As the CP Nutritionist I get a ton of questions from clients about all sorts of random crap they are bombarded with. Some of these items are ok, some are not so great, and they turn to me to help them figure it out.
One of the most common examples is a product called Mona-Vie. Mona-Vie is a cocktail of a ton of different fruit juices, with its big star being acai juice. Acai juice has come to the forefront of mainstream fruit juices, being lauded by people like Oprah and Dr. Nicholas Perricone as a near miracle juice. Does acai juice, and in turn Mona-Vie, live up to the billing?
The research, unfortunately, says no. Acai may be a pretty damn good fruit, and it certainly has plenty of antioxidant properties, but antioxidant capacity is just one measure of the healthfulness of a food. The ORAC (oxygen radical absorbance capacity) value for acai is sky high, and this is highly touted for its application in juice blends and Mona-Vie. The problem is that ORAC is just a general, non-specific measure. ORAC doesn’t account for phenolic content, or other powerful phytochemicals that exert great health effects independent of oxidation. It is just one number among many methods to determine the benefits of a food.
One study sought to look at fruit juices from more than the ORAC angle. Seerem et al used ORAC and 3 other antioxidant tests with names too complex to worry about. They also took into account the ability of the juice to lower the oxidation rate of LDL (a powerful marker of heart disease), total polyphenol content and the actual potency of the antioxidants.
Guess what didn’t rank #1? Acai juice. It actually came in a respectable 6th. The big finisher? Pomegranate juice. Followed by red wine, concord grape juice, blackberry juice, and blueberry juice all ahead of acai.
So is acai the Superfood it is promoted to be? No. Is it still a potentially healthful addition in small amounts to the diet? Absolutely. Is Mona-Vie worth the $40-50 it sells for, or are you better off with a few ounces of some pomegranate juice every morning? My bet is on the pomegranate, which has some amazing clinical research proving real world efficacy, not theoretical lab analysis. There are a ton of healthy fruits (check out my write up on plums and kiwi) and veggies that provide astounding benefits, so don’t get locked into just one.
There is nothing wrong with wanting to get more fruits and veggies in your diet, and there are plenty of greens products to choose from that contain more than just juice, but don’t overlook just actually eating more real fruits and veggies. If raw veggies aren’t your thing, try a little juicing, here is a great recipe I stole from Jonny Bowden:
I haven’t done one of these in a while, and since I am enjoying my day off playing with some new computer sofware, I was in a rather random mood. Here goes.
1. I thought Sam Leahey wrote a great blog on Mike Boyle’s Strength Coach Blog. It should be required reading for all up-and-coming strength coaches and personal trainers. I am all about reading and educating yourself, but as Sam points out, it doesn’t mean a damn thing if you can’t coach it. Alwyn Cosgrove is fond of saying that knowledge isn’t power, applied knowledge is power, and this article proves it.
2. Too many fitness enthusiasts believe that training has to be priority number one all of the time. As much as I love training, there are certainly times when it takes a back seat. We need to remember that much like we shouldn’t live to work, we shouldn’t live to train, but vice versa. When you are working full time, commuting 12+ hours per week, doing online consulting and planning a wedding (though my fiance would argue this one), setting gym PR’s is not the top of the priority list.
On a side note, enjoy time off when you get it. This is a lesson I should heed more often.
3. Tony wrote a great blog about entitlement the other day. It is unfortunately the reality of the situation. I may not be old and wise yet, but I feel like the generation just behind me lost something along the way. You have to pay your dues, especially in this field, and you will be far greater at what you do because of it.
I look back on my internship at CP, and I know it is what made me the coach I am today and the even better coach I will be tomorrow. I thought I knew everything and could coach anybody when I got out of college, even without a formal exercise science background. You were lifting weights, how hard could it be? I knew nothing. Just because you can squat well doesn’t mean you can teach someone to squat well. Read, educate yourself, and learn from people who already excel at what you want to do. And when you get that opportunity, attack it, maximize it, and squeeze everything you can from it.
4. Re-registering your car in a new state is a giant pain in the ass.
5. Turkish Get-Ups are hard. Really hard. Tony and I have been experimenting a lot with them the past few weeks, and we were both blown away at the incredible difficulty and torso control it takes to do them properly. Give them a try and let me know what you think.
I am blogging two days in a row for the first time in who knows how long, though it will just be a quickie today.
A few months ago Mike Robertson started his own little podcast to sometimes replace his traditional newsletter. It is awesome. He interviews some great people, asks great questions and just generally provides top-notch content. They are also not usually too long, roughly 30 minutes to an hour, which is perfect for my commute.
His past two episodes were especially interesting to me. He had on as guests some of my favorite people in the industry. Episode 8 was an interview with legendary strength coach Mike Boyle.
Mike is one of those people whom I could just listen too for hours. He is just fantastic in this style format and he always, I mean always has at least one quote where you finish listening and are amazed that you never thought of it. He is always able to put things into perspective, make it interesting and teach you a few things along the way. He has been at this for 25 years, he knows a thing or two.
Episode 9 was with nutritionist Alan Aragon. Many of you may not know the name, but know that he is one of the best and brightest in the nutrition field. He was one of my earliest mentors, though he doesn’t know it, as I used to follow his work on many fitness forums back in my college days. Alan is a straight forward evidence-based kind of guy who does not hesitate to call it as he sees it. He is just starting to put himself out there more with this recording and his recent spot on the FitCast, but be sure to pay attention when he speaks, you will learn more than you could imagine.
I recently got an email from a reader that intrigued me. He wanted my input on an article he had read about organic food.
The article started with a very bold statement. It claimed that based on a “major” recent study just published, organic food has no nutritional or health benefit over conventionally raised food. This major recent study was a meta-analysis. This means thats the researchers gathered all the data on the subject that they deemed relevant, which is to say they may have omitted studies that could have gone opposite to their conclusion, and came up with a conclusion based on all the pooled results.
Do not get me wrong, meta-analysis is very important as it allows us to gather all of our data and develop conclusions that shape our health policy, but it can be a very biased method depending on the researchers conducting the analysis, and who is funding it.
The researchers did admit that there were a small number of differences in nutrient levels seen between organic and conventional produce, but they were insignificant to overall health. The truth is I wouldn’t really argue with him on that point. The nutrient differences seen are not going to make or break your health. I don’t think that personal health differences should be the main reason why we purchase organic foodstuffs anyway.
While it is true that on an individual level the infinitesimal amount of pesticides and herbicides ingested from conventionally raised produced probably won’t have much of a negative effect on our health or well-being, the slightly greater nutrient content may or may not have any truly significant direct health benefits either.
The true benefits of choosing organic are that you are choosing a food that is raised in a manner that is sustainable and healthy for the environment. It is a method of food production that does not cause frogs to become asexual or deformed due to the not-so-infinitesimal amount of pesticides and herbicides and ammonium fertilizer run-off into streams, ponds, lakes, rivers and oceans.
The amazing fact is there is a dead-zone in the Gulf of Mexico that ranges from 6,000 to 8,500 square miles (about the size of New Jersey) where due to the toxic run-off from conventional agricultural production, oceanic life can no longer be supported. The chemicals cause the gulf to be a hypoxic wasteland where only algae can proliferate, wreaking havoc on the surrounding environment, as well as the fishing industries. This is the most well known of 250 dead-zones like this around the world. 250. That is an astounding number. But conventionally raised food is definitely just as healthy for us as organic. Right.
The problem with reviews like the one that started this rant is that it only looks at direct impact to human health, not the big picture. So, on an individual basis is organically grown food any healthier for human consumption? The answer is probably no, it probably isn’t much healthier. On a world basis, for the next generation, and for our food production as a whole is organically raised food any healthier for human consumption? The answer is a resounding YES. To make an even better choice, try buying local, seasonal and fresh produce from local farms and farmer’s markets.
I know I am fond of this statement, but it is important to keep the big picture in mind, we need to not miss the forest for the trees.
To read more about why our conventional food production sucks, please check out Michael Pollan’s amazing The Omnivore’s Dilemma.
As long time readers surely know, I am not exactly what you would call a fan of the MSN Health & Fitness page. It is usually full of junk advice that is a thinly veiled attempt to get consumers to purchace some unnecessary 100 calorie snack pack or other nutritionally worthless crap. I blogged a few times about their lack of actual good advice, check it out HERE and HERE.
Just the other day though I was checking out msn.com, and I came across a headline called The Healthiest Foods on Earth. I obviously couldn’t resist to see what bullshit they came up with now, maybe they were going to start hyping acai juice as the secret to curing cancer or creating world peace, or maybe they were going to actually surprise me and have some good content.
Surprise me they did. As I am scanning through the article I decided I had to scroll back up and see who the author was. Lo and behold it was none other than Jonny Bowden. Jonny is a great nutritionist who has been a huge influence on me, and this artcile was just simple brilliance. Here is an excerpt for those too lazy to click the above link:
Hold on to your shopping carts: There is no perfect diet for human beings. At least not one that’s based on how much protein, fat or carbohydrates you eat.
People have lived and thrived on high-protein, high-fat diets (the Inuit of Greenland); on low-protein, high-carb diets (the indigenous peoples of southern Africa); on diets high in raw milk and cream (the people of the Loetschental Valley in Switzerland); diets high in saturated fat (the Trobriand Islanders) and even on diets in which animal blood is considered a staple (the Massai of Kenya and Tanzania). And folks have thrived on these diets without the ravages of degenerative diseases that are so epidemic in modern American life—heart disease, diabetes, obesity, neurodegenerative diseases, osteoporosis and cancer.
The only thing these diets have in common is that they’re all based on whole foods with minimal processing. Nuts, berries, beans, raw milk, grass-fed meat. Whole, real, unprocessed food is almost always healthy, regardless of how many grams of carbs, protein or fat it contains.”
That brief bit was just awesome. People are always arguing about which dietary strategy is better. Low carb? Low fat? Ketogenic? The list goes on and on. I get asked daily if a particular food is good for you. My answer is always it depends. How was that food grown? Was it grown covered in pesticides and herbicides (which may not have much of an impact on me personally, but as a whole they destroy the environment). Was it injected with antibiotics and growth hormones? Was it allowed to consume it’s normal diet? Everything is context dependent.
For general health those are the most important questions to ask. When dieting the calories and macros are more important so in that context the questions might get a slightly different answer, but you still want to eat real food. Regardless of goal, real whole food should be what you are consuming, you can worry about the macronutrients and such after that has been mastered.
One important caveat is that not every food is good for everyone. Some people have allergies and intolerances to foods, so just because raw milk may be great for some people, it probably isn’t so good for someone lactose intolerant. Same goes for lots of foods, so always keep that in mind.
For more great stuff from Jonny Bowden definitely check out his book The 150 Healthiest Foods on Earth. I know I pimp it a lot, but it really is that good. It is easy reading chock full of some absolutely incredible content. It is one of my favorite nutrition books ever.
Hey folks I am back! I was on vacation in Maine (it was beautiful), but I have returned to resurrect my blog. I feel like I haven’t written in forever!
I wanted to discuss something light today. I figured I would ease myself back into things. Lately I have been getting a lot of questions from clients about supplements. What to take, what not to take, what is safe, what is dangerous, what will make them swole and/or ripped. You know, stuff like that. The problem is that most people who ask questions about supplements eat like crap. Supplements are all well and good, and can provide some helpful benefits, but if you do not have your day-to-day nutrition lined up, they won’t do a damn thing. If you want to learn which supplements I do like, check out this article I wrote for The FitCast HERE.
Don't be this guy
There is absolutely no need to purchase every new product that comes out promising to make you jacked. Most supplements are completely worthless, and you are just pissing your money away. From the nutrition side of things, your consistent eating habits determine 90% of your results. I am talking about proper food choices and portion sizes. You master that, and you are 90% of the way there. Mastering the basics is the single greatest key to making health, training and body composition goals. That other 10% is just the fun stuff to play around with. All the supplements on earth won’t really increase that 10% threshold. The best nutrient timing on earth won’t either. You could have the best post workout shake, with the best ingredients at the most optimal time after the world’s greatest training session, but if at the end of the day you didn’t consume more calories than you expended, you aren’t going to grow. Period. End of story. Same goes for fat loss.
The most effective method of changing your physique is to master your nutrition basics, train hard and recover. This means eating real food, not something made in a lab, doing a program that is tailored for your needs and goals, and doing it balls to the wall, and getting your 8 hours. It isn’t sexy, and it isn’t revolutionary, it just plain works.
So before you head off to GNC to purchase some new, fancy, over-priced and completely worthless supplement, just remember that $80 could buy you a weeks worth of amazing, delicious, and physique changing food.
Today I got an email from my good friend Cassandra Forsythe. Cass is brilliant so anything she sends my way I take very seriously, and this email was no exception.
She forwarded to me a newsletter from the Metabolism Society (yes, we are geeks) about a new documentary being made called “In Search of the Perfect Human Diet.” It looks absolutely fascinating. Here is an excerpt from the newsletter:
“The film is an unprecedented global exploration for the solution to the epidemic of overweight and obesity, rapidly becoming the #1 killer in America. What I’d like to do is tell you a bit about why we’re making this film, how it began for me, and the “behind the scenes” moment that occurred over and over again taking us places we never expected. These unexpected developments have made the search for the “perfect human diet” an incredibly fascinating treasure hunt, one that will be a real eye opener for audiences everywhere.
CJ Hunt - The movie creator
At this moment in history we are losing the war with obesity, and losing badly.
Between 300- 400,000 American’s die every year from complications related to diet and obesity. Sadly, this crisis is not ours alone. The World Health Organization (WHO) projects that by 2015, 700 million adults will be obese worldwide.
As independent journalist-filmmakers looking for buried treasure, we had to go where others in our profession had not. If we were to genuinely dig to find the answers, the place to explore was outside of the present dietetic groupthink. So in the summer of 2006, it began. Over the last several years we filmed interviews with many of the world’s top scientists, authors, clinicians and researchers in archaeological science and medicine, paleo and forensic anthropology, nutrition and metabolism, and the emerging field of “human dietary evolution.” And what we’ve found are not new scientific theories and speculation- but definitive, scientific, fact-based answers; answers that, if taken advantage of, could solve our weight epidemic.
The first interview we conducted was with Professor Loren Cordain of Colorado State University, author of “The Paleo Diet.” Professor Cordain is a leading U.S. expert in evolutionary human nutrition. At the conclusion of our time with him, he added, “You know who you should go talk to is Mike Richards at the Max Planck Institute in Leipzig, Germany…” And this kind of mention at the end of each interview is what ended up directing the course of filming. What I had in mind originally only had a few subject matter experts and authors here in the U.S. But these unexpected moments and mentions took us from excavations containing remains of Neanderthals and early modern humans in Jonzac, France, to the biomolecular anthropology analyses labs at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, and more. Every destination provided more groundbreaking evidence of a “perfect” human diet that can’t be ignored.
What we’ve uncovered during this journey to solve the obesity epidemic is remarkable. I don’t want to spoil the movie for anyone, but what I can tell you is this – the solutions to our epidemic of overweight and obesity lie not in focusing on reworking the USDA Food Pyramid every 5-years, but in a vast area of overlooked understanding in nutrition – evolution.
If you would like to know more about the documentary or sign up on the DVD notification list you can do that at perfecthumandiet.com. If you wish to contribute – any amount helpful in assisting in the completion of the film. For business and strategic distribution alliances, please e-mail us at info@perfecthumandiet.com”
Here is a youtube video of CJ Hunt (the creator) talking about this amazing documentary.
If you watched the video you probably noticed that this documentary notes that problems started around 10,000 years ago (if you are a regular reader of my blog you might already know where this is going). What happened at this point that changed the game? My answer (without actually seeing the movie): The Agricultural Revolution. The ability to farm grains and have ready access to it changed us from hunter-gatherers to farmers. Now this had the result of creating human civilizations, science, art, culture, religion, organized warfare, basically life as we know it today, so it certainly had its benefits. The downfall is that this drastic change in dietary intake, this great increase in grain consumption, caused some severe negative metabolic effects that we are suffering from today. Granted there is more than grains that are the problem: increased sugar intake, increase refined vegetable oil intake, decrease activity levels, etc., but it all started with farming.
I highly encourage you to check out this movie and sign up for the info. It will be an awesome experience.
Weird right? Coffee healthy? Doesn’t seem possible or probable. Many people tell me when they begin changing their diet that they stop drinking coffee. I always ask why and they never really have an answer. It appears to be one of those foods that has gotten an undeserving bad rap. Granted, caffeine is a drug and can be addictive, people put all kinds of crap into their coffees, not all coffee is created equal (is anything?) and coffee is not for everybody, but for most people, it is their greatest source of dietary antioxidants! Seem impossible? Keep reading.
Unfortunately there is a ton of conflicting research on coffee. Studies can be absolutely positive with praise;
drinking more than 5 cups per day may decrease likelihood of diabetes
coffee consumption can increase exercise tolerance even in patients with heart failure
increases alertness and can increase short term mental and physical performance
may lower incidence of Parkinson’s and gallstones
may decrease risk of liver cirrhosis
These benefits are no joke. I would love to decrease my risk of diabetes and Parkinson’s while at the same time making me temporarily more awesome. Unfortunately these results are not unequivocal. Some negatives:
could possibly increase risk of miscarriage
interfere with normal sleeping patterns
can increase PMS symptoms
can raise blood pressure in people with hypertension
In my opinion the reason the results are so mixed is because of something called nutrigenomics. If you have never heard of nutrigenomics, don’t worry, you aren’t alone. It is a new science showing the interaction between the foods we consume and our genetics. This interaction is not the same for everyone, and can actually vary widely. To read more here is a good article on the topic. It is a fascinating new science that unfortunately goes well beyond the scope of this blog post.
Onto more good stuff about coffee. Much to the surprise of my clients, I don’t tell them that they have to stop drinking coffee (though I do encourage them to make it black!). Here is why: coffee increases antioxidant activity in the blood for hours, has more antioxidants than dark chocolate, green or black tea and is the single greatest contributor of antioxidants in the average American diet! Coffee may be the source for as much as 70% of the antioxidant intake of many Americans.
As with all things, as long as consumption is kept moderate, I don’t encourage more than 2-3 cups per day, most people should not only be fine, they should see some nice benefits in the process. For those of you who may feel negative effects from coffee, then don’t drink it, switch to something just as healthy with less kick, like a fine cup of green tea. For more info like this check out Dr. Jonny Bowden’s spectacular book The 150 Healthiest Foods on Earth.
It has been an insanely busy week and I have tried my damndest to get in even 2 blogs. So at 10:30 on a Friday night I am cranking out blog #2 just for you guys, so I hope you enjoy it.
I often get questions on how to spice up food, add a little more pop, variety and spice to meals that can sometimes become monotonous. So today I wanted to discuss a few condiment options that can really diversify your meal planning. There are obviously many more, but these are a few of my favorites.
1. Extra Virgin Olive Oil Basil Pesto.
I LOVE pesto. It is calorie dense, so you do have to be mindful of portion size, but it is most certainly delicious! The fat comes from the incredibly heart healthy extra virgin olive oil, and the basil provides some pretty potent health benefits as well. Basil has been shown to protect cell structures as well as chromosomes from radiation and oxidation. It has also been shown to have some very powerful anti-bacterial components. It is also anti-inflammatory, and is a good source of vitamin K, and vitamin A.
2. Hummus.
Hummus. One of my absolute favorite snacks. I don’t think a day goes by where I don’t have hummus with some baby carrots. I absolutely love it. It is low in calories, only 50 in 2 tbsp. It is made from chickpeas so it has little to no impact on blood sugar. The chickpeas are a great source of molybdenum, manganese, folate, fiber, protein and more! Molybdenum is not exactly a famous nutrient, but it is quite interesting. It helps to detoxify sulfites, which some people have reactions to and can cause rapid heartbeat, headache or disorientation.
3. Guacamole.
Gauc. Awesome in combination with pesto, absolutely awesome. Being made mainly from avocados, it is incredibly healthy. It provides a nice serving of heart healthy monounsaturated fats (like pesto) and also helps fight cancer of the mouth, breast, and prostate, and improves skin tone. Avocados also contain lutein, a powerful antioxidant that is essential to eye health. They also contain more potassium than bananas for blood pressure, is the richest source of beta-sitosterol, may increase HDL and provides more than 25 essential nutrients.
There you have it, three condiments that not only add a whole bunch of kick ass flavor to your cooking repertoire, but also had some kick ass nutrients to your health. Enjoy!
So, this is a slightly random post today, but it is something I think can help a lot of people. In winter I suffer from pretty dry skin that used can be sometimes quite painful. I have tried lots of different bodywashes and stuff, loofahs, lotioning everyday (manly I know) to prevent it. They help, but it’s not perfect.
I was reading my dad’s Men’s Health a few months back and they had a report on water filters, shower filters and such. It piqued my interest as it mentioned a shower filter that removed 99% of chlorine, as well as reducing sulfur and other drying agents. With my history of dry skin I thought it might be worth it to give it a shot, so I bought one, and it has been awesome. It has a kickass massage setting, plenty of water pressure and helped to keep my skin much better at the end of the winter. I couldn’t be happier with it.
It is the Culligan WHS-C 125 Wall Mount Filtered Showerhead. It is relatively cheap, roughly $30 for a 6 month filter life, and about $15 for a replacement filter. When you have painful dry skin, $45 a year is a pittance to pay to help keep it healthier. They also offer a handheld version if you are so inclined. It isn’t fool proof, and it isn’t going to make your skin perfect all by itself, but it can help, and help a lot. For those of you who wage the dry skin battle, it is just one more arrow in your quiver. Good luck.
Posted on August 10th, 2009 by Brian St. Pierre
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