Ripped Recipe: Lemon Mint Ricecream and a rant against fructose and high-density ice cream


As the name implies, Lemon Mint Ricecream can be a calorie bomb

I deploy ricecream strategically for one or a combination of the two following reasons: 1) I’m totally burned out i.e. I’ve depleted most muscle and liver glycogen walking 20,000 steps while fasted or after having put in a particularly grueling lifting session, or 2) I’m mentally burned out and need a soul massage.

Ingredients
Cooked rice (with a little salt), cooled to room temp (whatever type and however much you want)
Vanilla ice cream
Juice of a quarter lemon
Chiffonade of several mint leaves
Cinnamon to taste

Preparation
Put rice in bowl. Mix with mint and lemon juice. Put vanilla ice cream on top. Sprinkle with cinnamon. Maybe let ice cream melt a little. Maybe mix ice cream and rice. Eat like a freaking wild animal then drink red wine then go right to bed.

Ice cream density is the devil

First, let me say that Ben and Jerry’s makes me angry. There’s no reason ice cream should be that rich. If you take a look at the weight of one serving (1/2 cup) of a “simple” Ben and Jerry’s flavor, like chocolate or vanilla, you’ll notice that it’s approximately 100 grams. Compare that to a less rich ice cream like Turkey Hill chocolate or vanilla, and you’ll see that the same 1/2 cup serving weighs around 60 grams. That means it’s less dense. Ok, fine, but that also translates into Turkey Hill containing about 60% the fat and 50% the sugar of the same volume of Ben and Jerry’s. Sure, you could eat only a quarter cup of B and J’s, but why the heck would a human want so little ice cream? I don’t know. This gets me all nice and hot for my next item, a rant against fructose.

Fructose is toxic

In my opinion fructose should be classified as a toxin and only be permitted to be used by a skilled practitioner who is well in tune with his or her body. Agave syrup should be banned outright, for it is 70% fructose, higher in fructose than any other substance other than pure fructose. You can hate me for despising agave syrup; I’m at peace with it. Based on my own research, I believe that fructose is so fantastically bad for the body for so many reasons. Yeah, sure it doesn’t elicit much of an insulin response (which is totally ironic), but for me, its number one offense is that the form of glycogen into which it’s converted by the liver cannot be stored in muscle which should be our primary carbohydrate storage tank (most people — at least Americans — eat way too much food, carry too little muscle, and don’t deplete their glycogen stores regularly enough for this mechanism to be effective, so they store most excess energy as fat). But I digress. I was saying that the form of glycogen into which fructose is converted can only be stored in the liver, which holds less glycogen than all the muscle in the body. As soon as the liver’s full of glycogen, which for the average, non-fasting, less active person it almost always is, that fructose is converted to triglycerides and stored as fat. Ever heard of high circulating triglycerides and how bad that is? Fructose, not saturated fat or cholesterol is one of the major contributors to the condition precisely because of way it is metabolized.

If I eat something with sugar (sucrose, which is half fructose by weight) in it, I make damn certain I’ve done everything I can to deplete my glycogen stores. That statement is a bit of a straw man; since I fast 21 hours every day and walk or lift or a combination of the two during my fast, it’s never an issue. This is yet another reason why fasting regularly for an extended period can be so incredibly powerful.

2 comments

  1. Hmm it looks like your site ate my first comment (it waas
    extremelly long) soo I guess I’ll just sum it up what I had
    written and say, I’m thoroughly enjoying your blog. I ass well am an aspliring blog blogger but I’m still new to the
    whole thing. Do you have any points for beginner
    blog writers? I’d certainly appreciate it.

    1. Thanks for your kind words; I’m glad you enjoy this blog. I have to admit that I don’t know too much about blogging (I just started a couple of months ago really), but the one thing I CAN suggest from experience is that I find satisfaction (and ease) in writing about a subject that I have many opinions about and experience with. My approach to this is to treat it almost as a personal journal; if others find my thoughts interesting, that’s great, and I’m very glad to engage with them!

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