People sometimes ask me, "Is there anything worse than plastic?" My answer would be, "Of course!" One thing that's definitely worse than plastic is... recycled plastic, as this new study shows. 👇
Experts believe there may be as many as 13,000 different chemicals involved in the manufacture of plastics, the vast majority of which are totally unknown to us in terms of their safety and potential toxicity.
But plastics can also be contaminated with other chemicals, including pesticides, pharmaceuticals & industrial chemicals, at various stages of their lifecycles. If these contaminated plastics are then recycled, humans can then be exposed to these harmful substances.
Researchers tested plastic pellets from recycling plants in 13 different plants across the world. They found 491 readily identifiable organic compounds, with a further 170 tentatively identified. As you can see from the table below, they span a wide variety of chemical classes.
As well as being harmful to the workers handling them, recycled plastics are also potentially harmful to consumers who use them. Recycled plastics have a wide variety of applications, from toys and furniture to clothing.
Recycled plastic clothing, like these t-shirts from the brand Oceanness, are advertised as the height of ethical consumerism, but in reality if you wear such clothing, you may be exposing your body, through your skin and through inhalation of fibres to some horrible chemicals...
that you wouldn't find in "virgin" plastic.
And look, here are 100% recycled plastic toys for your little ones to chew on all day long...
This new study makes it pretty clear, as far as I can see, that recycling plastic is a bad idea. We already know that recycling produces massive quantities of microplastic waste as well. What we really need to be doing is phasing out our use of plastics, full stop. And now.
GIRONDA PRINCIPLE #1: AIM FOR DENSITY, DON'T OVERTRAIN
Each day I'll outline one of the central principles of Vince Gironda's legendary bodybuilding system.
Here's the first: do more work in a shorter period of time, and only do as much as you need to. 👇
Vince’s flagship workout was the 8x8, which he called the "Honest Workout." As the name suggests, you perform eight sets of eight reps for a particular exercise.
The devil is in the details, though, as always for Vince. You want to perform those eight sets of eight reps with as little rest as possible, increasing the density of the work you perform in order to stimulate more muscle growth.
Rather than necessarily adding more weight to the bar, Vince would have you decrease rest between sets, so that you had to perform the same amount of work in less time (this is "density").
In his opinion, and in the opinion of sports scientists, this was just as effective a means of building muscle for the bodybuilder as adding weight to the bar. If you start with 30 seconds between sets, you can end up, after a while, with barely 10 or 15 seconds between each set.
Eating fermented foods is really good for you. It was good for our ancestors too, & may have helped drive human evolution by pushing digestion outside the gut, allowing us to have shorter digestive tracts and bigger brains. Here are 5 easy recipes.
FIRST: THE BENEFITS OF FERMENTATION
Scientists believe fermentation may have had a key role to play in human evolution, allowing our ancestors to grow bigger brains by shrinking their digestive apparatus. Fermentation could have allowed this to happen by allowing circulating microbes to kick off the digestion process outside the body (“external fermentation”), meaning that our ancestors could absorb more nutrients from a smaller gut.
It’s worth emphasising again that fermentation — processes of chemical transformation of a substrate (i.e. food) — can take place anywhere, whether inside or outside the body. When you let microbes sour cabbage in a jar, this is a process that is little different from what happens inside your gut or the gut of a chimpanzee or giraffe.
Here's a detailed description of some of the benefits of fermentation, from a scientific paper.
Rather than relying on the microorganisms within the gut, external fermentation is carried out by organisms in the environment or on the surface of the organic material itself. Like internal fermentation, external fermentation increases the bioavailability of ingested nutrients, specifically, the absorption of macronutrients and micronutrients. In addition, external fermentation contributes to the health and efficacy of the host’s gut microbiome, in turn, facilitating nutrient absorption. External fermentation enhances digestibility of carbohydrates and proteins. Fermentation of legumes hydrolyzes macromolecules into more easily digestible individual amino acids and sugars. These benefits have led public health scholars to recommend increasing the consumption of fermented foods in countries experiencing food insecurity and high infant mortality.
External fermentation also improves the bioavailability of micronutrients in a number of ways. B-complex vitamins produced from the external fermentation of carbohydrates can increase the amounts of B vitamins (thiamin, riboflavin, and niacin) by up to 10-fold. External fermentation can also break down ANFs [anti-nutrient factors].
Phytate, a chelating ANF, can be broken down by phytase, an enzyme that some mammals—but not humans—have evolved the ability to produce endogenously. External Lactobacillus-driven fermentation is an alternative to phytase: by lowering the pH, it provides a favorable environment for both bacterial and endogenous phytase to hydrolyze bound phytate and release minerals80. Oxalate, another chelating ANF, and tannins, ANFs which bind to and lower the bioavailability of proteins, can also be degraded through external Lactobacillus fermentations. Of note, phytate is more effectively degraded by external fermentation than by cooking, as phytase bioactivity decreases above 80 °.
External fermentation can go further than simply increasing nutrient bioavailability. It can also render poisonous foods edible. One example is the detoxification of cyanogenic glycoside in bitter cassava (also known as yuca or manioc), a common staple for hundreds of millions of people living within the Tropical Belt. If consumed unfermented, cassava’s cyanogenic glycosides are hydrolyzed by colonic microorganisms and absorbed as cyanide, causing convulsions, hypotension, respiratory failure, decreased heart rate, and death85,86. When processed properly, cell walls in the cassava tuber are broken down by Lactobacillus bacteria, permitting endogenous enzymes normally sequestered from the cyanogenic glycosides to hydrolyze the toxin. The production of lactic acid during fermentation also acidifies the environment and provides a favorable milieu for other microorganisms to contribute to the hydrolysis of up to 95% of the toxin prior to consumption.
Recipe 1: Sauerkraut
Okay. This is a classic. Really easy, but also delicious.
You’ll need cabbage (red or white) and 2 tablespoons of good quality sea salt for every pound of cabbage you use. This will take up to four weeks to ferment fully.
Remove and discard the outer leaves of the cabbage and any that are damaged. Remove the core and discard. Rinse the remaining cabbage well, allowing the water to flow between the cabbage leaves. Drain.
Reserve 1 outer leaf, then thinly shred the remaining cabbage with a knife or food processor. Place in a large bowl. Sprinkle all the salt over the cabbage and toss well. Let sit for 15 minutes.
Massage the cabbage with your hands for 5 minutes. The cabbage should release plenty of liquid during this time.
Now pack the cabbage firmly into a very clean jar or jars. Fill each jar with kraut, top up with the cabbage juice and then cut a circle from the reserved leaf to top the mixture. If you have weights, place one on top of the cabbage to ensure that it stays under the brine. If the brine doesn't completely cover the cabbage and weight, top them up with a 2% solution of salt water (1 teaspoon salt per cup of water). Finally, add a lad to each jar.
Allow to ferment at room temperature until the kraut is as sour as you like it (the longer, the more sour).
Pistachio is the greatest ice cream of them all, but it's hard to come by, mainly because companies say it's too expensive to make properly.
Well, it isn't. All you need is three ingredients. 👇
You already know my OG no-churn ice-cream recipe from my cookbook Raw Egg Nationalism, which uses meringue mix, but this one's even simpler. The key ingredient is condensed milk, which provides an absolutely dreamy texture and richness and also means you don't have to churn.
In addition, for the pistachio flavour, you'll need some high-quality pistachio butter, ideally made from 100% pistachios and nothing else. A jar costs me about ÂŁ9, but it makes four portions of ice cream, so that's pretty good value.
People are talking about a preprint study that shows 0.5% of the brain by weight may be plastic. I picked this up and reported on it for @infowars, and wrote about it on my Substack, a month ago. It's bad. Very bad. 👇
Researchers looked autopsy samples taken in Albuquerque, New Mexico between 2016 and 2024 and compared microplastic levels between different organs—brain, liver and kidneys—and compared levels over time.
Here’s what they found.
In basic terms, brains contain more microplastics than the liver or kidneys, and levels of microplastics in all three organs have increased over time. The results are plotted in a series of graphs which I’ve posted below.
It’s not just that microplastic concentrations were greater in brain samples than the liver or kidneys. They were significantly greater. There was also a significantly larger amount of one plastic, polyethylene in the brain rather than the liver or kidneys. Polyethylene is used in plastic bags, bottles and other containers.
What’s more, concentrations are increasing with time. In the case of the brain, the study suggests concentrations may have increased by as much as 50% in the last eight years.
This course does exactly what it says on the tin: it provides you with a six-week course focused on abdominal development. Add it to your normal weight-training regimen. 👇
The course is not intended for absolute beginners. Vince believed beginners shouldn’t train abs at all. For beginners, according to Vince, general training, and especially compound movements, is enough to stimulate the abdominals. Only later, after the bodybuilder has gained some experience, should they then start to train abdominals specifically.
The six-week course consists of six one-week regimens to be performed one after the other, in order. Each regimen contains a different exercise or exercises, which Vince describes in detail.
Some weeks, such as week two include different exercises depending on the practitioner’s skill level. Weeks five and six are based around the same difficult exercise—the shoulder planche.