My friend,Sean S., led me to Art De Vany’s blog a few years ago. He came out with a book last December. A surprising addition to the central theme of the book is the afterword written by Nasim Nicholas Taleb of The Black Swan fame. You can read most of his afterword if you check the first pages link. Some interesting thoughts on how the Black Swan theory applies to diet and exercise.

I contributed this comment (loved reading this article after munching on Trader Joe’s jelly beans last night while watching The Expendables):

What was the typical diet of these cancer-free Inuit Indians? My guess is that it was high in animal proteins and fats and very low in fruits and vegetables. But the animals they were eating were wild and not being raised on factory farms.

The takeaway for me from this article is that processed “foods” can have long-term harmful consequences. Michael Pollan has touched on this in his books, and this article is another reminder to eat only what your grandmother would recognize as food.

Although the only use of fermented potatoes I could quickly find is in the production of vodka, many Hawaiian natives prefer fermented taro. The article has a vivid description of 2-week old poi (mashed taro) with a fuzzy layer of white mold on top which is stirred into the poi. This fermentation provides a source of beneficial bacteria to the Hawaiian diet. I wonder why potatoes aren’t fermented for probiotic reasons.