Nitrate Birds FeNCE Escape Results

I registered for FNCE today. The Food & Nutrition Convention Expo is the American Dietetic Association’s national annual meeting. The place where you network and pat each other on the back and say “well done! We are cool!”

I am going for two reasons:

1) It’s an excuse to go to San Diego, and

2) I got selected to speak at it.
Ok, 3 reasons...3) I am cool. 

Number 2 still terrifies me but it allows me to do number 1 which equals number 3?

Number 2 is about my thesis. I will get in front of people and talk about my double-blind, placebo controlled, cross over study involving treadmills, beetroot, and really good friends. And by “really good friends” I mean threatened participants.

These really good friends had to come to the lab fasted, eat 7oz of beetroot (or placebo) and run a 5k in the fastest time possible. Without music. Staring at a blank wall. Still hungry.

(If I haven’t thanked you enough, thank you again guys).

The proposed reason behind beetroot is nitrate consumption. More nitrate consumption, more vasodialation, more blood flow to working muscles, more oxygen for that lovely thing called the electron transport chain which makes more ATP which equates to more energy for running!

You: “Nitrates! But aren’t nitrates bad?! I swear NPR told me that they were carcinogenic! Like in deli meats and stuff?!”

But that is why academia created thesis projects. To research these predicaments. Because nitrates that are inoculated in deli meats are not the same as nitrates found in natural, whole beetroot…

I spent this past weekend on a not-jumping-through-the hoops-but-still-organic, “organic” farm. That description could easily be shortened to “I spent this past weekend in heaven.”

I woke up in a tent and actually heard a rooster roost. It was like too storybook that it was actually ridiculous. When I climbed out of the tent I saw non-rooster birds wandering. I, myself, being a chick, wandered up to the house and asked the fellow sitting on the porch swing (remember: storybook) “how free range are these said birds? Because I’m pretty sure they’re not supposed to be this free range.” 

I was right. The birds needed catching-Both the chick, women types and the birds who jumped-through-Hooch’s-chicken-hoops on Farmer Hooch’s “organic” farm when the storm put a hole in the FeNCE. 

Farmer Hooch doesn’t feed his birds nitrates. And I could tell. The chicken was tender & delicious.

And the other meat was so tender & delicious as well. Although, there may have been some nitrate, meat tenderizer on that smoked brisket…

The whole discussion of meats and nitrates led into a little joke about free-range, organic hot-dogs. A serious predicament…also known as farm humor people. The only thing free-range about hot-dogs that weekend was the 5 wiener dogs that were free-ranging around Hooch’s farm. There were enough of them to do a proper wiener dog race.
If only I had a treadmill….and nitrate meat tenderizer- it's possible that they could smoke the chicken.

I’ll save that one for my next FNCE trip. It would certainly be a trip.
Or maybe a face-plant.