Protein shake al Gaston

I was listening to "The World" today on public radio on my way to get some Drano to clear the kitchen sink, when I heard about a Harvard anthropologist who believes that cooking shaped our bodies evolutionarily speaking. Apparently, in addition to making things tasty and safe to eat, cooking also helps digest food. Makes sense. From a physical perspective, cooking is just using energy to break things apart. Anyway, he thinks that use of fire started over 2 million years ago and pretty much was the reason we could have calories to spare for a big brain. The radio piece here.

However, homo erectus simply never had to deal with donuts--where in nature can you find something that is both high-fat and high-sugar at the same time? Trying to combat the effects of my highly-evolved brain scheming of ways to increase my calories, I have decided to fight back--synapse vs synapse, neuron vs neron, cortex vs cortex. Apparently protein makes you feel full longer, and so I have tried to stay full as long as possible by upping protein to about 50-60% of my diet.

It works. One of the ways is my monster protein shake--which basically turns into a brick in my stomach and keeps me full forever.


This was my attempt at trying to get lots of protein in my belly without getting tons of fat or carbs as well. And it still has to taste good. My lactose intolerance complicates things further. But I found a couple of answers. First, casein is a protein in milk and doesn't cause the problems that lactose does. So I loaded up on that, some yogurt to give it some smoothness, and lactose-free milk. Then I kept adding things to try and up the full factor--more protein, more fiber. Spinach, egg whites, psyllium husks, and a banana. Then ice and water to actually allow it to blend and taste good. I am up to five egg whites per shake. You basically can't taste them and so I keep adding more.

Every afternoon when I am making a shake like this, I sing this to myself (skip to the 2-minute mark):



Maybe 4-dozen, one day, and, unlike Gaston, I am not aiming for barge-size status.

1 comment:

  1. did you mention drano because this shake has the same effect on your body? because that's kind of what i envision when i think about those ingredients.

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