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Research of the Week

Only one type of human fat cell responds to insulin.

After mechanical loading (lifting heavy things), muscle cells tell fat cells to release fat.

Less sleep for new mothers, faster aging.

Metabolic rate doesn’t have to decline with age.

Obesity may increase virality.

New Primal Blueprint Podcasts

Episode 513: Gina Swire: Host Elle Russ chats with Gina Swire, self-love expert.

Health Coach Radio: AdaPia d’Errico needs you in your purpose.

Media, Schmedia

Have you heard of zero-zero wine?

Out of fire, a new beginning for the land.

Interesting Blog Posts

Remember to remember.

Most strangers are decent people.

Staying gluten-free on the Big Island.

Social Notes

Looks like a creation myth.

Everything Else

I get it.

Anemia on the rise in children.

Things I’m Up to and Interested In

It’s about time: Elite female athletes are changing their training and slowing down and getting stronger to heed the lessons of the female athlete triad.

Beautiful: Treesong.

Something I’ve long thought: I bet we’re underestimating almost every animal’s social skills.

Good opportunity: Peter Attia is hiring.

Bad for car quality, I’d imagine: Volkswagen internal employee canteen nixes meat.

Question I’m Asking

What do you think about the prospect of psychedelics becoming mainstream?

Recipe Corner

• Grilled tamarind chicken.
• Taco-stuffed sweet potatoes, great post-workout meal.

Time Capsule

One year ago (Aug 7 – Aug 13)

• 8 Ways to Deal with a Difficult Partner Who Doesn’t Eat Like You— How to make it work.
• Male Menopause is a Thing. What To Do About It. — What to do.

Comment of the Week

“The article introduces psychopathy as characterized by by the presence of behaviors that conflict with the social norms of society, and I’m pretty sure anyone sufficiently primal fits that description.”

–I neither confirm nor deny this.

The post New and Noteworthy: What I Read This Week—Edition 142 appeared first on Mark’s Daily Apple.

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Why do some people live well into their nineties with zero health problems, while others get sidelined by diabetes, heart disease, and autoimmune conditions? Sure, your genes play a role, but it’s your lifestyle that pulls the biggest lever.

If you’ve followed the Primal Blueprint for more than a minute, you know it’s possible to reprogram your genes, regardless of what health struggles your parents or their parents faced. As a health coach, and someone who fully intends to become a centenarian one day, I’m fascinated by cultures who have their diet and lifestyle totally dialed in.

Take the Blue Zones, for instance. These regions are spread throughout the world — but it’s not where they’re located that’s so important, it’s more about what the locals do on the daily that makes the biggest impact on their health.

What’s Up with Blue Zones?

Named by Dan Buettner, the National Geographic journalist who studied them, Blue Zones are five regions where people are known to live healthier and longer than anywhere else in the world, reaching the age of 100 at a significantly greater rate than most folks living in North America.

Despite being scattered throughout the globe (the zones are in Greece, Italy, Japan, Costa Rica, and southern California), they share nine key lifestyle habits, including:

• Move naturally
• Have a clear sense of purpose
• Manage stress
• Eat ‘til you’re 80% full
• Consume a plant-based diet (stay with me here…)
• Drink in moderation
• Be part of a community
• Put family first
• Maintain a fulfilling social life

I’m not saying you should drop your carnivore diet for one rich in grains and legumes, but you can’t argue with the fact that certain behavioural, societal, and environmental factors play a huge role in health and lifespan.

Is It Genetics or Lifestyle?

The study that fueled Buettner’s research was this one published in 1996, which evaluated 2872 pairs of Danish twins over a thirty-year period. Researchers looked at a variety of genetic and lifestyle influences and determined that only about 20% of how long you live is dictated by your genes, where the other 80% is all about lifestyle.

Since then, more and more studies continue to roll out confirming his findings. Like this one that analyzed the DNA methylation levels of 318 men and women, ages 65-105, revealing that epigenetic control in aging had less to do with the participants’ chronological age and more to do with how they lived their life. Not only that, recent studies exposed the grim consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic, showing how factors including stress, isolation, and lacking purpose had a direct correlation to a decline in mental and physical health.¹ According to research, loneliness shaves fifteen years off your life expectancy – roughly the same impact as being obese or smoking a pack of cigarettes a day.²

Since Buettner’s research has been out, several cities have adopted the Blue Zone principals and seen dramatic results. They’ve implemented these nine secrets of longevity to make it easier to get up and move, make new friends, and find a reason for just being – citing results such as a 4% decrease in daily stress, up to 14% increase in people who say they’re thriving, and millions of dollars secured for community walking and biking paths.

Ready to Defy the Limits of Age?

You might not agree with all aspects of the Blue Zone principals — I do live for a good NY strip — but there’s more than just something to this whole longevity thing. The best part is that it doesn’t require any calorie counting, tracking of macros, or crushing it at the gym. Here’s how to incorporate these time-tested secrets into your own life:

1. Move naturally. Similar to the Primal Blueprint’s Move Frequently tenet, this Blue Zone principal forgoes slogging away on the treadmill, rushing off to spin class, or in contrast, sitting for hours in front of a computer, and encourages moving the way the body was intended to move naturally: walking, gardening, playing, or doing chores around the house.
2. Have a clear sense of purpose. Called “ikigai” in Japanese culture, this term basically means that you wake up in the morning with some kind of drive or motivating force. To find yours, figure out what you’re passionate about — it could be parenting, painting, cooking, or health coaching, then take steps to act on that passion.
3. Manage stress. As you probably know, chronic stress can lead to chronic inflammation, which is linked to nearly every major disease. The people who live in Blue Zone regions have routines that eliminate stress, including having a gratitude practice, praying, taking daily naps, and engaging in happy hours. Think about what you can add to your routine to lower your stress levels.
4. Eat ‘til you’re 80% full. Our longest-living counterparts also follow the “don’t stuff yourself” rule, only eating until their stomachs are 80% full. Another thing they do? They eat their last meal in the late afternoon or early evening – without mindlessly reaching for a second dinner or something snacky or sweet before bed.
5. Consume a plant-based diet. Unlike the Primal Blueprint, beans, soy, lentils, and grains are a dietary staple of most Blue Zone centenarians. While that won’t fly here, there are a few things we can learn from our plant-based friends, including eating more green leafy vegetables and seasonal fruits, and less processed convenience foods.
6. Drink in moderation. Folks in Blue Zones (except the Adventists in Southern California) who consume 1-2 glasses of alcohol per day with friends and/or food outlive both non-drinkers and heavy drinkers alike. Spoiler alert: you can’t save up your weekly allotment and binge drink on the weekends.
7. Be part of a community. The centenarians in these regions all belong to a faith-based community, but religion isn’t necessarily a mandatory here. Having a sense of belonging — whether it’s in your neighborhood, through your kids’ school, a book club, or right here on Mark’s Daily Apple — can create a feeling of community.
8. Put your family first. Got aging parents or grandparents? Keep them close by. Buettner’s research shows having that kind of proximity to family can lower disease and mortality rates of everyone in your household. Committing to a life partner (no pressure, right?) can also add up to three years to your life.
9. Maintain a fulfilling social life. By following the lead of the Okinawans in Japan who create moais (groups of five friends committed to each other for life) we can benefit from having close social circles. And now that the world is opening back up, we have more opportunities to go out and engage with our like-minded friends.

Live Long and Prosper

There’s a lot we can learn from the Blue Zone regions, even if we don’t agree on dietary choices. It all comes down to our environment and lifestyle, consciously swapping out stress, chronic overachieving, and neglecting our own needs for natural movement, connection, purpose, and self-care. When we start making these elements a priority, we can tap into the longevity secrets these centenarians have known for years. It might be the closest thing to the fountain of youth we’ve ever seen.

Do you follow any of the Blue Zone principals? Tell me in the comments below.

The post What We Can Learn from World’s Longest Living Populations appeared first on Mark’s Daily Apple.

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The ability of the human population to produce unending reams of utterly nonsensical health and wellness trends is unparalleled. Never content to rest on our laurels, humankind feels compelled to come up with some wellness trend or another. Some of the motivation is financial—it’s hard to sell the old tried-and-true methods that really do work. Some of the motivation is curiosity—people love trying new things, no matter how silly they sound. And most of the motivation is probably sheer frustration—most people get health and wellness wrong, and very little of it actually works, so there’s always plenty of consumers ready to consume wellness content.

But still, you can’t write it off. You have to bust the wellness myths, and not just to steer people away from the stuff that doesn’t work, but also to sift through the garbage to find the nuggets of truth that occasionally emerge.

So today I’m going to cover a few of them. If it works out, if you people like it, I’ll do some more in the future.

Kombucha

I don’t trust kombucha as a “health elixir” very much. I trust kombucha about as far as I can throw it, which isn’t very far. I once threw a glass of kombucha and the liquid fell out almost instantly and became a mist that sprayed the ground 8 feet away. Like I said: not very far.

Anyway, you know I’m not a stickler for studies. While I do like to cite my assertions and back up my opinions with research, I’m also open to anecdotes and speculation, especially when it makes intuitive or ancestral sense. However, kombucha has very little of either.

There’s one human study on kombucha.¹ It’s inconclusive.

It’s plausible that it offers health benefits. It’s a probiotic beverage, and it’s made out of tea. But in the studies that find that kombucha contains compounds that have been shown to improve human health (particularly liver health), they admit that these same compounds are also found in the base tea.² Could you drink green tea and improve liver health? Possibly. That’s been shown repeatedly. Could you drink kombucha green tea and improve liver health? Potentially, but it hasn’t been shown to be any better than the green tea you started with.

However, historically, kombucha wasn’t an everyday drink. It was medicine doled out by healers. You didn’t have kids drinking it instead of water. You didn’t have pregnant women chugging it. That’s not to say it’s bad for you. Enough people drink it that I doubt it poses any serious acute danger to human health. But as a health panacea, I don’t see the evidence.

I definitely don’t trust alcoholic kombucha. I can drink good quality wine and feel great, assuming I avoid drinking entire bottles of the stuff and stick to the natural, lower-alcohol dry-farmed wines. I can have a couple beers with dinner or on a hot day and have no ill effect. But if I have even one hard kombucha, even a low alcohol kind, I don’t feel right. It “seems” toxic, if that makes sense. And it’s not the alcohol content, because if I have more alcohol by volume via good wine the effect is absent.

Coffee with Lemon Juice for Fat Loss

Coffee can help with fat loss, particularly if you pair with low level physical activity. You see, coffee/caffeine liberates fatty acids from fat cells—this is called lipolysis—and then if you go for a long brisk walk, take a little jog, or even do some strength training, you will burn some of those newly liberated fatty acids. It’s not magic, of course, and the majority of people who take this to mean that they can get a Triple Caramel Pumpkin Garbage Latte Frap and lose weight will be sorely disappointed (and fatter). But smart use of coffee can support improved body composition.

However, lemon juice does nothing to help with the weight loss. All it does is make the coffee taste bad. I know because I just tried it. Awful.

Cabbage Soup Diet

This thing has been kicking around for decades. I remember people back in the 80s going on the “Cabbage Soup Diet,” and pretty much all of them failed miserably.

The most popular iteration I’ve seen isn’t really even a cabbage soup diet. It’s a fat-free cabbage soup diet supplemented with, depending on the day of the week, bananas, skim milk, brown rice, skinless chicken breast or lean beef, and non-starchy vegetables. 2-3 times a day you eat a plain cabbage soup—cabbage cooked in water with salt, carrots, onions, mushrooms, parsley, and spices. And then you get to add a few of those other foods listed each day.

If anything, eating too much cabbage can make weight loss harder. Cabbage is a good source of goitrogenic compounds that are great in small to moderate doses but in high doses can reduce thyroid activity, which makes it harder to lose body fat and depresses the metabolic rate.

This could be a decent basis for a short-term protein-sparing modified fast, but instead of emphasizing the cabbage soup I would emphasize the lean meat and non-starchy vegetables and I would make a few modifications. I would bump the protein up super high. I wouldn’t add any extra fat but I wouldn’t freak out about fat that comes attached to the meat. Instead of skim milk, do low-fat kefir to provide better nutrients and probiotics; also, in observational trials, low-fat dairy is linked to worse health outcomes unless it’s fermented. Instead of boring cabbage soup, I would do a bone broth-based vegetable soup that includes cabbage but isn’t solely comprised of it.

These changes would make the “cabbage soup diet” actually effective as a short-term option.

The Master Cleanse: Lemon Juice, Cayenne Pepper, Water and Maple Syrup Detox Tea

You know why it’s popular, right? Because it tastes good. I’ll admit that. You warm up some good water, stir in some lemon juice, a little cayenne, and a healthy dose of high quality maple syrup, and you’ve got yourself a tasty warm sweet spicy sour tea. But it’s not cleansing you. It’s not detoxing you. It’s just some polyphenols, some potassium, some fructose, some capscaicin, and some water. There’s nothing wrong with those things, and I would say that they can form part of a healthy diet. They just aren’t magic, nor are they the master key to a body free of toxins and heavy metals and all the other evil things our corrupted animal bodies supposedly harbor.

This is just the most prominent example of a “detox” or “cleansing” drink. There are hundreds of others out there.

I will say that all those “skeptics” (who are actually cynics) who say “detox doesn’t work, just let your liver and kidney do it” get it just as wrong as the people who drink expensive cleansing teas and juices. You can absolutely augment the efficacy of your inborn detoxification capacities. Here’s a post detailing how you go about supporting those organs and systems. No cayenne or maple syrup required.

If you’re set on it, though, there is something you can do with cayenne pepper, lemon juice, and maple syrup. I learned this in Thailand once when some backpacker staying at the same place as us showed me his morning pick-me-up: He was dumping a sack of red powder into a small glass of water. He mixed it together and tossed it back, making a face reminiscent of a teen trying cheap gin for the first time. Turns out he was taking shots of powdered Thai chiles. Said it was better than coffee and offered me a shot. I accepted, of course. I took it, shot it, and probably made the same face he did, but it woke me up. It may have been placebo (though I wasn’t expecting much), but I swear I felt buzzed, really calm yet energized for an hour or two after. I’ve since learned that adding lemon juice and a touch of maple syrup to the cayenne (or powdered Thai chili) shot takes the edge off the spice. This won’t detox you but it does wake you up.

Alright, folks. That’s it for today. If you want to hear me deconstruct any other wellness trends, let me know down below and I’d be happy to make this a regular feature of the blog.

Take care, everyone.

The post Try It or Toss It: Mythbusters for 4 Wellness Trends appeared first on Mark’s Daily Apple.

Originally Posted At: https://breakingmuscle.com/feed/rss

Put yourself in your potential client’s shoes. Why would they fork over a large amount of cash to train with a person they barely know? Or, when they become clients, how do you keep them coming back? The answer is in the buy-in.

Are the clients buying what you’re selling?

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The back-to-school season is always bittersweet. Emotionally, it’s a tug-of-war between relief that the kids are returning to school, anguish that the summer is already over, and dread at the thought of having to get the kids out of the house on time every morning.

Primal parents often feel torn on the issue of school lunches. On the one hand, we generally like to control what our kids eat. On the other hand, packing lunch every morning is a grind. By my count, I’ve packed somewhere north of 2,500 lunches since my eldest started school, and I only have two kids who aren’t even in high school yet. (I just calculated this for the first time. That number makes me want to go take a nap!)

At this point, I have a pretty good system in place. Most days, my kids’ lunches consist of four elements:

• Protein – some sort of “main dish”
• Vegetable
• Fruit
• Snack – something extra for them to nosh on

This template makes it easy to throw together quick, healthy, balanced lunches.

What to Pack for School Lunches

Below you’ll find examples of what you could pack for each category, as well as some gear recommendations and tips. What I like about this modular system is that it works for kids of all ages and different dietary preferences. Lunches can be simple or more elaborate, and it’s adaptable to different budget levels. Picky eaters still get some variety if they like even a couple items from each category that you can mix and match. If your kids are voracious eaters, you can double down on the protein and add an extra snack item. This strategy also works whether or not your kids eat strictly Primal.

Protein: The Lunch Box Centerpiece

While items like lunchmeat and beef jerky are lunch box staples, don’t limit yourself to the obvious fare. Anything that they willingly eat at home is fair game for lunch boxes.

Options include:

• Lunchmeat
• Salami
• Beef jerky, beef sticks
• Cooked chicken, steak, etc. (eaten cold)
• Chicken salad
• Cooked salmon, smoked salmon
• Hard-boiled eggs, egg salad
• Cooked bacon
• Cheese slices or cubes
• String cheese
• Cottage cheese
• Greek yogurt
• Protein smoothie (see the Gear section below)
• Tuna, tuna salad
• Sardines, anchovies (hey, some kids eat them!)
• Leftover stews, chili, soups (heated and packed in a Thermos)

Serving suggestions:

• Sandwich on your bread of choice
• Wrapped in lettuce or a grain-free tortilla
• On top of a salad
• Greek yogurt parfaits with toppings like berries, nuts, seeds, dried coconut, cacao nibs, or granola (tip: pack the toppings separately and let the kids assemble at school)
• Cottage cheese with fruit (berries, melon, pineapple) or savory toppings (avocado, cherry tomatoes)

Crunchy and Colorful Vegetables for Kids

If your kid will eat a Big-ass Salad for school lunch, that’s fantastic. Mine won’t, but they will eat raw vegetables. Include any raw or cooked vegetables your kids like. Here are some standard faves:

• Carrot sticks
• Celery sticks
• Cherry tomatoes
• Cucumber slices
• Bell pepper slices
• Snap peas
• Broccoli
• Cauliflower

Don’t forget the vegetable dips!

The best way to get kids to eat vegetables is to include a little container of dipping sauce. Think ranch, hummus, baba ganoush, guacamole, or nut butter (for celery sticks).

Fruit for More Color

Any fruit your kids will eat is on the menu here. The Primal Blueprint suggests opting for local, in-season fruit when possible. Frozen is always an option, too, although things like frozen berries can thaw and become too mushy. Frozen peach and mango wedges hold up well, though.

Remember that even if you opt for a low-carb or ketogenic diet, kids are generally more metabolically flexible than adults, so there’s no need to worry about including fruit in their diets. Fruits contain nutrients and fiber and can easily be part of a Primal kid’s repertoire. Some good lunch box options are:

• Apples
• Berries
• Oranges
• Peaches
• Nectarines
• Avocado
• Dried or freeze-dried fruit (look at added sugar content)

Finish with Snacks

I’m using the term “snacks” here to include all the other items you might use to round out the lunch box. This is where you can add something crunchy, sweet, savory, and/or salty for more variety, plus get more food in when you’re feeding hungry tweens or teens. Also, if your kids’ schools are like mine, they need something designated for mid-morning snack time.

Note that with the list below, I’m assuming that you’re choosing options made with Primal-friendlier ingredients (grain-free flours and whatnot) if that’s how you feed your kids:

• Protein bars
• Energy balls
• Muffins
• Pancakes, waffles
• Chia pudding
• Seaweed snacks
• Tortilla chips
• Plantain chips
• Pork rinds
• Crackers
• Olives
• Trail mix, nuts

Healthy School Lunch Ideas

As an example of what this could look like, here are some tried and true combos:

Traditional: turkey sandwich or wrap + cherry tomatoes with ranch dip + strawberries + plantain chips

Two-minute lunch: Greek yogurt + baby carrots + mandarin orange + seaweed snacks

Big eater: tuna salad + celery sticks with peanut butter + avocado + protein bar + trail mix

Deconstructed chicken nachos: cooked chicken mixed with shredded cheese + sliced radishes + salsa + avocado + grain-free tortilla chips

Shmunchables (for the kids who ask for those prepackaged lunch kits, wink wink): salami + sliced cheese + ranch dip or mustard + apple slices + grain-free crackers + cookie

Gear

Bento boxes are popular with kids and adults alike because it’s fun to have a mini smorgasbord when you sit down to lunch. The protein + vegetable + fruit + snack system is the same idea, and you can certainly pack these lunches in bento boxes if you have them. I just keep a large stash of small containers and reusable bags on hand.

Here are my essentials:

• Lots of small containers in different sizes (these are great for dips)
• Reusable bags made from food-safe fabric or silicone
• Smoothie bottles or pouches (I also use these to carry fuel on long runs or bike rides)
• Thermos for hot food (Klean Kanteen version)
• Silicone baking cups for partitioning snacks inside larger containers
• Ice packs for keeping food cold

Tips for Making Lunch Prep Easier

Honestly, I am not a meal prepper. I see the value in it, but I like having the freedom to decide what I want to eat each day. That said, I’m a big fan of prepping for school lunches. You can save a lot of time in the morning by planning ahead.

Make big batches of carrot muffins, zucchini bread, energy balls, and protein pancakes to keep in the freezer. Throw them in the lunch box frozen, and they’ll thaw by lunchtime. (By the way, yogurt tubes, applesauce pouches, and smoothies can be frozen, too.)

Cut up a bunch of vegetables on Sunday night. You can portion them into individual containers at the beginning of the week, but my kids grab them and eat them after school, too, so they’re gone by Tuesday. Instead, I store cut veggies in big containers and throw them into smaller containers each morning.

Let older kids pack their own lunches. Provide them with this basic template and cede control of what, specifically, goes in.

Finally, I’ll note that it’s awesome if you have the time and energy to make homemade granola bars and cut your kids’ fruit into fun shapes each morning. Please don’t feel bad if you don’t have the wherewithal to do so, or if making Instagram-worthy lunches doesn’t bring you joy. I’m right there with you! I trust that we’re all doing the best we can with whatever time and financial resources we have.

The post School Lunch Ideas for Picky Eaters, Prolific Primal Eaters, and All Kids in Between appeared first on Mark’s Daily Apple.

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Findings from a new University of Kentucky College of Medicine and College of Health Sciences study add to growing evidence that resistance exercise has unique benefits for fat loss. The Department of Physiology and Center for Muscle Biology study^[1] published in the FASEB Journal found that r

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Someone asked me how I would program an 8-week CrossFit cycle and I had to say, I wouldn’t. Frankly, I prefer 12, 14 or 16-week programming blocks because I think 8-weeks is just too short to create some meaningful impact.

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It’s like social media always says, regular physical exercise is awesome and it’s your fault you don’t look like an Instagram filter on steroids. However, real scientist also know that working out decreases the risk of virtually all chronic illnesses, although they are not quite sure how that happens or the mechanism behind it.

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The star of this lemon caper chicken recipe is a simple sauce with bold, memorable flavor. Three easy ingredients – capers, parsley, and butter, plus one secret ingredient (the brine from the caper jar) come together into a rich and piquant sauce that will have you licking the plate.

The versatile sauce pairs well with chicken breast, but if you have a little more time on your hands the sauce can certainly be served with thicker skin-on chicken breasts or thighs, a pork chop or tenderloin, a pan-seared fillet of fish or roasted vegetables.

Here’s how to make it.

Gluten-free Lemon Caper Chicken Recipe

Ingredients

• 1.5 lbs boneless skinless chicken breasts (4-6 chicken breasts)
• 2 tbsp. tapioca starch
• 1/2 tsp. salt
• 1/2 tsp. black pepper
• 1/4 cup butter, separated
• 5 cloves garlic, sliced
• 3/4 cup (or more) chicken broth
• 1 large lemon
• 3 tbsp. capers, rinsed
• 1/4 cup chopped parsley
• Salt and pepper

Directions

Use a meat mallet to flatten the chicken breasts between two pieces of parchment until they are uniform in thickness, or about ½ inch thick. Combine the tapioca starch, salt, and pepper and sprinkle the mixture on all sides of the chicken.

Heat 2 tablespoons of butter in a skillet over medium heat. Once hot, add the chicken breasts and sear for 4-5 minutes on each side. Remove the chicken breasts and set them aside.

Heat another tablespoon of butter in the skillet. Once it is melted and bubbly, add the garlic slices and saute until fragrant. Add the chicken broth and stir with a spoon or whisk to pick up any browned bits off the bottom of the pan. Once the mixture begins to bubble, slice the lemon in half and squeeze the juice from half of the lemon into the pan and stir it in. Once the mixture starts bubbling, add your chicken back to the pan. Cook the chicken for a few minutes on each side until the internal temperature reaches 165 degrees.

Add the capers and half of the parsley and fold them into the sauce. Once the sauce has reached your desired thickness (you can always add a little more broth if you want more sauce), remove the pan from the heat and add in the last tablespoon of butter and mix it into the sauce.

Slice the remaining half of the lemon into thin slices and top the chicken with the lemon slices and remaining parsley and serve alongside your favorite veggie side dish.

Print

Gluten-free Lemon Caper Chicken Recipe

---

• 
  Author: Mark’s Daily Apple
• 
  Prep Time: 5
• 
  Cook Time: 15
• 
  Total Time: 20 minutes
• 
  Yield: 4 servings
• 
  Diet: Gluten Free

Print Recipe

Pin Recipe

Description

Lemon butter chicken with a creamy caper sauce.

---

Ingredients

1.5 lbs boneless skinless chicken breasts (4-6 breasts)

2 tbsp. tapioca starch

1/2 tsp. salt

1/2 tsp. black pepper

1/4 cup butter, separated

5 cloves garlic, sliced

3/4 cup (or more) chicken broth

1 large lemon

3 tbsp. capers, rinsed

1/4 cup chopped parsley

Salt and pepper

---

Instructions

Use a meat mallet to flatten the chicken breasts between two pieces of parchment until they are uniform in thickness, or about ½ inch thick. Combine the tapioca starch, salt and pepper and sprinkle the mixture on all sides of the chicken. 

Heat 2 tablespoons of butter in a skillet over medium heat. Once hot, add the chicken breasts and sear for 4-5 minutes on each side. Remove the chicken breasts and set them aside.

Heat another tablespoon of butter in the skillet. Once it is melted and bubbly, add the garlic slices and saute until fragrant. Add the chicken broth and stir with a spoon or whisk to pick up any browned bits off the bottom of the pan. Once the mixture begins to bubble, slice the lemon in half and squeeze the juice from half of the lemon into the pan and stir it in. Once the mixture starts bubbling, add your chicken back to the pan. Cook the chicken for a few minutes on each side until the internal temperature reaches 165 degrees. 

Add the capers and half of the parsley and fold them into the sauce. Once the sauce has reached your desired thickness (you can always add a little more broth if you want more sauce), remove the pan from the heat and add in the last tablespoon of butter and mix it into the sauce. 

Slice the remaining half of the lemon into thin slices and top the chicken with the lemon slices and remaining parsley and serve alongside your favorite veggie side dish.

• Category: Lunch, Dinner
• Method: Stovetop
• Cuisine: Italian

Nutrition

• Serving Size: 1/4 of recipe
• Calories: 341.4
• Sugar: .6 g
• Sodium: 667.7 mg
• Fat: 16.1 g
• Saturated Fat: 7.9 g
• Unsaturated Fat: 3.9 g
• Trans Fat: .47 g
• Carbohydrates: 6.91 g
• Fiber: .8 g
• Protein: 39.9 g
• Cholesterol: 151.4 mg
• Net Carbs: 6.07 g

Keywords: gluten free chicken piccata, lemon caper chicken recipe

The post Gluten-free Lemon Caper Chicken Recipe appeared first on Mark’s Daily Apple.

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Research of the Week

More flavonoids, less cognitive decline (not the first time research has found such a connection).

Natural COVID infection seems to be pretty protective against future COVID infection.

Anemia on the rise in America.

Speaking of flavonoids, fisetin (a flavonoid found in apples, cucumbers, and strawberries) reduced COVID mortality in mice.

Using math to predict divorce.

New Primal Blueprint Podcasts

Episode 512: Tyler Cartwright: Host Elle Russ chats with Tyler Cartwright, back from the almost-dead.

Health Coach Radio: Eric Stein has created a place for coaches to share their digital presence.

Media, Schmedia

Is Canada embracing regenerative cattle ranching for carbon sequestration? Hope so.

Great documentary on the immense pressure Olympic athletes face, if you have HBO.

Interesting Blog Posts

Although the accuracy of lifespans in Blue Zone countries is in question, here is an interesting piece on their drinking habits.

A response to a response about real meat vs fake meat.

Social Notes

Food is more than calories and sustenance.

Everything Else

The “Atlantis” of the North Sea.

Jake Gyllenhaal isn’t really into bathing.

Things I’m Up to and Interested In

Scary: Where have all the bugs gone?

Interesting post: Was ancient medicine that bad and ineffective, really?

Fascinating older article on AIDS and the corruption of medical science: “Out of Control.”

Interesting stat: 4.5% of the adult population are psychopaths.

Important: The interplay between sleep and the gut bacteria.

Question I’m Asking

What do you think about the prospect of psychedelics becoming mainstream?

Recipe Corner

• Almost no-carb crab salad.
• Never would have thought of creamed shishito peppers.

Time Capsule

One year ago (Jul 31 – Aug 6)

• Making Distance Learning Work— Make it work.
• Why You Need to be Taking L-Theanine — A true chill pill.

Comment of the Week

“I once walked a man off the Golden Gate bridge who was going to jump. I happened to be there just killing time before meeting some friends for dinner. I noticed he was distressed and behaving oddly (obsessively looking down at the water, not the gorgeous views). I chatted him up, walked him to a bench on the South end and sat down and listened to his tale of woe for about 40 minutes then gave him a ride to BART so he could catch a plane. I suppose the skills were just paying attention and empathy.”

–Incredible!

The post New and Noteworthy: What I Read This Week — Edition 141 appeared first on Mark’s Daily Apple.