the Italian sausages and a half-pickle with some cheese.
The evening consisted of a hamburger mixed in with some stir-fried celery and egg. I had some red wine with it and was sitting with my 2-year-old on my lap, eating sugar cookies on my lap from a huge plastic bootful of the stuff. She kept taking a bite, then dropping the remainder of the cookie in my bowl.
So what’s a guy to do when a beautiful girl sitting on his lap drops sugar cookies in his bowl?
You know what I did. They were great sugar cookies.
Anyway, the scale took pity on me and remained the same as yesterday – 209.6.
And I’m just another guy blaming a beautiful woman for a momentary lapse of reason.
Low Carb Confidential 
The body is very efficient. When you cycle at the same speed, at the same incline and for the same amount of time every day, it will soon learn to do the job with as little muscle movement and as little calorie expenditure as possible (though I’m not sure that happens within a week, that seems very fast).
You can switch it up by doing Interval Training or sprints: Once every x minutes, cycle as fast as you can for, say, 30 seconds. Really go all out. Then cycle normally to recover. Try it out!
Hey I think I was the one who commented to eat as much as you want as long as it was low carb (I think). I agree you probably don’t want to overdo it. But if your concerned about it then by default you probably won’t overdo it.
As for the exercise I think you probably are fitter. I noticed big changes in my heart rate in the first month.
Dr Dan – Yep – you were my enabler there to ‘eat as much as you want’.
External confirmation of our existing prejudices is always welcome.