Melissa's blog

Yesterday marked the first day in Chicago of cold autumn rain. And certainly not the last. Being an avid walker in all types of weather, that means I have to have footwear that can handle 

wet weather -- any kind of wet weather from hot rain to snow. Of course you can get rainboots anywhere, but traditional rainboots have some serious issues.

I've been on the hunt for the "perfect" minimalist sandal for years. For me that means a couple of things:

Sometimes I think about deleting this blog. After all, I started it to talk about "paleo," a diet I no longer follow. Largely I eat what I want now. I eat a lot at restaurants and when I'm not I eat a lot of simple satiating foods– full fat yogurt, cheese, crispbread (I like the rye kind from Finland), pickles, jerky, smoked fish, that kind of thing. I get a lot of exercise from walking (usually 2-6 miles a day) and do some body weight workouts and yoga nearly every day.

Sometimes you just realize how much of a bubble you've ended up in. When you're in the health/diet/fitness world sometimes you are liable to forget that there are plenty of people who do nothing particularly special with their diet or exercise who are extremely attractive. When I moved from writing about food in light of diet to more general restaurant writing I was exposed to more of these people. Because a lot of them work in front of the house positions as servers or bartenders. I met people who have lifestyles and diets that would horrify most personal trainers and diet gurus.

A little off topic from the usual content of this blog, but thought I might as well post it here :)

Writer David Gumpert reports on a controvery at The Weston A. Price Foundation over fermented cod liver oil, particularly the Green Pasture brand that the organization promoted. 

A chronic and frustrating, but not deadly, disease like IBS is a perfect one for experimentation. However, I’d never considered alcohol as anything but a trigger. And that wasn’t really borne out of experiences, but a cultural bias against it. It was just unhealthy, right?

Recently a post on LinkedIn titled "25% of the people have a 4th cone and see colors as they are ;p" by Professor Diana Derval has gone viral and probably because the "test" in the post tells a lot of people they are tetrachromats.

You see between 33 and 39 colors: you are a tetrachromat, like bees, and have 4 types of cones (in the purple/blue, green, red plus yellow area). You are irritated by yellow, so this color will be nowhere to be found in your wardrobe. 25% of the population is tetrachromat.

Increasingly I see a lot of articles deriding the “gluten free” fad. I wonder if people writing them have actually talked to people who are gluten-free despite not being diagnosed with celiac disease. I’ve talked to many of them. And almost always, behind their gluten-free diet is a story of the failure of our medical system.

It’s funny because when I blogged about health and diet I was often accused of being a shill for meat or dairy or whatever. I wasn’t, but now writing about restaurants I actually am now in a minefield and worry I might become a shill if I’m not careful. That’s because of something few people are willing to talk about, which is comps: free meals or other food products paid for by PR companies, restaurants or other food and drink producers.