NUTRITION

Gary Taubes, breaking down the nutrition myths....

The Dose of Intervention and the Land of Dr. Oz

Written by GT 

Today marks my appearance on the Dr. Oz Show, which was, let’s just say, an interesting experience and leave it at that.  It was the show, though, that  (finally) prompted me to address an issue I’ve wanted to address for quite some time.

The Dr. Oz Show is one part health advice and discussion and quite a few parts entertainment, as Oz’s producers kept telling me in the days before we taped the episode.  To make for what they consider good television they played me up as the second coming of Atkins  – a persona that my wife likes to refer to as “meat boy”  — while Oz got to play the role of the harvest king, extolling the healing virtues of fruits, vegetables and whole grains.  This made it more difficult than I would have liked to get across the important messages from my books, but television is television and I certainly knew what they had in store for me.

My message and the message of Why We Get Fat was not that we should all be eating nothing but animal products – and certainly not the unappetizing meat and eggs that Oz’s crew prepared as props  — but that carbohydrate-rich foods are inherently fattening, some more so than others, and that those of us predisposed to put on fat do so because of the carbs in the diet. That’s why I called the book Why We Get Fat rather than some variation on The Miracle 24-Hour (or 14-Day or Three Week or Three month) Diet Cure, which is more the norm for lay books in the nutrition genre.

The idea despite all the controversy is pretty simple. I’m arguing, as others have before me, that the same thing that makes our fat cells fat is what makes us fat — a fat person, after all, is a person with a lot of overstuffed fat cells — and what makes our fat cells fat is fundamentally the hormone insulin. Raise insulin levels and we accumulate more fat in our fat cells. Lower insulin and fat is released from the fat cells and the cells of our lean tissue can burn it for fuel.

There’s nothing particularly controversial about the science involved. If you doubt insulin regulates fat accumulation in fat cells, you can literally look it up in any good biochemistry or endocrinology (the study of hormones and related disorders) textbook – the latest editions, say, of Lehningers Principles of Biochemistry or Williams Textbook of Endocrinology, which are the authoritative texts in their respective fields. Look up the word adipocyte (the technical term for fat cell) and this is what you’ll find:

First Williams (and I’ll translate the technical terminology immediately after):

The activity of LPL within individual tissues is a key factor in partitioning triglycerides among different body tissues. Insulin influences this partitioning through its stimulation of LPL activity in adipose tissue. Insulin also promotes triglyceride storage in adipocytes through other mechanisms, including inhibition of lipolysis, stimulation of adipocyte differentiation and escalation of glucose uptake.

To understand what this means you have to know that LPL is the enzyme (in less technical language, the thing) that works to pull fat from the circulation into whatever cell it happens to be sitting on. If that cell is a muscle cell, the fat is used for fuel. If it’s a fat cell, the fat is stored. Triglycerides are the form that fat is stored in fat cells and transported through the blood stream in lipoproteins. Adipose tissue is fat tissue and adipocyte is the fat cell.

So what Williams says is that fat is stored in different tissues (partitioned) depending on how this enzyme LPL is distributed on the cells of those tissues, and its insulin that to a large extent determines this. Then it adds that  insulin promotes fat storage through other mechanisms as well — it creates new fat cells (stimulation of adipocyte differentiation), and it inhibits the escape of fat from the fat cell and its use for fuel (lipolysis), and it also increases the uptake of blood sugar (glucose) into the fat cell, which might not be relevant but the authors of the textbook don’t apparently know this, and neither did I when I wrote Good Calories, Bad Calories.

Now here’s Lehningers Principles of Biochemistry:

High blood glucose elicits the release of insulin, which speeds the uptake of glucose by tissues and favors the storage of fuels as glycogen and triaglycerols, while inhibiting fatty acid mobilization in adipose tissue.

Lehningers uses the other spelling of triglyceride – triaglycerol – to denote the fat in the blood and in our fat cells, and we get high blood glucose by consuming carbohydrate rich foods, which end up as glucose (a carbohydrate) in our blood stream. We also tend to have high blood glucose when we have a condition called insulin resistance, which is the underlying defect in obesity, diabetes and heart disease.  When Lehningers says insulin inhibits fatty acid mobilization that’s pretty much the equivalent of what Williams is saying about insulin inhibiting lipolysis.

The point of both is simple. Insulin puts fat in fat cells. That’s what it does. And our insulin levels, for the most part, are determined by the carb-content of our diet — the quantity and quality of the carbohydrates consumed. (Or if Jenny Brand Miller and her colleagues are right, also by our fat content — the lower the fat in the diet, the higher the insulin and vice verse.) The way to get fat out of fat cells and burn it, which is what we want to do with it, is to lower insulin. This has been known since the early 1960s.

One point I make in Why We Get Fat is that we all respond to this carbohydrate/insulin effect differently. Some of us can eat carbohydrate-rich meals and burn them off effortlessly. We’re the ones (like Oz) who partition the carbs we consume into energy. (This is the fuel gauge metaphor that I use in WWGF and that Oz’s producers reproduced wonderfully on the show.) And some of us partition the carbs we consume into fat for storage, and that partitioning depends on a lot of different enzymatic and hormonal factors — mostly relating to insulin and LPL as Williams Textbook of Endocrinology said).

There are a few obvious dietary means  to reduce the amount of insulin we secrete and ultimately the level of insulin in our circulation day in and day out. One is to eat fewer carbohydrates; one is to improve the quality of the carbs we do eat,  which means eating carbs that are less refined (their glycemic index is low or at least lower) and carbs that come with a lot of fiber attached (green leafy vegetables), and then eating less sugars, by which I mean both sucrose and high fructose corn syrup.

And this brings us to the point of controversy on the show – where Oz and I disagree. (Okay, one of the many points on which we disagree, but the one that needs clarification sooner rather than later). This is also the point that public health authorities, physicians and nutritionists almost religiously refuse to accept or even understand, because one implication of what I’m saying is that the good Dr. Atkins was right all along, and they just can’t get it through their head, as Oz can’t, that a diet of the kind Atkins recommended might be not only healthy but the medically appropriate treatment for the condition – in this case, obesity.

Another Baby Step Change...

Baby Step #3: Get Rid of the Bad Stuff and Snack Well!

from CrossFit Aspire

Close your eyes and imagine yourself only eating real, whole foods that are good for you. Flavorful vegetables, succulent meat, fresh fish, creamy avocados, crunchy nuts, sweet fruit, etc. Seems pretty easy, right?

Now open your eyes. Look around you. You can probably walk or drive less than a half mile and see a fast food ad campaign, neon-signed chain restaurant, or a ‘convenience’ store filled with processed junk that is parading around, looking like food. All of these things are bad for you. And you already know that. But, all of the sudden, for some weird reason, you are drawn to them. You want them. You crave them.

All healthy habits are EASY to stick to, unless you’re battling with the temptation of the unhealthy habits. That’s because most of us are literally addicted to eating unhealthy foods that we’ve been eating for our entire lives. Sugars that are found in all processed foods and desserts cause out bodies and brains to have chemical reactions similar that mimic that of a response to opiates. ( So consider this your intervention). Baby Step #3 is to get rid of the bad foods in your house. All of them!

Does your snack drawer look like this?

So what do you do? You do all that you can to minimize your exposure to the ‘bad things’. Since we’re taking baby steps here, let’s just start with your own kitchen. If you’re making an effort to eat only whole foods, then you shouldn’t have ANY non-whole foods in the house. Makes sense right? A person trying to quit cigarettes probably wouldn’t have much success if they kept a pack in their drawers or on their counter tops. The same idea applies to you and your food.

A proper burial

So our suggestion is to raid your fridge, pantry, drawers, ‘secret junk food stash’, desk drawers, and remove all of the non-foods. Be honest with yourself, and remember to check all labels on questionable items ( ingredients that you can’t pronounce are probably not whole foods, or good for your body). This process should feel liberating, simplifying, and a little overwhelming. Step away from the pantry, breathe, and realize that this is the first step to really making a radical change to the way you think about food. The word “food”, in your future, will be defined as something perishable, locally grown if possible, grassfed (meats), and unprocessed.

You may think that your pantry is bare, and subsequently wonder what you’ll be able to buy in order to fill it up again. Since most real foods don’t have a long shelf life at room temperature,  your fridge should become your new pantry – the place you go to first thing in the morning, when you are preparing for dinner, and when you want a tasty snack.

A "Real Foods" Fridge

If your bare pantry looks a little depressing, try cheering it up with a few minimally or non-processed foods such as Larabar, almond or sunflower seed butter, canned fish, raisins, and all-natural,  low sodium chicken broth. They are the closest thing to fresh real foods as you can get, and they are great options for ‘on the go’ snacks. ( Not the broth – save that for soup, silly!)

A Happy Pantry. (Notice the lack of crappy foods)

Now that the bad stuff is gone, you can clear your head, go food shopping for all real foods, find new recipes, and start making food that you body was actually designed to eat!

Here are a few suggestions for Real Food snacks to keep in the house. Keeping foods like these on hand will make it simple to avoid making excuses.

Hardboiled Eggs

High Quality Turkey Breast from the deli counter

Cooked Spaghetti Squash

Boiled Sweet Potatoes with cinnamon

Carrots

Blueberries

Fruit  (just one piece per day)

Beef Jerky (check out Steve’s Original)

Guacamole ( eat with cucumber chips)

Kale Chips (bake kale in the oven with some olive oil on baking sheet until crispy)

Larabar

Roasted Squash, Zucchini and Eggplant with seasonings

Chicken Salad (boil the chicken, drain, add olive oil, a bunch of chopped up veggies, some raisins, and some finely chopped almonds)

Tuna (straight from the can, with some olive oil and sun-dried tomatoes)

Sardines

Homemade Salsa

Bacon and veggies

Smoked Salmon

Pulled pork, chicken, or beef ( cook in slow cooker and pull apart)

Bottom line is that if you replace all of the Bad Stuff in your kitchen with Good Stuff, you’ll find it next to impossible to eat badly, make a bad decision, or to panic and get fast or fast(er) food.

Hope this has helped!

Please comment below if you’ve had success with this ‘clean out the pantry/desk/drawers/fridge’ method.

Carbs Are Crack!

Are Carbs More Addictive Than Cocaine?

Your body is virtually defenseless against a dependency on carbohydrates—the substances that really make you fat—and it's time for an intervention.

By Paul John Scott,

Photographs by Zachary Zavislak

March 2011 Issue

I'm sitting in a comfortable chair, in a tastefully lit, cheerfully decorated drug den, watching a steady line of people approach their dealer. After scoring, they shuffle off to their tables to quietly indulge in what for some could become (if it hasn't already) an addiction that screws up their lives. It's likely you have friends and family members who are suffering from this dependence—and you may be on the same path yourself. But this addiction is not usually apparent to the casual observer. It has no use for the drama and the carnage you associate with cocaine and alcohol. It's slower to show its hand, more socially acceptable—and way more insidious.

I'm in a Panera Bread outlet. The company is on Fortune's 2010 list of the 100 Fastest Growing Companies and earned more than $1.3 billion in 2009, mainly from selling flour and sugar by the railcar. Last year, Zagat named it the most popular large chain in the United States and ranked it second in the Healthy Options category. The company responded by touting its "wholesome" food. Sure, Panera sells a few salads. But why do the scones, pastries, baguettes, and bear claws get all the good lighting? Why are the grab-and-go packs of cookies and brownies next to the register? What need is fulfilled by serving soup bowls made of bread, with a mound of bread for dipping, and then offering more bread on the side? How come it's noon and the couple behind me are eating bagels while the guy to my right is sawing into a cinnamon roll with a fork and a knife like it's a steak?

The answer is that fast-burning carbohydrates—just like cocaine—give you a rush. As with blow, this rush can lead to cravings in your brain and intrusive thoughts when you go too long without a fix. But unlike cocaine, this stuff does more than rewire your neurological system. It will short-circuit your body. Your metabolism normally stockpiles energy so you can use it as fuel later. A diet flush with carbohydrates will reprogram your metabolism, locking your food away as unburnable fat. When you get hungry again you won't crave anything but more of the same food that started you down the path to dependency. Think of this stuff as more than a drug—it's like a metabolic parasite, taking over your body and feeding itself.

You aren't supposed to talk this way about carbohydrates. According to USDA dietary recommendations, they are not only healthy but are supposed to make up the majority of the food we eat—45 to 65 percent of all calories. Carbs, which are classified as starches and sugars, make up the essence of bread, cereal, corn, potatoes, cookies, pasta, fruit, juice, candy, beer, and sweetened drinks—basically anything that isn't protein or fat. Our government's recommendations were established in the 1970s and have since been accompanied by an explosion of obesity and diabetes. The advice came about as early nutrition scientists rallied around a misguided maxim that remains embedded in the fabric of our attitudes toward food to this day: Eating too much fat makes you fat. But science never bore out this pre-Galilean view of nutrition. What is now clear is this: At the center of the obesity universe lie carbohydrates, not fat.

"You could live your whole life and never eat a single carbohydrate—other than what you get from mother's milk and the tiny amount that comes naturally in meat—and probably be just fine," says Gary Taubes, the award-winning author of Good Calories, Bad Calories, which is helping to reshape the conversation about what makes the American diet so fattening.

If all you knew about food is what you read in the USDA guidelines, you'd think our bodies conveniently come into the world seeking the one nutrient that is cheap and amenable to commercial mass production: carbohydrates. "Sugars and starches provide energy to the body in the form of glucose, which is the only source of energy for red blood cells and is the preferred energy source for the brain," says the latest edition of the guidelines. Wrong, says Taubes, who just released Why We Get Fat, a layman's version of his influential scientific tome. In the absence of carbs, your body will burn fatty acids for energy. It's how you sleep through the night without eating for eight hours. "The brain does indeed need carbohydrates for fuel," Taubes says, "but the body is perfectly happy to make those out of protein, leafy green vegetables, and the animal fat you're burning." As a pair of Harvard doctors (one an endocrinologist and one an epidemiologist) wrote in the Journal of the American Medical Association last summer, carbohydrates are "a nutrient for which humans have no absolute requirement."

Nutrition Challenge Wrap Up

Wrapping Up

When we started this challenge, we were hoping to accomplish several things. First and foremost, we wanted to expose those of you who weren't familiar with the Paleo diet to the basics of it.  Next, we wanted to give an option to the "cold turkey" method that some of you had a hard time with in the past.  Not only were you overwhelmed with all the "rules", but having to adjust overnight meant that sometimes you were eating things you weren't supposed to without even knowing it.  Lastly, we wanted to show you some "levels" of the Paleo diet, and help you to see which level you could get to before it started becoming a challenge.  Everyone gets to a different spot before they have to start making difficult adjustments.  Losing the dairy products to some is nothing, while others go nuts without it.  We wanted you to find your level, and then you could push past that level, and even formulate a plan for getting to that next step. 

So how did you do?  Do you think this was easier or harder than "cold turkey"?  Did you see any results or changes since starting Paleo?  Are you likely to stay Paleo, or at least stay at the level you can handle for a while before pushing further?  We want to hear from you.  Post your thoughts to comments.  Oh, and stay tuned for more nutrition fun in the future!

Coconut!

Joel shared his Primal Coconut Recipe Cookbook with us.

from Mark's Daily Apple:

The Wonderful World of Coconut Products

Coconut seems to have a special place in Primal hearts. Judging from the forums, people are pretty taken with the fatty pseudo-nut and they’re always interested in new ways to consume the stuff. For some who abstain from dairy completely, coconut products make a great replacement for creams and butters. Others see the evidence from South Pacific traditional groups who thrived on a diet of coconut and fish, and want a bit of that in their lives. The milk makes a great base for smoothies, soups, and curries; the oil is a great source of saturated fat that stands up well to heat; the water beats commercial sports drinks with its impressive electrolyte content; the nut itself can be used as a projectile weapon. It’s just a well-rounded, versatile food with some interesting characteristics and a ton of offshoot products. Unlike most food “products,” however, coconut products are legit. They’re real food, and they’re real good. To help you guys wade through the often-confusing world of coconut products, I’ve put together a little guide to them all. Of course, I’ve probably missed a few things, so share your thoughts with me in the comments section.

Without further ado:

 

Coconut Oil

We’ve mentioned coconut oil plenty of times before. Tons of our readers eat it. It’s good by the spoonful, with eggs, on your scalp, or as a moisturizer. It can even double as a benign form of suntan lotion. Coconut oil is primarily saturated (over 90%), with the bulk of it coming from lauric acid, a medium chain saturated fatty acid; it’s incredibly heat-stable. Use it for stir-frying and sautéing, or drop a spoonful in your coffee. Makes a good base for an energy bar.

A tablespoon gets you 14 grams of fat, 12 of them saturated.

Coconut Butter

Coconut butter is to coconut oil as butter is to ghee; it’s made from whole coconut flesh, with all the delicious fat and the solids included. The oil and flesh meld together to form a creamy texture that spreads well. I wouldn’t use it for any high heat cooking, though, as the bits of flesh will just burn. Spoonfuls of this stuff are delicious, but addictive. Because the flesh is included, it retains a decent amount of sweetness. A big dollop of coconut butter can really finish off a curry nicely, though.

Two tablespoons get you 18 grams fat, 16 saturated.

Coconut Milk

Coconut milk is made by mixing shredded, fresh coconut meat with water, then squeezing it through a sieve or cheesecloth. The thick, creamy liquid that comes out is coconut milk and can be used for Thai curries and Brazilian seafood stew. Personally, I love drinking a big chilled glass of it by itself. Because people tend to misinterpret the natural separation of coconut milk in the can as spoilage, most canned coconut milk often includes thickening agents like guar gum, especially the stuff sold in Western countries. I wouldn’t worry too much about guar gum.

You could always make your own, of course, if you wanted to avoid any thickeners, preservatives, or BPA from the can lining.

A quarter cup gets you 12 grams of fat, 10 of them saturated.

Coconut Flour

We’ve gone over coconut flour before, so I’ll keep it brief. Use this stuff if you have a hankering for baked items. Ideally, we’d all stick to whole, real foods in their natural state, but there’s nothing wrong with the occasional Primal baked good. If it helps you maintain your eating plan without any major lapses, I’d say using coconut flour is a good compromise.

Two tablespoons get you 1.5 grams fat, 1 gram saturated, along with 10 grams of carbs, 9 of them fiber, and 2 grams protein.

Coconut Cream

Think of coconut cream as coconut milk without all the water. It’s the same stuff – pulverized coconut flesh mixed with water – but coconut cream is thicker and pastier. If you want to make a thicker coconut curry without all the added liquid, use coconut cream in place of milk. Many recipes even specifically call for coconut cream. In case you don’t have access to actual coconut cream, you can skim the thick top layer out of an unshaken, undisturbed can of coconut milk; that’s the cream. Store bought coconut cream is often sweetened, so be vigilant and scan those labels.

Creamed Coconut

Creamed coconut usually comes in a solid block. It may look like shortening or hydrogenated lard, but it’s not, and it may sound like coconut cream, but it isn’t. It’s pure coconut flesh, pulverized and formed into solid blocks that can be broken up into chunks and added to sauces or curries toward the end of cooking. Some claim it makes the best curries, better even than milk or cream-based ones. I haven’t tried, so I can’t verify that statement, but I am keeping my eyes peeled for creamed coconut.

An ounce will get you 20 grams of fat, mostly saturated, along with 6 grams of carbs, mostly fiber.

Desiccated Coconut

Desiccated coconut is unsweetened, very finely ground coconut with most of the moisture removed. This is not to be confused with coconut flour, which has the fat removed; desiccated coconut retains all the SFA goodness. Desiccated coconut is used all over for desserts, but PBers might enjoy sprinkling it over a bowl of berries and cream, onto curries, or directly into their mouths. It’s just the coconut flesh only dry, so there’s still a nice bit of subtle sweetness to desiccated coconut.

An ounce will get you 18 grams of fat, 16 grams saturated, 7 grams carbs, with 5 being fiber, and 2 grams of protein.

Shredded Coconut

Shredded coconut is mostly dry, but it usually retains more moisture than full-on desiccated coconut. But really, the main difference between shredded coconut and desiccated coconut (and flaked coconut, too) is the shape of the coconut. Shredded coconut comes shredded; it’s in thin strands or strips. Flaked coconut, meanwhile, comes is flatter, wider pieces. Still dry, though, and still coconut. Use shredded or flaked coconut the same way you’d use desiccated, ground coconut.

Sources

Ethnic groceries, especially ones catering to Indian or Southeast Asian clientele, are the best brick-and-mortar spots for the various coconut products. They’ll usually have the most authentic products at the cheapest prices, but not everyone has access to these stores. Whole Foods and other health food spots will generally carry coconut oil, coconut milk, desiccated coconut, as well as shredded and/or flaked coconut. Maybe even coconut butter. Again, though, not everyone has access to a Whole Foods or a health food store. Trader Joe’s carries a coconut milk, but it’s “light.” Avoid these and stick to the full-fat versions.

Another option is an online vendor. There are several good ones:

Tropical Traditions tends to get high marks for its coconut products. Coconut oil gets most of the attention, but their “Organic Food” pull down menu has a section for other coconut stuff: flour, flakes, shredded coconut, and cream.

I hear great things about the Artisana Coconut Butter, available from several different sources, including Amazon and many more.

Simply Coconut is another vendor.

Another good option is to just browse Amazon, which carries a ton of different coconut products, each with user reviews. Find a few, compare the ratings and reviews, read the nutrition facts, and take a chance.