Year of the Cow (22 page)

More like
Nourishing Traditions
keeps telling me I should eat.

I should read more.

*   *   *

First things first, however: I should run more.

If I'm worried about my health, getting into some sort of exercise routine seems like the right thing to do. Running is one of the few purely physical activities that humans are supposed to be good at—yet most people would rather perform their own appendectomy than run a hundred yards. Me, I run only sporadically. A few years back, my wife and I ran the Marine Corps Marathon in Washington, D.C. The next day, my entire lower body cramped up, leaving me couch-ridden for several days. Because I couldn't stand, let alone run, I took a hiatus from what was at the time a pretty aggressive running regimen. I'm still on that hiatus.

Almost anyone can complete a marathon, if completion is their only goal. It isn't the sort of exertion that most people assume it would be. It's like sitting in a reasonably comfortable chair while a large man beats your heels with a very large hammer. Slowly. If a runner isn't trying to finish in any particular time, there isn't much aerobic exertion involved in running a marathon. It isn't a matter of being in shape. It's just a matter of enduring a moderate amount of pain for a very long time.

Getting hurt while running is relatively common; Summer developed stress fractures from her marathon training. I've never understood why something as natural and instinctive as running has such a high rate of injury—by some estimates, almost 80 percent of runners hurt themselves running each year. I can't count the number of times I've heard people say that they used to run, but they stopped because it's “bad for their knees.”

I, on the other hand, am trying to get back into it. I've slimmed down a bit eating whole foods, and I'm generally happy about it. And because of my recent news, I'd like to keep the health train rolling. Plus, swimsuit season is just around the corner.

That in mind, I slip on my ancient running shoes and head out the door. I'm not as fast as I was when I ran regularly, but I have to start somewhere. It's a beautiful day, and I breathe deeply as I settle into my once familiar rhythm. Besides the birds, the only sound is that of my feet on pavement. Ka-thump, ka-thump, ka-thump. (I run loud—always have.) As I run, I mentally subdivide the sound of my strides into whatever song I have stuck in my head at the moment. Today, it's Paul Simon's “Cecilia.”
I'm begging you please to come home
 … ka-thump, ka-thump, ka-thump.
Whoa oh oh!

I round the corner of my block and head back toward home. As it's the end of my run, I sprint, giving it everything I have. The rhythmic ka-thump vanishes. There is no music now. Just exertion.

Finally, I slow to a walk, panting. My feet hurt. I think I need new shoes.

*   *   *

It's a Sunday afternoon. I'm in the grocery store buying supplies for one of my weekend culinary adventures. Today, I'm not at just any grocery store—I'm at Whole Foods. They charge a premium for their wares, but they have everything that a budding food dork could desire: screamingly fresh produce, gorgeous seafood, and a fairly robust selection of cheeses for a supermarket chain. Drifting through the dairy section, I freeze—I've spotted a unicorn in the refrigerator case. Culinary Bigfoot. The Dairy Loch Ness monster.

For some completely unknown reason, this store sells raw milk.

I thought that was illegal.

Raw milk is one of the staples and primary points of contention between the Weston A. Price crowd and the population at large, as notably represented by the FDA.

I pull a bottle out of the refrigerator case to double-check—yes. Raw. Unpasteurized. Comes in a glass bottle like men in white suits used to leave on doorsteps. I hesitate, then move to put it back. Then stop. And put it in my cart.

*   *   *

Back in my kitchen, I open the bottle and smell it. It doesn't smell like much—milk, I guess. What was I expecting? But is it my eyes, or does it look slightly different? A little yellower, perhaps? More straw-colored? I examine the label: “Shake Well Before Use.” I look through the clear glass bottle at the fluid inside, which must be why they put it in a glass bottle instead of a carton in the first place. The milk is two-toned. It's definitely lighter on top because it hasn't gone through a process called homogenization—when bottlers force raw milk through tiny holes at high pressure, breaking up the fat globules and enabling them to remain in suspension instead of floating to the top of the bottle, as they have here. Homogenized milk has a uniform density. This milk does not. It's the real deal.

I shake the bottle vigorously. How long am I supposed do this, a few seconds? A minute? Five? I check the milk's consistency. Nope, still clumpy. I shake more. A few minutes later, and, well, I won't say it's unclumpy. But it's something like a more uniform consistency. I pour a glass. Take a sip.

It's creamy and very, very rich. I drink a little faster. Cold, it's almost chewy. It's grassy and thick, with a little more sweetness than I'm used to. I'm drinking it fast, like an eight-year-old child at a school picnic, and I can feel the milk coat my upper lip. For science, I check my milk mustache in the mirror. Regular milk gives one a certain pencil-thin, John Waters–esque 'stache—elegant and easily removed, if noticeable at all. Raw milk drops the full Wilford Brimley. It's luxurious, thick, and ever so slightly gloopy.

Also, this milk is delicious. If, of course, you have the sort of psyche and constitution that can shrug off the threat of a little
Listeria
. That is, if you aren't very young, very old, pregnant, or suffering from some malady that compromises the immune system. Listeriosis can kill—it's one of the reasons that some governments began widespread pasteurization of milk in the first place. It's a decision between absolutely bacteriologically safe milk with a possibly decreased flavor and health profile versus more flavorful milk with potentially greater health benefits that is
likely
bacteriologically safe—but if it isn't, it could be very, very bad. That's a personal choice, and I'm not sure there's a clear-cut right answer. Listeriosis is potentially deadly, and those most susceptible to it, especially children, have the least agency in their own food choices. Conversely, risk can be minimized by buying locally from producers one knows and trusts. And proponents say the health benefits can be enormous.

I don't have an answer. But I do have milk. I top off my glass and put the bottle back into the refrigerator. I leave my kitchen and stride across my living room, before sitting by the window with a good book.

I take another sip of my raw milk. I'm down the rabbit hole now.

*   *   *

Some nights just don't go quite like you planned.

“Cool,” my wife says. We're in our living room. She is gazing down at a small ceramic bowl on her lap with a look midway between nonplussed and actively disinterested. “So what is it, like a bowl?”

“It's a French butter crock!” I exclaim, as if that should explain it all. “You're making a lot of bread now, and I thought you could use this to keep your butter fresh.”

“Of course,” she replies, trying out a smile because I'm being a little weird. “Well, thank you. I really like it.” She says it like the conversation should be over now.

“Allow me to elucidate,” I continue, unwilling to give up on an item that I think is actively fantastic. I talk fast. “Before refrigeration, people had to keep butter from going bad somehow, right? Most of the time, they'd wrap it tightly and keep it submerged in water. It takes a lot of energy to change the temperature of water, so the butter would stay pretty cool. Also, because it's away from oxygen, it wouldn't go rancid. Make sense?”

“Sure.” I can only imagine what mad gleam I must have in my eye.

“In the late 1800s, French butter lovers—great band name, by the way—developed this little guy.”

“To hold butter.”

“Exactly! Dig.” I gesture to the device in question. “Two pieces. The outer is this mug-looking thing. You fill it about a third up with water.”

“Okay.”

“The inside is this inverted bell-type thing. You fill this with butter. Flip it over, insert it, and the lip of the bell slips beneath the surface of the water. You get butter, sealed free of air, so it keeps at room temp. What's more, it stays super spreadable. So you won't have to nuke it and risk it separating. All without refrigeration.”

“So this just sits on the counter?”

“Yeah.”

“And the butter won't go bad?”

“Not for thirty days, give or take. But when does butter ever last us thirty days?”

A pause. Her eyes dart from the butter crock to me. “Cool…” she says.

“You're not excited?” I ask incredulously.

She smiles. “I'm excited you're excited.” Her smile widens a little. “I haven't seen you this excited about something for quite a while.”

“It's butter! And it's a better, cheaper, more delicious way of doing something. It's an old tech that's better than the new one, and a mere forty-eight hours ago I had no idea it even existed. What's not to get excited about?”

“You are absolutely right. It's very cool, Jared. Thank you.” She stands up and kisses me on the top of my head.

“You will understand the magnificence of the butter crock!” I bellow, fist shaking sarcastically like a B-movie villain. “You must recognize its genius!”

“Come to bed, Goldfinger,” she calls over her shoulder. “We have to get up early.”

I glance at the clock. She's right. She's always right.

*   *   *

Several days later, anticipating a breakfast featuring astonishingly spreadable butter, I get ready for my run. I've been looking into which shoes I should pick up for my new running habit, and I've been exploring how people used to run. From my days as an anthropology undergrad, I recalled that humans are supposed to be really good at running pretty fast for a really long time. It's one of only a very few purely physical traits we could exploit for hunting success. We aren't especially strong. Or especially swift. We don't have sharp teeth or claws. We usually have one baby at a time, and our babies stay helpless for years. But we can run. Pretty fast. Almost forever.

Specifically, we can run fast enough and long enough to wear out prey—a technique called persistence hunting. We can't beat many animals in a sprint, but we can keep on running, whereas a prey animal—say a gazelle or an elk—has to stop and catch its breath. Lacking the ability to sweat, these ungulates have to stop and pant to cool off. While persistence hunting, a running human catches up, forcing the prey to run before it has managed to recover from the first sprint. Eventually, the prey becomes too hot and tired to continue, which allows the hunter to spear them. Or shoot them with an arrow. Or atlatl them. Persistence hunting is an ancient technique—thought to be originally developed by
Homo erectus
but still practiced by some indigenous groups today, such as the famed!Kung people of the Kalahari Desert. However, persistence hunting clearly doesn't depend on modern running shoes. Nike was only founded in 1964. How did people run prior to that?

When I looked into how people used to run, I discovered the work of Harvard evolutionary biologist Daniel Lieberman. He's done research comparing the biomechanics of shoe-wearing runners and shoeless runners. His research shows that shod runners and unshod runners run very differently.

Most runners who learned how to run in shoes, myself included, stretch their foot out in front of them and land on their heel. Then they roll forward across the base of their foot before pushing off again with their toes. Or, in my case, I land on my heel, using my longest possible stride because I'm rather tall, and then quickly slap the rest of my foot down on the pavement because I'm also relatively fast. Ka-thump.

I'm only allowed the luxury of landing on my heel and slapping the rest of my foot down shortly thereafter, according to Lieberman, because I'm wearing running shoes. These shoes cushion the impact of my heel on the ground, called a heel strike, allowing me to take advantage of my six-foot-one frame by reaching my lead foot way out in front of my body, taking the largest strides possible.

Runners who learned to run without the benefit of shoes run very differently. Without the enormous cushion provided by a pair of modern running shoes, heel striking doesn't work. There simply isn't enough fatty tissue on the heel of the foot to absorb the impact forces of an entire human body crashing down onto it. Instead, people who learned to run without shoes land on the ball/middle of their foot, called a forefoot strike. Then, using the calf muscles as a spring, they place their heels on the ground only briefly before again launching off their toes and into the next stride.

In heel strikers, the entire body comes to a complete dead stop for an instant before forward momentum and the action of the leg muscles launch the body forward into the next stride. This presents a tremendous impact directly up the leg to the knees and hips, without the benefit of a calf muscle and ankle joint to mitigate the stress.

In forefoot strikers, the impact is dramatically lessened because the impact force is transferred instead into angular momentum, modulated by the ankle joint and the calf muscles, before pushing off again into the next stride. The result of the forefoot strike is decreased stride length—a runner doesn't have the luxury of sticking his foot way out in front of him anymore—but increased stride efficiency. This may make running injuries less common in forefoot strikers because they're no longer coming to a momentary dead stop with each step, jolting their body weight up their legs. Research is still ongoing.

Another way to look at it: People who learn to run barefoot run as though they actually have calf muscles and ankles to do some of the work. People who learn to run in shoes could be running on pirate peg legs, as far as their stride impact is concerned.