Filed under: General Health, Nutrition
Everybody loves chocolate, especially my mom, so I decided today to clear up some confusion on the alleged and real health benefits one of the world’s most delicious foods, chocolate.
Now I love chocolate as much as the next person, but I have come to terms with the fact that not all chocolate is created equal. The health benefits of chocolate mainly depend on how much percentage of that chocolate is made up of cacao. On most dark chocolate wrappers a percentage will be shown, and this is the real key to knowing which chocolate is best. The only downfall to this is the higher the percentage, the better the health benefits, the more bitter it tastes. Always a catch.
Dark chocolate is chock full of health benefits, and with over 300 identified compounds, is certainly one of the most complex delicacies on the planet. One family of important compounds are flavanols, which can decrease blood clotting to reduce the risk of heart attack and stroke. Another heart healthy benefit of dark chocolate is it’s ability to decrease blood pressure due to its ability to stimulate nitric oxide and its high magnesium content. Cacao also contains tryptophan, which stimulates serotonin production, the “happy” neurotransmitter. Lastly, it is also a good source of sulfur, which is responsible for healthy skin, hair and nails.
The problem is, the lower the percentage of raw cacao, the less of the wonderful elements there are, the less fiber and the more sugar and processed ingredients. These health benefits are found in raw cacao, and a lot of these health promoting substance are what make dark chocolate bitter. Unfortunately, milk chocolate and white chocolate do not qualify as health foods, missing out on compounds that their dark brethren are loaded with. One other catch is that all chocolate, including 100% raw cacao (my favorite) is high in fat, mainly the saturated kind. I have stated numerous times on my blog that while I don’t whole heartedly believe that saturated fat is a cause of heart disease, eaten to excess it can still cause issues. Fortunately the majority of the fatty acids in chocolate are either heart healthy or neutral, with only a third of them being anything to worry about. A few ounces per week is all you need to reap the benefits, anything more and you are just adding excess calories. There was a recent study that I looked at that is eluding me at the moment that I believe stated the actual amount was 1.5oz every other day to maximize the health benefits, anything more provided no greated benefit, just calories.
Most nutrition experts will recommend consuming dark chocolate that is 70% cacao, I take it a step further and like to see people over the 80% marker, more fiber, less sugar, more benefits. I personally use a great product from a company called Navitas Natural. It is shredded 100% raw cacao, that I put in yogurt and cottage cheese, it is awesome. 1 serving contains:
- Calories 130
- Fat 12g
- Sat. Fat 7g
- Carbs 10g
- Fiber 9g
- Protein 4g
Not too shabby at all. A big thanks to Danny for sharing that Navitas Naturals with me, and a shout out to EC for finally joining the club. Eric and his girlfriend Anna got engaged this past weekend, and I think his staff record deadlift is up for grabs with that newfound ball and chain he has to lift on every rep. Haha just kidding Eric. Sorta.
Filed under: General Health
Here is a little taste of awesomeness to have for the weekend. I spent all morning reading a book I’ve been meaning to get to since Christmas. Many of you know I love a lot of Jonny Bowden’s work, his book The 150 Healthiest Foods on Earth was probably the single best thing I read in 2008, I recapped the best of the year here. Well this morning I read his book The Most Effective Natural Cures on Earth.
Given the title, it seems like it would be a tree-huggin hippie-loving book full of voodoo and rain dances. I assure you, it is not. Jonny lays down the law about simple changes you can make to your diet (ie – stop eating processed food products) and simple things you can take to supplement your diet that are backed by sound research.
The most common items prescribed in this wonderful book are fish oil, vitamin C, vitamin E, magnesium, zinc, and probiotics, along with some more esoteric items added in. I will even definitely be making a few changes to my routine after reading this book. There were some really interesting facts that I had never heard before such as: 4 celery sticks per day has been shown to lower blood pressure, cherries can help relieve gout pain, saw palmetto for BPH and much more. It was fascinating and I would highly recommend it. Whether you suffer from acne, hot flashes or post-traumatic stress disorder, Bowden provides some fantastic advice that can help you overcome whatever problem you may have.
Even though there are a lot of supplement recommendations in that book that I would completely agree with, there are a lot of really crappy supplements out there. We recently had a client come in who had gotten a free package of a Muscle-Tech product in one of her orders. Needless to say, the item was awful. I am amazed at how much useless shit they squeezed into one product. To read more, Tony blogged about the actual product here. We need people to realize that supplements will make little to no difference in your results if you aren’t making good food choices and portion sizes. Supplements are not the answer, use them judiciously to enhance, not replace your diet.
Also of note, one of our minor baseball clients was recently featured on the Precision Nutrition blog. Shawn Haviland was a Harvard kid drafted by the A’s that I had the pleasure to work with this off-season. Shawn put in a ton of effort and really changed his nutrition, training, his body and his performance. I helped Shawn a lot with his nutrition and I give him credit, he stuck to it and got great results. He is a great guy and you can learn more about him on his blog.
I was a hyperlink fiend today and that is all I’ve got. Have a great weekend folks.
Filed under: General Health, Nutrition
A while back I wrote a blog about Why Fruit Juice Sucks, and today we are back with even more evidence to prove the truth of that statement. Orange juice is one of the most popular drinks in the country. Something like 40% of it is consumed in the Northeast, without a single orange grove for about 1000 miles. This alone should send off a few alarms, but the technology for shipping OJ is quite impressive, and actually doesn’t take all that long. So should we be worried?
An interesting article on boston.com with author Alissa Hamilton about her book Squeezed: What You Don’t Know About Orange Juice recently caught my attention. She explains many of the quirks and rather disturbing practices of the orange juice industry. In theory it seems like orange juice should be a simple and straightforward product right? It is merely the juice of an orange, nothing more nothing less, and more than 620 million gallons of this “natural” OJ are sold in the US per year. How natural and simple it seems, how completely deceived we are. The truth about OJ is that it is actually the result of real oranges, just not necessarily from Florida, combined with the ingenuity of chemists and their flavor packs to actually make it taste like juice after pasteurization and being held in storage tanks for upwards of a year.
Maybe not as pure and wholesome as we thought, eh?
Some of my favorite pieces from the article:
IDEAS: You write that the first question everyone asks when they hear about the book is whether orange juice is good for us. So – is orange juice good for us?
HAMILTON: I tell people if you like it, drink it, but not because you think it’s good for you. You’d be better off with a whole orange than a glass of orange juice. It has more fiber and more vitamin C. But I’m not a dietitian. The book is not about whether you should drink orange juice and whether it’s healthy. It’s about how little consumers know about how popular and – in the case of orange juice – seemingly straightforward foods are produced and the repercussions for agriculture.
After reading The Omnivore’s Dilemma I couldn’t agree more. Our agricultural system is an absolute nightmare, and if people really knew where their food came from, and we have the right to, I think a lot of things about our food production would change.
Next is my favorite section, as it shows just how sneaky and honestly how deceptive the OJ industry is, which is really just a microcosm for the entire food industry as a whole.
IDEAS: What isn’t straightforward about orange juice?
HAMILTON: It’s a heavily processed product. It’s heavily engineered as well. In the process of pasteurizing, juice is heated and stripped of oxygen, a process called deaeration, so it doesn’t oxidize. Then it’s put in huge storage tanks where it can be kept for upwards of a year. It gets stripped of flavor-providing chemicals, which are volatile. When it’s ready for packaging, companies such as Tropicana hire flavor companies such as Firmenich to engineer flavor packs to make it taste fresh. People think not-from-concentrate is a fresher product, but it also sits in storage for quite a long time.
IDEAS: What goes into these flavor packs?
HAMILTON: They’re technically made from orange-derived substances, essence and oils. Flavor companies break down the essence and oils into individual chemicals and recombine them. I spoke to many people in the industry at Firmenich, different flavorists, and at Tropicana, and what you’re getting looks nothing like the original substance. To call it natural at this point is a real stretch.
IDEAS: Why isn’t orange flavor listed in the ingredients on the carton?
HAMILTON: The regulations were based on standards of identity for orange juice set in the 1960s. Technology at that time was not sophisticated at all . . . I don’t think the concern is so much “are these flavor packs unhealthy?” The bigger issue is the fact that having to add flavor packs shows the product is not as fresh and pure as marketed. The flavor industry can lend diversity to products that aren’t really that diverse. Soft drinks are a perfect example: They’re corn syrup and flavor. With orange juice, it’s masking the processing procedure rather than the diversity of ingredients.
I know I am putting quite a bit of the article in here, but I just couldn’t help myself, I found almost every question and answer to be interesting and important to the discussion at hand. The last bit:
IDEAS: To what degree is orange juice still made from Florida oranges?
HAMILTON: Most concentrate is now from Brazil. Shipping it is relatively easy. Until recently, you could count on [Tropicana] Pure Premium being from Florida, but shipping technology has advanced. Companies like Tropicana have started shipping full-strength juice from Brazil rather than buying and squeezing in Florida. The majority of not-from-concentrate is coming from Florida-squeezed oranges, but that’s certainly changing. The orange growing is moving to Brazil, which grows the most oranges for juice by far. Land is cheaper, and environmental regulations are almost nonexistent.
(cough) bullshit (cough)
This is scarily true, I looked at the OJ in our fridge, Tropicana Pure Premium, and wouldn’t you know it oranges from Florida and Brazil. I am tired of crap like this, why can’t we just get good quality products made with integrity, what is so hard about that? Don’t even get me started on what happens to the vitamin C content of the OJ after pasteurization and storage and shipping, a whole other can of worms.
On a good note, I found out that my mom has been reading my blog and she is looking for fresher food options. She walks every day and she passes a “farm”, it’s not really I just don’t know what else to call it, a family with some animals and a little land, and she bought a dozen freshly laid eggs from “the farmer” for 1 dollar. These chickens get to go outside every day, they eat their natural diet in the warm spring and summer, and these eggs aren’t being shipped for hundreds of miles and sitting for who knows how long before being consumed. Pretty exciting stuff in my world. And just for clarification, my family is from Maine, but we don’t live in the boonies where there are farms all over the place, we live in the second biggest city in the state (which isn’t saying much, but still), so it is nice to know that it is still possible to get eggs the old-fashioned way.
PS – Goi, you had a question on a recent blog post of mine which I accidentally deleted while getting rid of spam. If you read this, please repost and I will gladly answer. Sorry.
Filed under: General Health, Nutrition
Continuing with the 5 Helpful Tips theme, this time we are rolling with some nutrition tips. These tips aren’t earth shattering and novel, but they are always important to keep in mind, whether you are a nutrition newbie or an experienced expert.
1. Shop the perimeter of the grocery store.
The perimeter is where you find your produce, your fish and meat, eggs and dairy, etc. It is not where you find twinkies, chips, or donuts. Make quick ventures into the middle aisles to get other items like salsa, tuna, oats and flax. Sticking to the perimeter will also allow you to avoid buying stuff you don’t need just because it is on sale or is making some ridiculous health claim, you usually don’t get suckered by produce.
2. Buy things that don’t come in a box or plastic wrapper.
This could also be increased to only buy food that you can find or make in nature. If something comes in a box, has more than 5 ingredients, or has any ingredients you can’t pronounce, it probably isn’t good for you. Stick to real whole foods that you could hunt, gather, pluck or grow, and avoid the man made food products.
3. If a food makes a heath claim, it probably sucks.
A lot of food items make health claims like no trans fat, low cholesterol, low sodium, blah blah blah. In most cases if a food has to make a health claim for you to buy it, it probably sucks. Adding 20mg of omega-3′s to milk (like Horizon did, a crappy organic monopoly) is useless, but it allows them to make a claim based on legitimate research. If you are eating real, whole, unprocessed foods then you shouldn’t have to worry about whether or not your butter contains plant sterols (which are controversial and have very little real evidence behind them).
4. Don’t live off coupons.
I know times are tough and people are looking for any way they can trim their budget, but cutting back on the items that nourish you and maintain your existence is probably not the best option. Neither is living off Ramen and Mac and Cheese. If you have room in your budget for that plasma flat screen, the HD cable package and Netflix, I think you need to reevaluate where you are spending your money. Our diet is related to our health in more ways than one, spending more time with your family and friends around the dinner table will more than make up for your loss of HBO.
5. Learn what real whole grains are.
Most people know the term whole grains, and they think they know what it is referring too. Unfortunately, the food industry has some other ideas, and fools people into purchasing crappy foods that are listed as being great sources of “whole grains”. For something to be really whole grain, it should be entirely whole grain, not just containing a small portion of whole grains. Real whole grain options are old-fashioned or steel-cut oats, amaranth, quinoa, wild rice and sprouted organic whole grain products (like Ezekiel). A great blog was written on this topic at the Precision Nutrition blog. To learn more about whole grains and more tips like this, check out Precision Nutrition.
These tips are just a small, but hopefully helpful addition to your arsenal of tools to make you a better shopper, and a better consumer of real, whole healthy foods. Good luck!
Filed under: General Health, Nutrition
Earlier this week I started my little series on dairy. Since then I have been working on a follow-up but it seems like something has always come up, but to make it up to you all I am going to give an epic post today.
In the previous post I mentioned pasteurization. Here we are going to discuss what it is, why it was started, and basically analyze the shit out of it. According to Wikipedia pastuerization
“is a process which slows microbial growth in foods. The process was named after its creator, French chemist and microbiologist Louis Pasteur. Pasteurization aims to reduce the number of viable pathogens so they are unlikely to cause disease (assuming the pasteurization product is refrigerated and consumed before its expiration date). Pasteurization typically uses temperatures below boiling since at temperatures above the boiling point for milk, casein micelles will irreversibly aggregate (or “curdle“). There are two main types of pasteurization used today: High Temperature/Short Time (HTST) and Extended Shelf Life (ESL) treatment. Ultra-high temperature (UHT or ultra-heat treated) is also used for milk treatment. In the HTST process, milk is forced between metal plates or through pipes heated on the outside by hot water, and is heated to 71.7 °C (161 °F) for 15-20 seconds. UHT processing holds the milk at a temperature of 138 °C (280 °F) for a fraction of a second. ESL milk has a microbial filtration step and lower temperatures than HTST. Milk simply labeled “pasteurization ” is usually treated with the HTST method, whereas milk labeled “ultra-pasteurization ” or simply “UHT” has been treated with the UHT method.
The HTST pasteurization standard was designed to achieve a 5-log reduction, killing 99.999% of the number of viable micro-organisms in milk. This is considered adequate for destroying almost all yeasts, mold, and common spoilage bacteria and also to ensure adequate destruction of common pathogenic heat-resistant organisms (including Mycobacterium tuberculosis, which causes tuberculosis and Coxiella burnetii, which causes Q fever). HTST pasteurization processes must be designed so that the milk is heated evenly, and no part of the milk is subject to a shorter time or a lower temperature.”
This seems all well and good right? It destroys harmful bacteria, making contamination almost impossible. When Louis Pasteur came up with the process, our food production was terrible. The idea of sanitation was not known, the idea that germs caused illness was just being realized (because of Pasteur) and animals, like cows, were not brought up in pristine conditions. Milk from cows brought up in completely unsanitary conditions, being sick and unhealthy, but still having their milk sold was cause for some serious health problems. This was before the creation of the FDA or any other food regulatory system, and before The Jungle showcased to the nation how disgusting our food production was. Incidentally that book led to the creation of the FDA, but that is neither here nor there. It is completely logical to believe that pasteurization was a huge breakthrough, and a necessity at the time of its inception. At the time, pasteurized milk was safer than raw. The question is though, is that still the case today?
One example showcasing the dark side of pasteurization is this study right here. While I am not a believer in the idea that cholesterol is the cause of heart disease, I do believe that oxidized cholesterol poses a huge problem, and is a major factor in heart disease. One specific example of oxidized cholesterol is 7-Ketocholesterol, a dangerous byproduct that comes from the oxidation of cholesterol. 7-Ketocholesterol is linked to not only heart disease, but cancer as well. The following chart is from the given study showing how pasteurization causes the formation of this deadly product. The higher the temperature that the milk is exposed to, the higher the level of 7-ketocholesterol, and that microwaving milk and ultra pasteurization causes the greatest increase in this deadly byproduct. The left side shows the temperature and duration of the pasteurization process, the right side shows the amount of 7-ketocholesterol after the pasteurization was complete.
- Raw cow’s milk None Detected
- Milk Pasteurized at 85C for 16 sec. 2.613e±0.806
- Milk pasteurized at 95C for 5 min. 11.733d±8.119
- Milk pasteurized at 95C for 15 min. 16.328c±1.717
- Milk pasteurized at 85-90C for 2 min. 3.142e±0.694
- Milk boiled at 96C for 5min. 15.363c±1.922
- Milk boiled in microwave oven at 95C for 5min. 50.029b±1.089
- Milk heated at 140C for 4 sec (UHT) 8.708de±1.399
- Reconstituted milk powder (UHT) 80.97a±1.232
That is some scary stuff right there, and certainly makes me wary of consuming pasteurized milk, and especially ultra pasteurized milk, not to mention using the microwave. I’m not presenting this data as a scare tactic, but just to inform people that just because the FDA or the dairy industry tells you pasteurization is better, it might just be better for their pockets, not necessarily for your health.
Onto homogenization. While I won’t go into as much detail on this one, I will give an overview. Homogenization is the process of preventing the cream and water in milk from separating. This is accomplished by forcing the milk at incredibly high pressure through small holes. This seems uncomplicated and fine, except that this causes the fat globules to be much smaller in size, and some may pass through the intestinal walls intact into the bloodstream. There are theories all over the place linking homogenization to heart disease, leaky gut syndrome, and actually being a big cause of dairy allergies. There isn’t a whole lot of proof about the dangers of homogenization, but the absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, there wasn’t always proof about the dangers of trans-fat either.
In closing, I have slowly, very slowly, come around to the idea of certified organic raw milk as being the healthiest cow’s milk option. If you purchase from a local farm that pastures their cows and keeps their animals in excellent health, then in my opinion you have less to worry about from raw milk than the pasteurized, homogenized corn fed version at Stop n’ Shop. To learn more about raw milk and where you can get it, check it out here.
Filed under: General Health, Nutrition
This whole week I am going to put a lot of focus on one of the most controversial topics in the nutrition community: milk and dairy products. Should we consume it at all? Is organic better? Raw or pasteurized? Homegenized or no? There are a ton of questions about dairy, and I am going to provide a lot of info, hopefully answering some questions (though not all, since they can’t all be) and coming to a comfortable resolution. This isn’t really going to be about the nutrients in milk and dairy, just the production and processing of it.
I have always been a big dairy consumer. I was raised on copious amounts of skim milk, non-organic, completely industrialized skim milk and I loved every minute of it. Be honest, who doesn’t still love the idea of a PB & J with a huge glass of milk? Through my evolution in this industry, and the learning process that I am continually undergoing, you read more, you learn more, and you question more. Throughout my college years and a little thereafter I didn’t believe any of the negative info about conventional dairy. Mainstream nutrition experts, the FDA, the ADA, and my professors all brushed any negative info aside, declaring dairy to be A-ok. The only people that seemed to be against it were the hippies. Come to find out, the hippies were right.
Reading The Omnivore’s Dilemma is an eye-opening experience to the scary process we call industrial food production. Unfortunately, it doesn’t produce real food, just items resembling and pretending to be real food. Conventional dairy farms are no exception, seeking to maximize production and minimize cost (makes sense from a pure business perspective, except it destroys the product) are huge, milk the cows nearly non-stop, feed them boatloads of corn to maximize milk yield, may inject hormones to do the same, smash them full of antibiotics to counteract the corn feeding which sickens the animals, and generally doesn’t give two shits about the actual quality of their product, just the quantity. It is a cyclical nightmare, and the biggest companies are the worst offenders (this same statement applies even to organic dairies).
One step in the right direction is organic milk. In order to be certified organic, the cows have to have access to pasture (which doesn’t really mean much), fed organic feed, no hormones, no antibiotics, get milked less, and generally live in more sanitary conditions with more room and better care. If you can find organic milk from a small, preferably local dairy, it is most likely even pastured/grass-fed cows producing the milk, which is even better, and for what is widely available, probably your best option. Huge organic companies, like Horizon, do not meet those requirements though. They are simply industrial organic, bending the rules but not necessarily breaking them, pushing their limits and generally not producing a better product than conventional milk. Last week I actually came across a fantastic resource on organic dairies, milk, cheese, yogurt, etc, that gave them scores based on surveys. It was quite revealing and I suggest you all check it out here. The good news is there are some great companies out there producing good products. If you are afraid of raw milk, and want the best “normal milk” that is widely available, Organic Valley makes some pretty good products and got pretty good ratings in that report.
The deeper you get into how your food was produced, the more you realize that there is a lot of shit you no longer want to eat. Conventional food production no longer seems remotely appealing, large organic corporations are not much better, their only real benefit being that at least they don’t contribute to our pesticide/herbicide/antiobiotic/hormone issues. I haven’t even gotten into the issues around pasteurization, ultra-pasteurization, homogenization, etc. This is a huge issue that I could never cover in its entirety in a few blogs, whole books have been written about it! I just hope to at least give some solid info on the topic and help people make better food choices. To Be Continued…
Filed under: General Health
Sometimes in this profession you get used to being surrounded by people who have a pretty good grasp on training and nutrition, and you sometimes forget how things that seem so easy and obvious to you, aren’t always so to everyone else. I am often reminded of this Curse of Knowledge when I deal with new clients. Things that I think everyone knows and are common knowledge, are completely new and foreign to them. Some examples are what I want to share today.
1. Nutrition Facts do not tell you everything about a food. Prime example – a high qaulity extra virgin olive oil compared to a highly refined canola oil will look similar nutritionally based on their nutrition facts, but are an entirely different animal. One has been gently processed and contains not only undamaged healthy fats, but also a significant amount of antioxidants, including chlorophyll, carotenoids and polyphenols, the other has been refined, damaged and altered until it no longer resembles a food, if it once contained beneficial compounds, they have been processed out. This canola oil is just a transport for calories, and nothing more. The Nutrition Facts do not reflect the differences, but they are there and imperative for optimal health.
2. As some of you may know, I am a huge fan of tea, but not all tea is created equal. A lot of people think green tea tastes terrible, so I make some new suggestions. Tazo Zen Green Tea is quickly becoming one of my favorites. It is absolutely amazing, with a delicate lemon-mint flavor. I am totally dominating a cup as I write this.
3. Fat-free hot dogs are not food. I can’t imagine anything more processed or further from it’s original source(s), whatever that may be. It does not belong in anyone’s diet, nor should it even exist. If you are eating this “food”, we have some work to do. You know who you are.
4. Find small ways to increase your energy output. A client at CP who works a stressful desk job in finance has found a clever way to get in more exercise. Every time he gets up to go to the bathroom, or grab a snack, anytime at all really, he tries to crank out something. He might do some pushups, or some bodyweight squats or lunge variations. He also might do some stretching or mobility work. Not enough to work up a sweat, but enough to burn a few extra calories and keep his energy levels up. It all adds up. Excuse me while I bust out some squat thrusts, no big deal.
5. I am all for people reading and educating themselves, but always have a filter. Keep an open mind, but do realize that many people and sites have agendas and are often manipulating info to push a certain product. A healthy dose of skepticism is probably not a bad idea when reading information that may challenge everything you think you know about fitness, unless I wrote it, because then it is always right!
That’s all I got for this week, enjoy your weekends!
Filed under: General Health, Nutrition
Recently on the Precision Nutrition blog there was a review of some research on the potentially adverse health effects of consuming artificial sweeteners like Splenda. I am going to give an overview of the study and discussion and give my take, but if you would like a more in depth look strictly at the research, check it out here. I also recently blogged about antibiotics and their effects on intestinal flora, right here.
This research focused on the administration of Splenda to rats to see the effect on their intestinal flora. Though not identical, the human digestive system is not all that dissimilar from rats, so results from this type of work usually translate quite well.
There were several different dosages given along with a control group not receiving any Splenda. The lowest treatment group had an intake below the expected daily intake of a human, based on the rats bodyweight so the percentage of sucralose to bodyweight would be the same. The next lowest group was above expected intake, but still well below acceptable levels for health concerns. The last two treatment groups were above the acceptable intake.
The study lasted 12 weeks and had some scary results. In the lowest treatment group, well below even the expected daily intake let alone levels considered to be the anywhere near the upper limit of safe, the amount of good bacteria in the gastrointestinal tracts had decreased by nearly 50%! Even after a 12 week washout period where no Splenda was consume, that lowest level intake group still had nearly 54% less good bacteria than before they began Splenda consumption. This effect was seen at all dosages and only got worse as the treatment does went up. That is some scary stuff right there, doesn’t make those artificially sweetened yogurts sound so appealing now does it? Talk about self-defeating!
This destruction of intestinal flora can weaken your immune system and cause plenty of digestion issues. There was some other interesting points in the article about weight gain. The lowest treatment group actualy gained weight from the Splenda, as did the third treatment group. The second and highest did not. Odd, but one possible explanation is that the body has what Helen Kollias called “threshold levels of compensation to sucraslose” (the artificially sweet part of Splenda). That is why there was weight gain in the lowest group, but not the next as the higher intake caused a compensation of specific proteins to remove it, the next highest dose didn’t trigger a higher compensation so there was some weight gain seen there, and the highest dose reached a new threshold where the removal proteins were upregulated yet again. This is a double edged sword that Helen goes into more detail about, some interesting stuff.
In conclusion, we need more research, preferably on human subjects, but still I suggest resorting to consuming as little Splenda, or any artificial sweetener at that, as possible. Focus on real whole food, preferably local, seasonal and usually organic. I understand it’s not easy, but your GI tract and your immune system will thank you.
Filed under: General Health, Nutrition
After last week’s diversion from the norm, I am back at it again today with a fantastic food that is sure to stir up some controversy. Today I wanted to talk about the delicious, and incredibly healthy coconut oil. The organic extra-virgin variety. Just like with olive oil, or any oil for that matter, the processing makes a huge difference and we want it as unadulterated as possible. You could make that statement for all food, but that is another story for another day.
Some might argue that it is too high in saturated fat, blah blah blah. The fact of the matter is, there is little to no direct evidence showing a cause and effect relationship between saturated fat intake (especially a naturally formed, non-fried or damaged version) and heart disease, despite 30 years of science trying to prove it. Regardless, the saturated fat in coconuts is quite distinct, as it is made up of medium chain triglycerides. These MCT’s are quite unique as they are do not require bile to be digested (if you have had your gallbladder removed, you will appreciate this), they are more readily used for energy rather than stored as energy, and in coconut’s case, are made up of 44% lauric acid. This is significant because lauric acid is one hell of a fatty acid. Lauric acid is converted into monolaurin in the body and it is known to be antiviral and antimicrobial. There have been many studies demonstrating this effect, an example of one from Wikipedia:
“A laboratory study investigated the effect of monolaurin on primary and secondary skin infections compared with six common antibiotics.[14] In culture isolates from the skin infections, monolaurin showed statistically significant broad-spectrum sensitivity to both Gram-positive and Gram-negative bacterial isolates, such as Staphylococcus aureus, Streptococcus spp. and Enterobacter spp.”
Interestingly MCTs are used in the treatment of people suffering from cystic fibrosis, AIDS, cachexia and childhood epilepsy. Not only that, there are many Pacific Island populations who subsisted on a huge intake of coconut, their diets being anywhere from 35-60% of calories from fat (mostly saturated), they were found to be nearly completely free of atherosclerosis, heart disease, obesity, diabetes, etc. For more reading on that topic, I refer you again to the Whole Health Source blog. He covers it in great detail.
Shredded unsweetened coconut is also a fantastic food, high in MCTs, fiber, potassium and more, so eat your coconut! Though some recommed many tablespoons per day, I think adding in 1-2 tbsp is more than sufficient. In conjunction with the extra virgin olive oil, fish oil, flax, nuts and the fat from animal sources, I think your fat intake will be taken care of.
Filed under: General Health, Nutrition
My title for this blog may be a little dramatic, but it is well deserved, and you will see that I don’t pull any punches on this one. It is a little long, but bear with me, it is one of the most important discussions I have ever had on this blog, and I feel it is necessary reading for everyone.
At CP we have a ton of high school athletes, most of whom are struggling mightily to pack on size. We encourage some of these clients to have a protein shake either during or after their training, or both, then the rest of the time I highly encourage them to eat real food. Now some parents get a little bent out of shape about the protein shakes, and we don’t make kids take them, it is just a suggestion usually given to kids older than 15 to help them reach their protein and calorie needs. I do explain to the parent, if they are willing to listen, that there is no danger from these shakes. Protein in a powdered form was once protein in a solid food form. Whey protein is merely a dairy protein that has been extracted, dried and powdered. It isn’t some dangerous synthetic concoction made from petroleum and bull testicles. I understand that these parents are just concerned for their kids welfare, and that is all well and good, if they really dont want their child to take it, we don’t force the issue. The problem really arises when the parents claim they heard these shakes are dangerous, from no less authority than their child’s physician. (If their is a pre-existing health condition, obviously that is an entirely different animal). It truly pisses me off like few things can.
We recently had some athletes who have been with us for well over a year see their physician. Well Mr. Doctor who clearly knows nothing about nutrition, and most definitely has no formal education in nutrition, speaks his mind about these “dangerous protein shakes”. This is akin to me telling someone what is wrong with their car just because I can change my own oil. I may know a thing or two about cars, but I sure as shit am not a mechanic. According to the athletes’ mother, “Dr. X was very clear to eat food, not protein drinks. He explained about the toll it takes on the liver and kidneys which manifests years after the person has ingested the substance.”
Right. Physiologically this makes complete sense. Since we have researchers showing evidence that the body metabolizes high fructose corn syrup (a man made substance) exactly as it does sucrose(since they are off almost identical sugar composition), clearly a dairy based protein like whey would damage the liver and kidneys years after I have a shake in ways that complete dairy protein(whey and casein) does not. Yes sure, that follows. And where might I ask did this doctor find such inscrutable information? What research studies was he referring too? Absolutely none. There is absolutely ZERO research on healthy subjects showing ill effects from a high protein diet, whether from food sources or from protein shakes. If protein shakes actually lead to serious health complications there wouldn’t be hundreds of studies using them to test their efficacy, it would be considered unethical. We don’t do studies on human subjects using known harmful substances. We do know, from real research on human subjects that whey has actual health benefits such as: promoting weight gain (our goal), elevating glutathione levels (which in turn increase superoxide dismutase levels, a powerful antioxidant), and some types of whey, containing lactoferrin, can possess bacteriostatic and bactericidal activity against microorganisms that can cause gastroenteric infections and food poisoning. Not only has whey protein been shown to be safe, they are using specific kinds to prevent infection by food borne pathogens: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17293018?log$=activity.
Quotes like this are more ridiculous bullshit that come from nowhere. I remember in my Nutrition 101 class my ancient professor (I believe she was 88 at the time, no joke) mentioned in a slide that high protein diets can be dangerous. She went on to mention that there actually isn’t any proof for it, but that she kept it in her slide because it had always been there and that’s what she believed (and taught). It’s the same with the general statements about saturated fat and dietary cholesterol causing heart disease, a 70% carbohydrate diet being good for us, and that all vegetable oils are healthy(even the highly refined kind). We wouldn’t want to upset the status quo now would we. The American Dietetic Association is no better at giving information, since they are sponsored by big food industry and they wouldn’t want facts to get in the way of the needs and wants of their sponsors, but I digress.
And there we come to the crux of the problem. People, including doctors, regurgitating false information merely because it is what they had heard or what they had always said, regardless of the actual facts. It has been clearly shown in research and in surveys that physicians do not receive nearly enough training in nutrition to earn their degree, yet people continue to seek their advice, and physicians continue to give it, whether accurate or not. Physicians, by their own admission, are not nearly educated enough in the world of nutrition to give counsel to people, so why do they continue to do it? Who knows, but here are some interesting stats to prove my point:
- When surveyed 85% of physicians were dissatisfied with the quantity and 60% with the quality of their medical-nutrition education.
- In 1991 the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) reported that of 128 US medical schools, only 23% (29 schools) had a required nutrition course, with an average of <6 h of class time; 25% of schools failed to offer any formal nutrition education.
- The AAMC raw data for the 1997–1998 academic year reported that 26% of schools had a required nutrition course whereas 25% of schools still did not require or could not quantify nutrition education in their programs.
- This is sad.
A little more food for thought, the results and discussion from one of the studies given below:
In its 1985 survey, the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) found that, overall, an average of 21 h of nutrition instruction was required in medical schools, but only 34 of the surveyed US medical schools (27%) had a separate, required nutrition course (3). The NAS report concluded that “Nutrition education programs in US medical schools are largely inadequate to meet the present and future demands of the medical profession.” This report has been called groundbreaking because it was the first comprehensive and systematic assessment of the status of nutrition education at medical schools that helped to identify the deficiencies. Publication of the report prompted the inclusion of medical education in the National Nutrition Monitoring and Related Research Act of 1990 and emphasized the need for physicians to be educated on nutrition topics. Patients routinely seek physicians’ guidance about diet, and the relation of nutrition to the prevention and treatment of disease is well known. However, practicing physicians continually rate their nutrition knowledge and skills as inadequate (5). It also is no surprise that more than one-half of graduating medical students report that the time dedicated to nutrition instruction is inadequate
According to the 106 respondents of a 2004 survey, the curricula of 99 schools (93%) provided required nutrition instruction. Five schools (5%) offered optional instruction only, and another 2 (2%) reported that they did not offer any nutrition instruction. The schools requiring nutrition instruction provided an average of 23.9 (range: 2–70) contact hours. Remarkably, less than one-half (41%) of the responding schools provided the minimum 25 h or more recommended by the NAS in 1985 (3). Also surprising was the finding that 17 schools (18%) required only 
10 h of nutrition instruction.
An overwhelming majority (93/106, or 88%) of instructors indicated that students at their medical schools need more nutrition instruction, whereas only 8/106 (8%) said that they did not. Six of these 8 were at schools offering much more than the national average number of nutrition hours. The remaining 4% of schools responded that they did not know whether their students needed more nutrition instruction.
Is the national average of 23.9 h found in our survey adequate to properly train future physicians about nutrition? We realize that the definition of adequate is open to interpretation, but we used 2 major recommendations reported in the literature as a benchmark. The current 23.9 h fall just short of the NAS 1985 minimum recommendation and far short of the American Society for Clinical Nutrition (ASCN) 1989 recommendations. The ASCN recommendations were based on a survey of curriculum administrators and nutrition educators; the former group suggested 37 h (median: 32), whereas the latter suggested 44 h (median: 40) be devoted to nutrition instruction (9).
By either criterion, less than one-half of the surveyed medical schools (41%) provided the minimum of 25 h of medical nutrition education; compared with the later recommendations of 37–44 h, the percentage of schools meeting the recommendation falls below 20%. This means that roughly 60–80% of schools are teaching far less nutrition than is recommended. In addition, nutrition education typically occurs during the first 2 y of medical school when the basic sciences are being emphasized; nutrition does not appear to get much emphasis during the clinical years when nutrition concepts and skills could be applied more directly to clinical problem-solving. Because the number of schools requiring a nutrition course (32 versus 34) and the overall number of hours of nutrition teaching (23.9 versus 21) has changed little over the past 2 decades, it is not surprising that most medical students continue to assess the time devoted to nutrition as inadequate. From our surveys, it seems that instructors are even more dissatisfied with the hours of nutrition in the curriculum than medical students are. Thus, it appears that we are producing a pool of physicians who feel largely unprepared to counsel their patients about nutrition (6, 10–12) and to make appropriate clinical decisions on nutrition-related issues. Surveys in the literature show that practicing physicians feel inappropriately prepared to address the growing problem of obesity, particularly in children (13, 14). With the rising epidemic of obesity in the US population and the knowledge that prevention is more likely to be successful than treatment, it is clearly imperative to ensure that medical students are adequately prepared.
There are many famed medical doctors, Dr. Michael Eades comes to mind, who clearly state that classically trained physicians are completely unprepared to offer nutrition advice unless they are willing to seek out nutrition information, attend seminars, and participate in continuing education. So I urge everyone to stop asking their unqualified physician nutrition information, and actually ask someone who may know what they are talking about.
For more info, here are some links to some serious research on the topic.
http://www.ajcn.org/cgi/content/full/83/4/941S
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3717071?ordinalpos=9&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_DefaultReportPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum
http://www.ajcn.org/cgi/content/full/72/3/868S
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15165973?dopt=Abstract
Posted on April 21st, 2009 by Brian St. Pierre
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