We reap what we sow...

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.

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

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.

Unintended Consequences: Salt Intake, Obesity and Insulin Resistance

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.