Of Lab Rats and Men

You might think...

2012-01-20T22:56:00.007-06:00

... that after a while, the chorus of inaccurate information would be drowned in the sea of evidence. MSNBC's Health Today posted an article four days ago (I've been busy) on Paula Deen's diabetes. They basically say the same old tired non-sense about how it has nothing to do with what you eat, that if you only maintain your weight and exercise more you won't get diabetes, unless of course you are predisposed to it because of genetics.

What’s important when it comes to diabetes prevention is not what you eat, but rather, how much, said Linda Siminerio, director of the Diabetes Institute at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center.
“To my knowledge no particular food has been linked to an increase in the risk of diabetes,” Siminerio said. “It’s being overweight and inactive.”

Linda Siminerio ought to be ashamed of herself. How does one become director of a Diabetes Institute without having a grasp on biochemistry? What in the hell does she think makes people gain weight? What food could be cut out to make them lose weight effortlessly? I'll give you three guesses. Carbohydrates(!) make you gain weight (if you are insulin resistant). End of discussion.

Excessive carbohydrate intake (along with damage to your mitochondria, maybe from eating trans-fats or all the fake processed crap or something else unknown or all of the above) exacerbate insulin resistance, which in time leads to diabetes. See! I understand that and I'm a freakin' artist. I'm probably more qualified than she is to talk about what diabetics and those at risk of diabetes ought to eat. Why? Because I have a brain, some common sense, and can look at the data and draw a conclusion. Ms. Siminerio on the other hand is beholden to the "establishment". She can't say anything that hasn't already been dictated or she'd probably lose her cushy position as director of some Institute on Something.

Oh, but you say, "Some people eat carbohydrates and they don't get fat or get diabetes." And I say, that's fantastic for them. The bottom line is, if your metabolism is "broken" you can't eat carbohydrates. I know, it's very sad. I like brioche and donuts as much as the next person. But like recovering alcoholics liking their alcohol, I know that if I eat them, I will gain all the weight back.

Here's the deal. Doctors and these "experts" are just humans. Half of them probably aren't even as smart as the average person. In fact, I've come to the conclusion that none of them have even half the common sense of your average American. That's a sad state of affairs. I've seen day laborers with more sense than Ms. Siminerio and her "expert" friends.

I'm rambling now, and I have a ton of other things to do than rage about the stupidity of people. How many more people have to DIE before these asshats stop spreading lies and misinformation? >_<

I'll leave you with something heartening, on the way home today, I saw a sign at a local Tex Mex place that said "Low Carb Plate $7.95" :)

We Protest SOPA/PIPA

2012-01-17T20:41:00.003-06:00

This site will be blacked out on January 18th to protest SOPA/PIPA.

So much for smaller government.

Oh noes, Sausage causes cancer

2012-01-14T00:22:00.004-06:00

The Daily Telegraph reports that eating sausage will give you pancreatic cancer. I'm just screwed then because I eat a lot of sausage and a lot of red meat. Funny, so did our ancestors and they didn't die of cancer very often.

I'll keep this short because it's waaaaaay past my bedtime, but they drew these conclusions by doing a meta-analysis on eleven studies that used food recall questionnaires. What a waste of time and money.

The latest study, published in the British Journal of Cancer, is from researchers at the respected Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden. [Respected? By whom?]

They examined data from 11 studies, including 6,643 cases of pancreatic cancer.

I'll bet not one of those studies asked how much wheat they ate, or considered macro-nutrient intake. Of course not, because it's all a bunch of BS. They want us all to be vegan but eat Monsanto's genetically engineered crap while we're at it.

Low Carb Brownie Recipe

2012-01-12T17:44:00.004-06:00

I made the chocolate covered peanuts recipe from the other day again today. It's a real winner, everyone in the house likes it, which means I keep running out. Anyway, after I made it, as I was licking the pan before washing it, I had an epiphany. I thought the chocolate part would make a good base for brownies. And boy was I right! Everyone loved these brownies:

Brownies (Low Carb, cake type)

1 stick butter (8 T.)
2 T. cocoa

2 eggs
3/4 c. splenda
1/4 c. erythritol (buy it here)
1 tsp vanilla
3/4 c. almond flour (buy it here or grind your own)
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt

Melt butter on very low heat. Add cocoa and stir until smooth. Remove from heat.
In mixing bowl, beat eggs until light. Add sugar and stir well.
Then add the above together (after the cocoa has cooled off a little).
Add vanilla and stir.
Add dry ingredients and mix thoroughly.

Bake on 350 degrees in a well greased 8x8x2 pan for thirty to thirty-five minutes.

Healthier Scammers

2012-01-07T13:06:00.010-06:00

While on Facebook today, I saw an ad for a website called Healthier Post claiming to promote health and weight loss. I told you the other day that I could find something to make me face-palm every day of the week! They're out to sell you a supplement of course, and I am sure that there are probably hundreds of others just like them, but I'm picking on them because I saw their ad.

I perused their website, and honestly I wouldn't have bothered writing about them, except for the fact that they are touting patently false information, and some of it would be almost comical, if it weren't for the fact that this information will make you sick and could kill you. Now, some of the information on their site was reasonable. They advocate avoiding sugar and processed flour. I think we all agree those things are not good for you. But how about this?

This is a screen capture from a page on their website, text hi-light is mine

The idea that your body cannot process fats and oils is one of the most absurd things I've ever read. And I was an Art History major for a while, trust me when I say that I've read a lot of absurd things. I'm not going to get into the biochemistry behind fatty acid metabolism, mostly because I barely understand it myself. (If you want to learn more about biochemistry as it relates to health and weight loss I suggest checking out Hyperlipid's blog, as he knows more about this stuff in his pinky finger, than I do in my whole brain.) What I will say is this, it's very basic science to understand that your body doesn't know fat you eat from fat you store. It's all fuel to your body. If what they said were true, and your body could not "process" fats and oils, humans would not have made it out of the paleolithic. If there is nothing to eat, what do you think your body runs on? It runs on fat released from your adipose (fat) tissue and ketone bodies manufactured by your liver. Your brain can use ketone bodies for fuel instead of glucose once ketone levels are sufficiently high. Research has shown that brain cancer patients could benefit from zero carb diets because brain cancer likes glucose but cannot use ketones. Go figure.

But it gets better! On another page they tell you to avoid the following foods in order to lose weight. It sounds almost like the standard government advice, but the text below has more ridiculous assertions that have no basis in biochemistry.

Another screen shot from their website, emphasis mine

Three things here, first of all your body doesn't view "natural" sugar (whatever they mean by that) any differently than any other sugar. Sugar is sugar. Glucose and fructose are all handled in exactly the same way by your body and it doesn't matter what the source is. Next they say that fats and oils are toxic. Apparently they've never heard of essential fatty acids. You know, those things that are required for you to continue living. I don't know about you but I like living, and I like to eat fat too. Now lastly, they say that you should cut these foods completely out of your diet. You know, you'd almost think they were advocating veganism, but they're not. A few paragraphs down they say, "...you should eat proteins like steak, fish, chicken, and eggs to keep you strong and give you the energy to exercise." Are they just stupid? I'm not entirely sure, but a great portion of steak, fish and all of egg yolks are fat. Maybe they're just uneducated, out to sell you a product, and have copy and pasted various (and thus contradictory) text from around the web.

The moral of this story is, if a website promotes "fast" weight loss, advocates colon "cleansing," wants to sell you something to lose weight, and does not understand that just because something is "natural" doesn't make it good or safe, do like Monty Python and RUN AWAY!

Recipe: Chocolate Peanut Butter Bark

2012-01-06T19:36:00.003-06:00

I have come up with the perfect treat if you're eating low-carb. It tastes just like chocolate covered peanuts but in the form of something like toffee bark, in that it is poured into a pan.

I'm calling it:

Chocolate Peanut Butter Bark

1 stick + 2 T. of butter (total of 10 T.)
6 T. cocoa

4 T. peanut butter
1 1/2 c. splenda
1/2 c. erythritol (buy it here)
2 packets stevia
1/2 tsp vanilla extract
heavy cream as needed (appx. 3-4 T.)

2-3 c. peanuts (depending on how much cream you add)

Melt the butter on low heat in a sauce pan. Add cocoa and stir until smooth. Add the the peanut butter and stir again until smooth. Turn the heat off.

Add sweeteners and vanilla, and again, stir, but it won't be smooth. At this point, you'll want to add enough cream to make it smooth again. You may need to turn the heat back on at this point. If the mixture winds up a little thin, it's okay because it will harden in the fridge.

Don't stop stirring while the heat is on

Add peanuts and stir until they are thoroughly covered. For the last batch I made I tried peanuts from a local place that still had the skin on them, and they came out just fine.

Pour the mixture into a quarter sheet pan that is covered with parchment paper. Spread the mixture over the pan.

Parchment paper is the best thing since sliced meat :P

Refrigerate for a few hours until hardened. Once hardened you can break into chunks and put them in a container and freeze them. It's very good frozen! Actually it's just damned good :)

The final product, great for everyday snacks or a party

The entire recipe has the following nutritional content (according to the Nutrition Data website):

5645 calories (all that butter yum!)
505 g fat
139 g saturated fat
213 g carbs
64 g fiber
184 g protein

That's 149 grams of net carbs in the entire recipe. You can eat maybe three pieces before you've really had quite enough. There's probably about 5 grams of carbs per chunk, depending on the size of the chunk. And a whole lot of yummy fat to mediate those carbs.

Face-Palm Thursdays: Because two million years of evolution is obviously wrong

2012-01-04T22:44:00.008-06:00

I should start a new trend where I publish things that make me face-palm on Thursdays. Actually, in this subject I could probably find enough things to make me face-palm every day of the week, possibly multiple times a day. US News has the skinny on what will make you skinny. Not really.

Face Palm: Best Diets for the New Year 2012

Top of the list? A diet, called the DASH diet, developed by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI). You guessed it, eat your recommended number of carbs plus all those "healthy" whole grains, and just don't eat salt and saturated fat and you'll lose weight, especially if you cut back on calories! How does that work anyway? And they say that "rigorous studies" showed that this diet can lower blood pressure. Funnily enough, they don't quote exactly which "rigorous studies" they're referring to.

I'm not going to list all of the craptacular diets they put at the top of the list, (and believe me, I know all about craptacular diets having been obese for most of my life and trying repeatedly to lose the weight and being unable to), but they put Atkins towards the bottom. While their "rigorous studies" obviously prove that cutting back salt and eating whole grains defeats heart disease (really! I'm super cereal! pun totally intended) they dis Atkins because all the studies were too short and the data was not statistically significant. You can read that again, but I assure you, you didn't misread it.

Now, the Vegan Diet did better than Atkins and the Paleo diet despite the fact that it "may not provide enough of some nutrients." No kidding. But it ranks higher than ones that are better for you? Well, I believe that's called cognitive dissonance.

And what did they put at the bottom of the list? The Paleo Diet. Because 2 million years of evolution is obviously wrong. To whatever quack job wrote the article on US News, go live with the Inuit for a year like Stefansson did and get back to me on the lack of dairy and grains. Here's what they say about the nutritional breakdown of the Paleo Diet:

Fat. At about 39 percent of daily calories from fat, a sample Paleo menu exceeds the government’s 35 percent cap by a bit.

Protein. The government recommends 10 to 35 percent of daily calories come from protein; the Paleo diet clocks in around 38 percent.

Carbohydrates. At 23 percent of daily calories from carbs, it’s far below the government’s 45 to 65 percent recommendation.

Repeat after me, THERE ARE NO ESSENTIAL CARBOHYDRATES.

Homemade Mayonnaise Recipe

2011-12-24T20:13:00.009-06:00

I have found that making mayonnaise from scratch is very easy! It may seem counter intuitive, but doing it by hand is actually easier than trying to get an emulsion in a mixer or blender.

There are a few things that I have learned that will be helpful to you if you decide to try to make your own. The first is, use fresh farm/yard eggs. I don't know what they've done to our commercial egg supply, but the yolks are not the same. I know, you find that incredibly hard to believe. {/snark} Fresh yard eggs will make an emulsion and keep it without you even having to do anything, I mean unless you just dump all the oil in. If you pour the oil slowly and stir fast, the emulsion makes itself (or in Soviet Russia emulsion makes you!)

Secondly, you will want to use "light tasting olive oil" like this here (or whatever brand you'd rather have). Other types of olive oil can have a very strong flavor, which might be okay in some instances, like if you're making dressing out of it. Don't use lard. Trust me on this.

Finally, I've found that a mixture of sherry wine vinegar and lemon juice really makes the best mayonnaise.

So the recipe? There are literally dozens of them, maybe hundreds, but I've found the best one to make by hand is based on the one from Mastering the Art of French Cooking* by Julia Child, et al.

I've altered it though, because it says either sherry wine vinegar or lemon juice, but I insist that using both is better. I also reduce the amount of boiling water needed, maybe because I add more vinegar/lemon juice than she says to. I also suggest you buy the book, because it is one of the best cookbooks ever :)

Homemade Mayonnaise by hand

4 egg yolks

1 T. sherry wine vinegar
1 T. lemon juice
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp prepared or unprepared mustard

~17 oz bottle of light tasting olive oil
Sherry wine vinegar and lemon juice as needed (about 3T. of each)

3 T. boiling water

All you need is a bowl and a whisk to make this. Make sure your bowl is warm (but dry!) so to take the chill off your eggs. Beat the egg yolks until they are thick and sticky, about two minutes.

Add the vinegar, lemon juice, salt and mustard. Beat for 30 seconds.

Then add the oil, a teaspoon at a time at first (don't stop stirring until you have an emulsion!), then once you have an emulsion (after about a quarter of the bottle) you can add a Tablespoon at a time. Once you do have an emulsion, make sure you whip it good after adding oil, before adding any more. When the mixture gets thick, add more sherry wine vinegar or lemon juice to thin it out, alternating between the two. I generally add about 3 T. of each during the course of adding the oil, a Tablespoon here and there. Once you have added all the oil, you'll want to add the boiling water to keep the mayonnaise from turning.

And buy the book! There are a lot more details about making mayonnaise in it, and all about how to fix turned mayonnaise and how to save a mixture that has lost the emulsion. I can't recommend it enough, it's really one of my favorite cook books of all time.

*The edition we have is an old one, so I don't know if they've changed anything in the newer versions

Squirrel Stew (also known as Brunswick Stew)

2011-11-24T22:41:00.004-06:00

You're going to want to start this recipe really early in the morning because it will take approximately nine hours to make, most of that simmering on the stove. The squirrel can be frozen. I had harvested the squirrels I used to make this a couple months prior and they were stored in freezer bags in the freezer. See youtube on how to field dress a squirrel (not kidding, that's how I learned!)

Five squirrels, skinned, field dressed and quartered
2 qts chicken stock
water
4 T. salt
4 tsp black pepper
2 tsp cayenne pepper

2 medium sized onions
3 medium sized potatoes
1 can corn
2 c. frozen or fresh lima beans
2 c. frozen or fresh okra
3-4 carrots
3-4 celery stalks
5 c. cherry/porter tomatoes

In a very large pot, first put squirrel meat in the broth adding enough water to cover the meat. Add salt, black pepper and cayenne pepper. Bring to a boil and then reduce heat so it is lightly boiling. Cook meat for about three to four hours, adding water as needed, until the meat falls off the bones.

Using a slotted spoon, remove meat from stock. Add vegetables to stock, all of them should be well diced. You can use any vegetable really, but NOT rice. Rice is never used in Brunswick stew.

Next, remove meat from bones (this can take a while) and then add meat back into pot. Add more salt to taste. Let simmer/lighthly boil, stirring fairly often (it will stick to the bottom of the pot) until vegetables are reduced to mush. Add water as needed. You can make this the day before you need it and reheat it on the stove.

This recipe is really, really good and based on one from a late 19th century cookbook. My husband does not like fried squirrel, but he did love this stew. The long cook time takes a lot of the gaminess out of meat. You might use this recipe for other game meats as well.

They're trying to kill us!

2011-11-24T22:05:00.002-06:00

Or at least that's what the mum-in-law said when I told her about this stupid email I got with a link to a page with tips on how to control your blood sugar. Lies! That's what I call it. They basically say to remove meat from your diet and add whole grains and fruit as a means to control your blood sugar. Yeah, you know what the definition of insanity is? Doing the same thing over and over and over again and expecting different results. I don't suppose one should expect anything different from a site that is run by a bunch of corporate jackals and overseen by quacks *cough* Dr. Oz *cough*.

Good thing they have a medical disclaimer that states "[this] information is not to be taken as medical or other health advice..." Good advice, that.

By the way, we had a delicious thanksgiving dinner, with deep fried (in lard) turkey, squirrel stew (really! from a late 19th century recipe), jalapenos stuffed with cream cheese and wrapped in bacon, mashed cauliflower, and I don't know what else, plus a bunch of nut flour based deserts.

Texas Diabetes Council is Murdering Diabetics

2011-08-17T21:50:00.002-05:00

The Texas Diabetes Council is trying to murder diabetics. I downloaded their food guide on a lark, and it basically mirrors the crappy food pyramid that the government advocates. They tell diabetics to eat six or MORE servings of bread per day. Hello? Bread is the same as sugar. But oh, sugar is okay for diabetics according to their food guide, but fat isn't.

Excuse me, but what the hell is wrong with these people? Why? I feel some days like I'm living in Orwell's 1984. Freedom is slavery, war is peace, sugar is good for diabetics.

They advocate a no to low fat diet. Since one can only eat so much protein, that means they advocate a high carbohydrate/sugar diet for diabetics. I'm sorry, Texas Diabetes Council, 1960 called. It wants it's diabetic diet back.

If you'd like to call them and ask why they're killing diabetics, their phone number is 1.888.963.7111 Ext 7490, or you can write them at PO Box 149347 MC 1965, Austin TX 78714-9347.

Or you can go in person:

Next Quarterly Texas Diabetes Council Meeting: October 27, 2011, 1:00 p.m., Texas Department of State Health Services, 1100 West 49th Street, Austin, TX 78756

THEY'RE KILLING PEOPLE WITH THEIR BAD, INACCURATE AND FRAUDULENT ADVICE, FUNDED BY OUR TAX DOLLARS. These "authorities" publish a message that is contrary to all of the scientific evidence, a message that makes people sicker so they have to rely on drugs, which ultimately makes them so sick they tax our healthcare system, which we ALL pay for. This nonsense, it makes me absolutely livid. How many more people have to DIE because of their bad advice?

Which Industry Funds Your Study? Sun Exposure and Vitamin D

2011-06-26T21:11:00.010-05:00

I decided after reading up about Vitamin D the other day, and hearing that it may prevent sunburns as well, that I would look for more articles on that. Well, I found an article that made me want to laugh when I read the abstract. In fact, if it weren't for the erroneous statement they made, I probably wouldn't have bothered reading it. I found more erroneous propositions in it of course. And these people call themselves researchers? This is the problem with medical research in this country today. Seemingly educated people make stupid assumptions and it gets translated into "common knowledge." So what has irked me so? This from this article, about how terrible the sun is for you:

"When nature gave man the appealing capacity for vit D photosynthesis, the expected lifespan was far less than 40 years."

And these people are "educated"? First of all, average lifespan during the paleolithic is arguable. Secondly, the "average" is dragged down by infant mortality. During the paleolithic if one lived past the age of five and did not succumb to infection disease, one probably had just as much chance to live to eighty as they do now. So the whole "expected lifespan" is irrelevant to their argument. Completely irrelevant. I learned this in introductory archaeology.

Secondly, when evolution chooses for something, it has to be before child bearing age. In other words, it has to happen before you pass it onto your offspring. So, things that are bad for us later in life, are not evolutionarily chosen for. This is basic biology. Who are these people? And who is paying them to write this crap?

"The causal role of UV irradiation in both non-melanoma skin cancer (NMSC) and melanoma has been suspected by experienced clinicians and epidemiologists for well more than a century and was demonstrated repeatedly in studies of hairless mice and other animal models beginning in the 1920s."

Yes because we're genetically altered hairless mice. And they suspect UV irradiation causes skin cancer, so therefore it must be true. Wait. What? This doesn't convince me of anything except that whoever wrote this article has the critical thinking skills of a dung beetle. What's even more amusing is they cite an article from 1928. Yes, I'm not making that up. In 1928, they had just figured out that Pellagra wasn't an infectious disease. Incidentally, that's the same year that Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin. My, how far we've come. I need a sarcasm font, but I digress.

"Photoaging changes, even aside from the strongly associated skin cancer risk, is a source of distress for a majority of fair-skinned adults beyond the age of 40–50 years and has spawned a multi-billion dollar skin rejuvenation market. The cause-and-effect relationship between UV exposure and photoaging, like the relationship with skin cancer, has been well documented in mouse models."

Again, I'm not a mouse. I've heard of this type of argument before, it's called an appeal to the vain. Someone should make a snark font, I could use it now. I'm sorry, but no one's skin looks very good at 70, sun or no, unless they've got a plastic surgeon on call. And what does this have to do with cancer?

"...the attractiveness of a tan became embedded in the public psyche and remains there to this day, nearly a century later, despite the revised medical and scientific perception of a tan as a DNA damage response and widespread appreciation that UV exposure often leads to skin cancer."

So now we're at the museum. One of my favorite pieces that I have an appreciation for is Meindert Hobbema's Avenue at Middelharnis. It gives the perception that one is standing, looking down a road in 17th century Holland. Are we in Art History class or doing medical research? I call shenanigans.

"In the 1980s, studies employing normal human volunteers and multiple narrow band UV light sources determined the relative efficacy of different wavelengths of light in producing sunburn and suntan as well as epidermal DNA damage."

In other words, they stuck people under artificial UV light sources. Not the sun. I would think that makes the study pretty irrelevant when it comes to actual sun exposure. How is artificial light the same? I know that it could be composed of the same UV rays, but is it the same? Might there not be some difference, that without doing an actual study where you, oh I don't know, put people in the sun, you'd never know there was a difference? But what do I know, I'm just an artist.

This article has a real problem with what they call the "tanning bed" industry. However, I'm thinking that since they put a large plug in for sunscreen, I believe I know where their funding came from.

"If 2–8 min of unprotected summer sun exposure is required to optimize cutaneous vit D synthesis..."

Except it's not. If 2-8 minutes of sun were enough then no one would be deficient in Vitamin D. What the rest of that sentence goes onto say, is that 10-20 minutes is plenty if wearing sunscreen. Yeah, you can't make this stuff up.

"The confusing and misleading media coverage of the “vit D controversy” over the past few years has unfortunately indeed undermined the campaign to reduce the current excessive sun exposure in our society."

Is that anything like the low-fat campaign? I'm to the point that if authority figures tell me I should do something, I believe I should do the opposite.

Vitamin D deficiency and Type 2 Diabetes

2011-06-24T13:22:00.010-05:00

In the early part of the 20th century, a disease called Pellagra was thought to be caused by a virus or bacteria. It was common in the lower classes, but also did show up on occasion in more wealthy people. It was thought to be a "dirty" disease, and there was a stigma attached to contracting it. One of the people who contracted Pellagra was my husband's great-great grandmother. She died at a hospital in Dallas in 1922 from the disease. However, her death, and thousands of others were completely preventable. It turned out that Pellagra was a vitamin B3 deficiency.

Now we blame obesity and type 2 diabetes solely on what people are eating, but what if the catalyst for obesity and T2D is really something else entirely? What if it's a vitamin D deficiency? I found the following article at Science Direct:

The role of vitamin D deficiency in the pathogenesis of type 2 diabetes mellitus

Vitamin D can be obtained either through dietary intake or produced endogenously. It is found in foods such as oily fish (salmon, sardines, mackerel), egg yolks and fortified milk and juice; however dietary intake only accounts for about 30% of the vitamin D obtained. The primary route via which people obtain vitamin D is through exposure to ultraviolet B (UVB) sunlight at wavelengths between 290–315 nm, occurring predominantly in the summer months (June–July) in the Northern hemisphere (latitude >= 42° N).

In other words, if you're not getting a lot of sun, you should probably be supplementing Vitamin D3. I find it interesting that the pushing of the use of sunscreen coincides with the rise of obesity and diabetes in this country. Of course that's when our sugar intake increased too. Maybe it was the perfect storm?

Sunscreen wasn't in widespread use until the 1980s. Prior to that, beach goers might put zinc oxide on their noses, but that was about it. Then with the erroneous idea that the sun causes malignant cancer, enter the sunscreen industry. Like many things, drugs, food, etc. most research about sunscreen is funded by the sunscreen industry. They're out to sell you a product. If you die in twenty years because of it, well, they've made their money.

Glucose sensors located on β-cells sense increases in blood glucose levels despite increases in insulin secretion; the persistent hyperglycemia triggers a series of events which ultimately leads to an increase in β-cell expression, β-cell mass and enhanced secretory capacity of the pancreas. This compensatory increase in insulin secretion explains why some highly insulin resistant individuals never develop T2DM. In a study which examined pancreatic tissue from obese, non-diabetic individuals, relative β-cell volume of the pancreas was 50% greater in obese individuals than in their lean, non-diabetic counterparts (2.6 ± 0.39% vs. 1.71 ± 0.28%, P = 0.05), suggesting that these obese individuals did not progress to T2DM because they were able to increase their insulin production capacity by increasing β-cell mass. Individuals with T2DM do not experience this increase in β-cell mass, in fact there is a significant decrease in β-cell mass.

So long as your body can continue to manufacture insulin to store fat, you will probably not develop Type 2 Diabetes. It is only when this system fails that T2D occurs. Some morbidly obese people do not develop diabetes and it is because they can continue to get fat. A deficiency in Vitamin D may make it difficult for your β-cells to fucntion properly. Another explanation for why some obese people may not develop diabetes is because they're not vitamin D deficient, or if they are, for some reason they require less vitamin D than others.

The identification of the 1α(OH)ase in β-cells suggests that 1,25(OH)₂D₃ may play a role in overall β-cell function. In vitro and in vivo studies have ascertained that 1,25(OH)₂D₃ is essential for insulin secretion and glucose homeostasis. VDR mutant mice show a significant decrease in insulin mRNA levels when compared to controls, suggesting that 1,25(OH)₂D₃ may be required for insulin synthesis.

This isn't just something they've tried in a test tube. In vivo studies show that Vitamin D3 is essential for keeping blood sugar levels normal.

Lastly, obese individuals are often vitamin D deficient due to a decrease in the bio-availability of vitamin D metabolites which may explain why obesity is a risk factor for developing T2DM, although this association is only speculative...

Vitamin D deficiency increases peripheral tissue insulin resistance in addition to decreasing insulin secretion from pancreatic β-cells.

I would argue that they've forgotten that correlation is not causation. Say it with me, correlation is not causation. Associations are also not cause. Did it occur to them that (besides eating way too much sugar and way too many processed vegetable oils) that a deficiency in Vitamin D3 may be a catalyst for obesity? Obesity and insulin resistance go hand in hand. One may cause the other, or both may be caused by something else entirely. Or it's a chain reaction. Something causes insulin resistance which in turn causes obesity. I'm voting on that last one.

Another interesting article I found that has to do with how vitamin D deficiency may lead to breast, cervical and ovarian cancer. If you're not getting enough sun, I think it's a good idea to supplement Vitamin D3. It's cheap and the pills are small and easy to swallow.

Newest Designs at Cafe Press

2011-05-24T00:39:00.004-05:00

I have some new designs at my cafepress store! Grains are for the birds and oats are for horses! This is just a sampling, so please look around.

Bumper Stickers

Adults' Shirts

Kids' Shirts

Vegan Bacon

2011-05-18T13:44:00.004-05:00

At Hunter-Gatherer.

Who would eat such crap? That's what I'm asking. Look, I've said it before and I'll say it again, if you want to wreck your health being vegan, well fine. Go for it, but why would you eat something that is manufactured by some corporation and that doesn't even resemble food?

Veganism is one of THE stupidest things that exist, and the people who follow it like a religion are even stupider. I understand if you do it for "ethical" reasons (which I think is misguided but whatever), but it certainly ought not be for "health" reasons since it's one of the most unhealthful diets you can eat, right after the Standard American Diet. I blame the lack of saturated fat. Saturated fat is really important for developing and maintaining cognitive function. So is cholesterol, but I digress.

The thing that really burns my biscuits though, is that vegans act like theirs is the natural diet man is supposed to be eating. This couldn't be further from the truth. Do you think that paleolithic man had greens, bananas and other stuff that only grows for part of the year in most places, shipped to them from a tropical location? They ate meat and lots of it. Some archaeologists think that paleolithic people were partially responsible for the mass extinction of mega-fauna at the end of the paleolithic.

If one wanted to be "ethical" about the way we treat this planet, they would eat local. They'd eat what was in their back yard. Of course, that would require having a back yard. I despise living in a city. I've done it, and I really don't like it. The only place I despise living more is in the suburbs. The neighbors are always a bunch of wackos.

If you eat vegan bacon, I'd suggest finding some real food to eat instead. The ingredient list on this vegan bacon reads like any other crap-in-a-box you might find in the frozen food section. Hint: soybean oil is very bad for you

What have they done? Genetically modifying food, low-fat, and declining mental health

2011-05-14T19:13:00.010-05:00

I made some homemade mayonnaise today. This is the first time that I used yard eggs in it. The last few times I made it, I used store bought eggs. The yard eggs are expensive, what can I say? I have always noticed that the store bought eggs' shells seem to be very brittle and easily broken. The yard eggs have shells that you have to actually tap hard to break. If I get used to cooking with yard eggs and then go back to the store bought ones, I will make a mess hitting that first egg on the edge of the bowl, because the store bought eggs' shells shatter. What have they done to our food supply?

What prompted this post was, while I was making the mayonnaise, I noticed that it emulsified easily. The store bought eggs don't do that. It's actually kinda crazy. I remember reading that they had been breeding and feeding chickens (or more than likely genetically altering the chickens) to produce lower cholesterol eggs.

"Why the shift [in cholesterol]? The decrease in cholesterol might reflect an improvement in hens' diet, the agency says in a statement. Here's the full USDA Statement."

Because I'll turn into a pumpkin at midnight if mother nature would know what to feed a chicken!

Cholesterol is vital for cell membrane stability. If you don't understand the importance of that statement there, I suggest you pick up a basic biology text book. To top it all off, if you don't eat enough cholesterol, your body will make it for you, because you NEED it.

Add into the mix the fact that Monsanto has a gigantic monopoly on what is grown in this country, to the point that they can sue farmers because their genetically modified seeds are spread by the wind or birds, and they win(!?!?!WTF?!??!?!), one has to ask themselves, where are we going here? There will come a point (if we are not already beyond it) where there will be no turning back, and we will have permanently screwed up our food supply.

Beyond that, we come to an even more important thing. The astonishing rise of mental illness in this country. Saturated fat is important. I think that's an understatement of immense proportions. And what have they done? Told people to avoid eating fat, but especially saturated fat. Saturated fat is important for brain health. It's why we are intelligent. Our ancestors eating more saturated fat is probably what set us on the evolutionary path that we are on, and is what allowed our brains to grow bigger and more powerful. The drugs they prescribe people for ADHD, bipolar, depression and other mental illnesses like schizophrenia, do not work in the long term. The long term outcomes are actually worse for people who stay on their medication.

After one starts reading all this, they can't help but wonder if this low-fat crap is perpetuated by greed in what would rival even the most outrageous of conspiracies. By eating low-fat and high carb crap, people wreck their physical and mental health, needing drugs for cardiovascular disease, diabetes, high blood pressure, depression (which many of the anti-depressants trigger bipolar), ADHD (which ritalin leads to violent and aggressive behavior and wrecks the development of the brain).

What have they done? The powers-that-be are profiting off of this, they have destroyed countless lives by doing so, and worse, I think they KNOW what they're doing.

Pharma-topia

2011-04-20T23:19:00.003-05:00

A report has come out on the most popular drugs that are taken. Nearly all of them could be avoided if people would just toss this whole "low-fat" crap, dump the excess carbohydrates (especially sugar and HFCS) and start eating more saturated animal fat.

At number two, with 94 million prescriptions is generic Zocor, or simvastatin, a cholesterol lowering medication. And if you've read Uffe you'll know that this is unnecessary drivel. We have a population a little over 300 million... so that's almost one prescription for every three people in the country!

Metformin (for diabetes) is on down the list at 48.3 million prescriptions. Type 2 diabetes is a completely avoidable disease in most cases, and yet we have how many people with diabetes?

What else is on the rise here? Anti-psychotics. I think that the ad they run on television for Abilify is designed to MAKE you depressed. Seriously. Anyway, I suggest you read Anatomy of an Epidemic by Robert Whitaker. Big pharma has pushed anti-depressants and other anti-psychotics as 'wonder drugs' and they are not. They're possibly worse than the statins. Most people would see their mood improve if they'd just eat more saturated fat, for example butter or coconut butter/manna.

If your doctor tries to prescribe something you should ask questions and research it before agreeing to take it. It is your health that is at stake after all.

The only pill you should be taking is the red one.

Squirrel Lunch

2011-04-16T21:57:00.003-05:00

I harvested my first squirrel yesterday and we fried it up today for lunch. I had never had squirrel before, but my dad and my in-laws grew up eating it. I have to say I liked it and I'll probably try to harvest another one soon. The little bastards tore up our deer feeder last year and that means we have too many running around.

Some cities also have too many running around and they won't even let the residents do anything about it. A elderly neighbor of my uncle in Austin contracted typhus, which was probably transmitted by fleas living on the squirrels that have overrun the town since it's illegal to kill them. A female squirrel can have six offspring a year, so without predators, that quickly gets out of control. You can nearly kill little old ladies but you can't have squirrel for breakfast. Makes me glad I live out in the country.

Anyway, all this squirrel hunting made me think about how things used to be and why the amount of meat they say our ancestors ate is probably a huge under-estimation. Our grandparents and their parents, unless they lived in some place like New York City, did not rely on grocery stores for food. They also did not rely on huge commercial farms that grow genetically modified crops that can withstand bad weather. Go out in the woods and tell me how much you can gather. It ain't much. You're way better off trying to hunt something than to find edible plants, at least where I live. Our ancestors may have relied on other farmers or other hunters, but most of their food was not grown far away. Most people who lived out in the country hunted whatever they could get their hands on and it was never counted by USDA morons. Nowadays you'd probably go to jail if you tried selling meat to the neighbors, but I digress.

I thoroughly suggest for all you paleo types out there to go hunt your own food if it's possible. There's nothing like being out in the woods on a lovely spring morning. I know some people live where it's not possible, and all I can say is, I feel terribly sorry for you ;)

“Any woman who does not thoroughly enjoy tramping across the country on a clear, frosty morning with a good gun and a pair of dogs does not know how to enjoy life.” ~Annie Oakley

Lies, and the Vegans that tell them

2011-04-04T19:04:00.007-05:00

I've been busy the last few days and haven't had a chance to write anything. While going through my email tonight, I have yet more spam from the Eat Right America morons. Tonight's theme was too much not to write about. It basically said I should eat less meat but they weren't trying to promote veganism. Yeah and I'm the Pope. {/snark}

The thing though that prompted me to write though is this, they lie. Liars, liars, pants on fire. (Should I be surprised? Probably not, most people propagating the vegan diet have to lie because if they told the truth, few would be vegan.) So what reason do they give for eating less meat?

"In fact, [animal products] are rich in substances that scientific studies have shown to be associated with incidence of cancer and heart disease: saturated fat, cholesterol and arachidonic acid, an inflammatory acid found only in animal products." [emphasis mine]

Ah yes, the big old boogie men of saturated fat and cholesterol. We already know that's BS, but what is this arachidonic acid? Only an essential fatty acid, vital for visual and cognitive development of infants and found in breast milk. In fact, if the mother is deficient they need supplementation. Arachidonic acid is vital for neural function. And these asshats are basically saying you don't need it.

See this kind of crap makes me madder than hell. Why, do you ask? Because these idiots have an air of authority, and many people who read this crap will take them at their word without looking into what the thing actually does.

They go onto say that meat causes osteoporosis. Yes, you read that correctly, I'm not making this up.

"In addition, animal products are very acidic for the body and cause calcium to be released from the bones to help neutralize the acid in the blood. This in turn leads to calcium loss and weak, brittle bones."

That's gotta be the biggest load of BS that I've read. And do they quote a source, a study? Hell no, of course they don't. If it were true, that eating animal products made your bones brittle, then body builders would be breaking bones all the damned time because most of the ones that I've read on the internet are eating paleo. These idiots just keep piling it on. Forget the shovel, someone get them a backhoe so they can dig their lying asses deeper faster. Maybe the pit they're digging will cave in and bury them. But remember, they're not advocating a vegan diet by any means. *rolls eyes*

The problem IS veganism

2011-03-29T22:51:00.008-05:00

Props to Free the Animal:

Only in the "civilized" world would people be so stupid as to prescribe to a diet that would kill their child.

And only in the "civilized" world would people make excuses and say that it's not the diet that killed the baby since there are plenty of healthy vegan babies. That's a bunch of codwallop. The diet did kill the child, and the parents believed said codswallop. In both English and French press, there are people saying it's not the diet that killed the baby, but something else that was responsible, like the parents' ignorance, etc. I won't say it wasn't their ignorance that killed it, indeed it was. Ignorance that a diet that leaves you deficient could possibly be good for their infant daughter.

Let's explain this in terms that even a child should understand. Vitamin B12 deficiency can kill you. Vitamin B12 is found only in animal products. Therefore, many vegans are B12 deficient. As an adult, you have a store of B12 that might take years to deplete. If you metabolize B12 well, you might never become deficient. If you don't metabolize it well, you might become very sick.

A child has no choice. A child also does not have the vitamin stores that an adult has. I'm not going to beat around the bush and pander to your PC sensibilities. You are an absolute idiot to be vegan while pregnant or nursing.Ask any pediatrician. I blame a lack of saturated fat, which so happens to be essential for brain development. I think it makes them have a hard time thinking. If you're an adult and you want to be vegan, more power to you. Go for it. It's a free world. If you get sick and die, that was your choice. But don't damage your child's health by having them be as well. And the stupid thing is, you don't have to eat meat to get vitamin B12, you could be vegetarian. So long as you consume cream and eggs, you'd be fine.

Why must another child die for a lie? The lie is that veganism is healthy. It isn't.

The Spam that keeps on giving

2011-03-26T17:05:00.009-05:00

The Eat Right America people have been emailing me everyday about 2pm to let me know that I should start their vegan-wanna-be diet. I wasn't going to write any more about this, but as I was browsing their site, I just had to talk about what they say about diabetes.

"When we have more fat on the body, more insulin is required to deliver glucose to the cells as the coating of fat around them makes it difficult for the hormone insulin to transport the glucose into the cells." (emphasis mine)

Coating of fat around the cells makes it difficult for insulin to work? Wow. These people should contact all those biochemists who have struggled to find a concrete and indisputable reason for insulin resistance and let them know this. They also might want to let them know that fat people have their cells bathed in fat too. The year 1920 called. It wants it's understanding of biochemistry back.

There's only one problem with their crappy logic, besides the fact that it has nothing to do with biochemistry. Obese people are not the only ones who are insulin resistant, as type 2 diabetes strikes normal weight individuals as well. In fact, it seems that the inability to become fat might cause type 2 diabetes in normal weight individuals, as in the case of Pima men.

"Even five pounds of excess fat on one’s frame can inhibit the ability of insulin to carry glucose into our cells. Twenty pounds of extra fat and the pancreas may be forced to produce twice as much insulin to do the necessary job."

Citation? Really? I call shenanigans.

"The vast majority of diabetics who adopt a high-nutrient diet [as in their vegan diet] and exercise regularly become thin and non–diabetic. They are able to gradually discontinue their insulin and eventually other medications. They simply get well."

Pictures, or it didn't happen. I'd like to know who they're talking about. I really like how they have absolutely no citations whatsoever to any study anywhere.

And then I clicked on the Heart Disease tab.

"There is irrefutable scientific evidence that high cholesterol levels are associated with increased risk of Coronary Heart Disease (CHD). " (emphasis mine)

Liars. But we knew that.

"It has become increasingly evident that the direct relationship of cholesterol level to risk of heart attack exists at all but the very lowest cholesterol levels."

Yeah, people with very low cholesterol die of suicide and are violent, and if that doesn't' kill them they have a much higher incidence of cancer. Read Dr. Uffe Ravnskov.

"The new recommendations of medical authorities are to maintain your LDL cholesterol below 100. Less than 10% of the adult population in America actually has the cholesterol levels that meet these newest recommendations."

That's because they've lowered the recommendation because big Pharma wants us all on statins.

I'm kinda annoyed that they keep emailing me. I suppose that I could remove myself from their mailing list, but then I wouldn't have stupidity-in-my-inbox to write about. I'd have to go looking for articles at that point!

The Vegan Cult of the Flying Orange Monster

2011-03-24T22:06:00.008-05:00

So today, after taking that stupid survey from yesterday, I get an email in my inbox urging me to watch a video about their diet. Curiosity did indeed kill the cat. I couldn't help myself so I watched all six minutes of the vegan Dr. Joel Fuhrman looking like he was sitting in front of a green screen, with what looked to be tears in his eyes (for no explicit reason), telling me how eating animal products was killing me.

About a minute into this, I noticed something. He was using this strange speaking method, where he would pause at odd places. I've also seen preachers do this, but they typically vary their voices. Dr. Fuhrman's no preacher and his monotone voice got on my nerves after about another minute.

I did manage to watch all six minutes of his stupid video, but frankly, unless you're just a masochist, don't waste your time. It basically says if you don't eat vegetables, fruits, and seeds you're going to die a horrible death because you'll have cardiovascular disease, and who knows what else.

So why is this like a cult? The use of fear and "Join us so you won't be alone in a sea of ~~sinners~~, er I mean SAD eaters..." has been successfully used by plenty of cults from Jim Jones to those crazy people in California who thought they were getting on a comet. From a marketing point of view, it's kinda intelligent that they sent me an email today. After all, gotta reel people in if they forgot about the survey they took yesterday. Gotta remind them that they're going to kill themselves if they eat animal products.

What I want to know, is when they'll mention supplements for B12, an essential vitamin found only in animal products. After all, they recommended to me that I eat 94% of my calories as vegetables, fruit, wheat and nuts. Excuse me, but that's mostly carbohydrates (with the exception of nuts, lets hope no one's allergic!). There are no essential carbohydrates, but there are essential fatty acids (fats) and essential amino acids (protein). If you got 94% of your calories from vegetables, wheat, fruit and nuts, and did not take supplements, you would be killing yourself. Except not for a little while, because first your body would start eating itself. It really likes to eat the heart muscle when it doesn't get enough protein. If people get sick after following the Eat Right America fallacy, it'll only be the American way to sue the hell out of them ala Heidi Diaz.

So, I can eat meat 4% of the time. To put that in perspective, I can eat meat 14 days of the year on their diet. If anyone thinks that what they're pushing isn't veganism, they should probably re-examine their critical thinking skills.

Word of advice. Don't join cults. Especially vegan cults. After eating that way for a while, you won't have the energy or the brain power to think about leaving. Why do you think that cults actually are typically vegetarian or vegan? They don't want you thinking. All that cholesterol and saturated fat your brain needs to think, that's the last thing they want you consuming.

We Worship the Almighty Flying Orange Monster

2011-03-23T14:43:00.010-05:00

Forget spaghetti! Bring in the orange!

(props to Jimmy over at Livin' La Vida Low-Carb)

I'd like to deconstruct the above image. It's part of the header and used repeatedly on the website EatRightAmerica.com, which is run by a bunch of Vegan-not-really-called-vegan-call-it-Nutritarian idiots. Maybe the uneducated and/or unaware would look at this image and think nothing of it. Maybe they'd think it promotes good health, or fitness, etc. But I've had one too many classes in art history, and I never look at a picture as just a picture. Every picture has a meaning behind it, this is especially true of marketing images, and this one is no different.

For starters, this picture is full of religious iconography. Did the people who created this website do that on purpose? Maybe they weren't aware that they did. In the image we have a woman, in white, worshiping an orange. Yes, that is what that image says. She has her hands raised in adulation/adoration, just as many evangelical Christians might do during a sermon. She's wearing white, the color of innocence and purity. The orange is meant to represent the sun obviously, and what's better than sun worship? Many ancient cultures worshiped the sun, so there you have it. Even the tag line hearkens back to religion, as being a "life-changing" thing, or bringing you a "new life." In this case, your current life isn't "whole" enough.

This isn't done by accident typically. I mean, sure sometimes designers may accidentally associate something with something else and it's completely unintentional (or maybe they just claim it is to avoid the backlash). But most designers have had some art history, and they're typically not just throwing images together laissez-faire.

I have said before that a good deal of people treat diet as a religion. This was what Dr. Oz did when Taubes was on his show, repeatedly calling food "sacred." Food is not sacred. Neither is any diet (although I suppose one could argue it is if it is part of your religion, like in the case of the Hindus). I also think it's ridiculous that what I'm putting in my mouth gets some people as riled up as talking religion or politics.

Anyway, about the Eat Right America site. I put in my information. I couldn't remember my exact numbers for the blood tests (cholesterol, triglycerides, etc) from when I was at the doctor last but I know they were all normal, so I put in something close to normal. What did their stupid form tell me? I'm at extremely high risk for all kinds of death and destruction! zOMG, what ever will I do? I'm at risk of heart attack, stroke, diabetes(!) and all manner of ills.

My diet is on the right pie chart. The processed food must be bacon, because I don't eat anything else that could be considered "processed." I don't eat sugar, I don't eat out. I rarely eat any meal outside the house, low-carb or no. So, how did they determine that my health and diet are "poor"? Because I eat meat and dairy. In fact that's primarily what I eat, and yet I'm perfectly healthy. Indeed, I feel better than I have felt ever before in my life.

These people would be so much better served if they attacked what is wrong with most peoples' diets, which is excess sugar and high fructose corn syrup (and the fact that it's added to everything and used to replace fat). Instead, they quote studies that support what they want to promote, which is that animal products are bad for you.

They say at the end of my report:

"Of course, there are some ingredients that must be eliminated from your pantry. Salt needs to be avoided, even though we are used to adding it when we cook, and using a shaker on the table at meal time. Luckily, it takes only 1 week for your taste buds to recover from excess sodium. After that, the natural occurring sodium in food will be enough to tantalize your taste buds.
Oil is another ingredient that can easily be cut dramatically, or eliminated, without robbing your dishes of flavor or texture. You can sauté with water, or a little vinegar, or just let the ingredient release it's own liquid by slowly cooking with the top on your pan. You will be amazed at how quickly you will forget that oil and salt were ever essential ingredients.

Meat must become something special, never the main dish. Occasionally, reasonable portions of chicken or fish, 4 oz or less, will satisfy that craving, as long as vegetables remain the centerpiece of the meal. This is another one you will be shocked at- because today's focus on meat will change quickly, and you and your family will be amazed that meat "used to be" a daily essential. Another revelation will center on soy " meat " substitutes... Even lifelong carnivores won't feel deprived." [emphasis mine]

Thank you, but I don't think I'll be taking any cooking tips from vegans. Or worshiping oranges for that matter. Hell will freeze over first.

"Vegetarians, and their Hezbollah-like splinter faction, the vegans ... are the enemy of everything good and decent in the human spirit." --Anthony Bourdain

Lard Mayonnaise

2011-03-23T11:24:00.003-05:00

I had read somewhere online that you could make mayonnaise from lard. And indeed, you can. But, just because you can do something, doesn't mean you should. The thing is, it didn't taste too bad right when we made it, when it was warm. I thought it was a bit strong but okay. But then we refrigerated it, and used some of it later. It was disgusting, for lack of a better word. I'm not sure why, but I suspect it may be because when there's a lot of fat in a food, it's usually better heated up.

So, if you're thinking about trying it, I wouldn't.

The Difference a Few Years Makes

2011-03-22T14:38:00.006-05:00

I got to looking at some pictures of myself from a few years ago, and I have to tell you, I see a huge difference. In fact, my own mother nearly didn't recognize me when I posted a picture on facebook a couple of months ago. That says something I think. I haven't seen my mom in four years because I live so far from her, and I've lost a lot of weight since then.

The picture on the left of me was taken at my brother-in-law's wedding in July 2006. I could barely squeeze into a size 42 in men's. I had gained weight like mad at school, and struggled to keep from gaining any more, much less lose any. The picture in the middle is me in October 2006. The picture on the right was taken at Pompei in May 2009. You can see at that point I had lost some weight but it was a struggle to keep it off. I gained back somewhere in the neighborhood of ten to fifteen pounds right after my trip.

This is me today. I wear a 34 in men's.

And I don't have any pictures of me from when I was really heavy. That was before there were digital cameras. I think my mom may have some. I really tried to avoid ever having my picture taken then.

Hubby has lost a lot of weight too, but he forbids me to post any pictures of him LOL We've both lost all this weight, and haven't been hungry to do it. We've also been rather lazy and haven't even worked out. I do need to get motivated into a walking routine again. I think it would help me lose the rest of the weight I need to at a quicker pace, and maybe tone up the backside some ;)

Anyway, as they say, the proof is in the pudding, or in this case, in the pictures.

Low Carb should not be High Protein

2011-03-17T14:23:00.007-05:00

Over at Primal Wisdom I read this post today. I have my own comments on the news article, which can be found here. I really wanted to read the original journal article, but it's new and the library doesn't have a subscription to the journal. Going off the abstract, it sounds first of all like a bullshit study.

Why? Well let's start with this. The assumption that a low carbohydrate diet is high in protein. It isn't. Or shouldn't be anyway. Unless you're a body builder. A low carbohydrate diet should be high in fat, not protein. The amount of protein they fed these 17 obese men is more than I consume on a typical day, some days by double. My protein intake is generally 70g to 130g. They fed these men 137-139g of protein.

My other main problem with this study, and why I think it's really irrelevant without even having to read it, is it's short duration and it's use of 17 men as subjects. Under powered and sexist to boot LOL

I think it's an obfuscation, what they're doing. They're attacking animal protein by attacking the low carbohydrate diet. In the case of the above study, I assume that they fed the people in the low carbohydrate group primarily animal protein. How else would you keep your carbohydrate count so low?

This whole attack on animal protein brings me back to something I was reading last night. They blame the protein in dairy for cancer. How did they come to that conclusion? By feeding people skim milk. The study I was looking at also lumped "all dairy" together and implied that "all dairy" had protein.

"Except for cheese with an insulin score of 45, milk and all dairy products including yoghurt, ice cream, cottage cheese, and fermented milk products have potent insulinotropic properties."¹ [emphasis mine]

All dairy? Really. What about butter? Heavy cream? They have no protein. They have very little lactose, if any. You tell me how that's possible. I say it isn't. I say someone has an agenda and it's against animal products. Gee, I wonder who would have an agenda against animal products. I'll let you draw your own conclusions on that one.

"In a one-week intervention study of 24 pre-pubertal eight-year-old boys the effect of daily intake of 53 g of either lean meat or skim milk (1.5 l per day) was studied with regard to insulin and IGF-1 responses. In the skim milk group insulin significantly increased by 105% (from 22 to 45 pmol/l) and IGF-1 significantly increased by 19% (from 209 to 249 ng/ml) [12]. There was no significant increase in either insulin or IGF-1 in the meat group."¹ [emphasis mine]

Of course their insulin levels are higher in the skim milk group, the meat didn't have sugar (lactose) in it, and second of all, skim milk is not milk as you drink it from the cow. I mean, how stupid does one have to be? I went back and looked at the study that they're talking about, and talk about some confounding variables. The children were allowed to choose the diet they ate. Yes, you read that correctly. The children ate whatever they wanted, and simply were required to drink 1.5 liters of skim milk (12 of the boys) or eat 250g of low fat meat (the other 12). Consuming the milk apparently raised their IGF levels. But did it? Was it the milk? The protein in the milk? The lactose in the milk raising their insulin levels? The lack of fat in the milk so there was nothing to mediate their insulin levels? Some other dietary factor since there was no set diet? I mean, it could have been anything. I won't even get into the fact that it's under-powered and was only one week in duration.

Is drinking a large quantity of skim milk good for you? Hell no. I say you should never drink skim milk. If you want to consume milk, make sure it's whole, and better yet is straight from a dairy cow, not processed commercially.

"Milk consumption results in a significant increase in insulin and IGF-1 serum levels comparable with high glycaemic food. Insulin induces hepatic IGF-1 secretion, and both hormones amplify the stimulatory effect of GH on sebocytes and augment mitogenic downstream signalling pathways of insulin receptors, IGF-1 receptor and fibroblast growth factor receptor-2b."²

In other words, is it really the protein alone, or is it more likely that it's the lactose? And when they say "milk" do they mean skim, whole, or what? Because each kind should in theory have a completely different effect on your insulin levels.

One place to look for good information on what ketogenic diets do is in the one place that they're standard and acceptable. And that is in the treatment of epileptic seizures. About half of people, children included, will have a positive response to a ketogenic diet in helping control their seizures. This study found that IGF-1 was greatly reduced in a ketogenic diet, to the point where it stunted the growth of the children.³ A ketogenic diet is extremely low carb, basically near zero carb and low protein too (it's a high fat diet), and these children undertook it because being short is preferable to having seizures.

In fact, a lot of the literature is rife with making low carb synonymous with high protein. Like this study where they fed mice more protein than fat (46% v. 35% respectively). That's a lot of protein. Not to mention it throws in a confounding variable, so that when they declare that low carb diets do not slow tumor growth, one has to wonder how they know this. If they had fed them a higher fat diet, they might have noticed some benefit, since we know that protein affects insulin production, and insulin levels are probably a driving force behind a lot of nasty things. In fact, in this study IGF-1 was higher in the low carb group than in the high carb group, and I'm sure that is due to the protein, since insulin drives IGF.

So the point of all this? When eating a low carb diet, it should be primarily animal fat (none of that synthetic vegetable crap), your protein should probably be 15-20% depending on your activity level, and your carb count should be as high as you can tolerate and still lose/maintain weight. And don't listen to stupid journalists, and be wary of researchers, because I don't think most of them know what they're talking about.

References:

1. Milk - The promoter of chronic Western diseases. Medical Hypotheses 2009; 72(6): 631-639

2. Role of insulin, insulin-like growth factor-1, hyperglycaemic food and milk consumption in the pathogenesis of acne vulgaris. Experimental Dermatology 2009; 18: 833–841.

3.Growth dependence on insulin-like growth factor-I during the ketogenic diet. Epilepsia 2009; 50(2): 297-303.

Sometimes commercial is better?(!)

2011-03-16T14:15:00.007-05:00

The mum-in-law found this recipe over at Linda's Low Carb a little while ago. It's for a quick peanut butter pudding. On that day, I had been wanting something with peanut butter, but didn't know what. We tried making it, and the first bowl didn't mix up at all. The second one did. We were using raw cream. I finally figured out that you couldn't put one bit more cream in than what the recipe called for. The bowl that didn't mix up, I had spilled a bit extra in. It also took five minutes of whisking to make. Needless to say, I didn't want to make any for anyone else.

This week we went to get more raw cream, and the dairy didn't have any. So sad, I know. We're hoping to get a special order in for next time. Anyway, we're not purists, so we went over to the store and bought some commercial cream. I like my cream, a lot LOL. So today when I made that recipe from Linda's Low Carb, you're not going to believe this, but it whipped up in thirty seconds, and was way thicker than the recipe made from the raw cream. I'm thinking it probably has something to do with the carrageenan that's in the commercial cream. The hubby was happy too because I offered to make him some! If you use raw cream and need to whip it for a recipe that requires it be very creamy, you might want to get some commercial cream instead. It was very interesting that for making recipes, the commercial cream might be better.

Exercise away the plateau?

2011-03-16T11:27:00.007-05:00

I have to admit it, I'm lazy as hell. I've never been all that keen on exercising, or when I was a kid, playing. Back then, I liked to stay inside and read instead.

One summer when I was in college, I did a summer program where I was a ~~camp counselor~~ glorified baby sitter for high school students. We were expected to stay in the dorm pretty much around the clock with the kids. The gym however, was an acceptable place to be if we weren't in the dorm. So I started going to the gym to get the hell away from the dorm and the kids. I exercised everyday almost for about two or three hours. I had never been to the gym so much in my life. Why did I do this? I'm sure you've heard of the 'freshman 15' where the new college student gains fifteen pounds from eating the crap that Sodexo (used to be called Sodexho), or some similar food service, serves. I had gained something like 90 pounds in the two years that I had been at school. I never thought I particularly stuffed my face. I simply ate until I wasn't hungry. Skinny people do that all the time and don't gain weight. Anyway, I was approaching 250 pounds, and this after I had been down to 163 pounds (after eating Atkins no less!), from a high of 270 pounds when I was in high school. Let's just say, I wasn't having any of it.

This is before I understood how low carb works, so in addition to going to the gym I cut back my food intake. I was hungry all summer, but I lost twenty-five pounds (which left me at about 225 pounds) and in the end found it easier to do the elliptical machine for nearly an hour. I also lifted weights too. The last time I went to the gym, which was just before school started for the fall, this skinny bitch approached me and told me that I ought not to lift weights until I had lost more weight. Really? People seem quite capable of poking into your personal business. I shut her up by telling her my doctor had told me to. Well, I didn't have a doctor, but most doctors would tell you that resistance training is beneficial, especially if you're overweight.

I stopped going to the gym because during my senior year, I barely had time to sleep, much less exercise. I did maintain my weight though, and I credit that to living in an apartment-style dorm and not eating at the cafeteria very often. I think Sodexo makes it a point to inject ~~sugar~~, er, I mean High Fructose Corn Syrup, into all of their food. Typical fare was a burger with fries, or mystery meat with potatoes and some other vegetable. Don't get me wrong, if I had understood how low carb worked, I could have probably eaten there on it. I just didn't know at the time. Ignorance is not bliss.

When I graduated I stayed about 225 pounds for a while. Then I decided that I really wanted to lose some weight since I was going to Europe, so I started restricting calories and going to the gym again. I typically walked on the treadmill for an hour with it set to being inclined. I did lose another twenty pounds. After my trip, all the weight came right back the second I started eating until I was content. That's a great thing about low-carb. You can eat until you're not hungry, and you don't gain weight. The same could never be said when I wasn't doing low-carb.

Anyway, I was back at 220 pounds when I started this low carb journey back in May of last year. I'm currently at about 180 lbs, which I haven't weighed since before I went to college.

So what's the point of my story? About exercise. When I used to walk a lot, especially before my trip to Europe in 2009, I would be so sore. All the time. My legs used to feel like they were on fire the next day, especially if I skived off of walking for a few weeks and then started doing it again. (Maybe the pain is what made me not ever have the inclination to be a gym rat.) The first day after walking a few miles was always hell. And it often didn't get much better. I would think, 'I have been walking five miles every other day, shouldn't it get easier?'

Well, I've been stuck at 180 pounds for about a month now, and it's kinda annoying. I am 5'9" tall, and I think I probably ought to weigh 160 or maybe a little less. My BMI is currently 26.6, which is slightly overweight. I might ought to weigh 150, I'm not sure. I'd have to see when I get to 160. Anyway, I decided that I could do one of three things to break this plateau. I could try exercising, which I haven't done, because as I said at the beginning of this, I'm lazy as hell, not to mention I'm not masochistic. I don't like pain. The second thing I could do is cut out the diet coke and splenda sweetened kool-aid I drink, since artificial sweeteners could be a problem because they do raise insulin levels (I hate plain water, and I have cut back on the diet coke, you don't even want to know how much I used to drink). Or I could cut out the bit of dairy I eat (mostly cream or half and half) since I have read of other people who said dairy caused them to plateau. I decided I wanted to try exercising first. Walking is probably good for us, and I want to go backpacking in Europe again someday, so if I keep up being able to walk long distances, that would be a good thing.

I walked two miles yesterday. This after not walking, much less exercising, in months. I'm not sore today. I suspect it's the low carb diet, which reduces inflammation. (Inflammation causes pain, particularly in the joints). It's pretty amazing actually. I'm hoping this breaks the plateau. I'll let you know.

Lindt changes ingredients in it's chocolate

2011-03-15T17:53:00.006-05:00

It pisses me off that Lindt has changed their 85% dark chocolate. They have doubled the carb count and the sugar. I had been buying it because four squares only had eight grams of carbs and three grams of sugar. Now it has fifteen grams of carbs and five grams of sugar. I suppose it's not a whole lot of difference, especially if you only eat one square here and there as I do, but I don't understand WHY they had to change it. It was good the way it was. I like bitter chocolate.

A lot of people are mad that they changed their 70% chocolate to have soy lecithin in it. I suppose they've done this to make it more like American chocolate. To which I think, why would people buy European chocolate to have it be more like American chocolate? If you want American chocolate, there's already Hershey's.

I probably won't be buying any more of it. I'll find something else. Probably something made in Europe and not here.

When you're metabolically screwed up, the study of "normal" people tells you nothing

2011-03-14T15:33:00.007-05:00

Is it possible that sugar is the culprit behind metabolic syndrome? It seems that glucose and fructose together are bad news. I found an article to read last night, and saved it because it was late at the time. I've spent the last couple of hours reading it (and looking up biochemistry terms LOL).

The following are pieces of the article that I found the most interesting. Remember, if you don't have access to scholarly databases and want to read the article, you should be able to get a log-in for your local public library's proxy and then be able to look up journal articles.

1.) Low glycogen promotes insulin action, whereas high glycogen promotes insulin resistance. Glycogen is primarily elevated by eating carbohydrates.

"Prevention of glycogen synthesis, by fasting or feeding a low-carbohydrate/high-fat diet, results in a persistence of contraction and insulin-mediated glucose transport that lasts as long as carbohydrates are not consumed. This line of work shows that low glycogen promotes increased insulin action, whereas high glycogen promotes insulin resistance."

2.) People who are metabolically damaged respond more positively to restricting carbohydrate intake than people who are not metabolically damaged.

"That patients with MetS [metabolic syndrome] might be particularly sensitive to carbohydrate restriction was suggested by Cornier et al. [28] who compared the response of obese insulin-sensitive and obese insulin-resistant subjects randomized to either a high-carbohydrate (60%) or lower carbohydrate (40%) diet. Weight loss was similar for the insulin-sensitive group irrespective of carbohydrate level. The most striking result was that only the insulin-resistant group showed a major change in any lipid parameter with a 42% average decrease in TG on lower carbohydrate, and a 27% increase on higher carbohydrate. That individuals with MetS or insulin resistance syndrome respond better to restricting carbohydrates than fat is consistent with intolerance to carbohydrate as the fundamental metabolic problem."

3.) The saturated fat levels in your blood are higher when eating carbohydrates. Go figure.

"If carbohydrate intake were low enough to decrease levels of glucose and insulin, however, a high SFA intake would be processed very differently. We recently showed, for example, a disconnect between dietary SFA and plasma levels of SFA apparently due to the regulatory role of dietary carbohydrate in controlling de novo lipogenesis (DNL)...

A notable result was that, despite a 3-fold higher intake of dietary saturated fat during the VLCKD [very low carb], saturated fatty acids in TG [triglyceride] and cholesteryl ester were significantly decreased compared to subjects consuming the LFD [low fat diet]. That this was due to a decrease in DNL [de novo lipogenesis] was shown by a corresponding reduction in palmitoleic acid (16:1n-7), an endogenous indicator of this process."

4.) Glucose, independent of insulin, also has an effect on fat storage.

"Expression of the lipogenic genes occurs without any apparent effect of insulin indicating one way in which glucose directly regulates nutrient partitioning."

5.) It's not about calories per se.

"It is worth noting that many changes in lipid metabolism during fasting are due to the specific removal of carbohydrate as opposed to a general elimination of calories."

6.) This was the most interesting one. Insulin resistance occurs in the muscles and liver first, and when this happens, your body has no choice but to convert the glucose in your blood stream into fat (either de novo lipogenesis or manufacture of triglycerides). This is an interesting concept on a few levels. One thing is, any studies done on people who are NOT insulin resistant could be IRRELEVANT for those who are.

("There are truths which are not for all men, nor for all times."--Voltaire)

"The fate of a dietary carbohydrate load in lean insulin-resistant and insulin-sensitive men was determined using a combination of 1H and 13C NMR spectroscopy to assess liver and muscle triglyceride and glycogen synthesis, respectively, and deuterium enrichment to assess de novo lipogenesis. The insulin-resistant men showed impaired skeletal muscle and hepatic glycogen formation following intake of dietary carbohydrate. Consistent with the paradigm presented in Fig. 1, dietary carbohydrate in the insulin-resistant group was instead diverted toward hepatic DNL [de novo lipogenesis] and TG [triglyceride] synthesis that contributed to a significant increase (60%) in plasma TG levels."

7.) A short study probably shows jack when it comes to metabolism.

"The time course of metabolic adaptations is also variable; some lipolytic adaptations occur within a week (e.g., gene expression of FAT/CD36 and b HAD) while others take longer (e.g., FABP and CPT I). Several weeks may be necessary for complete switch to optimal fat utilization."

8.) Fatty acid oxidation is increased with carbohydrate restriction. According to Lippincott's Illustrated biochemistry text, fatty acid oxidation is the primary source of fuel when starving. We know that decreased carbohydrate intake is similar to starving when it comes to how your body mobilizes fat stores.

"The hormonal changes that accompany carbohydrate restriction, fasting or continued physical activity lead to inhibition of glycogen synthesis and inactivation of acetyl-CoA carboxylase and a fall in malonyl-CoA levels which, in turn, relieves inhibition of carnitine transport and thereby stimulates fatty acid oxidation."

All very interesting stuff.

Low Carb Diet Side Effects: How to deal with them

2011-03-14T12:29:00.006-05:00

Salt and fat are very important on a low carb diet.

If you've being doing low carb for a while, you may have heard of people saying that they had a "bad reaction", or suffered "side effects" on the diet. One of the most obnoxious side effects constantly stated is that you'll get bad breath. The press likes this one, as if bad breath was the worst thing that you could have happen to you. Personally, I never had a problem with this, nor did any of my family members who went low carb. Maybe we were just lucky? Anyway, the side effects people encounter are probably from them either not getting enough fat, from not getting enough salt, or from going on and off the diet regularly (see my post about how your body makes enzymes and hormones based on what you've eaten recently). Or maybe a combination of all of that. So, what to do about these unpleasant "side effects"?

First and foremost, throw your fear of fat out the window. You don't want a lot of protein. You want fat, mostly saturated animal fat. It's best to avoid synthetic, man-made vegetable fat. Eating a low-carb, low-fat, high protein diet will make you sick. They call it "rabbit starvation" because rabbits are such lean meat, you'll die if that's all you have to eat.

Some things that can happen while on a low carb diet are tachycardia (racing heart). What can cause this? Low blood pressure. Eating a low carb diet lowers your blood pressure, and if you have low blood pressure already, you know that you sometimes get a fast heart beat. The mum-in-law has low blood pressure, and she sometimes gets a racing heart. She says that it's because your heart needs to get that blood pumped around your body somehow, even if it has to beat faster to do it. It's usually nothing to worry about, although I would suggest seeing a doctor just to be sure.** Something that may help this, is to increase your salt intake. Salt intake does raise your blood pressure slightly (between 1 and 6 mg/Hg) and it may be enough to avoid the side effect of low blood pressure. In fact, increasing your salt intake on the low carb diet, especially in the beginning, can prevent you from losing too much salt from losing too much water. You retain water when you eat carbohydrates (chemically speaking, water is required for their metabolism, and they're made of water, hence the 'hydrate' part). That leads to the point that if you eat a high carbohydrate meal once or twice a week, you will gain water weight, sometimes crazily so. This is not because you've eaten too much per se, it's because you're retaining water. It can take a week or two of eating low carb again to lose the water weight.

Another cause of low blood pressure may be if you're on medication for your high blood pressure, and you go on a low carb diet, well, you may need to have your doctor adjust your blood pressure medicine down to compensate.

I personally (and I know this is anecdotal) do so much better on a low carb diet when it comes to my heart. I have a hard time getting enough potassium when I eat the standard American diet, and I once wound up in the emergency room with sinus arrhythmia, my heart was stopping momentarily, literally skipping beats. Needless to say, it scared the hell out of me. The doctors told me that my potassium was low. I don't get sinus arrhythmia on the low carb diet. Probably because red meat is a great source of potassium. I also noticed that my heart doesn't beat as "hard" as it used to when I would lay down to go to sleep. I used to be able to feel it beating loudly, and it doesn't make so much noise any more. My pulse is normal, it just seems like it's working more efficiently or something. And again, this is all anecdotal, so take it with a grain of salt (pun intended).

**Please note, that if you are having problems, especially to do with your heart, see a doctor. Have blood tests, get hooked up to an EKG and make sure you don't have an underlying medical condition.

A Faith Based Diet

2011-03-13T23:04:00.010-05:00

You know why a lot of people hate Gary Taubes so much? Besides the fact that Good Calories, Bad Calories blew their idea of what was 'truth' out of the water, they're pissed because what he shows is that if you're overweight or obese, it isn't your fault. Basically, you don't eat too much, and you've been lied to. OMG, how can that be? Aren't fat people just gluttonous? Slothful? How can it be that they're not?

How can it be that you'd be such a prick to think otherwise? Or isn't that how society sets everyone up to be? It's a sort of blame-the-victim game. This can even be seen in texts on biochemistry. In Lippincott's Illustrated text, they say that β-cell death in Type 1 diabetes is caused probably by a virus. With Type 2, people don't become diabetic until their pancreas can't keep up. In other words, their β-cells have failed to produce enough insulin. What's Type 2 caused by? Obesity. Yes, you read that right. Obesity caused Insulin Resistance, which lead to Type 2. But, really? This is after they say that Type 2 (as well as weight) is heavily influenced by genetics. Is it not possible that Insulin Resistance is caused by a virus? Or that Insulin Resistance is the cause of obesity, not the other way around. It's a chicken-or-the-egg argument. I've also read that some people are insulin resistant, and not overweight. Normal weight people can become Type 2 diabetic. When it's a disease, it would be rude to say it's the person's fault. Therefore we can't call obesity a disease, or how else could it be socially acceptable to degrade fat people?

Also, who *wants* to be obese? Besides this crazy woman... Most people who struggle with their weight do so while trying to do something about it. Eventually they give up because they figure by starving themselves, they're doing more harm than good. And who likes to go around hungry all the time? I did lose weight eating a low calorie diet. But you can't keep doing that, so you go back to eating enough food to satiate you (as all skinny people do), and you wind up gaining what you lost back, and then some.

And then people like Atkins and Gary Taubes come along, and they tell you it isn't your fault, it's *what* you're eating, not how much. And all the little skinny ass people who have never been fat a day in their life and can eat however they like self-righteously tell you that people like Atkins are full of it, and if only everyone would eat the way they eat (which it seems is usually vegan or vegetarian, even though there are plenty of overweight vegans and vegetarians, because YOU'RE DOING IT WRONG!), they'd lose weight.

That whole "you're doing it wrong" mentality is about as brilliant as some of the trolls I've seen on message boards. Just because you're not insulin resistant and/or don't have a hormonal imbalance with insulin, doesn't mean that you're doing something "right". It just means that you're not metabolically messed up.

I also doubt that most people who criticize Atkins or Taubes have ever read what they wrote. And in the case of Good Calories, Bad Calories, *if* they read it, they probably didn't understand it. This is where they resort to ad hominem attacks, because they have nothing else. I've read GCBC twice, and it's not an easy read. And I read plenty of intense books all the time. What artist do you know who reads Lippincott's biochemistry for fun? If you know of another artist who does, I'd love to meet them LOL!

I also understand that there is a group of people who don't have any critical thinking skills, who will follow whatever their doctors or their gurus tells them. They never look into anything for themselves. These are the same people who go on statins because they're scared of their cholesterol (hello! cholesterol is required for cell wall stability). They're the same people who parrot crap on message boards as if it's incontrovertible truth. I tell you, some diet advocates that I've seen put Catholics to shame when it comes to faith. Evangelicals, if you want to convert someone, target the diet crowd. I'm betting a near 100% success rate.

Basically, it's a bunch of codswallop. If some diet works for you, great, do it. If you can drink a two liter bottle of Coca-cola every day and not gain an ounce, that's fantastic {/snark}. I'd prefer to cook my liver on something tastier than soda though, just so you know (pain au chocolat comes to mind). If a diet doesn't work, then don't do it. But don't stand there and tell me that it won't work for me, or that it will work for me. How in the hell do you know what works for me? Are you me? And also, why do you care what I put in my mouth? If you care so much about what I, a complete stranger to you, eats, I suggest you do something important: Get a life.

Postscript:
If low carb diet isn't working for you, before you give up on it, a suggestion is to add more fat and less protein. A lot of low-carbers fall into the "fat is bad" mentality and don't eat enough fat. Depending upon how screwed up your hormones and cells are, too much protein may be triggering too much insulin, which if you're trying to lose weight, may cause you to plateau.

The Usual Fare: How your body adapts to what you're eating

2011-03-12T11:45:00.012-06:00

After reading some of the comments on the news articles I read for what I wrote last night, about how McDonald's made the commenters sick, I got to thinking about it and the mum-in-law pointed out that most of them probably are vegetarian and perhaps ate it in a pinch, and then did get sick because their bodies did not have enough of the enzyme to digest the meat. It had nothing to do with the fact that it was McDonald's. If they'd eaten at Austin Land and Cattle, they'd have had the same response, and I don't think a $42 steak should make you sick. Unless your body just isn't used to eating meat.

Your body responds to what you usually eat by making enzymes (like protease) and hormones (like insulin) to deal with your daily food intake. This goes for all food components, fat, carbohydrates and protein. I personally don't eat very many carbs, usually. I still need to lose about twenty pounds, so I'm going to keep on the very low carb band wagon until I lose all the weight. Now, yesterday, if you read my post about what we ate for lunch, you'll know that we all felt like crap afterwards. This is because your insulin production is based on what you ate for the last meal and maybe overall on what you ate in the last day or two. If you do very low carb and want to eat sugar again, just like with a vegetarian who hasn't eaten meat in a while, you have to go gradually off of it. If you are vegetarian and decide that you're going to eat meat again, and you eat a double Whopper, you're probably going to be sick. And it isn't because of the food itself. The same happens if you're a low carber. Say for instance, you go to France on holiday and you eat half a dozen pain au chocolat, you're going to be sick. I suggest ramping up for that LOL

According to Lippincott's Illustrated biochemistry text, the things that stimulate insulin synthesis (production) are glucose, amino acids, and gastrointestinal hormones, and it says that "the synthesis and release of insulin are decreased when there is a scarcity of dietary fuels [i.e. carbohydrates]..." p.310

In other words, if you don't eat carbohydrates, your body isn't making very much insulin. Why would it? That would be inefficient. Luckily the body is highly adaptable, and in the case of former vegetarians will go back to making the enzymes for digesting meat in a couple of days. Same for the low carb folks. Fall off the wagon, and your body will start making insulin again. If we weren't so adaptable, you wouldn't be sitting here reading this because your ancestors wouldn't have lived.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

And a little tangential thing I read today while I was researching the above, for your amusement. It's about the stupidest thing I've ever read actually. From a study,

Protein dietary reference intakes may be inadequate for vegetarians if low amounts of animal protein are consumed:

"The health benefits of vegetarian diets are well-recognized; however, long-term adherence to these diets may be associated with nutrient inadequacies, particularly vitamins B12 and D, calcium, irno, zinc and protein...

Results and Discussion...

Furthermore, two food groups (nuts/seeds and fruits/vegetables) contributed to nearly 20% of dietary protein, sources not recognized by the DRI report. These are important distinctions because protein from cereals and vegetables (particularly if these foods are less refined) has poor digestibility. Traditional vegetarian diets (e.g., Indian and Guatemalan vegetarian diets) with low amounts of animal proteins and large proportions of cereal and vegetable protein have protein digestibility scores averaging 70% (range 54–77%) compared with plant-based diets with a large proportion of animal protein (mean 88%, range 78–93%)..."

Now you tell me how a diet is simultaneously healthy and yet long-term adherence causes deficiencies. And not only that, in the results of this paper, they even say that plant protein is not as digestible as animal protein. The prior is codswallop if I ever read it and the latter should really have some vegans and vegetarians raising an eyebrow about what they've been fed (hint: lies). Someone has an agenda, and it ain't in the interest of your health. If I eat meat only, as Stefansson (and the Inuit) did, no supplements are required. Chew on that.

McRunner Eats McDonald's for a Month

2011-03-12T00:27:00.003-06:00

The news is going nuts over a guy preparing to run a marathon, by get this, eating only McDonald's for the month before. He's raising money for Ronald McDonald house. I immediately thought of Fat Head. Especially in response to some of the comments this guy is getting. People are complete sheeple. They believe anything they're fed.

I think some of the militant vegans are upset.

What I don't get about that last article I linked to, is people say they get sick off McDonald's. I think that's codswallop and/or all in their head. I worked at McDonald's in high school and ate plenty of it, and it never made me sick. The stores that I worked at were very strict on cleanliness. They were probably cleaner than your kitchen at home. If this guy does well in the marathon, it will probably give some vegans a heart attack.

The Cholesterol Lie: They'll never let it go

2011-03-11T23:46:00.008-06:00

If you've read anything by Uffe Ravnskov, you'll know that cholesterol does not cause heart disease. So, when I read this article this evening, I thought, they'll never let it go will they?

Fat Alone, Not Where It Sits, May Be Key to Heart Problems

"That challenges the widely adopted notion that not all obesity is alike, with so-called apple-shaped people, who carry fat mainly in their midsections, facing a bigger risk for heart problems than those whose excess fat is carried on the hips or elsewhere.

Not so, say the researchers behind the new study. When it comes to obesity and heart disease, no excess fat is good fat, regardless of where it ends up, their analysis has found.

"Society has accepted the idea that if you carry more weight around the middle, your risk of heart disease is higher," said Dr. Emanuele Di Angelantonio, the study's co-author and a lecturer in medical screening at the University of Cambridge in England. "But actually this study shows that it doesn't matter where your fat is located. If you're overweight you're at risk, full stop."...

They also found that tracking a person's blood pressure and cholesterol levels, as well as monitoring their history of diabetes, appeared to be best way to assess heart disease risk. When such indicators were readily available, they noted, adding in BMI and waist measurement information did not improve risk diagnosis..."

So, basically they do mention that diabetes is a risk factor for heart disease. What causes diabetes? Elevated blood sugar over a prolonged period of time that causes insulin resistance. What causes elevated blood sugar? Eating carbohydrates. Bleeding simple, and yet they're like Don Quixote, tilting at windmills. Forget testing for cholesterol. It's irrelevant! Test for blood glucose levels instead. That would give a better idea of whether someone is healthy or not.

If you are overweight, then you probably have elevated blood sugar and/or are insulin resistant. In fact, I'm not sure that it's possible to be overweight and NOT be insulin resistant. Hence why being obese is associated with cardiovascular disease, because every time your blood sugar is elevated, you are damaging your internal organs. Yes, you read that right. Every time you drink a Coca-Cola, every time you eat a piece of chocolate cake, you are DAMAGING YOUR INTERNAL ORGANS. In fact, even if you are not overweight and even if your insulin works well and it brings your blood sugar down quickly, it is probably never quick enough to completely avoid the damage that is done. Add this up over days and years, and you have cardiovascular disease. Not to mention all the other disease of civilization, like cancer. If you damage your cells repeatedly, they repair or regenerate themselves. If your cells are required to do this frequently, the cells regenerate quickly, leading to high cell turnover, leading eventually to a cell that doesn't regenerate in the right way, which leads to cancer.

The good thing is, your cells will repair themselves if given a chance. The bad news? You can never go back to eating the way you did if you want to remain healthy. You have to ask yourself what is more important. The slice of chocolate cake or your health? Death is inevitable. Health is your choice.

Sugar Crash

2011-03-11T22:51:00.006-06:00

Today we went out for lunch. We rarely do that. A friend of ours runs a little restaurant and we ate there. I have to admit that I had way too many carbs for lunch, and afterwards felt like crap. I would have probably been fine, except our friend always wants to give us desert, and then how can you not eat it? That would be rude. So anyway, I was tired and jittery all at once. I walked about a half mile after and that helped a lot though. This is why I don't like eating out. I mean, before I started this, I enjoyed eating out once in a while. Now, it's nearly impossible to do so with some exceptions. I mean, you can get a burger and toss the bun. Or you can get a steak. But you have to be at the right place for that. And even then, you're probably consuming vegetable oil, since that's what the restaurants cook everything in. It's so much easier just to cook for yourself.

On the way home I heard an ad for some company that will remove your fat, as in plastic surgery. I thought, why don't people just stop eating the carbohydrates? And then I remembered. They'd have to be told the truth. And they'd have to want to make the decision to do so. Like an alcoholic, carbs can be addictive for some people, and even if they're diabetic and it's killing them, they won't want to give the carbohydrates up. A piece of cake is more important to them than their health.

zOMG... you're all obese!

2011-03-09T15:03:00.005-06:00

I read about this yesterday. They have a new method they want to use for measuring obesity, called the Body-Adiposity Index. Now it hit me today, that if they do this, every woman on the planet will be obese. Isn't that what the pharmaceutical companies want? I hear there's a huge market for diet pills.

This method is so flawed, on multiple levels. First of all, it doesn't take into account Lipodystrophy, where body fat is stored in a particular location and not evenly throughout the body. I've seen men with humongous beer bellies that wear size 30 pants because their bellies hang out over their pants. Their hips are normal. So with this method of measurement, they'd not be overweight.

This method of measuring obesity sounds as much, if not more so, codswallop as using Body Mass Index as measurement.

I think measuring people in certain multiple locations could give a better idea about obesity, but not by merely measuring their hips. And I'm sure that even that would be flawed in the case of body builders. BAI is obviously very flawed in the case of men, who typically do not store fat in the hips. The storage of fat is driven by hormones, insulin and the sex hormones estrogen and testosterone. According to the measurements you're supposed to get with BAI, they've taken into account that men's hips are supposed to be smaller... maybe absurdly so.

The interesting thing is, the mum-in-law, hubby and I calculated our BAI using the formula given on various websites which is [hips in cm / ( height in m^1.5)] - 18. When we did the math, I came out with the number 32.08, the mum-in-law had 31.49 and the hubby had 26.07. I had a difficult time finding what the ranges were for normal, overweight and obese, but the one site I found that gave them says that I'm slightly over-weight, and that the mum-in-law is nearly so. Which is utter codswallop. She looks like a perfectly normal weight, and if you use the BMI she is, with a BMI of 22.5. My BMI is 26.6, which is reasonable, as I'm still a little overweight. I could definitely stand to lose another twenty pounds and am working on it.

Now we get to my husband. According to this silly equation he's obese. More codswallop. Men have more muscle mass than women (muscle is denser than fat), even if they don't lift weights, and he does not look obese. He looks overweight to be sure and could definitely stand to lose some weight, but if he had the numbers they want, he'd have to look like a skeleton to do it. To be in the middle of the normal range using the BAI he would have to lose 20 cm, or 7.8 inches. I don't think he could lose that much in his hips, as most of the extra weight he's carrying is in his stomach (like with so many males) and he's got a very large frame to begin with.

Just as with BMI, the BAI doesn't take into account body type or skeletal frame, and is therefore flawed. Honestly though, the true measure of health should have little to do with weight. I believe that blood glucose levels would give you a better image of how healthy someone is rather than how much body fat they have or don't have. This is something that Dr. Eades implies in Fat Head, when she says that the hardest person to make realize that they need to change the way they eat is the one that has metabolic syndrome/elevated blood glucose, and yet their weight is normal.

Be eco-friendly: To hell with agriculture

2011-03-09T14:16:00.003-06:00

I often see people who are advocating that we stop eating animal products tie that argument up into "environmentally friendly" and "sustainable" arguments. The arguments are flawed though, in so many ways.

Let's start with this, the fact that a single large ruminant will feed a single person for a while, and I mean a long while. The average weight of meat obtained from a single slaughtered cow is about 500 lbs. If you ate a pound of meat a day (which is a LOT of meat), then it would take you 500 days to eat the whole cow. That's over a year and a half of food, and it took only one cow. Say you only eat the beef for dinner, having eggs for breakfast for example, and you consume a half pound of meat, that cow will last a single person for more than three years.

One cow doesn't need very much grazing land, in good areas it's a cow per acre, unless you live in a very dry place. Not only that, but the cow doesn't till up the soil and drain it of vital nutrients. It doesn't kill countless rodents by using combine machines for harvesting (or farmers attempting to exterminate them because they damage the crops). It doesn't require pesticides that run off and destroy the water and kill fish. The argument that cows take up land that could be used to grow crops is a stupid one. Yes, let's tear down all those trees and till up all the grass so you can eat soybean oil.

If we take into account, that if you eat a primarily meat based diet, like the Inuit, you have no need of vegetables, fruit or grains, then you will by extension use less resources and less land than if you eat the standard American diet, or even a vegetarian or vegan diet. It is no accident that people who eat Atkins say that they consume less food. They do consume less food, because their body is getting everything it needs from the small amount of food they're eating. You cannot consume enough grain to get all of the essential amino and fatty acids that you need. But a single 6oz steak with fat on it has almost everything your body needs to function. We evolved to eat meat primarily. Our brains developed into what they are because of saturated animal fat. Your metabolism doesn't give one iota about your "ethics".

If you eat a vegetarian or vegan diet, you are forced to eat a wide variety of food to try to obtain all of the nutrients necessary for you body to function, and even then most who try such diets are forced to take supplements or they get very sick. Even some who take supplements cannot remain on such diets because it damages their health. Look at Gwyneth Paltrow. She's in her 40s and has osteopenia probably because she was a vegan.

Another thing is, I'm sure most vegetarians and vegans try to buy their food locally (or say they would like to), but depending on where you live, this could be impossible for most of the year. You're not going to find fresh fruits and vegetables in the middle of winter in most parts of the country. This therefore requires the shipping long distances of food (and vitamin supplements LOL). This is not a sustainable model for the environment. Do you know how much diesel a single tractor-trailer truck uses to travel across the country? I used to drive one, and for 600 miles of driving I would go through about a hundred(!) gallons of diesel. That's one truck. Not to mention jet fuel usage for fruits and vegetables that come from outside the country because it's too cold to grow them here in the winter.

So, how much land would it take to feed someone a vegan diet for a year and a half? The argument is, not very much. And that may be true. IF you lived out in the country, in a hospitable environment, and could grow your own food, it wouldn't take a lot of land to feed one person. Of course, you've got to get your vitamin supplements from somewhere >_<

You would also have to hope that the crops did good every year, and unless you're using pesticides, they may not do very well, and you would have to can enough of your crop for the winter. One bad year though, with floods, or bugs that eat all your plants, or no rain, and you'd better pray there's a grocery store nearby. Is this model applicable to most of the people in this country? Not no, but hell no. Most of the people who advocate eating vegetarian or vegan live in cities. Where the hell are they going to grow crops, on 5th Avenue? I mean, seriously?

We eat primarily venison, nearly every day for dinner, and even here in the Texas Hill Country, where the deer are small (about 38 lbs of meat on a doe after butchering), three adult does will typically last four adults for the entire year, and then some. And guess what, no fuel was consumed by any tractor-trailer to bring that food to us. We got it from our backyard. And that's another thing that pisses me off, though it is perhaps tangential to this argument, and that is that city-dwellers are somehow more "green" friendly than we are. Whatever someone in the city eats, whether it be meat or veggies, it has to be trucked in.

I insist that agriculture is the single worst thing that has ever happened to this planet. It allows for an artificially induced increase in population to a point that is unsustainable. From a historical point of view, it brought about patriarchy, but that's an entire other post all together. Eventually when crops no longer flourish because the soil has been over-used, there are famines. In addition to this, advocating commercial agriculture to feed everyone is supporting Corporations like Monsanto, whether you realize it or not. Monsanto loves vegans, they want all of us to be vegan so we'll buy their soybean derived products.

So, you want to be vegan? More power to you. Go for it. But here's a suggestion. Shut the hell up about it. It's not eco-friendly by default. It's not "the only way." It's not even a good way in my opinion. But it's a free country and if you want to do it, feel free. When you wreck your health, don't whine to me about it. I don't want to hear it. I'll probably just say I told you so. And don't tell me what to eat, and don't bother posting links to slaughterhouses run by some bad apples. I hate commercial farming, so of course I hate commercial cattle raising. That is not where most of my meat comes from, so you want something done about it? Write your congressman. I'm not an elected official and can't do squat about it. I don't come to your blog and tell you that paleo is more eco-friendly. That would be a waste of my time, because you're so caught up in yourself that you wouldn't consider it. I kill my own deer and know what it looks like to butcher one. Do you know where your food comes from? Unless you're hunting, buying from a farm down the street, or growing your own, Monsanto or some other Corporation is probably providing your food.

Angry at what I've written? Don't choke on your soybean oil.

Eat Meat to Cut Stroke, Heart Disease Risk

2011-03-08T14:48:00.003-06:00

Well, that wasn't the headline, but it should have been. An article I read today said that foods rich in potassium may cut the risk of heart disease and stroke. For those of you who don't know, potassium is what carries the electrical signals from your brain to your heart. I know this because low potassium, and because of that, sinus arrhythmia, run in my family.

When I ate the standard American diet, I used to get irregular heartbeat all the time. It's very upsetting, and once I wound up in the emergency room because I thought something was seriously wrong with my heart. They had me hooked up to an EKG and took blood and informed me that my potassium was low. The doctor told me to eat a banana.

Well, that's BS really. Bananas don't have much potassium in them. Potatoes have more, but they're not good for you either.

You know what has a lot of potassium in it? Meat. An 8oz steak has 850mg of potassium or about 25% of your recommended daily intake. Since eating low carb and trying to keep my food paleo friendly, I haven't had any problems with my potassium level, no sinus arrhythmia. Another thing that might help besides an increased intake in potassium, is that without elevated glucose and therefore elevated insulin levels my body may use the potassium more efficiently. I read somewhere that insulin interferes with the uptake of Vitamin C, and that raised glucose levels do as well (though which it is, is difficult to untangle since increased glucose leads to increased insulin). It stands to reason that glucose/insulin may interfere with other biological function too.

Of course, the press can't tell you to eat more meat, because that flies in the face of what they're advocating, which is a vegetarian (or better yet vegan) diet devoid of essential fatty and amino acids. Why are they advocating it? One could speculate, but what difference would it make?

Cholesterol and Colon Cancer

2011-03-08T12:33:00.002-06:00

I read an article today about a study that showed that higher HDL could decrease the risk of colon cancer. If you realize that cholesterol is vital for cellular function, then it's not a stretch of the imagination that by lowering cholesterol, you're doing damage to your body.

The article states that this was independent of other markers for colon cancer, which "include inflammation, insulin resistance and oxygen free radicals."

What increases inflammation, insulin resistance and free radical formation? If you said Carbohydrates, you're correct! What do you suppose the article says you should do to reduce your risk? If you said limit intake of red meat, you are also correct! Except that red meat has nothing to do with it. The studies they cite that show that meat has anything to do with colon cancer do not control for variables. People eat hamburgers and then say the meat is responsible.

This is just one more reason, besides all the terrible side effects, of why you should avoid statins. Lowering cholesterol is the last thing you want to do. If you want to be healthy, and avoid these diseases, then avoid sugar and refined carbohydrates, and don't worry about your cholesterol. If you are overweight or diabetic, then you should probably limit all carbohydrate intake.

It's all Taubes fault...

2011-03-07T15:55:00.005-06:00

...that none of my clothes fit. They're all too damned big on me now!

Gary Taubes was on the Dr. Oz show today, and while I haven't watched the whole thing yet because our internet is god-awful and I can't get it to load completely (why is it unacceptable to be able to download videos? streaming never works on a slow connection!). Anyway, one of the first things that Dr. Oz says is that what Taubes is saying disagrees with his BELIEFS. And this is why I have a general distrust of doctors. Belief should have nothing to do with science. There is evidence. There is sometimes uncertainty and we fill that in with what we *think* may be right, but to act as if your belief should trump everything, as Dr. Oz has basically done is downright stupid and dangerous.

The other thing that gets me is when these doctors flaunt their credentials. Your credentials and .75 cents will buy you a cup of coffee. "You're not a doctor." Yeah, and you're not a fucking biochemist. Asshole.

"I feel very strongly..." --Dr. Oz

Yeah, and the Pope feels very strongly that Jesus Christ is the savior of mankind and was born of a Virgin, but ask any Hindu or Muslim what they feel about that. Diet should again, have NOTHING to do with BELIEF. This isn't a religion. Or it shouldn't be anyway. Oz even calls high carbohydrate foods sacred!

And then Oz goes into how you can't live on meat and eggs. Like hell. I could eat steak with a huge whopping pat of butter on it every damned meal. You can keep your rice cakes, thanks.

edit:

I've managed to watch the whole thing now that it's loaded, and I'd like to reiterate that Dr. Oz repeatedly refers to high carb foods as "sacred". Again, a religion. I suppose that appeals to some people's sense of good, and right, and not-being-able-to-think-for-yourself. I also found it amusing that Post cereal is one of the sponsors of Dr. Oz's show. So basically, like every other television personality, Dr. Oz is beholden to corporate interests or he won't have a show.

I'd really like to see Uffe Ravnskov on Dr. Oz. It would be like celebrity death match, and I could go for that. I'm banking on Uffe winning. There's a reason why body builders eat paleo.

The interesting thing I found reading some of the comments over at Taubes' blog, is that Dr. Oz was diagnosed with pre-colon cancer. Maybe he should have read Dr. Eades blog on why fiber may cause colon cancer.

If you want to watch the video, the first part is here.

America: Exporter of Bad Eating Habits

2011-02-27T19:04:00.007-06:00

Apparently even the British have fallen for pseudo-science. The other day they released guidelines that people should eat less red meat because of the increase in colon cancer. If you've ever read anything on this, you will know that the data is taken from survey studies where they asked people what they ate, without taking confounding variables into consideration or from rat studies where they fed them all kinds of strange crap.

I really do wonder how they get rats to eat all of the stuff they feed them. Maybe they put it down their throats through a tube? I digress. Anyway, one headline screams "Five burgers a week raises cancer risk," without even stopping to think that when you consume a burger, you're not just consuming red meat. And indeed, even the BBC article on the dietary guidelines stated that eating processed lunch meat increased risk. If for a moment we were going to suspend rational thought and accept the survey results, how many people do you know (other than us crazy low-carbers) eat lunch meat plain? Most people eat it on white bread. Oh, surely the white bread has nothing to do with it!

I think this is all part of the vegan agenda to get everyone to eat fruit all day. Why else the disclaimer in this article that, "'This doesn't mean people have to become vegetarian, but if you're having a steak every day, that's probably not helping,' said Ed Yong, head of health information and evidence at Cancer Research U.K."

Yeah, because cavemen who ate mostly red meat all the time dropped dead of cancer on a regular basis. Why, with eating all that red meat and all, it's a bloody miracle that humanity even evolved to the point that it had fingers to type out such utter tripe!

I'd like for them to do a study where they look at the rates of cancer in people who do not consume sugar or refined carbohydrates. Oh, wait, there's no need because native people who don't consume such things don't have cancer. At all. At any rate, we're back to that I-won't-hold-my-breath theme, because they'll never do such a study. Mum-in-law said even in Italy they've gotten on this low-fat-meat-is-bad-for-you bandwagon. Let's pray the French never do, or cooking as we know it will never be the same. Meanwhile, I had chicken for dinner, so I thank the mum-in-law for not trying to give me colon cancer this evening. I'm sure I'll have some red meat first thing in the morning though, in the form of pork, to contribute to my demise.

The Organic Food Movement: A Brilliant Marketing Strategy

2011-02-25T11:48:00.007-06:00

I think that labeling food "organic" is one of the worst thing that could have happened to our food supply. I mean, on one level, all food should be organic. Secondly, by definition, there are things that could be termed "organic" that you really wouldn't want to eat. For example, deadly nightshade is pretty organic, I mean, so long as it hasn't been grown with pesticides, right?

I was disappointed to see that the organic heavy cream we buy isn't just cream any more. Yeah, before, there was one ingredient. Cream. Like it should be. Now there are three, Organic Grade A Cream (Milk), Sodium Citrate, Carrageenan. Carrageenan is used to thicken foods. Basically without it, the cream in this container wouldn't have the consistency of cream, because there's not enough cream in it to qualify as being heavy cream. It saves the manufacturer money. And you get not cream, but cream with some other crap thrown in. This is brilliant, from a marketing standpoint.

Sodium Citrate is probably used in this instance as a preservative. As if real cream needs a preservative! Pure cream shouldn't really need a preservative, if it's kept sealed and refrigerated. At the dairy where we get our raw milk, the dairy farmer told us that if we leave the cream on the milk would last maybe three weeks, whereas if we take the cream off, the skim milk left behind will go rancid in a few days. So what does Sodium Citrate being in the ingredient list tell us? It tells us the same thing as having the Carrageenan in it. There's not a lot of real cream in the container.

We're going to quit wasting money on this "organic" crap and get some real heavy cream from a local dairy. The amusing thing is, it's pretty much the same price as the product above.

The whole "organic" food movement is merely a money-maker and Big Agra is getting in on the game. It doesn't urge people to buy locally. They buy things labeled "organic" and think, firstly that the item is good for their health, based on the organic label alone, and secondly that they're doing something good for the environment. On the first part, if you're buying organic french fries, or organic waffles, those are no better for your body than non-organic ones. As for the environment, that's more codswallop. A truck had to bring your groceries probably at least half way across the country, and maybe an airplane had to bring it to the country in the first place. Do you know how much diesel a single truck uses in a day? I do, because I used to drive a tractor trailer. I would typically go through 100 gallons of diesel a day, driving for about 600 miles. That's a single truck.

Consider this article from Business Week:

Next time you're in the supermarket, stop and take a look at Stonyfield Farm yogurt. With its contented cow and green fields, the yellow container evokes a bucolic existence, telegraphing what we've come to expect from organic food: pure, pesticide-free, locally produced ingredients grown on a small family farm.

So it may come as a surprise that Stonyfield's organic farm is long gone. Its main facility is a state-of-the-art industrial plant just off the airport strip in Londonderry, N.H., where it handles milk from other farms. And consider this: Sometime soon a portion of the milk used to make that organic yogurt may be taken from a chemical-free cow in New Zealand, powdered, and then shipped to the U.S. True, Stonyfield still cleaves to its organic heritage. For Chairman and CEO Gary Hirshberg, though, shipping milk powder 9,000 miles across the planet is the price you pay to conquer the supermarket dairy aisle. "It would be great to get all of our food within a 10-mile radius of our house," he says. "But once you're in organic, you have to source globally."

So next time you pick up your "organic" crap at the store, ask yourself how far away it came from, and whether you could get the same thing closer to home, whether it's labeled "organic" or not. Organic certification doesn't mean jack, especially with Big Agra writing all the rules, and local farmers, although their food may be technically organic because they don't use pesticides, may not have the resources, the time, or the interest in getting certification. Buy locally, and ask the farmer how he operates.

Biochemistry for Artists?

2011-02-24T15:05:00.005-06:00

We decided to order a biochemistry text book to read. I know, most people don't read biochemistry text books for fun, but then, we're not really like other people. I read the first chapter last night on amino acids, and was wishing that I remembered more of the one chemistry class that I had years ago, and that I had taken more of them. Luckily mum-in-law has a master's degree in Mycology... I'm relying on her to explain some of what I read LOL

I realized reading it, that most "professionals" that are telling you what to eat, don't know anything about biochemistry. And the prime example, is registered dietitians. I always thought that most people who became registered dietitians did so because they couldn't hack it in a real college. I figured most of them were beauty school dropouts. I suppose it just seems that way. They do have to have a four year degree and pass an exam, but there doesn't seem to be any standards about how many science classes they take, or if they even have to have an understanding of biochemistry. It seems they can have a four year degree in food service management with just the minimal science classes required to graduate with a bachelor's degree, and become one. I'm sorry, but there's something wrong with that.

Registered dietitians used to have the job of taking the orders of patients in hospitals for what they wanted to eat for their meals. Now, registered dietitians tell you what you should eat, with little or no understanding of biochemistry or the roles of fats and cholesterol in the VITAL FUNCTIONING OF CELLS. When you listen to dietitians, you're letting someone with an inadequate education and understanding of human biological processes tell you what to eat. You don't let your hairdresser perform brain surgery on you. Listening to a registered dietitian about what you should eat, is for lack of a better word, stupid.

It ought to be that anyone who wants to dispense dietary advice as a "professional" have a degree in biochemistry. Otherwise, they don't understand what they're advocating. If registered dietitians had biochemistry degrees, they wouldn't tell you that fat is bad for you.

Frankenfood

2011-02-22T13:04:00.003-06:00

Is what you're eating real or is it frankenfood?

Listening to an Interview with David Gumpert by Jimmy Moore over at Livin' La Vida Low-Carb about raw milk, I wanted to tell a funny story about a kid who grew up on a dairy farm, as related by the dairy farmer we get our raw milk from.

If for one minute you think that the milk you buy in the store is anything like the milk that comes out of a cow, you've never had fresh milk directly from a cow. Luckily we live in Texas, where you are allowed (as if it should even be a question) to buy raw-milk directly from a dairy. There is also recent legislation to make it legal for dairies to sell their products off the farm, i.e. in towns and cities where most people live.

The dairy farmer we get our raw milk from told us how their kid, on the first day of school, received a carton of milk in the lunch room. He took a sip, and took it back up to the lunch ladies and told them it had gone bad. They gave him another carton, he drank a sip of it, and promptly took it back up as well. It tasted bad to him. At that point, they realized he was a dairy farmers' kid, and gave him chocolate milk for the rest of the time he was in school there. Why? Because pasteurized-homogenized-transported-hundreds-of-miles milk is simply bad milk. I'm not saying that all milk should be raw, rather anything produced in a large industrial dairy has to be pasteurized, because they're not clean. Local small dairies are clean though, so there's no reason why they shouldn't be allowed to sell their product.

A little history, pasteurization came about because people did used to get very sick off of raw milk. Back then they did not understand germ theory, did not have antibiotics, and did not have sanitation or refrigeration either. Pasteurization made milk safe to drink for city people in an age of no refrigeration. We on the other hand, living in the 21st century, have sanitation, we understand bacteria and how disease is transmitted, and we have refrigeration as well. It is perfectly safe to drink raw milk because of this. Sometimes we get caught up living in this advanced era, and forget that as late as the civil war doctors did not know how disease spread, and killed many soldiers they were trying to save because they did not wash their hands between procedures. That was only 150 years ago. One of the first to discover that washing your hands might prevent the spread of disease was Ignaz Semmelweis, who discovered this in the mid 19th century, and was thought to be a quack and was ridiculed by his contemporaries. So much for knowing so much.

The moral of this story? Real, fresh food doesn't taste like anything you find in the store. It's like the fresh green beans we grow in the summer. They're so much better than anything you find in the store, even ones from the produce department, because they haven't been transported a thousand miles. When we can't eat them all, we freeze them, and they then aren't as good. Doing things like canning, and freezing food, changes the taste. It doesn't take a big leap of the imagination to realize that it probably changes the vitamin content and the overall healthful nature of the food too.

Individuals are always stupid: Rawesome Raid

2011-02-22T11:00:00.000-06:00

"We're not going to take this sitting down! We're going to take it standing, on top of a step ladder, throwing a lawn dart at a barrel of DDT and while eating only half of our recommended daily fiber." LULz

"Individuals are always stupid." --David Atchison, Assistant Commissioner for Food Protection with the FDA, propagator of a nanny state, because not only can you not think for yourself. You shouldn't.

Socialized Illness

2011-02-19T20:39:00.006-06:00

Or how what they really want is to medicate all of us for perceived diseases. Just ask the AHA:

"90% of women have at least one risk factor for heart disease," Mary Michaels with the American Heart Association said.

See, it's crap like this that really pisses me off. If you read between the lines, what they're saying is, you probably have high cholesterol (meaning above an abnormally low level) and therefore you need medicine so you don't drop dead of a coronary. Well guess what sherlock, as my father used to say, you ain't getting out of this life alive. So, how do you want to go? If 90% of women have risk factors, could it be because we get old and die. And is this 90% at any given time, or that 90% will have a risk factor at some point in their life. Because I find the prior hard to believe, and the later makes me go "well duh." But, I bet they pulled these numbers out of their ass. Or better yet, their "risk factors" are codswallop.

They want to medicate us for imagined illnesses, and for "risk factors". Why do you think they prescribe statins?

And this article here vilifies fast food as dangerous for heart attack victims. It found that heart attack patients who ate fast food "were also more likely to have unhealthy levels of fat in their blood."

Do you know what fat in your blood is? Triglycerides. Do you know what determines triglyceride levels? Carbohydrate intake. These people could eat fast food, they'd merely need to toss the bun and skip the fries. They're still advocating the wrong things, saying eat more whole grains and more skim milk. And it ain't ever going to change as long as there's money to be made.

What I want to know is, what would you rather die of? A heart attack? Or cancer? Because some of the drugs they want to medicate you with, like statins, have a chance of cancer as a side effect. And they don't do anything for heart disease anyway.

Personally, a sudden heart attack at 90 is probably the best way to go. I watched both of my paternal grandparents succumb to cancer. The last time I saw my grandmother, she looked like she'd just gotten out of Auschwitz. That's not hyperbole either.

If it's bad for you, Tax it!

2011-02-18T12:41:00.003-06:00

And so it begins...

A California lawmaker wants to tax soda, because it's unhealthy for us.

"State Assemblyman Bill Monning (D-Carmel) wants to add a penny-per-ounce tax on all sugar-sweetened beverages sold in California. He would tax the manufacturers and distributors, but they'd likely pass that on to consumers, which is exactly what the assemblyman wants.

"Yes, our intent is to see that retail price go up, to dissuade some people from using it as a diet staple," said Monning."

I don't even drink regular soda, so why should I care? We're all low carb and paleo here, right, so this doesn't affect us? Right? Hardly. Next they'll be wanting to tax saturated fat, because that's bad for us too. And anything with cholesterol as well. It's a slippery slope. And on top of that, what prevents them from outright banning of something they think is bad? I never thought there could be a black market for soda pop, but I suppose stranger things have happened.

I've said it before and I'll say it again. We do NOT need a nanny state telling us what to eat. We do not need specific foods taxed because they're "unhealthy." What we need is information not filtered by big food and big pharma. We need a government not bought off. Again, another thing I ain't holding my breath over.

"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience." --CS Lewis

The Love (and HFCS) is in the Soup

2011-02-17T21:34:00.005-06:00

It's a heartwarming story about a major corporation fighting to end hunger and obesity. The Campbell Soup company is planning an initiative to reduce malnutrition in the town of it's headquarters, Camden, NJ.

It's a great PR story to be sure, no less at the expense of our press advertising it. But if they choose to follow the dietary guidelines spouted by every other nutrition "expert" they won't get very far. And judging by what they put in their products, I'm sure they'll heed the " experts' " opinion.

"Campbell officials have been particularly struck by problems that revolve around food. The company, long a purveyor of vegetables in its soups and V-8 juices, has made efforts to become — and bill itself as — a prime maker of healthy options. It has reduced sodium in many of its soups and other products and introduced whole-grain Pepperidge Farm Goldfish crackers, among other health-oriented developments."

What's ironic about this, is that some of the Campbell Soups are some of the unhealthiest things you could eat. Well, maybe white bread with High Fructose Corn Syrup laden jelly would be worse, but maybe not by much. Their tomato soup has HFCS as the second ingredient and most of their other soups have canola oil or partially hydrogenated cottonseed or soybean oil and MSG. Even their "upscale" looking soups have HFCS.

So maybe while they're on their anti-hunger, anti-obesity kick, they could maybe stop putting crap in their soup? Again, that's another one of those things that I'm not holding my breath over.

About the only way to get soup that comes already prepared without a bunch of junk in it is to pony up $4 for a can or box of organic. Poor people can't afford this. But why are some groceries so cheap in the first place? Because they put cheap, crappy ingredients in it. Truly you can make your own soup at home, easily, and you'll know what's in it. It will have ingredients that you can pronounce. I always hate it when I read an ingredient and first of all can't pronounce it, and secondly don't even know what on this green earth it comes from. Does it come from an animal? A plant? Industrial waste? Who knows?

Would you like to know how to make tomato soup? It is so easy, it makes me wonder why anyone would buy it in a can. You boil chopped tomatoes in chicken broth with a bit of salt, until they're very tender. You can even walk away while this is happening. When they're through, you pour them into a food processor and blend them up. It takes a minute of blending. Pour the mixture back into the pot, straining the seeds with a strainer, and add a bit of heavy cream and a packet or two of stevia or splenda and stir until warm. It is very, very good, and very, very easy.

How about carrot soup? I haven't made this in ages, but it's even easier than the tomato soup. You boil chopped carrots in chicken broth until soft. You then use a hand blender to blend them up, in the pot. Voilà! You have carrot soup. You can do this with just about any vegetable. And the stew-like soups, like our chicken soup are even easier in that there's no blending involved.

I see people all the time buying pre-packaged food, and think to myself that they've probably forgotten what real food tastes like. I'm sure that the five year old kid who weighs 125 lbs mentioned in the story, eats primarily processed carbohydrates.

"Kim Fremont Fortunato, who was hired late last year to head up the anti-obesity efforts, said she recently shadowed a doctor who was treating a 5-year-old Camden boy weighing 125 pounds. She said the doctor warned the boy's grandmother that he would be diabetic by age 10 if his obesity wasn't controlled."

I'd like to believe that the doctor treating him will tell his caregivers to lay off the carbohydrates, but that's probably wishful thinking. I'm sure they'll tell them to cut out the fat and the sodium and give the kid whole wheat bread.

Oh noes! Trans fats might make you depressed...

2011-02-16T21:53:00.006-06:00

o_O

Articles are popping up today about how trans fats cause depression. Now, I'm not saying artificial trans fats are good, quite the opposite. It seems they cause damage on a cellular level as well. But you know what else isn't good? The quality of research that has been put into some of these articles. Like this one:

"Of all these, the participants with a high level of consumption of trans-fats, artificially present in industrial cakes and biscuits and in fast food, and naturally in certain full-fat milk products, "showed an increase in risk of depression of up to 48% compared to those participants who did not consume these,"..."

Where do these people get off? I'd really like to know. I'd like to know how you can have a survey of people and act like it's a clinical trial. I'd like to know how you can have confounding variables out the wazzoo and act like you've controlled for a single variable. I'd also like to know why these people don't understand that CORRELATION IS NOT CAUSATION. It's so simple, and yet soooooo beyond the grasp of your basic nutrition "expert" or "journalist".

I don't need to point out that industrial cakes, biscuits and fast food are very high in carbohydrates. But did they decide that carbohydrates cause depression? No. Of course not.

But the thing that is really wrong with this article, and why I decided to write about it, is that it equates naturally occurring trans fats with the industrially manufactured ones. There are trans fats in nature, but they are not the same in chemical structure as the commercially developed ones. The most common one, Conjugated Linoleic Acid does indeed occur in dairy, eggs and meat. (Of course, those are all bad for you! Run away!) What's ironic, is CLA is known to be an anti-carcinogen. Yeah, how does that grab ya? Certain forms of CLA also reduce inflammation and thereby prevent cardiovascular disease. What was that about not eating eggs, whole milk and meat?

And even Time jumped on the band wagon, and failed to do any research on the difference between artificial and naturally occurring trans fatty acids:

"The results of the study may be especially bad news for Americans. While the average Spaniard gets about 0.4% of his or her calories from trans fats — mostly from natural or whole-food sources like milk, butter, meat and cheese — Americans log an average of 2.5% of total calories from trans fats. Americans not only eat more overall, but also eat worse-quality food, getting many trans fats from sources like processed snack foods and fried or fast food."

What do these "journalists" get paid to do? Copy and paste? It took me five minutes to find out about CLAs, and to realize they're not the same as artificial trans fats. But more than that, I realize that this "study" is flawed, and not even worth considering as evidence of anything, except that out of 12k people, a few got depressed.

Low Carb Hearty Chicken Soup Recipe

2011-02-16T19:17:00.004-06:00

The mum-in-law made this for dinner tonight and it was delish! It's pretty easy to make too, and something you can walk away from while it's simmering. It's a good dish to make if you're busy.

Low Carb Hearty Chicken Soup

10 slices of thick bacon, chopped
1 large onion, chopped
2 c. water
3 c. chicken broth
4 lbs boneless skinless chicken thighs
4 cloves garlic
1 T. salt
1 tsp pepper
15oz can of diced red bell pepper (or equivalent fresh)
2 1/2 c. green beans, frozen or fresh from garden
sour cream for topping (optional)

In a large pot sautée bacon and onion until bacon is crisp and onion is tender.

Pour in water, 2 cups of the chicken broth, add chicken, garlic, salt and pepper. Cook until chicken is done. Remove chicken and cut up into 1" cubes.

Add chicken back into pot, and add the red bell peppers and another cup of chicken broth. Cook approximately 30 minutes.

Add the green beans and cook until the green beans are tender.

Serve hot, top with sour cream if desired. Makes about 10-12 servings.

Notes on making: We used canned red bell peppers because that was what we had on hand. Feel free to use fresh if you have it. We also used frozen green beans, as we have some frozen from our garden from last year. Also, you could chop the chicken up before cooking it if desired.

Copy and Paste Health Advice

2011-02-16T18:09:00.003-06:00

I'm apparently in the wrong industry. I should have been a nutritionist, I could write for a newspaper, and copy and paste articles from the American Heart Association, the American Medical Association, etc. I wouldn't even have to think for myself.

Just do a search on Google news on any given day of the week, and I guarantee you will find at least one article (usually more) that have the "typical" dietary advice, that saturated fat is bad for you (they never say why, never cite any studies), that sodium intake is bad for you and if you'll only cut back it will lower your blood pressure (while citing studies that show reducing sodium intake only reduces hypertension by 1-5 mmHg, underwhelming I know), and that cholesterol is bad for you (while recommending you take medicine).

I find it amusing that a lot of articles have started in on denouncing sugar, while at the same time urging you to eat "whole grains." Newsflash: grains turn to sugar upon digestion, whole or not. They just don't get it. Or if they do get it, they're not interested in changing what they're copying and pasting.

But alas, I'd never make a good nutritionist. I'd probably flunk out for citing articles that the schools disagree with, because obviously, nutrition programs are turning out copy and paste robots.

When the dietary guidelines don't fit your agenda, get litigious

2011-02-15T13:42:00.011-06:00

When I saw the headline 'PCRM sues federal agencies over dietary guidelines', I chuckled, since I consider the dietary guidelines a crock, and really, what place does the government have telling us what to eat? And then I read the story, and it just about made my blood boil.

Their problem isn't that the government is telling us what to eat, their problem is the government isn't promoting a vegan diet.

"'Yet Defendants intentionally use inconsistent language, ambiguous phrases, and biochemical terminology to avoid providing clear dietary information and guidance for the general public regarding the health benefits of reducing consumption of meat and dairy products. This is due to Defendants’ conflicts of interest.'...

Asked if the PCRM's lawsuit were less a device to correct any problems with the dietary guidelines and more a tool to promote the group's vegan diet, Barnard said the question itself was focused on the wrong issue. He said the evidence is overwhelming that plant-based diets are more healthful and not reporting such information, in clear and unambiguous terms, in the dietary guidelines is misguided."

Of course the USDA has a conflict of interest, and so does PCRM! In other words, yes, they are attempting to use the dietary guidelines to promote their vegan diet. The evidence is NOT overwhelming that a plant-based diet is more healthful, in fact, if you've read Good Calories, Bad Calories, you'll know that it's the freaking OPPOSITE. It's like Orwell's 1984, War is Peace, Slavery is Freedom, and bloody hell if Ignorance isn't Strength.

It's not that I have a problem with people eating a vegan diet. Quite the contrary, if you want to wreck your health, that's your prerogative. It's a free country, eat whatever you want. In fact, if you want to go to McDonald's every day and eat 5000 calories like Spurlock did and gain a ton of weight, then by god, that's your god given right. If you want to eat tofu and sit in a drum circle all night, that too is your god given right as an American. If I want to eat venison I killed myself every night, it's none of your damned business and if you don't like it, you need to STFU. We do not need a nanny state telling us we need to eat one way or the other. THAT is what is wrong with the food guidelines.

What we need, is someone telling us the TRUTH about what medical research finds out, and then we as THE PEOPLE get to decide whether we want to act on that knowledge or not. Anything else is not worthy of a free people.

My mum-in-law just this morning was saying that as soon as more people start eating low carb and paleo that these militant vegans will petition the government to add a tax to everything that has animal fat in it, on the premise that it's bad for us like cigarettes. And indeed, on many forums I have seen the consumption of animal fat compared to smoking cigarettes, as if the two have anything in common. Unfortunately, my mum-in-law may be right.

Low-Carb Venison Meatloaf : Updated

2011-02-15T13:09:00.001-06:00

UPDATED: New Pictures 2/15/2011

We had this the other night for dinner:

Low-Carb Venison Meatloaf

2 lbs. ground venison
2 T. pure lard (not hydrogenated crap)
2 eggs
2 c. pulverized pork rinds (put them in a zippy bag and use a rolling pin on them)
2 tsp salt
1 c. chopped onions
1/2 c. chopped green peppers (or sweet peppers)
15 oz. tomato sauce (or spaghetti sauce, make sure it doesn't have any added crap)

Mix all this in a large bowl until all ingredients are well mixed. Put into a casserole pan. Bake at 350 degrees for about an hour. Everyone here thought it was very tasty!

New Pics!

We made this again tonight (the 15th) and I took pictures so I could update this post. I think we put in more peppers than the recipe calls for, so take note.

Venison and ground pork rinds

Fresh Yard Eggs, and yes that is a green egg! I think the lady has some Araucana chickens.

Colorful peppers

Peppers are chopped

Mixing it up

In the pan, ready for the oven

And the final piece, enjoy!

Health Writers

2011-02-14T20:49:00.005-06:00

Who do they get to write these articles? Ninth grade high school drop-outs? I'd say so, except I believe that could be an insult to ninth grade high school drop outs.

The latest article I've come across that is as full of garbage as a neolithic midden, is one from the Miami Herald. I think that a monkey, yes just one monkey, in a room full of type writers could compose better literature than this crap.

"[Trans-fats] act as saturated fat once inside the body...

This expert recommends limiting the consumption of these industry-made foods and to treat the trans fat in them as saturated, equivalent to that of red meat that is so harmful to cardiovascular health...

Researchers at the University of Colorado say that 'it is important to read the nutritional information on all products, including foods marked free of trans fat, since some manufacturers are replacing trans fat with tropical oils from sources such as coconuts and palms, which are also rich in saturated fat.'"

First of all, I doubt seriously that trans fats act anything like saturated fat once in the body. I'm an artist, not a biochemist, but I ain't stupid. First of all, trans fat and saturated fat have different chemical bonds. Trans fats do have something in common with saturated fat, in that they have had hydrogen atoms added to their structure. However, their structure is not the same.

Also, whereas saturated fat is natural and your body has use for it, trans fat is man-made and it's "molecules have unnatural shapes that are not recognized by enzymes such as cyclooxygenase and lipoxygenase." Those enzymes are used in the metabolism of fat. Your body cannot metabolize it and it does cellular damage. To imply that saturated fat, something we have been eating for millions of years, causes damage is to declare that evolution and mother nature are idiots. To paraphrase what Tom Naughton said in Fat Head, mother nature is not a dunce! The writers of these articles may be dunces, but evolution is not.

And they go on to malign red meat, and even coconut oil! It's absolute drivel, with nothing to back it up, masquerading as truth. And unwitting people believe it, because they read it in a major newspaper.

The Misconception of Natural Sweeteners

2011-02-14T14:20:00.009-06:00

Lots of things are natural, meaning they occur in nature. Arsenic, cyanide, uranium, deadly nightshade. That doesn't mean you'd want to eat them, or even come into contact with some of them. I don't know how many articles I have read decrying the evils of High Fructose Corn Syrup, and yet saying that regular sugar is fine. Now, I'm not saying that HFCS is the same as sugar, it's not, by a long shot, however, neither of them are good for your health. Other naturally occurring sugars are no better, like honey. Sugar is sugar, and the glucose spikes your blood sugar while the fructose portion damages your liver and raises your triglyceride levels. That includes the fructose in fruit.

We have articles in newspapers like this one, since it's Valentine's day:

"But let's not make fructose the only bad guy here. The real problem is our consumption of all added sugar. Naturally occurring sugars like fructose, found in fruit, and lactose, found in milk, are valuable nutrients."

Overall, this article is better than most, but still has some problems. It fails in that it differentiates the fructose in fruit from the fructose in HFCS. There's not one iota of a difference, with perhaps the exception that if you ate a piece of fruit you might get less than if you ate something laden with HFCS. The problem is, our modern fruit has been bred to be bigger and sweeter. The sweeter it is, the more fructose is in it. Also, the fructose found in sucrose (table sugar) is also the same to your cells.

The problem is, they can't let go of the notion, that "everybody knows it's common knowledge" notion, that fruit is good for you. Five hundred years ago everyone knew the earth was flat too, and the center of the universe to boot. We all know what happened to Galileo when he dared to suggest otherwise.

"Does this research mean that eating fruit will increase your risk of heart disease and diabetes? Absolutely not."

That statement may be blatantly false, considering the study out of New Zealand that I wrote about last week, that I might add no American media picked up (good thing I didn't hold my breath).

Another newspaper article, also acts like natural sweeteners aren't a problem:

"While the massive amount of high-fructose corn syrup consumed by many people isn't a great choice, a more moderate amount of natural sweeteners can be a wonderful complement to a healthy diet."

What exactly is their idea of "moderation"? Eating 100 lbs of sugar a year versus the current 150+? Taubes wrote about this in "Good Calories, Bad Calories" and it seems from some reports by doctors who were in Africa and other colonial places a hundred years ago that a sugar intake of approximately 60 lbs was the cut off point of "too much". After consumption rose above that level, and after a time frame of about 20 years consuming such levels, they saw diabetes and metabolic syndrome begin to develop, along with all the other western diseases that go along with them. And really, it might be that a lower consumption just means it takes longer to develop metabolic problems in some people, or maybe even in most people. I doubt seriously the authors of these news articles imagine that we really might need to restrict our sugar intake to a minuscule amount to avoid developing disease.

The first article I cited did have a great line in it:

"If we really looked like what we eat, most Americans would look like kernels of corn."

There's the truth if I ever read it.

Grocery Run

2011-02-13T14:04:00.006-06:00

I've made it a habit whenever we go to the store now to watch what other people are buying who are in line next to me, just out of curiosity. Today there was a lady in front of us, she had no meat or protein that I could see, except for two cartons of eggs. What she did have, was two loaves of white bread, macaroni and cheese, white spaghetti noodles, among a bunch of other carb laden merchandise. She spent about $200 (that's what the mum-in-law said), I didn't see the total. I could buy a lot of meat for that, and be much more satiated than after eating all that junk. She was overweight, but not terribly so, of course, she would probably be considered obese by the BMI standard.

Behind us was a family, mother, father, and three school age kids, a boy and two girls. They appeared to be a normal weight, although they were talking about sports the kids played, so I'm assuming they are not genetically predisposed to insulin resistance and because they're lean, they play sports and burn the carbs off before they do damage. I believe it was Taubes who said in Good Calories, Bad Calories, that athletes are not thin because they're athletes, they're athletes because they're thin. For some that works well, others, it eventually stops working, which is why many people who are thin when they are young are not when they get past 40. They too had no meat or protein that I could see, except for a box of flax seed meal. They had multiple boxes of granola bars (which in my opinion are nothing more than sugar laden junk food most of the time), pop tarts, frozen bread thingies with cheese on them, snack cups of fruit, along with some other frozen pizzas and other frozen carb junk.

What did we buy? Besides some broccoli (we're making Chicken Divan again tonight, it's delish!), we bought a bunch of marked down chicken livers and ground beef, for our dogs. We decided that we have too many dogs, eight at the moment, so that we can't afford to feed them entirely meat all the time, but we decided we could supplement their dog food. Before you freak out and wonder how or why we have so many, we live in the country and seem to have a knack for accumulating unwanted and dumped dogs. The last dog we got, dug into our fence during a storm. We put up fliers and no one claimed him. We figured he was dumped and decided to keep him since he chose us LOL. One of the dogs is actually mine, the other seven are my in-laws'. My dog was also dumped, we found him at a filling station, curled up in a little ball on the pavement. People had been feeding him hot dogs, he was malnourished, and absolutely covered in fleas. He also had a hurt back. He's completely better now, after being on Previcox for some months, we were able to take him off of it, and his back seems completely better. I don't understand how people can just throw a dog away like it's nothing. But whatever, their loss is our gain.

Anyway, we currently feed them the Costco brand, which isn't terrible, since the first ingredient is chicken, but it still doesn't have enough meat in it I think. The third ingredient is rice. I'm sorry, but the ancestors of dogs, living in the paleolithic probably didn't eat much in the way of rice. They may have eaten some grains from the intestines of the animals they ate, but probably not much. On that note, hubby and I were talking about it, and we wondered if that wasn't how people came to invent bread (and subsequently settle down to get their fix of it). It's possible I suppose, that if ancient people roasted intact, the stomach of big game animals that they may have gotten something the consistency of bread if the animal were eating grains.

We reap what we sow...

2011-02-12T22:31:00.004-06:00

And in this case, a lot of wheat and corn are sown, even by our frozen northern neighbors. Canadians are not immune to the bad dietary advice given here in the States. Indeed, it seems that the poor advice has spread pretty much the world over.

A few days ago, the Leader-Post, a Saskatchewan newspaper, published an online article about how "fresh artisan bread... and warm oatmeal raisin cookie[s]" can be part of a weight loss diet. I feel myself gaining weight just thinking about that. They deride the low carb diet, saying:

"Just eight years ago, the lowcarb wave rolled through North America. Admitting to eating bread or even starchy vegetables was like confessing to a crime. Carbs were cut out and weight was lost -initially. When the dust settled, weight was gained back. Low-carb stores closed for good."

First of all, I've never heard of anyone having a problem admitting to eating carbohydrates. It's more like the opposite, where you tell people you don't eat carbs and they look at you like you've got three heads. Secondly, low carb stores? Hmm, never had any of those here. Saskatchewan must be a strange place to live. Maybe the cold has something to do with it, but I digress.

Weight is gained back after going off a low-carb diet, because low carb isn't a temporary diet. You gained weight from eating carbohydrates in the first place, so of course when you go back to eating them, you gain the weight back. That's why Atkins has a maintenance phase, and the carbohydrate intake subsequently is based on how many carbs you can eat and still keep the weight off.

The article goes on to say:

"All vegetables, fruit and grain products are carbohydrates. Since a key weight-loss strategy is to make half the plate vegetables in most meals, eliminating carbs is illogical...

Unfortunately, the wrong carbs are everywhere. Forget to bring food for a busy day and it can mean game over. Many muffins, cookies and even sandwiches available on the go lack fibre. And if vegetables and fruit weren't packed, you might be without them until returning home. If you stumble upon them, will you pay a toonie for a banana at the coffee shop?"

I'd like to know what "key weight-loss strategy" they're thinking of. I suppose they think that if we all just nibble on iceberg lettuce, that surely we'll somehow magically get thin. They go on to give bad advice, first by saying that there's nothing decent to eat on-the-go (by decent, they mean full of fiber), and then saying if you do find it, it will be expensive. I hardly qualify a banana as being "healthy." Most people's insulin levels would spike, and they'd be hungry again in an hour. As for on-the-go food, I was thinking what a great thing the low carb diet is, as you can always get a huge bacon and cheese burger with lettuce, tomato, and mayonnaise and then toss the bun. You have a good bit of fat and protein that will keep you satiated for hours.

So why am I writing about this nonsense article, when there are so many other nonsense articles out there? Because two days later the same paper published two articles about how so many people in Saskatchewan are diabetic.

"Saskatchewan has the highest combined prevalence of diabetes and prediabetes on the Prairies and a quarter of our population will be living with either condition by the end of this decade...

It might be a tiresome old message to some ears, but diet and exercise is a good prescription to follow -both for those who have diabetes and those who want to avoid it."

Well, no wonder so many people have diabetes when the advice they're given is rubbish. As the proverb goes, you reap what you sow. In this case, bad advice has sown an epidemic of diabetes and obesity. And what happens? The diabetic gets blamed for their medical condition, a condition brought on by bad advice, which leads to other diseases that eventually cause death in a very long, drawn out, painful way. We can't possibly lay the blame where it belongs, which is at the feet of people who are supposed to be educated in medicine and diet, people who should know better, and yet ignore the evidence that what they're telling people, is making people sick and killing them.

Fructose and Fetal Harm

2011-02-11T12:10:00.005-06:00

Via a comment on Fat Head:

A commenter on Fat Head left a link to this article, from New Zealand that fructose may affect the development of female children. Sucrose (table sugar) is half fructose, and High Fructose Corn Syrup is more than half fructose, depending on the mixture. And I need not point out that HFCS is in just about everything that's manufactured or processed. They slip it into the most innocuous places. Fructose also occurs in fruit, something that a lot of doctors push people, especially diabetics, to eat (detrimentally to their health I might add).

A lot of pregnant women may think that because they're not overweight, or they don't have gestational diabetes, that it's okay if they consume large quantities of sugar or fruit. They often use the fallacy that because we've been consuming sugar for a long time, it's not a problem. The thing is, we've not been consuming sugar or fruit in the quantities we do for very long. Sugar consumption in the past thirty years has skyrocketed to 150+ lbs per person per year in the States, whereas in the 19th century sugar consumption was only in the 15 to 20 lb range per year before 1850. And even just fifty years ago, most people only ate fruit when it was in season, which in most parts of the world is a limited time frame. I'm sure with the powers-that-be and doctors pushing fruit consumption, that it has also risen.

Is fructose safe?

"In the study, where rats were fed diets high in fructose during pregnancy and lactation, the sugar was found to change key metabolic hormone levels in both foetuses and new born offspring...

The fact that we saw no obvious weight gain implies that women may be unaware that their diet could be compromising the development of their fetus."

They don't say what metabolic hormones are affected specifically, but I'm thinking insulin is probably one of them. Now, I also read a study not too long ago that female rat offspring were also affected by maternal dietary salt restriction. Another thing that the doctors push on us, lower your salt intake they say! Salt restriction in the mother made the female offspring insulin resistant with increased adiposity (fat). The male offspring were not so affected. Does this mean that there would be nothing to worry about with males then?

I doubt it seriously. I read that in indigenous populations, such as the Pima, female hormones somehow protect women from getting diabetes, at least for a while. However, they get very obese instead. Eventually they get diabetes, but not before getting fat. It is theorized that the fat protects them from diabetes as long as their bodies can continue to convert excess sugar in the blood to fat and store it. Now, the men don't necessarily get as fat as the women, but they have an increased incidence in developing diabetes.

I'm glad to see that a news organization actually published something that goes against the party line. I guess they don't grow much corn or sugar in New Zealand. I'm waiting for one of the American news organizations to pick this up, but I won't hold my breath. Asphyxiation is no way to die.

Parrot: "I'm a doctor!"

2011-02-10T22:55:00.010-06:00

Are writers incapable of researching stuff before parroting what they're told? Are editors? I hope some are, but it seems like the majority aren't.

For example, this article from US News states that eating too much sodium leads to high blood pressure. Except it doesn't. A dietary reduction in salt can lead to a whopping 1.1 to 5 mmHg at *most*, if you believe meta-analysis. I'm completely underwhelmed. Most high blood pressure is genetic and diet has very little to do with it. If your blood pressure is high you need medication. That's about the only thing you'll hear me say that you need medicine for.

From the article:
"As a family doctor, I've observed that more and more of my practice is devoted to preventing and treating nutrition-related disorders such as high blood pressure, obesity, and diabetes. So I had hoped that the new dietary guidelines would provide me with concrete strategies for helping change my patients' eating habits for the better."

Why don't these doctors do some research instead of relying on Big Brother, er, I mean the government to tell them what to tell their patients? I guess they're too busy to read anything. Or to think for themselves. I find all kinds of interesting information simply searching Science Direct or even google. If they'd recommend to their patients to eat low-carb or paleo, most of their patients' health problems would improve and/or resolve themselves. In fact, I'd bet money on it. I'd even bet a million dollars. I could definitely use a million bucks.

Maybe they're scared? Taubes said in Why we get fat that no doctor was ever sued for recommending a low fat diet. I guess the acceptable killing of patients via the low fat nonsense is preferable to a lawsuit.

Insulin Resistance and Response

2011-02-10T18:53:00.005-06:00

I've spent my day reading all about insulin resistance and insulin response. It's a very fascinating subject.

What prompted this was that I saw arguments on some forums that insulin has a short half-life, therefore it cannot have an adverse impact on tissue. I think that this is quite frankly, codswallop. Not because it's been proven one way or the other, but because the amount of time (or exposure) is not the only thing that determines damage. Frequency is just as important to take into consideration. Temporary high blood sugar spikes could possibly damage your internal organs. If it happens once, it might not be a problem, but when it happens repeatedly every day, over the course of time, it would come as no surprise if organ damage developed. Insulin does indeed have a short half-life, it is estimated to be between 9 and 16 minutes in humans.

However, this does not mean that insulin does it's job in this amount of time, nor does it mean that insulin is reduced completely in that amount of time. By definition, a half life is the amount of time it takes half of the thing in question to decay. Because it is always half, if you understand basic math, you will realize that it's exponential as to how long it takes for something to be cleared completely¹ from a system.

The math is for n, the number of half lives elapsed, the percentage remaining is 100/(2^n). This does not tell you how much is left after n cycles, the quantity being dependent upon the initial amount produced or in the case of insulin, secreted. It takes five half-lives for complete decay to be achieved. This means that after a meal insulin is in your blood at higher than basal levels for at least 45 to 75 minutes based on the 9 to 16 minute half-life. However, in real life, it may be much longer. Insulin remained elevated in subjects after a meal for more than 120 minutes in this study. If you are eating high carb meals with snacks in-between, how often do you think your insulin levels are elevated?

In a healthy person, perhaps this isn't enough time to do damage, even with frequency (although I doubt it, which may be why almost everyone becomes insulin resistant at some point, even if it's when they're old). However, a lot of people become insulin resistant when young. Insulin resistance means that your cells are unable to use the glucose in your blood. Insulin secretion will continue in waves so long as glucose levels in the blood are raised. If glucose levels remain elevated long enough, your pancreas' β-cells may lose their ability to produce enough glucose and this is by definition diabetes.

So is it just carbs? Not completely. If you are insulin resistant, and trying to lose weight, one reason why it's very important to make sure that on a low carb or paleo diet that a good quantity of your diet is from fat, is because protein can cause an insulin response just like carbohydrates. So get the 'low fat' crap out of your head! One study showed that consuming a steak could cause plasma insulin levels to rise nearly 100 pmol/l above fasting levels, whereas cod fillet only caused a rise of 50 pmol/l. This may very well be because steak has about twice the protein as cod fillet. According to caloriecount.about.com, one ounce of steak has between 7.7 and 8.6g of protein (depending upon the type of steak). The same amount of cod fillet has 4.8g of protein. The study's authors say the difference in insulin response could also be attributed to carnosine, a dipeptide which is found in beef but not cod. Regardless, lean meat can cause an insulin response.

Keep in mind that protein is vital for rebuilding muscles, and if you're weightlifting you may need more than someone who's not.

Now, what do all these studies mean? Not a damned thing if you ask me. Honestly, the people funding the study influence the results. The data can really be interpreted to mean anything. And I do mean anything. We now know that cholesterol doesn't cause heart disease, but rather inflammation and homocysteine probably do. And yet there are dozens of studies about the nefarious effects of cholesterol, most of them poorly done, and the data manipulated to say what the researchers wanted to be said.

So, what causes insulin resistance? It seems no one is very sure, and there may be multiple causes. Some say it's chronically elevated insulin due to elevated blood glucose from over consumption of carbohydrates. Some of it is probably genetic. Whatever causes it, eating low carb or paleo is beneficial, as it reduces inflammation and makes insulin resistance unlikely. Indeed, though it is anecdotal, many people have noticed improved glucose tolerance after eating low carb for a long time.

¹ Insulin is never completely cleared from our system. We secrete insulin in small amounts every few minutes, even when we haven't eaten.

Diet Coke causes...

2011-02-09T20:02:00.004-06:00

... what? Or another reason why news articles on science in this country are so lackluster.

News organizations are all over the latest finding that diet coke will kill you! I'm not about to say that diet coke is good for you by any stretch of the imagination. However, what I want to know is, how much did the corn industry pay them to write this (from MSNBC):

"The increased likelihood of vascular events remained even after Gardener and her colleagues accounted for risk factors, such as smoking, high blood pressure and high cholesterol levels. Pointing the finger more squarely at diet drinks, the researchers found no increased risk among people who drank regular soda." [emphasis mine]

Regular soda is full of High Fructose Corn Syrup. We all know that sugar causes inflammation, which in turn probably causes most cardiovascular disease.

What I want to know is, why they take a survey of 2500 people as proof of anything. A survey shows nothing. You can't control for variables. In fact, there's no control for variables because it's not a clinical trial. In other words, this isn't science. However, it's touted as being "scientific." Maybe the people who drank diet coke were like I used to be, consuming copious amounts of pastries and candy. The pastries and candy have nothing to do with their consumption of diet coke, but may be the cause of their cardiovascular disease.

The only way to find out if a substance is harmful or not, is to do a double blind clinical trial, where you have everything identical in two groups of people (or lab rats) and assign one group the product they want to test (the variable) and the other a placebo (the control).

At least the LA times isn't on the fear mongering band wagon and pointed out that correlation doesn't equal causation. I think most of these news stories are simply to scare everyone into eating in whatever manner the government wants us to eat.

Exercise and take your medicine

2011-02-09T11:44:00.004-06:00

This morning on a local morning show, KENS5 Great Day SA, they had a cardiologist on the show. He said that Cardiovascular Disease was preventable, I'm assuming he meant the non-genetic type, and listed the usual risk factors for it. A risk factor in their terminology means that it's "associated with" not that it causes it. Something that most people I don't think quite understand and the "experts" don't usually differentiate between.

Cholesterol was of course included, even though it seems it has little to do with cardiovascular disease. Cholesterol is vital for cell function, and acts to repair damage, which may be why it was erroneously thought to cause heart disease. The line of reasoning goes like this: There are house fires, and there are always firemen at house fires, therefore firemen cause house fires. That of course is ridiculous... unless you're in a sci-fi book, but I digress. So that means that just because Cholesterol is present doesn't mean that it has anything to do with the cause. Correlation is not causation.

The most important thing about cardiovascular disease that we now know, the thing they left out on Great Day SA of course, was inflammation. Inflammation is probably the cause of cardiovascular disease, and yet, they didn't even mention it. Eating a low-carb or paleo diet reduces inflammation. Of course, the day they tell people they ought to eat like that will be the day that the eighth circle of hell has frozen over and Dante has come back to life and is singing poems about homocysteine.

Anyway, what do you suppose they said on the show that you ought to do to prevent heart disease? "Exercise and take your medicine." Yes, folks, that's right. Be sure to take all of that expensive, profit inducing medication. I didn't catch the cardiologists' name, but I assume he's been listening to drug reps.

There's No Fat in Sugar

2011-02-08T20:33:00.007-06:00

We have an obesity epidemic in this country because our government, dietitians and doctors continue to give people the wrong information. Take for example an article on the Pima Indians from the NIH.

"Thirty years of research show that exercising and eating lower fat, fiber-rich foods can at least delay diabetes. "If you delay it long enough," adds Dr. Knowler, "It's almost as good as preventing it...

[NIH doctors] also discovered that high levels of insulin in the blood, or hyper-insulinemia, is another strong risk factor.

Studying this clue, researchers working with patients found that high levels of insulin were linked to insulin resistance. Normally, the pancreas releases insulin to regulate the amount of sugar or glucose in the blood. People who have non-insulin-dependent or Type II diabetes (hereafter referred to simply as "diabetes") produce insulin, but their bodies don't respond to it effectively. NIH researchers have made it clear that people with insulin resistance are those most likely to get diabetes...

The second strategy is to encourage those who are at high risk to change behaviors that can lead to diabetes, such as eating a high fat diet, being physically inactive, and being overweight.

The NIH has begun a major nation-wide program to prevent diabetes in people who increase exercise and eat lower fat foods." [emphasis mine]

Now let me explain something to you that even a five year old should be able to understand. We have three basic nutrients, fat, carbohydrates and protein. Carbohydrates break down in the blood into sugar. This causes you to secrete insulin, sometimes it makes people insulin resistant, some think quite possibly because of exposure to sugar and/or refined carbohydrates.

Once you are insulin resistant, simply cutting out the sugar and simple carbohydrates doesn't stop you from being insulin resistant. If you continue to eat carbohydrates, depending on genetics, you may become type 2 diabetic. If you don't eat carbohydrates, and restrict them severely, you will not. It's not possible (to my knowledge) to become diabetic if you are not eating carbs, because you don't have an increase in blood sugar if you're not consuming carbohydrates and therefore very little insulin is secreted. Some people can eat more carbs than others and be okay. Some have to cut out all carbohydrates, as in the case Taubes mentions in his book about the du Pont executive who couldn't even eat an apple. Some have said their insulin resistance improves after months of being on a low carb diet, and they can then have some carbs without having problems.

So you tell me why in the hell they are advocating that people who are already insulin resistant eat more carbohydrates? Because that's what they're doing. By lowering fat you raise carbohydrate consumption. Protein intake cannot increase very much, you can't tolerate too much of it (unless you're body building and breaking down muscle).

Why do they blame fat? I think it's because of the mistaken notion that since the Pima were agriculturalists that meant they didn't eat meat and that they only ate carbs. There isn't a single documented case of a native society being completely vegetarian, that I know of anyway. They usually tend to eat whatever they can get their hands on.

"A dietary change common to all these cases [of Native American cultures] has been the increased consumption of sugar and refined carbohydrates ... Since the key diagnostic feature of diabetes is high blood sugar, often accompanied by sugar in the urine, diabetes is frequently spoken of as "sugar diabetes" and "I've got sugar" or "I've got high sugar"... All carbohydrates cause a rise in blood glucose, and the glycemic index, a meaure of the impact of food or a meal on the rise in blood glucose, has a significant but transitory effect on both insulin production and glucose homeostasis." --from the Encyclopedia of medical anthropology by Carol R Ember, p 342

Since the Pima didn't grow sugar or refine grain to within an inch of it's life, I'm going to go with door number 1. And that is, the Pima are overweight or obese and diabetic because they consume carbohydrates typically found in the western diet. They may have consumed carbohydrates before contact with Europeans, but they were not the same kind of carbohydrates. Also, because they live in a rather inhospitable place, they may have not gotten enough calories, and this functions in much the same way as carbohydrate restriction if Ancel Key's studies on starvation are worth anything.

It's sad that all of the Native Americans' ancestors were screwed over by the Europeans. But what's even sadder, is that they are continuing to be screwed over even today, just like every other overweight or obese person in this country who has been told that they're fat because they eat too much. They will continue to get type 2 diabetes, will continue to have legs amputated and will continue to die prematurely as long as the lie that fat is the problem is perpetuated.

Low-Carb Nut Based Cereal Recipe

2011-02-08T17:07:00.007-06:00

I have the best recipe ever for cereal, and it's so easy to make. I found it by accident when trying to make cookies. I suggest finding raw whole milk to eat with it. The more fat in the milk, the slower the lactose is absorbed by your body.

Low Carb Cereal

1 c. butter (softened)
1 c. splenda (not packets, but bagged kind)
3/4 tsp molasses
3/4 c. peanut butter

1 c. chocolate or vanilla whey protein powder
1/2 c. flax seed meal
1 c. almond flour
1 tsp baking soda
1 tsp salt

In a Kitchen Aid mixer (or similar) beat butter until creamy. Add splenda, molasses and peanut butter. Beat on medium until mixed.

Add in dry ingredients. Beat on medium again until mixed, scrape sides of bowl with a spatula.

On a baking sheet that has sides, put a piece of parchment paper. Make sure it covers the surface. Spread the mixture onto the parchment paper with a knife, it should be about 1/4 inch deep. Bake at 375 degrees for about fifteen minutes, or until brown on top. Let cool and cut into small 1/4 inch squares. Best refrigerated and served cold with raw whole milk on it. Everyone here agrees it's really good.

You can also use different types of nuts, like ground hazelnuts, or all flax seed meal, but I've found you might get a slightly different consistency, it might be more or less crumbly. We've tried it different ways and it's all good. You can also use almond butter instead of peanut butter.

We've also found if you leave it sitting out to cool for a few hours before cutting it, that it stays together better and is less crumbly.

Cognitive Dissonance and Obesity Research

2011-02-07T20:47:00.002-06:00

After reading about obesity in children, since it's Heart Month there's a ton of obesity articles in general going around, I got to looking for scientific journals on the subject. One of the better articles is "Obese babies and young children: an approach to paedratric management" from the British journal Paediatrics and Child Health, Volume 19, Issue 9, Sept 2009, pages 425-429.

They actually say that the "energy in/energy out" that is used to justify why people should be blamed for being overweight is "too simplistic an explanation..." They even mention insulin insensitivity (resistance) as predisposing a child to gain weight. Amazing!

And then what do they do? They go on to say that "Hormonal causes of obesity are also extraordinarily rare." and "...however, at present identifiable metabolic and hormonal causes are exceptionally rare." I'm hoping that they're excluding insulin from this, as last I checked, insulin is a hormone and is very much responsible for most people's weight problems.

Later in the article they elucidate one reason why people may not be motivated to change their lifestyle.

"Unfortunately research shows that parents too often find that health professionals (and particularly doctors and dieticians) are critical, judgemental, blame them for their child's obesity, make them feel guilty, or are dismissive."

Well no duh! Especially when most nutritionists and people in general act like it's your fault that you're fat or your kid is fat. When you're eating corn syrup and sugar from the first day of life, what do you expect to happen? This isn't their fault, it's what they're being told to eat. It's what they're being told to feed their children.

"Babies are born with a natural ‘fuel gauge’ which signals when enough has been eaten. Unfortunately this gauge is often overridden by the way children are fed, which contributes to the development of obesity."

I don't think it's the way they're being fed, I think it's what they're being fed. They still talk of limiting food intake, contradicting what they said at the beginning of the article about how "calories in/calories out" was too simplistic of an explanation. They do say to avoid juice and stick with food that are of a low glycemic index, which is good, but I think doesn't go far enough. This is cognitive dissonance, which runs rampant through the field of dietary and obesity research. I guess old habits die hard.

Baby Formula is Junk Food: A Not-So Good Start

2011-02-07T15:31:00.003-06:00

Not having children, and I would breast feed if I did, I never realized what was in baby formula. Have you looked at it?

Now knowing that sugar and refined carbohydrate consumption cause insulin resistance, which in turn causes diabetes and a host of other metabolic problems, you would that that baby formula would be the last place you'd find said ingredients.

But no! I, as an adult, wouldn't consume what's in baby formula, and yet people are feeding it to their children, probably because they think don't have a choice.

Out of many of the formulas I looked at on the shopwell website, which will give you nutrition facts and ingredient lists, a common first ingredient in baby formula was 'corn syrup solids' or 'corn syrup'. This is simply a form of corn sugar, not unlike High Fructose Corn Syrup, except not as sweet. Common second and third ingredients are vegetable oils, corn maltodextrin (another sugar absorbed as rapidly as glucose), and sugar (sucrose, which is table sugar).

Now you tell me, do any of these things come out of a woman's breast? Do you think that this matches breast milk? Not no, but hell no. Breast milk has animal fat in it, we being animals and all. It is not soybean oil, or sunflower oil, or any other oil derived from a plant. Also, the sugar in breast milk is lactose, it is not sucrose. It is absorbed slower by the blood stream, lactose having a much lower glycemic index than sucrose (46 vs. 61). Also breast milk has more whole, saturated fat in it, which slows the absorption of lactose even more. This matters in terms of insulin resistance! These things are not the same, they are completely different.

Besides the main ingredients, infant formula also has mono- and diglycerides, a hydrogenated oil (trans fat) that is used as an emulsifier. It also has carrageenan to extend shelf life.

Mothers often have no choice but to work, and often either don't have the facilities or time at work to pump breast milk, or they don't know they ought to. They probably think formula is fine. Why is this allowed? Breast milk is best obviously, but in the case it can't be used why must we have junk food as formula?

It's ridiculous. I wouldn't be at all surprised if this is part of the reason why so many children are obese and type II diabetic.

Some examples:
Enfamil Prosobee, first ingredient Corn Syrup Solids, second ingredient is vegetable oil

Gerber good start Soy Plus, first ingredient is Corn Maltodextrin, second is vegetable oil

Similac Sensitive, first ingredient is Corn Syrup Solids, followed by sugar, as in table sugar.

And these are just a few of the ones on there. Almost all of them are the same crap.

I know that some infants are lactose intolerant or that some women don't produce enough milk. If you cannot feed your baby breast milk, I suggest looking into meat based formula. I know that's what I was fed, because I was allergic to milk and soy protein. I couldn't have regular formula or soy formula. Of course this was a long time ago, so if you found such formula now it may have crap in it too. Also, I bet regular baby formula when I was a baby did not have this crap in it.

Ridiculous. That's all I can think.

The Ancient Paleolithic Diet

2011-02-07T00:03:00.006-06:00

One argument used by people who are against low carb diets is that our paleolithic ancestors ate mostly fruit and vegetables. The argument is absurd of course. How did paleolithic people get fruit and vegetables in the middle of winter? They didn't have refrigeration or greenhouses or delivery trucks. This means that in most parts of the globe, Paleolithic people would have had to have hunted for meat, or they would have starved to death.

This means that they ate meat primarily most of the year, and in some places, as with the Inuit, they ate meat pretty much all year. And they were excellent hunters. Most of what we know about paleolithic people is derived in one of two ways. The first is by archaeology, where the remains that are dug up are studied. The second is by anthropology, where we study people who survived into the 20th century as hunter-gatherers.

A lot of what is found at dig sites from the Paleolithic is weapons, for example stone spear heads. They made lots of spears, both wooden and stone, although the wooden parts don't usually survive. Both homosapiens and neanderthalensis used spears to hunt medium and large sized mammals.

Atlatls were used as a means of extending a spear's throwing range and increasing the amount of force behind the throw. Atlatls have been used for probably 400,000 years, and would have allowed even a child to bring down large game.

Research at a site in Russia shows that ancient people could easily have hunted very big game like mammoths.

"Ethnographic sources and experimental work confirm that recent African elephants can be killed with spears or projectile points. According to Trilles (1932), Forest People from Gabon hunted elephants by sneaking under a standing elephant and thrusting a spear into its belly; the elephant could also be killed by arrows... According to Janmart (1952), the Ituri hunted elephants by creeping under an elephant and plunging a spear into its belly. The Ogiek people from Kenya hunted with dogs and used spears to kill elephants... Frison (1989) showed experimentally that Clovis projectile points used with atlatl and darts or thrusting spears can penetrate the thick hide of African elephants and inflect lethal wounds on elephants of all ages and both sexes. The hunting strategy should include several persons.

Comparison of the size of recent African elephants and mammoths shows that it is plausible that prehistoric hunters used the same techniques for hunting mammoths as recent hunter use to kill elephants."

So much for a lack of food. A large animal like a mammoth would feed a lot of people for a long while. Even smaller animals like deer or elk would feed a good number of people. In the winter, the meat would have lasted for a while, in areas where the temperature was cold enough to inhibit decay. And unlike fruit and vegetables, when the meat was gone, they could go and hunt some more.

Evolution has not had time to alter our genes to adapt to an agricultural life style. It has especially not had time to alter them to deal with the massive increase in sugar consumption that has happened since the early 1980s.

Statins: A real money maker

2011-02-06T16:58:00.004-06:00

Since it's February and it's heart month, it's the time of year that the pharmaceutical companies start promoting you being on medication of dubious benefit with possible dangerous side effects for the rest of your life. (Statins are cholesterol lowering drugs, like Lipitor and Crestor). Do they have to pay for this advertising? Hell no. They get "journalists" to publish the advertisment-as-news-story.

The first news article I read today about the untreated "epidemic of high cholesterol" was based on a study by the World Health Organization that found that a lot of people in developing countries had high cholesterol and were therefore at risk of heart attacks. They then cited this statistic:

"Cardiovascular disease kills more than 17 million people every year and WHO says 80 percent of these deaths occur in developing countries."

To which my morbid and sarcastic mind thought, one death is a tragedy, a million is a statistic. (attributed to Stalin) So, this means that not that many people die of cardiovascular disease in the world. 17 million divided by the population of planet earth, which is about 7 billion at the moment means that .002% of people in the entire world die of cardiovascular disease every year according to the statistic given anyway. And 80% are in developing countries? What else is killing people?

Probably cancer from trying to lower our cholesterol, and in the case of developing countries, infectious disease. But if the pharmaceutical companies don't scare people into thinking there's an epidemic, no one will want to take the medication they're hawking.

Another news article was complaining about the fact that so many Americans aren't getting treated for high cholesterol.

"In all, as many as two out of three Americans with high levels of bad cholesterol do not have their problem under control, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Tuesday.

That means only about 23 million of the 71 million adults with worrisome bad cholesterol levels keep it in check, perhaps because many don't eat wisely, exercise or take prescribed medications, experts said."

Never mind that diet and exercise have nothing to do with cholesterol, that it's genetic, and on top of that, has very little, if anything to do with cardiovascular disease!

What these articles are really decrying, is the fact that not *everyone* is on a statin. They want to put children on them from what I've heard. Another article says anyone over the age of 20 should have their cholesterol checked.

"There has been a national health objective known as Healthy People 2010 that seeks to make at least 80 percent of people age 20 and older aware of their cholesterol level. Unfortunately, this goal is not being met by every state in the nation."

My father-in-law is a pharmacist, and when he started out way back in the day, very few people were on maintenance medication. Those with high blood pressure and diabetes were about the only ones, and there weren't very many of them. Now he said, everyone's on maintenance medication for the rest of their lives, in an attempt to fix what our broken diet has caused. They wind up with side effects from the first medication and wind up on more medication to treat the side effects from the first!

If you're worried about cardiovascular disease, first you need to read either Gary Taubes book "Good Calories, Bad Calories" or "Why We Get Fat And What to Do About It." Then you need to read Dr. Uffe Ravnskov's books on fat and cholesterol. His first book is out of print, but his second two can be bought from Amazon. If you want more reading, check out books on homocysteine by Dr. Kilmer McCully, MD. They also have a website with information on why cholesterol is not important and why statins are dangerous to your health.

If you have family members that are on statins, they should probably wean themselves off of them. If you want to know why, read books on statin side effects and how they cause normal biological functions to cease, by Dr. Duane Graveline, MD.

**Do not go off of medication cold turkey. Consult a doctor, or better yet a pharmacist first. Pharmacists know more about medications than doctors.

Exercising your way to health or death?

2011-02-06T16:12:00.006-06:00

Forty years ago, your parents or grandparents would have told you that exercise was bad for you. It wears out your joints and puts unnecessary strain on your body. Currently the CDC suggests 300 minutes of moderate intensity aerobic activity each week plus weight training for "greater health benefits." That's three hundred minutes of you wearing your body out every week. And if you do more than that, they say "you'll gain even more health benefits."

Now, do you think they have specific data on this? Of course not. But they'll tell you it's a good idea anyway, and in fact tout it as a way to prevent heart disease. Wait for it though, because I found this, written for heart month, from the newspaper the Asheville Citizen-Times and I found it amusing in it's glorious contradiction:

"A key contributor to heart disease is lack of exercise — again, a factor that seems to affect busy women as they juggle jobs, kids, homes and community work and fail to make time for their own good health, Palmer said. And obesity is a critical factor, because “the more you weigh, the harder your heart has to work to give your body nutrients,” she said." [emphasis mine]

So, their first premise is that if you work your heart harder (by exercise) that you'll be healthier, but if your heart has to work harder because you're overweight or obese, that's bad. Can we say cognitive dissonance? Of course, being obese is associated with heart disease, but the primary reason for CHD isn't because your heart has to work harder, it's probably inflammation. However, I doubt having your heart work harder, either via strenuous exercise or by being obese, is very good for it.

I'm not saying that some activity isn't good, especially walking, but these people are advocating that an already busy person, who is not sitting at home watching television all day, should try to fit exercising into their already busy schedule. And that just creates more stress because they think it's a character flaw that they've gained weight and blame it on not getting to the gym. I think that makes about as much sense as telling a diabetic they should eat more fruit. Oh, wait. They do that too.

I tried to find some studies to either backup what they're saying or refute it, but it doesn't seem like any have really been done, at least with exercise alone. I would imagine to find out if exercise were beneficial, that you would take two very large groups of healthy men and women and have one group exercise and the other not. Then you'd find out if one group lived longer than the other. Most of the studies I've seen however, are in patients who already have CHD, are part of Statin drug trials, or part of a diet trial. There is no controlling for variables, they test multiple things at once, and that is not science. It's quackery is what it is.

There are multiple possibilities for why exercise could be beneficial, or not. One might be if carbohydrates cause heart disease by creating inflammation, and if you consume carbohydrates and exercise, you may burn off the carbohydrates before they can have an effect on your tissues, if you're a person who can burn them off. Most people who are obese have a problem metabolizing carbohydrates, so this probably wouldn't work for them. Or maybe if you never eat carbohydrates, you would have no need to exercise very much, and you would still live just as long as someone who ate carbohydrates and exercised. These are things that could be tested.

We should know so much more by now about what it is that is killing us, but we don't, and we won't. The food industry benefits from people eating their processed, expensive junk food and the pharmaceutical companies reap the benefits of people winding up on maintenance medication from such diets. To a lesser extent the fitness industry benefits from this too, as people try in vain to exercise to lose the weight they gain (exercise makes you hungry) by eating the "recommended diet". And the newspapers? They benefit by advertising dollars from the previous three industries to push what they want to be said.

Unintended Consequences: Salt Intake, Obesity and Insulin Resistance

2011-02-06T00:05:00.000-06:00

When William Banting wrote his Letter on Corpulence in 1863, the medical community attacked him like piranhas in a lake filled with hemophiliac swimmers. Gary Taubes describes this best in his book Good Calories, Bad Calories:

"The medical community of Banting's day didn't quite know what to make of him or his diet. Correspondents to the British Medical Journal seemed occasionally open-minded, albeit suitably skeptical; a formal paper was presented on the efficacy and safety of Banting's diet at the 1864 meeting of the British Medical Association. Others did what members of established societies often do when confronted with a radical new concept: they attacked both the message and the messenger. The editors of The Lancet, which is to the BMJ what Newsweek is to Time, were particularly ruthless. First, they insisted that Banting's diet was old news, which it was, although Banting never claimed otherwise. The medical literature, wrote The Lancet, "is tolerably complete, and supplies abundant evidence that all which Mr. Banting advises has been written over and over again." Banting responded that this might well have been so, but it was news to him and other corpulent individuals." [emphasis mine]

It was news to me as well. No one told me that I should eat that way. But what else was news to me is this, apparently restricting sodium intake can cause and/or aggravate insulin resistance. In a country with what some call a "diabetes epidemic" why are nutritionists still advocating restricting sodium intake? Especially when lower salt intake does little for lowering blood pressure, which is why it's pushed on the general public in the first place. One review found that a reduction in dietary sodium would amount to systolic blood pressure being lowered by a whopping mean of 1.1 mmHg, and diastolic by an even more underwhelming mean of 0.6 mmHg.

I suppose part of it may be because it seems a lot of the studies done were published in a journal called American Journal of Hypertension over the last 20(!) years, and I guess the "experts" and the "nutritionists" don't read it. I mean, don't read period. Because if they did, they'd have read Taubes and the plethora of other studies that would tell them that what they're telling people is flat out wrong and is killing them.

Not only can salt restriction apparently be bad for insulin resistance, but one study showed giving people more salt helps alleviate it and makes them more sensitive to the insulin.

"For the group as a whole, urinary sodium excretion increased on sodium chloride to 267 ± 118 mEq/day versus control (placebo) phase of 135 ± 53 mEq/day, P < .001. Total glycemic response in the oral GTT (area under the glucose curve) was 8.0% lower during sodium supplementation, P < .001. Secondary analysis revealed that the effect of sodium was noteworthy in 1) type 2 diabetic subjects (n = 8), 2) sodium -sensitive subjects (n = 10), and 3) nondiabetic subjects receiving antihypertensive drug treatment (n = 6). The total insulinemic response to oral GTT was also lowered by sodium loading among diabetic subjects. Thus, an abundant sodium intake may improve glucose tolerance and insulin resistance, especially in diabetic, salt-sensitive, and or medicated essential hypertensive subjects." [emphasis mine]

(The effect of sodium supplementation on glucose tolerance and insulin concentrations in patients with hypertension and diabetes mellitus, from the American Journal of Hypertension, Volume 14, Issue 7, July 2001, Pages 653-659)

One of the most recent and largest studies from the journal Metabolism, took data from 152 healthy people who were prescribed a high or low salt diet. It too found that a low salt diet was associated with increased insulin resistance.

People are expensive to do studies on. You have to pay them to participate. Lab rats on the other hand are cheap and you don't have to pay them anything and you get to dissect them when the study is over so you can obtain even more information on what was going on physiologically. One rat study found:

"In the present study, higher body weight, blood glucose, plasma insulin, triacylglycerols (triglycerides) and cholesterol, hematocrit and heart rate were observed in animals on low salt intake compared to the normal-salt group. Blood pressure and glucose uptake were lower on low-than on normal-salt diet." [emphasis mine]

(Insulin resistance due to chronic salt restriction is corrected by α and β blockade and by l-arginine, from Physiology & Behavior, Volume 88, Issues 4-5, 30 July 2006, Pages 364-370)

If you've been paying attention, insulin resistance (and by extension diabetes) is associated with obesity. Apparently one study showed that restricting salt intake in female Wistar rats predisposed their female offspring to obesity.

Most of the studies say that more and larger studies are needed. As mentioned above, studies are expensive. There were some studies in humans that found the opposite or no correlation between salt intake and insulin resistance, but of these I saw, they used a very small number of people, in one only eight and were very short term. That's not enough subjects or time to get meaningful data. We need large studies with lots of people, that way individual variation is controlled for. All of the rat studies I found showed a correlation with low salt intake and insulin resistance, and since rats are cheap, there were more rats involved than people. It may be that some people are not as effected by low sodium intake as others.

So here we have unintended consequences, in that nutritionists are advocating you messing with your diet for what might amount to a slightly lower blood pressure, at the expense of something else completely unforeseen. How do you like being an unwitting participant in one of the biggest health studies ever made? Because that's what you are if you live in any country that follows the dietary guidelines set forth by the USDA. You may think you have no problem eating as you are, but the food manufacturers have made it a point to remove salt and fat from the food they sell you. So unless you are making a concerted effort to add it back in, you may well be deficient and not even know it.

Common sense is indeed not very common. If excess salt intake had anything to do with ill health, the human race in western Europe and elsewhere would not have survived into the modern era. Last I checked, prior to the 20th century, people did not have refrigeration and used, get this, salt and LOTS of it to cure meat. I doubt there's any way to find out exactly how much they consumed, but it was way more than we do now. And since we don't have reports that medieval people were dropping dead from stroke or heart disease (plague is another matter), I dare say the salt wasn't a primary cause of mortality. Of course, absense of evidence is not evidence of absence, and maybe they just didn't live long enough for the salt to kill them.

Expert and No-so Expert Journalism: Diet Myths

2011-02-05T14:44:00.009-06:00

If you're going to be a journalist, I suggest that when an "expert" tells you something, that you get a second opinion on the matter from someone who disagrees with them. Or better yet, or in addition to, that you go and do some research yourself on the matter. Of course that requires having some critical thinking skills and being able to read on a post-baccalaureate level.

I'll give you an example of bad research, or just parroting whatever the nutrition "expert" tells you. In an article from yesterday in the Midland Daily News out of Michigan, they tell you that February is American Heart Month and talk to a Registered Dietitian from their local medical center to find out what you can do for a healthier heart.

I have yet to meet or read a Registered Dietitian that gives advice based on the latest metabolic research rather than the out-dated and plain wrong advice given by our government, the American Medical Association and the American Heart Association.

The first mistake that Registered Dietitian Sherry Elford makes is that we should avoid saturated fat. This is pretty typical, because since Ancel Keys decided that Saturated Fat was bad for us, it has become gospel to Dietitians and Doctors as much as Matthew, Mark, Luke and John are gospel to the Christians in this world. Now, if you're read Taubes, you'll know that there's not a shred of scientific evidence that Saturated Fat or Cholesterol has anything to do with heart disease. Heart disease has to do with inflammation which is probably caused by excess consumption of carbohydrates.

The next mistake made is that she says that "sodium raises bad cholesterol and plaque buildup in arteries increases." I'm assuming she means that cholesterol causes plaques in artery walls, which is wrong (and not that sodium does, which would also be wrong). However, her first premise, that sodium raises bad cholesterol is wrong. It doesn't. However it can LOWER good cholesterol. A five minute search on Science Direct found a study of sixty five men whose HDL cholesterol (the supposed "good" cholesterol) decreased with sodium restriction and had no statistical effect on overall cholesterol. Why aren't these "journalists" and "registered dietitians" doing their job by doing research? I'm not even a scientist and I can find this stuff!

"Short term dietary sodium restriction decreases HDL cholesterol, apolipoprotein A-I and high molecular weight adiponectin in healthy young men: Relationships with renal hemodynamics and RAAS activation" in Nutrition, Metabolism and Cardiovascular Diseases

On top of that, there is another study that showed that salt restriction may increase insulin resistance and lowers cholesterol as well.

"As a result, insulin C-peptide increased by 40% (p = 0.0001) whereas glucose rose by 6% (p = 0.02). Total cholesterol, LDL-cholesterol and HDL-cholesterol concentration were reduced by 6% (p = 0.001), 12% (p = 0.008) and 11% (p = 0.004) respectively. HbAlc, serum triglycerides, total/HDL-cholesterol ratio, urine catecholamines and VMA were unchanged during the trial. It is concluded that salt restriction may increase insulin resistance in hypertensive patients."

"Salt restriction and increased insulin production in hypertensive patients" from the Scandanavian Journal of Clinical & Laboratory Investigation, 1994, Vol 54, No 5, pages 405-409

And another study that said pretty much the same thing. And another. In case you aren't paying attention, insulin resistance is very bad. It's a precursor to diabetes. It's associated with weight gain. And these "nutritionists" are advocating something that may cause it.

Also, let me say that lowering choleterol is bad, despite whatever dogma you may have been indoctrinated with. Cholesterol is a vital substance required for life. It's essential for the structural integrity of cellular membrane walls and your brain uses it in your neural synapses. Without it, you wouldn't be alive. Cholesterol is found in arteriosclerotic plaques probably because it's trying to repair the damage.

Lastly, Ms. Elford "recommends soy foods." Elford fails to mention that soy may inhibit thyroid function, which is a very important part of your metabolism. Soy also contains phytoestrogens, which mimic estrogen. Now, whether or not this is harmful remains to be seen. I don't think that some *unprocessed* soy in small quantities would be harmful. However, the American public is getting much more than a small quantity of unprocessed soy. They put soybean oil (sometimes soy flour) in bread (even "healthy" looking bread), in some cereal, in crackers, they put it in just about anything that it will go in. You don't have to look far to find something with soy in it. About the only way to avoid all this soy is to make your own food from scratch and/or eat low carb. The soybean manufacturers must do something with all the soybean they grow. After all most Americans don't eat very much tofu.

The thing is, these people recommend to you a course of action to take, and it could be at the expense of your health. The Buddha said, believe nothing, even if I have said it. That goes here too. It's up to everyone to investigate what they should be eating, what will be healthiest, because most of the journalists aren't going to do it, and the nutrition "experts" certainly aren't going to do it.

Californian Mom Sues Nutella

2011-02-05T11:56:00.008-06:00

It doesn't take a genius to know that Nutella is not really a healthy food for you. But not because of the saturated fat content, but rather because the first ingredient is sugar. Either Athena Hohenberg is an idiot or she's after money. I'm leaning toward the latter personally. Why should she waste the courts time and money by suing, can't she use her brain and read a label? Maybe she hasn't had enough fat in her diet and her synapses are having problems communicating with each other.

If Athena wants healthy children she should be feeding them real, unprocessed foods like eggs and sausage for breakfast. But I digress. The real problem here, is that Athena Hohenberg has been told her whole life that saturated fat is bad for you. It's not, but sugar is, and at least sugar is included in the indictment. The great thing about living in a free country is that one should be able to eat whatever they want, whether it's good for them or not. The problem is, what is good for you? Now we're back to the lies.

So, when is she going to sue the breakfast cereal manufacturers? That's what I want to know.

Breakfast cereal manufacturers are no different than Nutella, advertising that their sugary, wheat infused mixture is a good thing to feed your kids in the morning. In my opinion, cereal is probably one of the worst thing you could feed your kids. Spreading Nutella on a piece of whole wheat bread would probably be about the same. Oh, except that cereal is "low in fat". I guess that makes it okay {/snark}. Even the ones touting to be "healthy", like Raisin Bran and Special K are hardly good for you, never mind the carbohydrate content. I've read the labels on those and they both have High Fructose Corn Syrup in them. Most of the breakfast cereal you'll find is also made with enriched flour, which is white flour with vitamins added back into it. When that hits your blood stream it's the same as if you'd eaten sugar.

*sigh*

In the beginning...

2011-02-05T10:42:00.007-06:00

In the beginning God created journalists. And they were real journalists, in that they rooted out the truth and gave it to the general public. But then somehow things changed, as they usually do, and journalists became beholden to corporate interests. And they stopped telling you (the public) the truth and began telling you what they thought was the truth. Or rather, what they thought ought to be the truth. It may not have been entirely their fault. They were lied to. But instead of investigating whether what they were told was a lie or not, they accepted it at face value. Perhaps the scent of money to be had made them shut their eyes and their ears and accept the lies. I suppose the glint of silver does that to a person.

We know it's a lie. Gary Taubes has shown us all that. The man deserves a nobel prize.

What pisses me off, is that I was lied to. Isn't that how it usually is? Humans are very self-centered creatures for the most part. I was told all my life that I ate too much, and that was why I was fat. In my case though, I now know that's not true and I can do something about it. I've lost about forty pounds since I read Taubes' book last May.

The same can't be said for the millions of dead. That's not hyperbole either. Almost everyone who has died of complications from diabetes in the last thirty years might have been saved if they'd only been told the truth, instead of to "eat more fruit." That includes my mother's best friend, who lost her leg before she lost her life some years ago now.

The lies go on almost every day in the press and on the daily news or morning show, and people continue to believe them. And until the lie is stopped, we'll have more dead best friends, more dead mothers, more dead sisters, etc... It doesn't have to be this way.