I just finished reading Butter in My Coffee this morning. It was an easy and enjoyable read, much more concise than the many, many books I have read on health over the years. My diet journey took me to 7 years vegan (after a cancer scare) and then overnight to carnivore (or maybe ketovore) after realizing that my vegan way of eating had me nearing prediabetes. I plan to gift your book to several friends and family members in hopes of planting a seed that may now or in the future bear fruit for them. I am a strong believer in the keto/carnivore way of eating and have experienced positive results in my lipid panels. Thanks for the book. May you enjoy many more years of amazing health.
Thank you! And the detail I keep turning over is the seven years. You did the thing that gets recommended after a cancer scare, you did it properly, and you arrived at prediabetes. That's not a failure of compliance. It's a diet that satisfies one set of criteria and not the one that turned out to matter.
I got to nearly the same place by an entirely different route. Which is the part I find useful. Two very different plates, same destination.
Gifting it is generous, and the way you put it is exactly right: a seed, now or later. It took me fifty years to be ready to hear it.
I am another new subscriber who just finished your book. I was so impressed by your synthesis of the whole story behind how humans evolved and how our dietary guidelines have been corrupted by the incentives provided in our society. It was refreshing to read such a balanced take on the subject. Whereas I might wear a t-shirt that identifies me as an angry conspiracy theorist, (not really) I loved that you left out the emotions and looked at the evolution of where we’re at more dispassionately. I have a hard time discussing these matters without getting emotional, and your book provides me with a way to communicate my views on the matter with those I love, who are less aware and suffering because of it.
Thank you. And keep the t-shirt in the drawer, which is more or less the whole method.
The dispassion isn't temperament, it's the argument. Name a villain and you hand the reader an exit: they reject the villain and your claim leaves with him. Incentives require nobody to be evil, and they explain the outcome better. A system that arrives here through people behaving ordinarily is harder to dismiss than a plot, and worse.
One caution, since you mention people you love. The book worked on you because you went looking. Handed to somebody who didn't ask, the same pages read as an accusation, and few people have ever changed what they eat because a relative proved them wrong at dinner. What tends to work is being visibly better off and dull about it until somebody asks you why. Slow, but it's the only version I've seen hold.
Today is Wednesday, and I read most of your book on Sunday and Monday. I have been reading family nutrition kinds of books for at least 25 years, but yours is the clearest and most compelling when it comes to explaining complicated science and relevant history. Not because you're a nutritional guru, but partly because you're not. I so appreciate that you aren't an influencer, or even an author planning more books with full color photos, and social media and paywalls and all the rest of it. God bless you, sir.
Thank you. Twenty-five years of reading in that category gives your comparison a denominator most don't have, and I'm glad the book held up against it.
The not-being-a-guru part wasn't modesty. I'm a physical chemist who got sick, went looking for the reason, and had nothing to offer but the reasoning and the sources. That constraint turned out to be the book's best feature. When you have no authority to trade on, you have to show the work.
This is where the work continues: corrections, new evidence, and whatever the news drags in. You're in the right place for it.
One of the books I read, almost 17 years ago now, owes a lot to a dentist in the 1930s, Dr. Weston A. Price. He wrote Nutrition and Physical Degeneration in 1939, but the book I read was Nourishing Traditions, half diet/nutrition info, half cookbook. It's not nearly as scrupulous as it should be, but it does push back against the low-fat mantra of the last three or four decades of the 20th century. You might find Price's story interesting.
I just finished reading Butter in My Coffee this morning. It was an easy and enjoyable read, much more concise than the many, many books I have read on health over the years. My diet journey took me to 7 years vegan (after a cancer scare) and then overnight to carnivore (or maybe ketovore) after realizing that my vegan way of eating had me nearing prediabetes. I plan to gift your book to several friends and family members in hopes of planting a seed that may now or in the future bear fruit for them. I am a strong believer in the keto/carnivore way of eating and have experienced positive results in my lipid panels. Thanks for the book. May you enjoy many more years of amazing health.
Thank you! And the detail I keep turning over is the seven years. You did the thing that gets recommended after a cancer scare, you did it properly, and you arrived at prediabetes. That's not a failure of compliance. It's a diet that satisfies one set of criteria and not the one that turned out to matter.
I got to nearly the same place by an entirely different route. Which is the part I find useful. Two very different plates, same destination.
Gifting it is generous, and the way you put it is exactly right: a seed, now or later. It took me fifty years to be ready to hear it.
I am another new subscriber who just finished your book. I was so impressed by your synthesis of the whole story behind how humans evolved and how our dietary guidelines have been corrupted by the incentives provided in our society. It was refreshing to read such a balanced take on the subject. Whereas I might wear a t-shirt that identifies me as an angry conspiracy theorist, (not really) I loved that you left out the emotions and looked at the evolution of where we’re at more dispassionately. I have a hard time discussing these matters without getting emotional, and your book provides me with a way to communicate my views on the matter with those I love, who are less aware and suffering because of it.
Thank you. And keep the t-shirt in the drawer, which is more or less the whole method.
The dispassion isn't temperament, it's the argument. Name a villain and you hand the reader an exit: they reject the villain and your claim leaves with him. Incentives require nobody to be evil, and they explain the outcome better. A system that arrives here through people behaving ordinarily is harder to dismiss than a plot, and worse.
One caution, since you mention people you love. The book worked on you because you went looking. Handed to somebody who didn't ask, the same pages read as an accusation, and few people have ever changed what they eat because a relative proved them wrong at dinner. What tends to work is being visibly better off and dull about it until somebody asks you why. Slow, but it's the only version I've seen hold.
Today is Wednesday, and I read most of your book on Sunday and Monday. I have been reading family nutrition kinds of books for at least 25 years, but yours is the clearest and most compelling when it comes to explaining complicated science and relevant history. Not because you're a nutritional guru, but partly because you're not. I so appreciate that you aren't an influencer, or even an author planning more books with full color photos, and social media and paywalls and all the rest of it. God bless you, sir.
Thank you. Twenty-five years of reading in that category gives your comparison a denominator most don't have, and I'm glad the book held up against it.
The not-being-a-guru part wasn't modesty. I'm a physical chemist who got sick, went looking for the reason, and had nothing to offer but the reasoning and the sources. That constraint turned out to be the book's best feature. When you have no authority to trade on, you have to show the work.
This is where the work continues: corrections, new evidence, and whatever the news drags in. You're in the right place for it.
One of the books I read, almost 17 years ago now, owes a lot to a dentist in the 1930s, Dr. Weston A. Price. He wrote Nutrition and Physical Degeneration in 1939, but the book I read was Nourishing Traditions, half diet/nutrition info, half cookbook. It's not nearly as scrupulous as it should be, but it does push back against the low-fat mantra of the last three or four decades of the 20th century. You might find Price's story interesting.
Thanks - I'll look for it!