Getting Paleo Fit...The Why!©

 

 

Author’s note -- I hope that you enjoy learning from this resource!  To help me to continue to provide valuable free content, please consider showing your appreciation by leaving a donation HERE.  Thank you and Happy Trails!

 

Since the beginning of modern humans on this planet, about 84,000 generations (2.4 million) years ago, our ancestors lived as hunter-gatherers.  In fact, modern humans evolved as hunter-gatherers and natural selection has designed us to survive and thrive in the wilderness, not as specialists, but as generalists.  For our ancestors, every day was a challenge and exercise wasn’t optional, but a lifelong requirement, simply to eat and to keep from being eaten!

 

However, 350 generations ago, just a short 10,500 years, the world changed when some early Middle Eastern peoples switched from being hunters and instead began planting crops and tending to domesticated animals.  Ever since then technology has been increasing by leaps and bounds.  Just seven generations ago the Industrial Revolution began, and the Space and Computer Age is just two short generations old!

 

  

Unfortunately, compared with the snail’s pace of genetic change, technological and cultural evolution moves at a light speed and this quantum leap in technology has resulted in large reductions in the amount of physical work required simply to stay warm and fed.  But modern humans are still genetically designed to need and require the same amount of exercise and activity that our hunter-gatherer ancestors expended every day.  But in the 21^st century, with our increasingly sedentary, highly convenient, ultra mechanized society, our increasing physical inactivity has surged to become the 4^th leading cause of death, with obesity becoming the 5^th cause of an early death!  

Today three quarters of Americans are overweight or obese.  Currently in America more than 80% of the adult population are not meeting the Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion’s Physical Activity Guidelines, and the average adult walks only about 5,000 steps, a mere 2 miles (3.2 km) per day.  The average hunter-gatherer typically takes 16,000 to 17,000 steps, or about eight miles (13 km) each day.  Meanwhile, American children spend more than 7 ½ hours in front of a screen.  The rate of high blood pressure (hypertension) is a shocking 90% among Americans today and cardiovascular disease is the number one killer, accounting for 41% of deaths.  What is worse it is projected to double in the next 50 years!

 

It is time to get back to basics and get paleo fit like our hunter gatherer ancestors.

 

Don’t get dead, come back next week and read “Getting Paleo Fit...Learning How to Stay Alive!©”, where we will talk about how to get into the same shape as our Great Grandad, 84,000 generations ago.

 

I hope that you enjoy learning from this resource!  To help me to continue to provide valuable free content, please consider showing your appreciation by leaving a donation HERE.  Thank you and Happy Trails!

 

I hope that you continue to enjoy The Woodsman’s Journal Online and look for me on YouTube at BandanaMan Productions for other related videos, HERE.  Don’t forget to follow me on both The Woodsman’s Journal Online, HERE, and subscribe to BandanaMan Productions on YouTube.  If you have questions, as always, feel free to leave a comment on either site.  I announce new articles on Facebook at Eric Reynolds, on Instagram at bandanamanaproductions, and on VK at Eric Reynolds, so watch for me.

 

That is all for now, and as always, until next time, Happy Trails!

 

 

Sources

 

Banksy; “Fast Food Caveman”, from Pyramid America Framed Plexi Posters on Amazon.com, https://www.amazon.com/-/es/Pyramid-America-Caveman-Graffiti-enmarcada/dp/B01NBC0CIB, accessed November 12, 2024

 

O’Keefe, Evan L., Lavie, Carl J.; “A Hunter-Gatherer Exercise Prescription to Optimize Health and Well-Being in the Modern World”, Journal of Science in Sport and Exercise, Vol. 3, 2021, pages 147 to 157, https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s42978-020-00091-0, accessed November 14, 2024

 

O’Keefe, James H., et al.; “Achieving Hunter-gatherer Fitness in the 21st Century: Back to the Future”, The American Journal of Medicine, Volume 123, Issue 12, pages 1082 to 1086, https://www.amjmed.com/article/s0002-9343(10)00463-8/fulltext, accessed November 14, 2024

 

O’Keefe, James H., et al.; “Cardiovascular Disease Resulting From a Diet and Lifestyle at Odds With Our Paleolithic Genome: How to Become a 21st-Century Hunter-Gatherer”, Mayo Clinic Proceedings, Volume 79, Issue 1, pages 101 to 108, https://www.mayoclinicproceedings.org/article/S0025-6196(11)63262-X/fulltext,

 

The Walking Site; “10,000 Steps A Day”, [© by TheWalkingSite.Com 1998-2023], https://www.thewalkingsite.com/10000steps.html, accessed November 16, 2024

 

Wikimedia; “imagen”, by Sandritaverooka, June 10, 2015, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ejemplo_evolucion.jpg, accessed November 13, 2024

 

It’s Time to Tune Up Your Palmer Furnace!©

 

 

Author’s note -- I hope that you enjoy learning from this resource!  To help me to continue to provide valuable free content, please consider showing your appreciation by leaving a donation HERE.  Thank you and Happy Trails!

 

Daylight saving time ended in the United States last weekend, and it’s time to tune up your Palmer Furnace!

 

What’s a “Palmer Furnace” you ask?  Well, it’s an innovative, and time tested technique for warming up when it is cold outside.  It was named after Dr. Arthur N. Palmer, a speleologist who taught at the State University of New York at Oneonta, by his students.  

 

“The Palmer Furnace, as perfected by Arthur N. Palmer.  When you are cold, you sit down.  Remove your carbide lamp from your hardhat.  Pull out your shirt from your body and hold the lamp at the bottom edge, so that the heated air rises through the “chimney” between your body and the stretched-out shirt.  After a few minutes, you will have a toasty, warm belly and a better attitude...” – From Caving Basics, 1982, page 39.

 

Besides a shirt or coat, you can use a poncho, a trash bag (with a slit for your face), a piece of plastic, a mylar survival wrap, or a blanket to block the wind and wet, and to channel the heat of a burning candle, a heat tab, a carbide lamp or even a pinch of C-4, around your core!

 

Don’t sit on the ground, it will suck the heat from you, sit on a closed cell, foam pad, a dry log, or a heap of evergreen boughs, dry leaves, or branches piled at least four fingers high when compressed.  If nothing is available to sit on, or time is a factor, crouch down with only the bottom of your feet on the ground.

 

Dig a small hole four inches wide by four inches deep (10 cm x 10 cm) in the ground between your feet, line it with a square of aluminum foil, to reflect the heat and light from your heat source.   Be careful to keep open flames away from any material.  A four inch (10 cm) high, one ounce survival candle will burn for 3-¼ hours if sheltered from the wind.  A ½ ounce (14 gram) tealight candle in its aluminum cup will also burn for between three and four hours.

 

Build A Palmer Furnace Kit

 

So, before you go out into the woods this fall, tune up your Palmer Furnace kit or build one, and ALWAYS remember to slip it into your pocket before you leave your house.

 

·       1      Five ounce (140 grams), contractor grade,  heavy-duty 55 Gallon, 3.0 Mil, 38"W x 58"H, trash bags.  Rip or cut a face hole about 5 inches (12.5 cm) below one of the bottom corners of the bag 5 to 10 inches (12.5 to 25 cm) long.

·       1      ¾ ounce (21 grams), BIC full size lighter.

·       4      ½ ounce (14 grams) tealight candles.

·       1      ⅛ ounce (4 grams) 12 inch (30 cm) square piece of aluminum foil.

 

The total weight of a Palmer Furnace kit is less than ½ a pound (224 grams) or about the weight of two 3.29 oz (92 gram) SNICKERS® Milk Chocolate Candy Bar Sharing Size, so there is no excuse for not carrying it with you when you adventure.

 

I hope that you enjoy learning from this resource!  To help me to continue to provide valuable free content, please consider showing your appreciation by leaving a donation HERE.  Thank you and Happy Trails!

 

I hope that you continue to enjoy The Woodsman’s Journal Online and look for me on YouTube at BandanaMan Productions for other related videos, HERE.  Don’t forget to follow me on both The Woodsman’s Journal Online, HERE, and subscribe to BandanaMan Productions on YouTube.  If you have questions, as always, feel free to leave a comment on either site.  I announce new articles on Facebook at Eric Reynolds, on Instagram at bandanamanaproductions, and on VK at Eric Reynolds, so watch for me.

 

That is all for now, and as always, until next time, Happy Trails!

 

 

Sources

 

Pearl; “Pearl’s Cold Climate Survival Candle”, United States Army Aviation Digest, Volume 18, October 1972, page 40, https://books.google.com/books?id=fX_PMHbuxfQC&pg=RA8-PA40&dq=shelter+candle+heat&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjhh-Cy28aJAxXohIkEHZPnFAI4ChDoAXoECAYQAg#v=onepage&q=shelter%20candle%20heat&f=false, accessed November 9, 2024

 

U.S. Department of The Army; Guide For Platoon Sergeant, PAM 350-13, [Headquarters, Dept of the Army, August 1967], page 87, https://books.google.com/books?id=0h25AAAAIAAJ&pg=PP7&dq=pam+350-13&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwi9u9if5dCJAxUgpIkEHbwEJcUQ6AF6BAgMEAI#v=onepage&q=pam%20350-13&f=false, accessed November 9, 2024

 

Hershey’s Tropical Chocolate Bar, Part Deux, The Taste Test!©

 

 

 

Author’s note -- I hope that you enjoy learning from this resource!  To help me to continue to provide valuable free content, please consider showing your appreciation by leaving a donation HERE.  Thank you and Happy Trails!

Now that we have brought our Frankenstein Tropical Chocolate  Bar recipe back to life, it is time to mix it up, see how it tastes and if it can survive for one hour in a 120^o F (49^o C) oven without getting soft and gooey! 

 

To make the bars for the taste test, I made a batch of 6 one ounce (28 gram) bars using the 1957 modified, D-Ration Bar recipe, multiplied by six, as shown in “Hershey’s Tropical Chocolate Bar, Part Deux, It’s Alive, Bwahahaa!©”, HERE.

 

The Mixing!

 

Okay, so my first attempt was a complete failure, it did make a great tasting hot chocolate powder, but it had the texture of mummy dust!  After a quick review of my recipe and some further research the mistake was obvious.

 

 

Curses!  Cocoa butter, I missed an ingredient, no wonder my monster was a pile of dust and not a creation that could be easily molded.  Either the list of ingredients from Hershey’s Community Archives changed between 1957 and the 1970s, or, more likely, it was a red herring put into the list by Hershey’s to keep people from recreating the recipe!

 

 

·       8 squares (60 grams) of Bakers Unsweetened Baking Chocolate

·       8-½  tablespoons (66 grams) of powdered sugar

·       3 tablespoons, plus 2 teaspoons (30 grams) of nonfat dry milk powder

·       1 tablespoon (12 grams) of cocoa butter.  NOTE -- scant the tablespoon by approximately ½ teaspoon, since 1 tablespoon of cocoa butter weighs 13.6 grams.

·       a smidgen, no more than ¹/₃₂ teaspoon (less than ½ gram) of ethyl vanilla

To melt the Bakers Unsweetened Baking Chocolate, use either a microwave or a double-boiler on a stove.

Microwave the chocolate in 30-second intervals, stirring between each, until the chocolate is mostly melted and only a few tiny pieces remain, about 1 1/2 minutes in total.

Mix in the remaining ingredients and press into a mold.  If the mix appears to be too liquid, add another ½ teaspoon of nonfat dry milk powder.

Let cool, remove from the mold and enjoy.

 

However, due to an utter lack of 100% food grade cocoa butter in my local area, the conclusion of your regularly scheduled article, “Hershey’s Tropical Chocolate Bar, Part Deux, The Taste Test!©” had been delayed.  It will return as soon as the cocoa butter arrives.

 

 

I hope that you enjoy learning from this resource!  To help me to continue to provide valuable free content, please consider showing your appreciation by leaving a donation HERE.  Thank you and Happy Trails!

 

I hope that you continue to enjoy The Woodsman’s Journal Online and look for me on YouTube at BandanaMan Productions for other related videos, HERE.  Don’t forget to follow me on both The Woodsman’s Journal Online, HERE, and subscribe to BandanaMan Productions on YouTube.  If you have questions, as always, feel free to leave a comment on either site.  I announce new articles on Facebook at Eric Reynolds, on Instagram at bandanamanaproductions, and on VK at Eric Reynolds, so watch for me.

 

That is all for now, and as always, until next time, Happy Trails!

 

 

Sources

 

How Many Wiki; “How to convert”, https://www.howmany.wiki/wv/--teaspoon------to----gram, accessed October 31, 2024

 

Johnson, Bob; “Cardboard Dehydrator”, Boy’s Life, November 1978, [Boy Scouts of America, North Brunswick, NJ], page 71, https://books.google.com/books?id=j6cUbIYsP6EC&pg=PA72&dq=%22of+four+13-cent+u.s.%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjomaS37rSJAxVAkYkEHf2mOYEQ6AF6BAgFEAI#v=onepage&q=%22of%20four%2013-cent%20u.s.%22&f=false, accessed October 29, 2024

 

Wikimedia; “mad scientist with a transparent background”, by J.J., July 15, 2003, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mad_scientist_transparent_background.svg, accessed October 29, 2024

 

Wikimedia; “Promotional photo of Boris Karloff from The Bride of Frankenstein as Frankenstein's monster”, 1935, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Frankenstein%27s_monster_(Boris_Karloff).jpg, accessed October 29, 2024

 

Wikimedia, “Maniac1” 1934 film Maniac”, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Maniac1_copy.jpg, accessed October 20, 2024

 

 

Hershey’s Tropical Chocolate Bar, Part Deux, It’s Alive, Bwahahaa!©

 

 

Author’s note -- I hope that you enjoy learning from this resource!  To help me to continue to provide valuable free content, please consider showing your appreciation by leaving a donation HERE.  Thank you and Happy Trails!

It’s almost Halloween and you’d better make sure that you have plenty of candy for the trick or treaters.  But you won’t be able to find any Hershey’s Tropical Chocolate bars, because they stopped making them sometime after 1981, because most Americans like sweet chocolate, not dark chocolate, and didn’t like the taste. 

 

But I did, I like dark chocolate, and I remember them fondly.  So, in the spirit of Halloween and like any good Hollywood Mad Scientist, I am going to bring it back to life, bwahahaa!

 

But where to start on my quest to breathe life back into a dead candy bar?  At the beginning of course!

 

The first military chocolate that Hershey’s designed was the 1937 D Ration Bar, which was a 4 ounce, 600 calorie emergency ration bars.  It was roundly disliked, because it was too hard to eat, and because designer Captain Paul P. Logan, wanted it to taste “just a little better than a boiled potato”.  The D Ration Bar was also designed to be able to withstand 120^o F (49^o C) heat for an hour without significant softening.  But most importantly, unlike Hershey’s Tropical Chocolate Bar, you can find a recipe for D Ration Bars!

 

So, if we use the D Ration Bar recipe as a framework, or, shall we say, as a skeleton and add in and take out all the changes that Hershey’s made over the years, we should get close to that 120^o F withstanding, sweet treat that I first had in 1978, and remember so well even today.

 

According to U.S. Army in 1944, the D Ration Bar’s ingredients were chocolate liquor, powdered sugar, skim milk powder, cocoa butter, oat flour, and vanillin or ethyl vanilla.

 

According to Hershey’s Archives, in 1943, when the Tropical Chocolate Bar was first introduced, its list of ingredients was identical to that of the D Ration Bar.  That is because it was simply a 1 ounce (28 gram) D Bar!

 

Since the D Bar, was designed to be an emergency ration, the chocolate “is not a sweet”, and wasn’t a sweet chocolate with just 15% cacao, but a bittersweet, chocolate made with a 36% cacao.

 

But in 1957, the basic ingredients were changed, and the oat flour was out, “nonfat milk solids” replaced the “skim milk powder”, and “cocoa powder” replaced the “cocoa butter”.

 

Now nonfat milk solids, are like skim milk powder and cocoa powder is simply the cocoa solids that remain when all the cocoa butter has been pressed out of the cocoa paste.  Since the oat flour has been removed, if exchange it for the same amount of powdered sugar, then, our ingredient list would look like this.

 

A recipe for a 1 ounce (28 gram) 1957 Tropical Chocolate Bar would then be as follows:

·       1-¹/₃ square (10 grams) of Bakers Unsweetened Baking Chocolate

·       4 teaspoons (11 grams) of powdered sugar

·       2 teaspoons (5 grams) of nonfat dry milk powder

·       ¾ teaspoons (2 grams) of cocoa powder

·       A dash of ethyl vanilla

To melt the Bakers Unsweetened Baking Chocolate, use either a microwave or a double-boiler on a stove.

Microwave the chocolate in 30-second intervals, stirring between each, until the chocolate is mostly melted and only a few tiny pieces remain, about 1 1/2 minutes in total.

Mix in the remaining ingredients and press into a mold.

Let cool, remove from the mold and enjoy.

 

Molds can be purchased at Frontline Rations, HERE, or at WWIISoldier.com, HERE.

 

So, now that our Frankenstein recipe is all stitched together, it’s time to give it a jolt and taste test it to see if it is alive!  Bwahahaa!  Come back next week to read “Hershey’s Tropical Chocolate Bar, Part Deux, The Taste Test!©”

 

I hope that you enjoy learning from this resource!  To help me to continue to provide valuable free content, please consider showing your appreciation by leaving a donation HERE.  Thank you and Happy Trails!

 

I hope that you continue to enjoy The Woodsman’s Journal Online and look for me on YouTube at BandanaMan Productions for other related videos, HERE.  Don’t forget to follow me on both The Woodsman’s Journal Online, HERE, and subscribe to BandanaMan Productions on YouTube.  If you have questions, as always, feel free to leave a comment on either site.  I announce new articles on Facebook at Eric Reynolds, on Instagram at bandanamanaproductions, and on VK at Eric Reynolds, so watch for me.

 

That is all for now, and as always, until next time, Happy Trails!

 

Sources

 

 

90th Infantry Division Preservation Group, “Quartermaster Specification - C.Q.D. No. 19 D”, http://www.90thidpg.us/Paperwork/Research/D%20Ration/CQD19D-19420708-Drat.pdf, accessed October 20, 2024

 

Harry; “K-Ration: D-Bar, Sweet Chocolate and the Candy Bar”, https://www.kration.info/d-bar-sweet-chocolateand.html, accessed October 20, 2024

 

Hershey’s Community Archives; “Ration D Bars”, September 7, 2018, https://hersheyarchives.org/encyclopedia/ration-d-bars/#:~:text=The%20first%20of%20the%20Field,Byrd's%20last%20expedition%20in%201939, accessed October 20, 2024

 

Hershey’s Community Archives; “Hershey’s Tropical Chocolate Bar”, September 6, 2018, https://hersheyarchives.org/encyclopedia/hersheys-tropical-chocolate-bar/, accessed October 20, 2024

 

Thatcher, Harold Wesley; The Development of Special Rations for the Army, 1944, pages 4 to 15, https://books.google.com/books?id=l4yMl2-ktH4C&pg=PA13&dq=%22the+formula+for+the+d+ration+as+produced%22&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwj28oeH9KWJAxVNkIkEHW5aGVQQ6AF6BAgFEAI#v=onepage&q=%22the%20formula%20for%20the%20d%20ration%20as%20produced%22&f=false, accessed October 20, 2024

 

Wikimedia, “D ration chocolate bar” U.S. Army Center Of Military History, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:D_ration_chocolate_bar.jpg, accessed October 20, 2024

 

Wikimedia, “Maniac1 copy” 1934 film Maniac, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Maniac1_copy.jpg, accessed October 20, 2024