Book Review - Wired to Eat

Can’t eat just one?

Don’t feel bad. You’re not supposed to be able to eat just one.

People build entire careers out making sure you can’t eat just one.

You can beat yourself up for being a miserable, sad-sack of a sloth, unable to muster a single molecule of willpower and discipline, or you can learn that you are actually an elegantly arranged matrix of carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, and a bunch of other atoms, that has evolved under dietary and environmental circumstances that make it a rarity not to have “issues” with food. (Or weight, or blood sugar, blood pressure, fertility, gout, mental clarity, and more.) If, in this age of a seemingly infinite supply of extremely inexpensive and, frankly, insanely delicious foods that didn’t even exist a hundred years ago, you are healthy, lean, and fit, you are the exception, not the rule.

Review: IONUTRITION Meal Delivery Service

Even though I joke about how nobody reads my blog, and how I have even fewer readers than Robb Wolf’s podcast has listeners (“Six listeners can’t be wrong!”), I think the time has come for me to acknowledge that there are, in fact, a few of you out there who actually read what I write. (Woohoo!) Even though my following is teeny tiny and itty bitty, apparently it is large enough that I now receive free stuff from companies who would like me to review their products. (And authors who would like me to help publicize their books.)

I hope by now you trust me to give you my honest assessment of things. Also, please note I have no affiliate relationships whatsoever with these companies or individuals. I make exactly zero profit if you happen to buy any of their wares. (If that should ever not be the case, I will say so.) The only things I make a couple cents off of are if you happen to buy stuff from places where I do have affiliate links, such as Amazon, Netrition, or Vital Choice. (And, of course, my Alzheimer’s book.)

Ooookay!

Now that all that’s out of the way, I would like to introduce you to IONUTRITION. IONUTRITION (which I’ll just call “ION” from here on out) is a meal prep & delivery service specializing in gluten-free, dairy-free, mostly organic real food. They have low-ish carb options, a Paleo plan, and more.

Idea! -- What Not to Eat

If you are not familiar with the American TV show What Not to Wear (which was based on the British version), you might want to skip this post. Without a thorough steeping in the ins and outs of that show, this post will not make any sense to you. I could take time (and several hundred words) to explain it, but honestly, if I do that, I guarantee the magic of the show will lose something in translation. So if you’ve never seen WNTW, no worries. Just sit tight and wait until I post something else. (If you were hoping to kill some time with one of my super-long posts, take a few seconds and go check out the book Growing Tomorrow, by the author of Gaining Ground, which I reviewed here. Hard to say which one I like more. (Actually, no. It's Gaining Ground.) Frankly, this guy is a friggin’ dynamite writer [and farmer!], and both books are excellent. Growing Tomorrow review coming soon!)

For the rest of you, if you have seen WNTW, I think you’ll agree that I have a million dollar idea here.

Label Madness Monday: Pigs are Not Vegetarians (Also: Nitrates)

We need to talk about animals, everyone. Specifically, we need to talk about animals that we raise for food. You’ve probably heard the phrase, “You are what you eat.” And in the ancestral health and real food communities, we sometimes take this one step further and say, “You are what you eat, eats.” Most of us use this to convey the idea that we prefer to eat animals that have consumed their own natural, species-appropriate diets. For example, meat and dairy products from grass-fed cows, and, generally speaking, meat, fowl, and seafood that have not been fed rations of genetically modified corn and/or soy. (In the case of seafood, actually, no corn or soy of any kind. ’Cuz, really? Corn and soy? In the marine food web?)

When I say “species-appropriate diets,” I mean this: some animals are herbivores, some are carnivores, and others are omnivores. While herbivores (such cows and sheep) and carnivores (such as felines) can survive—at least for a time—on diets primarily made up of substances that are not plants or animals, respectively, eventually, problems will develop.

Over the last several years, consumers have become more discerning when it comes to how they spend their food dollars. Movies like Food, Inc., and books like The Omnivore’s Dilemma have opened at least a few people’s eyes to the larger issues around sustainable agriculture, humane animal husbandry, and more. Unfortunately, the average consumer still remains in the dark, and food manufacturers delight in taking advantage of this collective food label ignorance, laughing all the way to the bank.

The Dietetics Organization Joins the 21st Century (Kind Of...)

If you’ve been living under a rock for the past few weeks, or, unlike me, you have an actual life, which precludes you from reading as many nutrition articles, blogs, and papers as I do, you might have missed the comments from the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics (AND) in response to the Scientific Report of the 2015 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee. (The AND was formerly the ADA—the American Dietetic Association—the body that oversees the registered dietitian credential [RD].)

This thing has been making the rounds in the low-carb, Paleo, Primal and real food circles, mostly because it is a refreshing—and we might even say downright shocking—reversal of course by this supremely mainstream organization regarding some of the nutrients that have been public outlaws for the past few decades. While the AND has certainly not come out and directly endorsed higher-fat, low-carbohydrate diets, here a few general points they made about the recommendations by the 2015 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee (DGAC), some of which agree with the committee’s findings, and some of which don’t: 

• Very low sodium diets are not appropriate for everyone, and may, in fact, be harmful for some populations. 
• There is no correlation between dietary cholesterol intake and serum cholesterol levels.
• Since the studies on saturated fat, cholesterol, and heart disease over the years have been so terribly conducted and interpreted, “the Academy suggests that HHS and USDA support a similar revision [for that of cholesterol] deemphasizing saturated fat as a nutrient of concern.”
• Carbohydrate intake is a much stronger predictor for cardiovascular disease risk than is saturated fat, and it might not be such a bad idea to replace some amount of dietary carbohydrate with fat. 

As you can see, these points mark a huge step forward for this organization, which in the past, has been tepid, conventional, and by-the-book all the way. It’s a gutsy move, and I’m thrilled to see it happen. I applaud the AND for joining the rest of us in the 21^st Century with regard to basic science about food and human health. Since I have ragged pretty hard on the AND in the past, I’m happy to be able to give credit where credit is due.

That being said, this wouldn’t be all that interesting a post if all I did was sing the praises of this document. Naturally, there are a few points of contention. So let’s look at things little more closely, celebrate the good stuff, and bring to light the not-so-good stuff. We’ll start with the not-so-good stuff and then move to the good stuff, so that we end on a positive note.

Food for Thought Friday: Sandwiches are Stupid

It’s true. They are.

But let’s not even address this from the perspective of low carb eating. Grain flour that’s been baked into some sort of spongy, edible “thing” is a completely unnecessary element in the human diet. Bread, rolls, buns, pita, naan, bagels, panini – carbohydrate, insulin, blah, blah, blah. Old news. It’s Friday, and since I like to have a little more fun with these posts than I tend to let slip in things like the cancer series or the fuel partitioning series, let’s look at the ridiculousness of sandwiches from a perspective that has nothing to do with aspects of carbohydrate that we’ve all heard about a million times over.

How about we tackle the sandwich from a functional and socio-cultural perspective?  

Metabolic Theory of Cancer: Speculation on the Causes of Cancer -- and How to Mitigate Them (Pt.3)

Graphic modified from Seyfried, et al. 

Cancer as a metabolic disease: 

implications for novel therapeutics. 

Carcinogenesis. 2014 Mar; 35(3): 515–527.

VIRUSES

The potential cancer cause we’ll look at today is viruses. Some cancers are known to be viral in origin, and this makes total sense. Viruses hijack a cell’s replication machinery, right? They hijack the replication mechanisms such that the virus’ own DNA or RNA gets copied like crazy, so we’re left with lots of cells that contain tons of viral DNA/RNA. I am not a microbiologist, nor do I play one on TV. But I have to assume that having lots of viral DNA or RNA floating around in a cell probably isn’t good for mitochondria. Either way, if certain viruses do cause cancer, my guess would be that they do so by affecting mitochondrial function.

As a potential cause of cancer, viruses can strike people of any age. I suspect viruses are one of the primary drivers of cancer in children. I can’t imagine much else causing it. Like I said, older people have had many more years to abuse their mitochondria via diet, lifestyle, and unknown environmental exposures. But little kids? Not so much. Something else has got to be driving cancer in younger people. (And like I've said before, it’s entirely possible there’s a role for maternal & paternal health/diet at the time of conception and during gestation, as well as environmental exposures in utero, but, like the authors of the paper I mentioned in an earlier post said, if you think I’m about to blame the parents of a child with cancer for causing that child’s cancer, you are crazier than a vegan at a Brazilian churrascaria.)

In terms of prevention,  We can’t do much about this except to make sure our immune systems are up to snuff. I have said before that most of us probably “get cancer” all the time. We have cells behaving badly and doing wacky things left and right, but our immune systems go to work and kick those misbehaving cells to the curb. (Or the cells engage in apoptosis, commit suicide, and save our immune systems the trouble.) So how might we try to ensure our immune systems are up to the task? I was originally going have a separate post (or two or three!) about cancer prevention, but it seems more logical to address potential prevention/mitigation strategies in the same post as I write about putative causes. (I would be embarrassed to admit how much time I’ve spent going back and forth over this issue, about which most of you probably don’t care one way or the other.)

Thoughts on the Brain Fair (Rant Warning!)

Greetings, Earthlings!

As I mentioned a few weeks ago, on April 18^th I had a table at the American Academy of Neurology’s Brain Health Fair, which was part of their annual convention. The event was free and open to the public, and as far as I could tell, it was mostly the public that came through the exhibit hall, since I didn’t get any doctors sidling up to my little corner of this shindig. (None that I know of, anyway.) My presence at this thing coincided with the launch of my e-book on Alzheimer’s disease. I am pleased to report that I had people coming up to me all day. People were very interested in hearing about the influence of food and nutrition on brain health. I don’t expect a lot of book sales to come from it, but I think I’ll be hearing from a few new clients. (And I made an Indian woman very happy when I told her it was okay to eat ghee again!)

There were some encouraging moments, and I think I dropped more than a few “knowledge bombs,” as Sean Croxton likes to say. But there were many discouraging moments, too. In fact, my main feeling on the event can be summed up in two words:

Holy, and crap.

Label Madness Monday: It's So Simple...

It’s time for another round of food label smackdown, folks!

If you’re on the edge of your seat waiting for the next post in the cancer series, get a bigger seat and scoot back for a bit. I’ve been working on a big project and am falling a little behind on those cancer deep-dives. But fear not; I definitely haven’t forgotten about them and there will be more...eventually. In the meantime, let’s take a look at something as “simple” as the vegetable oil spreads that have been masquerading as butter for the past few decades.

First up: “Deliciously Simple,” by the food chemists who bring you I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter!® (The company employing these food chemists is Unilever, the same company that brings you all these other non-foods and edible food-like products.

Let’s see just how “simple” this product is:

Book Review - Extra Virginity

Olive oil has a bit of a unique place in nutrition science. It’s one of the only single foods all the warring factions agree is good for us: Paleos, vegans, vegetarians, low-carbers -- we've all got a bottle of it in the kitchen. It’s lower in saturated fatty acids than most animal fats, which pleases the veg-heads (and the ignoramuses who think saturated fat is “bad” for us), and it’s loaded with monounsaturated fatty acids, which seems to please everyone else—doctors, nutritionists, chefs, and newspaper journalists who think they know anything about biochemistry. Olive oil has been anointed (pun intended) with the magical powers to do just about everything from preventing heart disease to making your salad delicious. (The latter, I agree with; the former, I don’t think we can say for sure. Prevent heart disease, maybe, maybe not. But biochemically and physiologically speaking, it’s sure less likely to cause cardiovascular problems than, say, soybean and cottonseed oils.)

I love reading about the science of nutrition, but I also love reading about cooking, culinary culture, and, if I’m especially enamored with something, individual ingredients. Since olive oil figures heavily into my diet—and probably yours, too—when I heard there was a book called Extra Virginity, which covers some of the historical, cultural, gastronomic, and economic significance of this palate- and health-pleasing oil, I got my keister to the bookstore to get a copy. And with a subtitle like, “The Sublime and Scandalous World of Olive Oil,” I knew I’d be in for some serious eye-opening.

Label Madness Monday

It’s been a while since we took a look at a food label and had ourselves a laugh. And lest this blog become nothing but book reviews, rants, and super-nerdy posts about cancer, I figured now might be a good time to resurrect good ol’ Label Madness Monday. So here goes.

Today’s an easy one. For those of you in the U.S., it’ll probably just make you chuckle. To those of you outside the U.S., let this be a lesson in the complete and total ridiculousness that rules food labeling laws in our whacked-out country. Land of the free, home of the brave, and slave to the almighty marketing dollar preying upon the complete idiocy of the majority of the population.

Here goes: Fat-free, sugar-free, non-dairy coffee creamer.

Can We Just Stop it Already? (a.k.a. Obesity is "Associated With...")

If you follow health-related news in the mainstream media or regularly read peer-reviewed scientific literature on obesity, weight loss, or health and nutrition and in general, you can confirm my observation that the phrase, “Obesity is associated with…” is bounced around so frequently, it gets more action than a metal pinball in a 1980s arcade. And in place of that ellipsis (the three little dots), feel free to put just about anything you like, because I can pretty much guarantee someone’s established an association between obesity and whatever that other thing is: heart disease, diabetes, cancer, depression, a flat tire on your way to work, and rain on your wedding day. (With apologies to Alanis Morisette.)

Note that word: association. Unless and until a firm chain of causation between two things has been established, researchers have to be very careful with their language. (Believe me, I know. In my other professional capacity, writing for a supplement company that is committed to sticking to the science, I have to get pretty creative with ways to stay safely within the confines of FDA regulations regarding the mechanisms of action of certain products. For example, I can never say something like, “This vitamin formula is specifically designed to help manage diabetes.” Instead of making that kind of “disease claim,” I have to stick to what is known as “structure/function claims,” which are super boring and tepid -- as in, “May help support healthy blood sugar levels,” or “Contains taurine, a compound required for healthy liver function.”) My point is, because no one wants to get sued, everyone has to skirt the legal edges of nutritional rhetoric.

But here’s the thing. Between you and me—just us friends here—we all know that when obesity researchers say “association,” they’re implying causation. They want to say causes. Obesity causes [insert-awful-and-expensive-health-condition]. But they can’t. Because it doesn’t.

That is, not usually.

Label Madness Monday: Why 100-Calorie Packs Piss Me Off

All right, dear readers, be honest with me: am I the only person who thinks these things are totally, completely, and utterly ridiculous?

They’re convenient. I get that. And as long as you have access to just one 100-calorie pack, they take willpower out of the equation. I get that, too.

I’m not saying the concept is ridiculous, just the way it’s executed.

My infuriation over these things is fourfold:

1. They’re wasteful.
2. They’re expen$ive. (No, really, like crazy expensive.)
3. They assume we consumers are too lazy or too stupid to divvy out reasonable portions on our own. (Unfortunately, I think they may be on to something here, but in my heart of hearts, I’d like to give the American public more credit than that, and I’m not the only one.)
4. They’re just plain ridiculous.

Label Madness Monday: Cereal Cups to Go

It’s been a while since I posted a dig at food labels. And like I mentioned recently, I’m working on a project these days that is eating a lot of my writing time, so it might be a little bit before I get another fuel metabolism post up. In the meantime, I’m trying to prevent total blog silence, so I’m posting things I can put together relatively quickly. So here goes.

I’ve posted a lot about cereal before, and that’s because it’s a perennial favorite of mine when it comes to food label bashing. I’ve said it before, and I know I’ll say it again: overt junkfood doesn’t bother me. Twinkies, cupcakes, brownies, cookies—everyone knows these things are junk, and no one’s trying to market them as anything but junk. But cereal and granola…whoo-whee, now there is some major marketing wizardry at work, my friends. Blood sugar napalm masquerading as healthy breakfast options. Whole grain health hellholes.

At the risk of beating this over people’s heads, let’s have a look at a few of these items that are supposed to be soooo good for us—not just because they’re made from whole grains, but because they’re low in fat, too. (Blood sugar napalm and an atom bomb, just in case the napalm didn’t wipe out enough life down there on the ground. Gotta cover all the bases, right? Wouldn’t want to leave a single soul with any semblance of pancreatic function when we’re done with ’em!)

The reason I wanted to take another look at these kinds of products (yes, that’s “products”—I refuse to call these “foods”) is that now, we have some context by which to evaluate these things. Now that we’ve learned a little something about fuel partitioning and how our hormonal state influences whether we primarily run on carbohydrates or fats, and how reaching an appropriate body weight and attaining good health is about far more than calories in and calories out, we can see these kinds of products for what they really are: absolute dietary disasters.

Okay, on with the show.

Book Review: Eat the Yolks

“Processed food, conventional wisdom, and calorie restriction wage war on health and hormonal balance.” 

                                                                   —Liz Wolfe, Eat the Yolks

It seems you can’t turn around these days without a new book being released by someone in the Paleo, Primal, and real food worlds. Mostly, this is a good thing, but I do wonder if the market isn’t going to be saturated at some point—and honestly, we might already be there. Many of the books that have come out in the past couple of years explain the exact same things, just using slightly different words and with different colored packaging. This doesn’t mean these books aren’t valuable, or that whoever decides to put pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard) doesn’t have a right to contribute to the conversation. It just means that we get a lot of repetition. Same thing, different day.

The good news is, there are also books coming out that step outside those lines and bring something slightly different to the table. Eat the Yolks, by Liz Wolfe, is one of them.

Fat Tuesday: Eat the Yolks Preview

“Margarine is the greatest culinary and dietary atrocity ever to be inflicted upon our society.”

You’ve got to love a book with a line like that!

I’m almost done with Eat the Yolks, a brand-spankin’ new book by Liz Wolfe, the non-Diane half of the Balanced Bites podcast and the gal behind the RealFoodLiz site (formerly CaveGirlEats). I’ll post a full review of the book soon, but in the meantime, I couldn’t help wanting to share some of the great quotes about fat. It is Tuesday, after all, and you know what that means...

  

Label Madness Monday: Thoughts on the New Food Labels

Have you heard the news? U.S. government nutrition authorities are retooling the labels on packaged foods. That’s right: the same institutions that brought you the grain-heavy, complex-carb heavy, low-fat, low-cholesterol guidelines, calorie counting, and fat-fearing that have proven to be a an unmitigated disaster during the past six decades are up to their usual antics. Considering the current health (or lack thereof) of far too much of our population—the responsibility for which I believe we can lay in large part at the feet of these guidelines—I’m not sure we should trust these folks with things again. (Fool us once, shame on them. Fool us twice, shame on us.)

In case you don’t have time to read my usual novel-length missive today, let me sum things up for ya: the proposed new food label is a step in the right direction. However, it’s such a teeny tiny, itty bitty step that it might as well not be taken at all. In my opinion, they’re still focusing on numbers rather than nutrition, and the specific numbers they’re calling out aren’t necessarily the ones that ought to be the focus. (Please pardon me for butchering the following quote, but I’ve seen many different versions of it and am not sure which one is accurate.) Albert Einstein said something along the lines of, “You cannot solve a problem with the same sort of thinking that created it.” And since we’re in the current healthcare predicament we’re in largely due to the flawed dietary recommendations in the first place, I don’t think we need more of the same. I’d prefer to see the government get out of the nutrition business altogether, and leave things in the hands of professionals who aren’t beholden to lobbyists from food processing corporations or the grain, soy, cattle, and dairy industries. As a nutritionist, I don’t have to answer to corporate sponsors or other funders. I am responsible solely to my clients, and my income is based mostly on the success they find while following my recommendations. If those recommendations don’t produce success, I don’t insist my clients keep doing more of the same. I evaluate what’s not working well and reformulate things. (A real reformulation; not some half-arsed attempt, like these updated labels.)

It’s funny that in this label series, I’ve picked apart labels on various food products but never thought to take on the label itself. So I guess I can thank the gub’mint for sparking the idea. Here goes.

Label Madness Monday: Oatmeal

It’s been a while since I posted a “proper” label takedown, so here’s my attempt at reclaiming my former glory. Today’s topic: oatmeal. I alluded to this in the post about granola, but oats have fallen victim to the same food processing and sweetening madness that have transformed other simple, nutritious, and wholesome whole foods into desserts so laden with sugar and vegetable oil that you wouldn’t even eat them for dessert, let alone breakfast. In their whole, unrefined state, oats are a decent carbohydrate source in the grain family. They have a fair bit of fiber and a not pitiful amount of vitamins and minerals. (Animal foods—such as liver—pack a much bigger nutritional bang for your buck, but if you’re inclined to eat grains and your individual carbohydrate tolerance allows for them, you could do a lot worse than old fashioned oats.) But let’s see what kind of health havoc happens when food processors get their hands on this humble traditional staple food of Ireland and Scotland.

Label Madness Monday: Funky Hash (No, not *that* hash!)

In the words of The Bangles, “It’s just another manic Monday.” So here we are, another week, and another label. Considering that one of my recent posts (about the large intestine) was longer than a blog post has any right to be, I’ll keep this one kind of short. What are we serving up today? That breakfast staple, that complete meal-in-one, that mix of protein, fat, and carbohydrate that any short order cook worth his salt could cook in his sleep: roast beef hash!

Label Madness Monday - Health Halos Strike Again

Here we are, everyone, another glorious Monday, and another not-so-glorious food label to dissect, disembowel, and otherwise lay waste to. (Speaking of disemboweling--and waste!--have you checked out the latest post in my digestion series? It’s on the large intestine, so when you’re done here, hop on over there and get edumucated about your colon.)

Today’s label falls into the category I love to hate: junk food masquerading as health food. As I’ve said many times (but most forcefully in my rant from a while back), I’m okay with treats. Treats that act like treats, and whose manufacturers aren’t trying to hoodwink us into thinking are anything but treats. What I’m not okay with is pure junk that’s marketed as pristine, healthful, nutritious fare.

If you learn just one thing from all these label posts, let it be this: organic, gluten-free, artisanal junk is STILL JUNK. Organic sugar is still sugar, and organic soybean oil is still oil they manage to squeeze out of soybeans. (And for the gluten-intolerant among you, organic, non-GMO wheat flour still contains gluten.)

Okay. Now that we’ve gotten the preliminaries out of the way, let’s jump in.