I am about to embark on a mini-series on fats, and this may be a little dense for many of my readers (assuming I have many readers). I can actually recall a time when “good cholesterol = HDL” and “bad cholesterol = LDL” were not yet fixed associations in my mind, so I am sympathetic if you still find yourself there now. Nevertheless, if you are going to take an interest in your health, as I sincerely hope you will, you are going to have to acquire an understanding of some of the basic science of human nutrition. So, let’s begin with the classification of fats into Saturated and Unsaturated.
Simply put, saturated fats are in solid form at room temperature and unsaturated fats are in liquid form. In the new “Dietary Guidelines for Americans, 2010,” the HHS/USDA has begun to use “saturated fat” and “solid fat” interchangeably. In the same document and in their “food pyramid”, the HHS/USDA describes unsaturated fats as “oils.”
Saturated fats are for the most part animal fats, i.e. fats found in intramuscular tissue as well as under the skin and around the organs. Both in the animals we eat, and in our own physiology, fat serves as both energy source and energy reserve. It also cushions the organs and skeleton from damaging blows and insulates the body from cold. More recently – and this is a development of monumental importance in our understanding of fat metabolism -- fat stores have come to be recognized as an endocrine organ as well. Leptin, a hormone discovered in adipose (fat) tissue in 1994, is an appetite suppressant, sending a strong signal to the hypothalamus at the center of the brain. Our fat is in a constant state of flux as its primary form, triglyceride molecules, are being synthesized (created), or catabolized (broken down).
Two other saturated fats (both solid at room temperature) that are commonly found in foods are vegetable in origin: Both are tropical oils – coconut oil and palm oil. Coconut oil, a medium-chain saturated fat, is appearing with increasing frequency in the Western Diet, but both have been used for millennia in the cuisines of the tropical regions.
Saturated fats are solid because they are structured in a dense way, with every carbon atom along the carbon chain having two hydrogen atoms. In addition, as it has no “double bond” between carbon atoms, they are straight, packed closely together and thus solid. Since there are no “free” atoms, they are also very stable and are not liable to become rancid when exposed to oxygen. It also means that, in their normal state or in cooking they will not create harmful “free radicals” (unpaired electrons) or produce pro-inflammatory AGE’s (Advanced Glycation End-Products) when heated.
Unsaturated fats break down into two sub-classes: monounsaturated and polyunsaturated. The monounsaturated fats are primarily found in olive oil, and to a lesser extent in Canola oil and peanut oil. Additional sources are avocado and many popular nuts (macadamias, pecans, hazelnuts). Because they have only one “double bond” in the carbon chain, they are called monounsaturated. They are fairly tightly packed and fairly stable when heated or exposed to oxygen (as in air). Have you noticed how olive oil becomes solid when refrigerated? It is, therefore, safe to use. Note, however, that medium chain, monounsaturated fats like olive oil, and longer-chain fatty acids, such as those found in polyunsaturated vegetable oils that need bile salts from the gall bladder to be digested, are more likely to be stored as adipose tissue, i.e. body fat. Saturated fats (e.g. butter), in contrast, are more likely to be directly used (oxidized, i.e. burned) for energy.
Polyunsaturated fats are fats that have more than one double bond in the carbon chain (hence poly), and are therefore loosely constructed and always found in the liquid state as “oils.” Because of their loose construction, they are relatively unstable, “reactive,” become rancid rather easily, and are also easily damaged by heating and especially reheating. These are the vegetable oils that have become ubiquitous in our food supply due to the ability to manufacture them cheaply. But the refining and processing has deleterious effects that are becoming increasingly known and understood. Trans fat is only one example. Trans fats (the artificial kind created in the processing phase to make liquid oils solid and more stable for use in margarine and in manufactured baked goods and cooking) are partially hydrogenated vegetable oils. There’s a broad consensus that everyone should strictly avoid artificial trans fats.
It is important to recognize that all fats are combinations of the three types: saturated, mono and polyunsaturated. Butter, for example is 66% saturated, 30% mono and 4% poly; Tub margarine is 23% saturated, 55% mono and 22% polyunsaturated; olive oil is 15% saturated, 70% mono and 10% poly. Soybean oil, used in 70% of processed foods, including restaurant meals in the US, is 15% saturated, 22% mono and 62% poly. Canola oil, a genetically engineered variant of rapeseed oil, is 7% saturated, 65% mono and 28% polyunsaturated. What are we getting ourselves into now!
The next column will be “The Dangers of Polyunsaturated Fats.” I will not be espousing the government’s position here.
© Dan Brown 5/1/11
Subscribe To
Posts
All Comments
Tuesday, May 3, 2011
Thursday, April 28, 2011
The Nutrition Debate #19: The Archevore Way of Eating a la Dr. Kurt G. Harris, MD
I mentioned in my last column that I had a “peripheral interest” in Paleolithic Nutrition and in Dr. Kurt Harris’s Archevore Way of Eating in particular. It is peripheral because I have been a Type 2 diabetic for 25 years, and for the last 8 years have been eating (mostly) a Very Low Carb dietary. VLC is a very effective way to control blood sugar and lose weight.
If you are overweight, or have Metabolic Syndrome or diabetes, to improve your health Dr. Harris advises you not to eat the Archevore way. He recommends that you eat with special macronutrient ratios to address those medical conditions.
But, if you are not overweight or have Metabolic Syndrome or diabetes, Dr. Harris counsels that by emulating the “evolutionary metabolic milieu” he describes in his 12 step program, this “pastoral diet” can improve your health. He counsels the follower to “go as far down the list as you can in whatever time frame you can manage. The further along the list you stop, the healthier you are likely to be. There is no counting, measuring, or weighing. You are not required to purchase anything specific from me (him) or anyone else. There are no special supplements, drugs or testing required.”
Dr. Harris’s 12 step program is taken directly, verbatim, from his blog at http://www.archevore.com/get-started/.
1. Eliminate sugar (including fruit juices and sports drinks that contain HFCS) and all foods that contain flour.
2. Start eating proper fats. Use healthy animal fats to substitute fat calories for calories that formerly came from sugar and flour.
3. Eliminate gluten grains (wheat, barley, rye, malt). Limit grains like corn and rice, which are nutritionally poor.
4. Eliminate grain and seed derived oils (cooking oils). Cook with Ghee, butter, animal fats, or coconut oil. Use no temperate plant oils like corn, soy canola, flax walnut, etc.
5. Favor ruminants like beef, lamb and bison for your meat. Eat eggs and fish.
6. Make sure you are Vitamin D replete. Get daily midday sun or consider supplementation.
7. Two or three meals a day is best. Don’t graze like an herbivore.
8. Adjust your (Omega) 6’s and 3’s. Pastured (grass fed) dairy and grass fed beef or bison has a more optimal 6:3 ratio, more vitamins and CLA (natural conjugated linoleic acid). If you can’t eat enough pastured products, eat plenty of fish.
9. Get proper exercise – emphasizing resistance and interval training over long aerobic sessions.
10. Most modern fruit is just a candy bar from a tree. Go easy on bags of sugar like apples. Stick with berries and avoid watermelon which is pure fructose. Eat in moderation. If you are not trying to lose fat, a few pieces of fruit a day are fine.
11. Eliminate legumes (beans, lentils, peas, peanuts, soy beans).
12. If you are allergic to milk protein or concerned about theoretical risks of casein, you can stick to butter and cream and avoid milk and soft cheeses.
“No counting, measuring or weighing is required, nor is it encouraged.” “Archevores typically range from 5-35% carbohydrate, from 10-30% protein and from 50 – 80% fat (mostly from animals) but wider ranges are entirely possible if you are not dieting and you are meticulous about the quality of your animal food sources. If you are trying to lose weight, really minimizing fructose and eating 50-70g a day of CHO as starch is recommended. If you are at your desired weight and healthy, 20% of calories as carbs are plenty for most very active people.” “Archevore diets tend to be lower in carbohydrate than the Standard American Diet (SAD) because you can only eat so much, and eating animals gives you lots of fat. But it is emphatically not a “low carb” diet as you do not count anything. You just avoid certain foods that happen to be largely carbohydrate. Note that “Fat” and “Carbohydrate” are macronutrient categories that each contains good and bad. Saturated and monounsaturated fat is generally good. More than 4% of calories from PUFA (whether n3 or n6) is bad. For healthy non-diabetics, starch (glucose polymers) is good. Excess fructose is bad. In wheat, the carbohydrate starch is not the major problem. It is the gluten proteins and wheat germ agglutinin that come along with the starch. So, forget “carbs vs. fat.” It is Neolithic agents of disease versus everything else. Most Archevores only know macronutrient metrics in retrospect, as they don’t target numbers just like wild humans didn’t target numbers. If you are not trying to lose weight and you like to eat potatoes and rice, EAT THEM. Sweet potatoes, white rice and white potatoes are well tolerated by most people, and starchy vegetables per se are not Neolithic agents of disease. Many active people without diabetes or metabolic syndrome feel and function better with a fair amount of starch in their diet. YMMV (Your Mileage May Vary).” (end quotation from http://www.archevore.com/get-started/)
So, if you are overweight, or have Metabolic Syndrome or pre-diabetes or diabetes, well…carbohydrates do count, as Dr. Harris makes clear. Woe is me. Next week we will start a 4-week series on “Know Your Fats.”
Dan Brown. 4/24/11
If you are overweight, or have Metabolic Syndrome or diabetes, to improve your health Dr. Harris advises you not to eat the Archevore way. He recommends that you eat with special macronutrient ratios to address those medical conditions.
But, if you are not overweight or have Metabolic Syndrome or diabetes, Dr. Harris counsels that by emulating the “evolutionary metabolic milieu” he describes in his 12 step program, this “pastoral diet” can improve your health. He counsels the follower to “go as far down the list as you can in whatever time frame you can manage. The further along the list you stop, the healthier you are likely to be. There is no counting, measuring, or weighing. You are not required to purchase anything specific from me (him) or anyone else. There are no special supplements, drugs or testing required.”
Dr. Harris’s 12 step program is taken directly, verbatim, from his blog at http://www.archevore.com/get-started/.
1. Eliminate sugar (including fruit juices and sports drinks that contain HFCS) and all foods that contain flour.
2. Start eating proper fats. Use healthy animal fats to substitute fat calories for calories that formerly came from sugar and flour.
3. Eliminate gluten grains (wheat, barley, rye, malt). Limit grains like corn and rice, which are nutritionally poor.
4. Eliminate grain and seed derived oils (cooking oils). Cook with Ghee, butter, animal fats, or coconut oil. Use no temperate plant oils like corn, soy canola, flax walnut, etc.
5. Favor ruminants like beef, lamb and bison for your meat. Eat eggs and fish.
6. Make sure you are Vitamin D replete. Get daily midday sun or consider supplementation.
7. Two or three meals a day is best. Don’t graze like an herbivore.
8. Adjust your (Omega) 6’s and 3’s. Pastured (grass fed) dairy and grass fed beef or bison has a more optimal 6:3 ratio, more vitamins and CLA (natural conjugated linoleic acid). If you can’t eat enough pastured products, eat plenty of fish.
9. Get proper exercise – emphasizing resistance and interval training over long aerobic sessions.
10. Most modern fruit is just a candy bar from a tree. Go easy on bags of sugar like apples. Stick with berries and avoid watermelon which is pure fructose. Eat in moderation. If you are not trying to lose fat, a few pieces of fruit a day are fine.
11. Eliminate legumes (beans, lentils, peas, peanuts, soy beans).
12. If you are allergic to milk protein or concerned about theoretical risks of casein, you can stick to butter and cream and avoid milk and soft cheeses.
“No counting, measuring or weighing is required, nor is it encouraged.” “Archevores typically range from 5-35% carbohydrate, from 10-30% protein and from 50 – 80% fat (mostly from animals) but wider ranges are entirely possible if you are not dieting and you are meticulous about the quality of your animal food sources. If you are trying to lose weight, really minimizing fructose and eating 50-70g a day of CHO as starch is recommended. If you are at your desired weight and healthy, 20% of calories as carbs are plenty for most very active people.” “Archevore diets tend to be lower in carbohydrate than the Standard American Diet (SAD) because you can only eat so much, and eating animals gives you lots of fat. But it is emphatically not a “low carb” diet as you do not count anything. You just avoid certain foods that happen to be largely carbohydrate. Note that “Fat” and “Carbohydrate” are macronutrient categories that each contains good and bad. Saturated and monounsaturated fat is generally good. More than 4% of calories from PUFA (whether n3 or n6) is bad. For healthy non-diabetics, starch (glucose polymers) is good. Excess fructose is bad. In wheat, the carbohydrate starch is not the major problem. It is the gluten proteins and wheat germ agglutinin that come along with the starch. So, forget “carbs vs. fat.” It is Neolithic agents of disease versus everything else. Most Archevores only know macronutrient metrics in retrospect, as they don’t target numbers just like wild humans didn’t target numbers. If you are not trying to lose weight and you like to eat potatoes and rice, EAT THEM. Sweet potatoes, white rice and white potatoes are well tolerated by most people, and starchy vegetables per se are not Neolithic agents of disease. Many active people without diabetes or metabolic syndrome feel and function better with a fair amount of starch in their diet. YMMV (Your Mileage May Vary).” (end quotation from http://www.archevore.com/get-started/)
So, if you are overweight, or have Metabolic Syndrome or pre-diabetes or diabetes, well…carbohydrates do count, as Dr. Harris makes clear. Woe is me. Next week we will start a 4-week series on “Know Your Fats.”
Dan Brown. 4/24/11
Sunday, April 17, 2011
The Nutrition Debate #17: Michael Pollan: Pied Piper of Pseudo Paleo Prandial Principles
I’ve read Michael Pollan’s last four books and enjoyed them all; he’s a good writer. But he’s a journalist, as he often reminds us in “The Omnivore’s Dilemma.” He’s not a science writer, and that is my quarrel with him. He “gets” a big part of the message I write about in this series (archived at http://danbrown-thenutritiondebate.blogspot.com), but he misses a critical part of the science (just how he misses is muddled in mystery), and so he “misses the mark.”
The first book of his that I read, “The Botany of Desire,” I bought in a Garden Center! But his latest three, all best sellers, are for the most part about the food we eat. “The Omnivore’s Dilemma” is the best read, but “In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto” is the most relevant to our discussion here. “Food Rules” is a compendium of “Defense” and just icing on the book sales cake. It is, however, a useful iteration of its predecessor for those with only an hour of free time or who want a quick reference for pocket or purse.
The mantra of “In Defense of Food” (recapitulated in outline in “Food Rules),” is “EAT FOOD, NOT TOO MUCH, MOSTLY PLANTS.” I completely buy in to the first two parts, both in overall concept and in virtually all the particulars. I also subscribe to his long prefatory rationale – the first two thirds of “Defense,” actually – almost in their entirety.
However, Pollan goes astray in the third part of his mantra when he buys into the government’s shift away from healthy animal fats (aka saturated or “solid” fats in the latest “Dietary Guidelines for Americans”) and towards a “mostly” plant-based diet. He ignores all the science in this area – even after lambasting all the errors of the last fifty years and apparently espousing the “alternative” hypotheses earlier in “Defense” – in order to align himself with the virtually vegan victuals point of view that our public health officials have taken up and are trumpeting to the masses.
Perhaps his virtual visits to the abattoirs of the industrial beef production industry, and his actual experience slaughtering a few chickens on a farm in the Shenandoah Valley while researching “The Omnivore’s Dilemma,” affected him more than he realizes. Or perhaps it was the easy-to-fall-into trap of writing “to the market”, i. e., pandering to a perceived predisposed mindset of the reader. Even though he pulls his punches a bit with “mostly plants,” I think it is a miscalculation, if a calculation at all. Or, we could blame the pandering to the government line on his editor/publisher.
There is no doubt that Pollan has become a Pied Piper, though. He has put himself out in front of the lemming masses. To the extent his Pseudo Paleo dietary advice is followed, he will lead them over the abyss, after he stops at the bank.
Pollan himself, it should be noted, does not claim to be advocating Paleo principles of eating. His precepts initially resemble Paleo ideas, but in the final analysis they are decidedly not paleo (more on what Paleo is in the next installment). He correctly identifies all of the dietary errors for the last 10,000 years, suggesting that he is heading towards an evolutionarily informed way of eating. Then he doesn’t. After setting us up to follow him back to “healthy eating,” he takes us instead in the direction that our government, etc, etc, is currently leading us - the complete opposite of where we should be going. Avoiding animal fats, and cooking with Crisco and Wesson Oil (or any other polyunsaturated vegetable oils that are high in Omega 6 fatty acids), is not what we should be doing (more on this too in coming weeks). Again, we could blame this on his editors too. Maybe these two books, “In Defense of Food” and “Food Rules,” were their idea too, to capitalize on the enormous (and deserved) success of “The Omnivore’s Dilemma.”
Philosophically, this lack of thematic consistency, which l attribute to his “journalist” grounding, both in the good and bad ways described, damages the force of his argument. And due to the lack of grounding in science, on his part or his editor’s, these books ultimately fail to give good advice in the “mostly plants” section.
This column was not meant to be a book review, but that is what is has become. In the next installment I will describe what is meant by “Paleo Nutrition” and how its principles can be used in guiding us forward in the present milieu. Why should we be guided by what our primordial ancestors ate and what they didn’t eat? Is there a scientific basis, anthropologically, physiologically and biochemically speaking? And should we use it to prescribe a way of healthy eating today? Let’s explore that next.
© Dan Brown 4/10/11
The first book of his that I read, “The Botany of Desire,” I bought in a Garden Center! But his latest three, all best sellers, are for the most part about the food we eat. “The Omnivore’s Dilemma” is the best read, but “In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto” is the most relevant to our discussion here. “Food Rules” is a compendium of “Defense” and just icing on the book sales cake. It is, however, a useful iteration of its predecessor for those with only an hour of free time or who want a quick reference for pocket or purse.
The mantra of “In Defense of Food” (recapitulated in outline in “Food Rules),” is “EAT FOOD, NOT TOO MUCH, MOSTLY PLANTS.” I completely buy in to the first two parts, both in overall concept and in virtually all the particulars. I also subscribe to his long prefatory rationale – the first two thirds of “Defense,” actually – almost in their entirety.
However, Pollan goes astray in the third part of his mantra when he buys into the government’s shift away from healthy animal fats (aka saturated or “solid” fats in the latest “Dietary Guidelines for Americans”) and towards a “mostly” plant-based diet. He ignores all the science in this area – even after lambasting all the errors of the last fifty years and apparently espousing the “alternative” hypotheses earlier in “Defense” – in order to align himself with the virtually vegan victuals point of view that our public health officials have taken up and are trumpeting to the masses.
Perhaps his virtual visits to the abattoirs of the industrial beef production industry, and his actual experience slaughtering a few chickens on a farm in the Shenandoah Valley while researching “The Omnivore’s Dilemma,” affected him more than he realizes. Or perhaps it was the easy-to-fall-into trap of writing “to the market”, i. e., pandering to a perceived predisposed mindset of the reader. Even though he pulls his punches a bit with “mostly plants,” I think it is a miscalculation, if a calculation at all. Or, we could blame the pandering to the government line on his editor/publisher.
There is no doubt that Pollan has become a Pied Piper, though. He has put himself out in front of the lemming masses. To the extent his Pseudo Paleo dietary advice is followed, he will lead them over the abyss, after he stops at the bank.
Pollan himself, it should be noted, does not claim to be advocating Paleo principles of eating. His precepts initially resemble Paleo ideas, but in the final analysis they are decidedly not paleo (more on what Paleo is in the next installment). He correctly identifies all of the dietary errors for the last 10,000 years, suggesting that he is heading towards an evolutionarily informed way of eating. Then he doesn’t. After setting us up to follow him back to “healthy eating,” he takes us instead in the direction that our government, etc, etc, is currently leading us - the complete opposite of where we should be going. Avoiding animal fats, and cooking with Crisco and Wesson Oil (or any other polyunsaturated vegetable oils that are high in Omega 6 fatty acids), is not what we should be doing (more on this too in coming weeks). Again, we could blame this on his editors too. Maybe these two books, “In Defense of Food” and “Food Rules,” were their idea too, to capitalize on the enormous (and deserved) success of “The Omnivore’s Dilemma.”
Philosophically, this lack of thematic consistency, which l attribute to his “journalist” grounding, both in the good and bad ways described, damages the force of his argument. And due to the lack of grounding in science, on his part or his editor’s, these books ultimately fail to give good advice in the “mostly plants” section.
This column was not meant to be a book review, but that is what is has become. In the next installment I will describe what is meant by “Paleo Nutrition” and how its principles can be used in guiding us forward in the present milieu. Why should we be guided by what our primordial ancestors ate and what they didn’t eat? Is there a scientific basis, anthropologically, physiologically and biochemically speaking? And should we use it to prescribe a way of healthy eating today? Let’s explore that next.
© Dan Brown 4/10/11
The Nutrition Debate #18: Paleolithic Nutrition and the Archevore Diet
“The modern dietary regimen known as the Paleolithic diet…is a nutritional plan based on the presumed ancient diet of wild plants and animals that various human species habitually consumed during the Paleolithic” era, according to the Wikipedia entry. A fundamental precept of this Way of Eating is that it “ended…with the development of agriculture” and animal domestication at the advent of the Neolithic era. Hence, the “contemporary Paleolithic diet consists mainly of meat, fish, vegetables, fruit, roots, and nuts, and excludes grains, legumes, dairy products, salt, refined sugar, and processed oils,” quoting from Wikipedia but with emphasis added.
“Paleolithic nutrition is based on the premise that modern humans are genetically adapted to the diet of their Paleolithic ancestors, and that humans have scarcely changed since the dawn of agriculture, and therefore that an ideal diet for human health and well-being is one that resembles this ancestral diet.” From the time of the onset of our hunter-gatherer stage of evolutionary development some 2.5 million years ago, hominids have been carnivorous animals. We ate whatever we could hunt or catch or forage. We fed, and then we fasted until the next kill or catch or gather. We also most likely ate the whole animal, including organs, blood, fat and bone marrow, before we put the hide and bone to use.
“The ancestral human diet is inferred from historical and ethnographic studies of modern-day hunter-gatherers as well as archeological finds, anthropological evidence and application of optimal foraging theory,” again quoting Wikipedia. Today, a Paleo diet would of course include cultivated plants and domesticated animal meat as an alternative to foraging and hunting. However, the Industrial Revolution led to the large scale development of mechanized food processing techniques for these cultivated plants. Refined cereals, refined sugars, and refined vegetable oils have become major components of Western diets [such as the Standard American Diet (SAD)]. Intensive livestock farming methods produce fattier (corn fed) meat (from cattle); while selective breeding has produced leaner pork and poultry with greater amounts of white meat. Selective breeding also resulted in larger, sweeter fruits. Modern transportation systems provide year round availability for almost every sort of food stuff. The Paleo diet rejects some of these newer foods as “Neolithic agents of disease,” in the words of Dr. Kurt G. Harris, author of the Archevore (formerly PāNū) blog.
These modern-day developments are described (and deplored) in Michael Pollan’s “The Omnivore’s Dilemma,” where he slams the industrial production of corn-fed feedlot beef and cooped-up chickens. He followed up with “In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto” and “Food Rules,” where he defined “real” food and enumerated some twenty-odd rules of thumb on how to identify it. I am in complete accord with Pollan, insofar as his definition of “real” food goes. However, to hone my approach to Paleo eating, on my blogroll at http://danbrown-thenutritiondebate.blogspot.com, I subscribe to the thinking of Dr. Kurt Harris. Dr. Harris developed his interest in health and nutrition after reading Gary Taubes’s “Good Calories-Bad Calories.” More recently, Taubes is the author of “Why We Get Fat: And What To Do About It.”
“Archevory refers both to a dietary approach which strives to focus on essentials without superfluity, but also to the yearning to consume or learn about essential principles in general,” Harris says at http://archevore.com/archevore/. Harris explains, “The Archevore diet and approach to health is centered on a simple idea – that the diseases of civilization are largely related to the abandonment of the metabolic conditions we evolved under – what I have called the “evolutionary metabolic milieu” EM2. “I believe we can make sense of many of the diseases prevalent now and relate them to some simple but profound changes that have occurred with the introduction of agriculture and the more recent industrialization of our foodways. These changes are related to how the food environment, including its availability, interacts with the metabolic environment of our bodies.”
Harris says his conception of the “evolutionary metabolic milieu” is “not derived from a single science or field of inquiry, but draws first on medical sciences like biochemistry and endocrinology, and only then looks back with history and paleoanthropology. It is becoming clear now that many of the diseases afflicting humanity are not a natural part of the aging process, but are side effects of technology and other powerful cultural changes in the way we eat and live that have occurred since the dawn of agriculture roughly 10,000 years ago. These changes seem to center largely on the sequential introduction of what I call the Neolithic agents of disease – wheat, excess fructose, and excess linoleic acid.”
Dr. Harris’s “12 step program to remove the Neolithic agents of disease in an efficient and practical manner” will be the subject of the next installment in this series. I have a keen, if peripheral, interest in this ascendant eating program.
© Dan Brown 4/17/11
“Paleolithic nutrition is based on the premise that modern humans are genetically adapted to the diet of their Paleolithic ancestors, and that humans have scarcely changed since the dawn of agriculture, and therefore that an ideal diet for human health and well-being is one that resembles this ancestral diet.” From the time of the onset of our hunter-gatherer stage of evolutionary development some 2.5 million years ago, hominids have been carnivorous animals. We ate whatever we could hunt or catch or forage. We fed, and then we fasted until the next kill or catch or gather. We also most likely ate the whole animal, including organs, blood, fat and bone marrow, before we put the hide and bone to use.
“The ancestral human diet is inferred from historical and ethnographic studies of modern-day hunter-gatherers as well as archeological finds, anthropological evidence and application of optimal foraging theory,” again quoting Wikipedia. Today, a Paleo diet would of course include cultivated plants and domesticated animal meat as an alternative to foraging and hunting. However, the Industrial Revolution led to the large scale development of mechanized food processing techniques for these cultivated plants. Refined cereals, refined sugars, and refined vegetable oils have become major components of Western diets [such as the Standard American Diet (SAD)]. Intensive livestock farming methods produce fattier (corn fed) meat (from cattle); while selective breeding has produced leaner pork and poultry with greater amounts of white meat. Selective breeding also resulted in larger, sweeter fruits. Modern transportation systems provide year round availability for almost every sort of food stuff. The Paleo diet rejects some of these newer foods as “Neolithic agents of disease,” in the words of Dr. Kurt G. Harris, author of the Archevore (formerly PāNū) blog.
These modern-day developments are described (and deplored) in Michael Pollan’s “The Omnivore’s Dilemma,” where he slams the industrial production of corn-fed feedlot beef and cooped-up chickens. He followed up with “In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto” and “Food Rules,” where he defined “real” food and enumerated some twenty-odd rules of thumb on how to identify it. I am in complete accord with Pollan, insofar as his definition of “real” food goes. However, to hone my approach to Paleo eating, on my blogroll at http://danbrown-thenutritiondebate.blogspot.com, I subscribe to the thinking of Dr. Kurt Harris. Dr. Harris developed his interest in health and nutrition after reading Gary Taubes’s “Good Calories-Bad Calories.” More recently, Taubes is the author of “Why We Get Fat: And What To Do About It.”
“Archevory refers both to a dietary approach which strives to focus on essentials without superfluity, but also to the yearning to consume or learn about essential principles in general,” Harris says at http://archevore.com/archevore/. Harris explains, “The Archevore diet and approach to health is centered on a simple idea – that the diseases of civilization are largely related to the abandonment of the metabolic conditions we evolved under – what I have called the “evolutionary metabolic milieu” EM2. “I believe we can make sense of many of the diseases prevalent now and relate them to some simple but profound changes that have occurred with the introduction of agriculture and the more recent industrialization of our foodways. These changes are related to how the food environment, including its availability, interacts with the metabolic environment of our bodies.”
Harris says his conception of the “evolutionary metabolic milieu” is “not derived from a single science or field of inquiry, but draws first on medical sciences like biochemistry and endocrinology, and only then looks back with history and paleoanthropology. It is becoming clear now that many of the diseases afflicting humanity are not a natural part of the aging process, but are side effects of technology and other powerful cultural changes in the way we eat and live that have occurred since the dawn of agriculture roughly 10,000 years ago. These changes seem to center largely on the sequential introduction of what I call the Neolithic agents of disease – wheat, excess fructose, and excess linoleic acid.”
Dr. Harris’s “12 step program to remove the Neolithic agents of disease in an efficient and practical manner” will be the subject of the next installment in this series. I have a keen, if peripheral, interest in this ascendant eating program.
© Dan Brown 4/17/11
Sunday, April 3, 2011
The Nutrition Debate #16: Diets and Dieting: Had Enough? Ready to Move On?
Diets and dieting have been around forever. I started this series with a story about William Banting, a retired London undertaker who in 1863 published a pamphlet, “Letter on Corpulence,” after following a diet his doctor had heard about while attending a medical conference in Paris. Banting lost 50 pounds on the diet. It is not recorded if he gained it back.
These days, every few years we hear about a new diet that has caught the public’s imagination. Why is that? The answer seems to be that, for most people, we may lose weight on a temporary basis, but usually we gain is back before too long. So, we continue to look for “a diet that will work for us.”
A few years ago there was a flurry of interest in the Blood Type Diet, a “nutrigenomic” program based on your blood type (obviously) but that was also based on your ethnic-geographic origins and therefore presumably your ancestor’s primordial dietary. Other still-popular diets include the Mediterranean Diet and the South Beach Diet. However, it is the contrast between the establishment’s low-fat diet and the alternative low-carb diet that is of special interest to me.
Diets and dieting, of course, are for those who are overweight, obese or even morbidly obese. These days that includes about fifty percent of the US population. The incidence of morbidity as it relates to Type 2 diabetes and the lesser recognized Metabolic Syndrome is also increasing at an alarming rate. Associated co-morbidities include hypertension (high-blood pressure) and CVD (cardio-vascular disease). Other Diseases of Civilization, including Alzheimer’s dementia, many cancers and numerous lesser known diseases are also frequently associated and are increasing dramatically.
Paradoxically, at a time of plenty in the food supply for most of the developed world, especially the US, the relatively “poorer” classes demographically are fatter as a population than the economically “better off.” Although some of that can be attributed to poor education about food choices, it seems to me that it is simply the economics of the food choice dilemma that is causative. The less expensive foods (carbohydrates) are more fattening; the more expensive foods (protein and fat) are, well, more expensive. Sadly, the choice is simply, what can I afford to buy for my family?
Thus, the poor get fat because they can’t afford to “eat healthy.” Hence the recommendation in the latest “Dietary Guidelines” to eat a vegan diet to get your protein and fat from less expensive plant sources: “beans and peas, nuts and seeds,” as well as “fortified soy beverages.” It’s a clever device to promote both a meat-free diet and the vegan agenda. Our government has been snookered and swallowed it whole. They want you to as well, especially if you’re in the “poorer” demographic. That’s what Public Health does: prescribe a regimen for all that will accrue a benefit to a few. For my take on the “Dietary Guidelines,” see installment #14 archived at http://danbrown-thenutritiondebate.blogspot.com.
But not everyone today is overweight and obese. Some of my readers, especially those who haven’t developed the damaged glucose regulatory mechanism about which Gary Taubes hypothesizes, will ask, “How have I managed to avoid getting fat?” Are these folks so precisely attuned to their metabolism that they eat exactly the amount of food their body requires, not a calorie more? Or do they attribute their metabolic balance to the amount of exercise they do, increasing the amount each year as they age? Or do they “eat right?” If you think it is the latter, I think you’re right.
If you need to lose weight, and keep it off, you would be well advised to change what you eat permanently, for life, (double entendre intended). If you are not overweight, you may already “eat right,” but would benefit from avoiding foods that may harm you in ways other than making you fat. The Diseases of Civilization, attributed to the Western Diet, are frequently independent of a tendency toward overweight. They are multifarious, and more are being identified by association and/or by causative agent in the literature with each issue of almost every medical journal. A search on any disorder will produce a vast amount of (often conflicting) research attempting to attribute association or even causality.
This suggests to me it is time for everyone to assess their own diet and consider what makes sense for them. I personally have “an interest in eating,” as the publisher wryly noted in an early introduction to this column. But I also have a special interest in eating well, both for my pleasure and for my health. I have lost a great deal of weight by adopting a Way of Eating that works for me. More importantly, my health is much better by all the metrics that my doctor uses: my lipid panel is now “to die for” (oops!) and my blood sugar is now under control, practically without meds. I have the fasting blood glucose and HbA1c of a non-diabetic! I feel great and am never hungry. My diet is very high fat, moderate protein and very low carbs. Your mileage may vary, but gradually eating fewer calories from carbohydrates is a good start.
© Dan Brown 4/3/11
These days, every few years we hear about a new diet that has caught the public’s imagination. Why is that? The answer seems to be that, for most people, we may lose weight on a temporary basis, but usually we gain is back before too long. So, we continue to look for “a diet that will work for us.”
A few years ago there was a flurry of interest in the Blood Type Diet, a “nutrigenomic” program based on your blood type (obviously) but that was also based on your ethnic-geographic origins and therefore presumably your ancestor’s primordial dietary. Other still-popular diets include the Mediterranean Diet and the South Beach Diet. However, it is the contrast between the establishment’s low-fat diet and the alternative low-carb diet that is of special interest to me.
Diets and dieting, of course, are for those who are overweight, obese or even morbidly obese. These days that includes about fifty percent of the US population. The incidence of morbidity as it relates to Type 2 diabetes and the lesser recognized Metabolic Syndrome is also increasing at an alarming rate. Associated co-morbidities include hypertension (high-blood pressure) and CVD (cardio-vascular disease). Other Diseases of Civilization, including Alzheimer’s dementia, many cancers and numerous lesser known diseases are also frequently associated and are increasing dramatically.
Paradoxically, at a time of plenty in the food supply for most of the developed world, especially the US, the relatively “poorer” classes demographically are fatter as a population than the economically “better off.” Although some of that can be attributed to poor education about food choices, it seems to me that it is simply the economics of the food choice dilemma that is causative. The less expensive foods (carbohydrates) are more fattening; the more expensive foods (protein and fat) are, well, more expensive. Sadly, the choice is simply, what can I afford to buy for my family?
Thus, the poor get fat because they can’t afford to “eat healthy.” Hence the recommendation in the latest “Dietary Guidelines” to eat a vegan diet to get your protein and fat from less expensive plant sources: “beans and peas, nuts and seeds,” as well as “fortified soy beverages.” It’s a clever device to promote both a meat-free diet and the vegan agenda. Our government has been snookered and swallowed it whole. They want you to as well, especially if you’re in the “poorer” demographic. That’s what Public Health does: prescribe a regimen for all that will accrue a benefit to a few. For my take on the “Dietary Guidelines,” see installment #14 archived at http://danbrown-thenutritiondebate.blogspot.com.
But not everyone today is overweight and obese. Some of my readers, especially those who haven’t developed the damaged glucose regulatory mechanism about which Gary Taubes hypothesizes, will ask, “How have I managed to avoid getting fat?” Are these folks so precisely attuned to their metabolism that they eat exactly the amount of food their body requires, not a calorie more? Or do they attribute their metabolic balance to the amount of exercise they do, increasing the amount each year as they age? Or do they “eat right?” If you think it is the latter, I think you’re right.
If you need to lose weight, and keep it off, you would be well advised to change what you eat permanently, for life, (double entendre intended). If you are not overweight, you may already “eat right,” but would benefit from avoiding foods that may harm you in ways other than making you fat. The Diseases of Civilization, attributed to the Western Diet, are frequently independent of a tendency toward overweight. They are multifarious, and more are being identified by association and/or by causative agent in the literature with each issue of almost every medical journal. A search on any disorder will produce a vast amount of (often conflicting) research attempting to attribute association or even causality.
This suggests to me it is time for everyone to assess their own diet and consider what makes sense for them. I personally have “an interest in eating,” as the publisher wryly noted in an early introduction to this column. But I also have a special interest in eating well, both for my pleasure and for my health. I have lost a great deal of weight by adopting a Way of Eating that works for me. More importantly, my health is much better by all the metrics that my doctor uses: my lipid panel is now “to die for” (oops!) and my blood sugar is now under control, practically without meds. I have the fasting blood glucose and HbA1c of a non-diabetic! I feel great and am never hungry. My diet is very high fat, moderate protein and very low carbs. Your mileage may vary, but gradually eating fewer calories from carbohydrates is a good start.
© Dan Brown 4/3/11
Monday, March 21, 2011
The Nutrition Debate #15: Did Grandma Know About Macronutrients and Phytochemicals?
We all love(d) our grandparents, of course, and I have nothing but fond memories of mine. My mother’s father was a truck farmer who owned 40 acres on Staten Island. I remember his really rough hands. Every week he drove his chain-drive, solid-tired, flat-bed truck through the Holland Tunnel to the Washington Street market before dawn. There, he sold crates of vegetables at the wholesale market where the World Trade Center was later to be built. He and his wife, my grandmother, were both fat and died at about age 75, he of lung cancer (he loved cigars) and she of Alzheimer’s.
My father’s father died at age 79 when I was only 8 but his wife, my grandmother lived to be 89 and was skinny all her life. She hadn’t eaten a tomato since 1895. Poison, she said, nightshade family. So are potatoes, of course, and eggplant, Bell peppers, chili pepper, paprika, tobacco, petunia, and belladonna (deadly nightshade). So far, they haven’t killed me. (Aside: When my wife read this column in draft, she told me her father ate unripe tomatoes as a kid and got really sick.)
I did not derive any enduring wisdom about eating from any of my grandparents. I wasn’t asking, and they weren’t saying, but YMMV (Your Mileage May Vary), to use internet slang. Increasingly, however, we hear this advice: Don’t eat any food that didn’t exist when your grandmother went food shopping, or don’t eat anything that is sold in a box or a bag; or has more than 4 ingredients; or has things in it that you can’t pronounce. In other words: eat whole, unprocessed, unrefined foods. In sum, as Michael Pollan says, “Eat Real Food”. I think that’s good advice, as far as it goes. It’s a start anyway. And you have to start somewhere if you want to improve the quality of your life and avoid getting a “progressive” dietary disease like Type 2 diabetes, or even a syndrome. Woe is me, not Metabolic Syndrome!
It’s easy to make these pronouncements, but we all lead busy lives and preprocessed foods are convenient. Besides, dietary advice is constantly changing and so much is still unknown and uncertain. Low-fat, low carbohydrate, who’s to know? Your doctor’s in charge of your health, right? And the government knows best. Well. Now you’ve gone too far for me, but if you’ve reading this column (archived at http://danbrown-thenutritiondebate.blogspot.com), you know this.
So, as it turns out, our grandparents made smart food choices by default! Real Food was the only option they had. But in truth there were bad choices they could have made and did make. White flour was preferred because it kept longer. And farmers have been breeding fruit to be sweeter for hundreds of years (at least), increasing the fructose load that our livers have had to deal with to protect our bodies from its toxic effects. So, fruits got sweeter, and more fructose went directly to the hepatic portal vein without the usual oxidative metabolism required of glucose. Then sucrose (table sugar), a disaccharide of refined cane sugar containing equal parts fructose and glucose, replaced molasses, and was added to lots of foods. Now, high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) is commonly used to sweeten foods and beverages. Our livers are in fructose overload. As a result, non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) is now on the increase.
And as we try to avoid saturated fat, as recommended by the “Dietary Guidelines for Americans” (see installment #14), we are 1) eating more and more monounsaturated fats like olive oil, which is otherwise a “good” fat but which is more likely to become added body fat than saturated fats and 2) eating too much polyunsaturated fat, which tends to be partially hydrogenated trans fats and also contributes to an unhealthy ratio of Omega 6’s to Omega 3’s.These PUFA’s are often hidden in baked goods and in fried foods that are cooked in high-heat vegetable oils that are used repeatedly. Repeated use destroys the delicate omega 3’s and oxidizes the rest. Oxidation = rancidity.
So, the challenge is 1) to eat Real Food; 2) avoid excessive amounts of fructose; and 3) avoid partially hydrogenated trans fats from vegetable oils in store-bought baked goods and fried foods and restaurant cooking and deep fat frying.
Now, add to all this the refined grains. Although the Dietary Guidelines don’t tell you this explicitly, “refined grains” means anything made with bleached, enriched, white flour from wheat, or any other refined (milled, bleached, enriched etc.) grains. I’m not telling you this. The “Guidelines” are telling you this. They just can’t say it in so many words without getting the Industrial Agricultural Complex mad as hell. They already have the beef and lamb and pork industries up in arms. They can’t afford to get Archer Daniels Midland and Cargill up in arms too. Besides, their representatives were on the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee, so there wasn’t much danger of that. So was the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI), the quintessential nanny-state advocacy organization. Together, these groups are now in the driver’s seat of my grandfather’s chain-drive, solid-tired, flat-bed truck on the way to today’s market. Personally, I hope that market will eventually “move” too, the way the Washington Street Market did to make way for the Twin Towers.
© Dan Brown 3/4/2011
My father’s father died at age 79 when I was only 8 but his wife, my grandmother lived to be 89 and was skinny all her life. She hadn’t eaten a tomato since 1895. Poison, she said, nightshade family. So are potatoes, of course, and eggplant, Bell peppers, chili pepper, paprika, tobacco, petunia, and belladonna (deadly nightshade). So far, they haven’t killed me. (Aside: When my wife read this column in draft, she told me her father ate unripe tomatoes as a kid and got really sick.)
I did not derive any enduring wisdom about eating from any of my grandparents. I wasn’t asking, and they weren’t saying, but YMMV (Your Mileage May Vary), to use internet slang. Increasingly, however, we hear this advice: Don’t eat any food that didn’t exist when your grandmother went food shopping, or don’t eat anything that is sold in a box or a bag; or has more than 4 ingredients; or has things in it that you can’t pronounce. In other words: eat whole, unprocessed, unrefined foods. In sum, as Michael Pollan says, “Eat Real Food”. I think that’s good advice, as far as it goes. It’s a start anyway. And you have to start somewhere if you want to improve the quality of your life and avoid getting a “progressive” dietary disease like Type 2 diabetes, or even a syndrome. Woe is me, not Metabolic Syndrome!
It’s easy to make these pronouncements, but we all lead busy lives and preprocessed foods are convenient. Besides, dietary advice is constantly changing and so much is still unknown and uncertain. Low-fat, low carbohydrate, who’s to know? Your doctor’s in charge of your health, right? And the government knows best. Well. Now you’ve gone too far for me, but if you’ve reading this column (archived at http://danbrown-thenutritiondebate.blogspot.com), you know this.
So, as it turns out, our grandparents made smart food choices by default! Real Food was the only option they had. But in truth there were bad choices they could have made and did make. White flour was preferred because it kept longer. And farmers have been breeding fruit to be sweeter for hundreds of years (at least), increasing the fructose load that our livers have had to deal with to protect our bodies from its toxic effects. So, fruits got sweeter, and more fructose went directly to the hepatic portal vein without the usual oxidative metabolism required of glucose. Then sucrose (table sugar), a disaccharide of refined cane sugar containing equal parts fructose and glucose, replaced molasses, and was added to lots of foods. Now, high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) is commonly used to sweeten foods and beverages. Our livers are in fructose overload. As a result, non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) is now on the increase.
And as we try to avoid saturated fat, as recommended by the “Dietary Guidelines for Americans” (see installment #14), we are 1) eating more and more monounsaturated fats like olive oil, which is otherwise a “good” fat but which is more likely to become added body fat than saturated fats and 2) eating too much polyunsaturated fat, which tends to be partially hydrogenated trans fats and also contributes to an unhealthy ratio of Omega 6’s to Omega 3’s.These PUFA’s are often hidden in baked goods and in fried foods that are cooked in high-heat vegetable oils that are used repeatedly. Repeated use destroys the delicate omega 3’s and oxidizes the rest. Oxidation = rancidity.
So, the challenge is 1) to eat Real Food; 2) avoid excessive amounts of fructose; and 3) avoid partially hydrogenated trans fats from vegetable oils in store-bought baked goods and fried foods and restaurant cooking and deep fat frying.
Now, add to all this the refined grains. Although the Dietary Guidelines don’t tell you this explicitly, “refined grains” means anything made with bleached, enriched, white flour from wheat, or any other refined (milled, bleached, enriched etc.) grains. I’m not telling you this. The “Guidelines” are telling you this. They just can’t say it in so many words without getting the Industrial Agricultural Complex mad as hell. They already have the beef and lamb and pork industries up in arms. They can’t afford to get Archer Daniels Midland and Cargill up in arms too. Besides, their representatives were on the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee, so there wasn’t much danger of that. So was the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI), the quintessential nanny-state advocacy organization. Together, these groups are now in the driver’s seat of my grandfather’s chain-drive, solid-tired, flat-bed truck on the way to today’s market. Personally, I hope that market will eventually “move” too, the way the Washington Street Market did to make way for the Twin Towers.
© Dan Brown 3/4/2011
Friday, March 11, 2011
The Nutrition Debate #14: The New “Dietary Guidelines for Americans, 2010”
My heart is pounding, and I’ve only just re-read the Executive Summary of this year’s long awaited “Dietary Guidelines for Americans, 2010” (www.dietaryguidelines.gov). I had listened live to the press conference on January 31, 2011, when it was released to the public, and had managed to calm myself since, but now my blood is boiling again. Where to begin?
First, to be fair, the government’s “Dietary Guidelines” is a public health document, and a public health recommendation is geared to an entire population with a broad purpose which is often interpreted by a much narrower segment to which it may not be applicable. There is much too much variability within the population for such broad pronouncements to edify or be efficacious; but they are made nevertheless in the broad interest of “the public health.” So, if you’ll pardon the expression: “take it with a grain of salt.”That being said:
This year’s “Guidelines” are cleverly crafted by wordsmiths with skills for euphemism: “(A)t a time of rising concern about the health of the American population…,” we are told that “poor diet” and “physical inactivity” are “associated with major causes of morbidity and mortality” in the US. True enough. Then, we are told that “15 percent of American households have been unable to acquire adequate food to meet their needs.” Then, “This dietary guidance can help them maximize the nutritional content of their meals,” and “Many other Americans consume less than optimal intake of certain nutrients even though they have adequate resources for a healthy diet.” Again, all this is certainly true.
Parsing those words, they mean that on limited incomes many people make poor food choices, and the government wants to help. I’m reminded of a headline I read in Honolulu last September that 50% of Hawaiian residents were on food stamps. The government dole, not the pineapple company, helps these poor folks survive in paradise.
So, the guidelines start with several iterations of the obvious, universally-held truth (NOT) about the “Energy Balance Equation: Energy In = Energy Out,” (see installment #6 at http://danbrown-thenutritiondebate.blogspot.com). Then the “Guidelines” summarize the “key recommendations” this way: “Americans currently consume too much sodium and too many calories from solid fats, added sugars, and refined grains. These replace nutrient-dense foods and make it difficult for people to achieve recommended nutrient intake while controlling calorie and sodium intake. A healthy eating pattern limits intake of sodium, solid fats, added sugars and refined grains and emphasizes nutrient-dense foods and beverages – vegetables, fruit, whole grains, fat-free or low-fat milk and milk products, lean meats and poultry, eggs, beans and peas, and nuts and seeds.” I could, and will, quarrel with some of this in later installments, but not bad so far.
A little later we are told where to find a meal plan with such a dietary: “Two eating patterns that embody the Dietary Guidelines are the USDA Food Patterns and their vegetarian adaptations and the DASH (Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension) Eating Plan. I haven’t gone there yet (I will), but first I want to characterize the “Key Recommendations.”
There are seven “foods and food components to reduce” and nine “food and nutrients to increase.” We’re told to reduce our sodium intake, consume less dietary cholesterol, keep trans fat from synthetic sources as low as possible, limit saturated fat by replacing it with mono and polyunsaturated fats (hmmm), and limit refined grains, “especially refined grain foods that contain solid fats, added sugars and sodium”…and limit alcohol consumption. By word association, they unfortunately and erroneously link trans fats and “…other solid fats,” and “solid fats and added sugars” as things to be reduced or avoided together. In recommending the substitution of mono and polyunsaturated fats for saturated fats, they are stepping into a trap of their own making they will rue and wish they had avoided in the years to come. I will speak to this in later installments. And note, if it wasn’t already clear, that “solid fats” is a new term in the “Guidelines” and a euphemism for saturated fats, which in our dietary is almost entirely animal fats, the only exceptions being the tropical oils (coconut and palm), which are not common in most people’s daily “food pattern.”
Of the food and nutrients to increase, recommended are fruits, vegetables , whole grains plus some vitamins and minerals (as supplements if you can’t get them in “real” food); but, five of the nine recommendations were ways to avoid saturated or “solid” fats, including eating “beans and peas, soy products, and unsalted nuts and seeds” and “fortified soy beverages.” I may just have to look at those “USDA Food Patterns and their vegetarian adaptations” after all. But first, I want to examine what Grandma knew about food patterns, and then what Michael Pollan is telling us.
First, to be fair, the government’s “Dietary Guidelines” is a public health document, and a public health recommendation is geared to an entire population with a broad purpose which is often interpreted by a much narrower segment to which it may not be applicable. There is much too much variability within the population for such broad pronouncements to edify or be efficacious; but they are made nevertheless in the broad interest of “the public health.” So, if you’ll pardon the expression: “take it with a grain of salt.”That being said:
This year’s “Guidelines” are cleverly crafted by wordsmiths with skills for euphemism: “(A)t a time of rising concern about the health of the American population…,” we are told that “poor diet” and “physical inactivity” are “associated with major causes of morbidity and mortality” in the US. True enough. Then, we are told that “15 percent of American households have been unable to acquire adequate food to meet their needs.” Then, “This dietary guidance can help them maximize the nutritional content of their meals,” and “Many other Americans consume less than optimal intake of certain nutrients even though they have adequate resources for a healthy diet.” Again, all this is certainly true.
Parsing those words, they mean that on limited incomes many people make poor food choices, and the government wants to help. I’m reminded of a headline I read in Honolulu last September that 50% of Hawaiian residents were on food stamps. The government dole, not the pineapple company, helps these poor folks survive in paradise.
So, the guidelines start with several iterations of the obvious, universally-held truth (NOT) about the “Energy Balance Equation: Energy In = Energy Out,” (see installment #6 at http://danbrown-thenutritiondebate.blogspot.com). Then the “Guidelines” summarize the “key recommendations” this way: “Americans currently consume too much sodium and too many calories from solid fats, added sugars, and refined grains. These replace nutrient-dense foods and make it difficult for people to achieve recommended nutrient intake while controlling calorie and sodium intake. A healthy eating pattern limits intake of sodium, solid fats, added sugars and refined grains and emphasizes nutrient-dense foods and beverages – vegetables, fruit, whole grains, fat-free or low-fat milk and milk products, lean meats and poultry, eggs, beans and peas, and nuts and seeds.” I could, and will, quarrel with some of this in later installments, but not bad so far.
A little later we are told where to find a meal plan with such a dietary: “Two eating patterns that embody the Dietary Guidelines are the USDA Food Patterns and their vegetarian adaptations and the DASH (Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension) Eating Plan. I haven’t gone there yet (I will), but first I want to characterize the “Key Recommendations.”
There are seven “foods and food components to reduce” and nine “food and nutrients to increase.” We’re told to reduce our sodium intake, consume less dietary cholesterol, keep trans fat from synthetic sources as low as possible, limit saturated fat by replacing it with mono and polyunsaturated fats (hmmm), and limit refined grains, “especially refined grain foods that contain solid fats, added sugars and sodium”…and limit alcohol consumption. By word association, they unfortunately and erroneously link trans fats and “…other solid fats,” and “solid fats and added sugars” as things to be reduced or avoided together. In recommending the substitution of mono and polyunsaturated fats for saturated fats, they are stepping into a trap of their own making they will rue and wish they had avoided in the years to come. I will speak to this in later installments. And note, if it wasn’t already clear, that “solid fats” is a new term in the “Guidelines” and a euphemism for saturated fats, which in our dietary is almost entirely animal fats, the only exceptions being the tropical oils (coconut and palm), which are not common in most people’s daily “food pattern.”
Of the food and nutrients to increase, recommended are fruits, vegetables , whole grains plus some vitamins and minerals (as supplements if you can’t get them in “real” food); but, five of the nine recommendations were ways to avoid saturated or “solid” fats, including eating “beans and peas, soy products, and unsalted nuts and seeds” and “fortified soy beverages.” I may just have to look at those “USDA Food Patterns and their vegetarian adaptations” after all. But first, I want to examine what Grandma knew about food patterns, and then what Michael Pollan is telling us.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)