Your arteries on Wonder bread
physorg.com
physorg.com
Maybe this new study really has gotten to the bottom of heart disease, in which case we can all eat the newly re-formulated Low Glycemic Index Wonder Bread and carry on as usual. We'll be healthier, Food Industry will make another fortune, everyone's happy.
Thought this would be a good opportunity to pimp the book: In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan. It's quite extraordinary if you are interested in your health (in the broadest sense of that word), food, and the history of Nutrition Science and the western diet.
Nutrition is one of the areas where normally rational people (such as the typical HN reader) go totally off the deep end and rely on superstition, hearsay, herd mentality, group think, and whimsy. In general, most people (including people who are otherwise quite rational) do exactly what advertisers and corporate sponsors want when it comes to nutrition.
There was a huge bombshell study a few years ago, documented in the book "The China Study" on the western diet (by a guy from Cornell). It should have made headlines. People should have thrown their meat and dairy into the garbage immediately... but nothing happened.
Instead, ostensibly "health conscious" people convince themselves that there are "good fats" and ask themselves if they are getting enough protein.
Most Americans are overweight and will end up with obesity, type II diabetes, heart disease, or colon cancer. Most vegetarians are overweight, pallid, and sick-looking (b/c they eat so much "good fat" -- more fat than McDonalds aficionados eat!).
What it means for a human to eat optimally is well known and has been backed up by rigorous scientific research... why hasn't it made headlines? Because in this case it's too much work to think critically... it's not easy going against the grain of an entire society built upon destructive mythology with the nutrition establishment telling us to eat according to a harmful food pyramid, etc.
So the whole "nutrition" industry is focused on convincing people that health is obtained by consuming or avoiding magic ingredients like "Omega 3s" or "turmeric" or "trans fats" or "mono unsaturated fats" or "whole grains" or "protein". All of this is at best minimally correlated or patently false.
What's the difficult truth that nobody wants to hear? Animal protein causes disease. That means no meat, fish, milk, etc. The optimal human diet is plant based and should contain 80% carbs (as much of this unrefined as possible), 10% protein, and 10% fat). Fresh fruit has a few percent fat already, so very little extra fat is needed, even if it's so-called "good fat".
If you're skeptical, read The China Study and then raid your fridge and cure your future cancer immediately :)
notes:
1) humans can survive on lots of things including meats, cardboard, etc. b/c we evolved to survive in extreme conditions/habitats. That does not mean that all things we can digest are optimal for health. Also, it is trivial for any modern human to obtain sufficient calories only from optimal foods.
2) link to book (well worth the $10, read the reviews on Amazon):
http://www.amazon.com/China-Study-Comprehensive-Nutrition-Im...
I'd rather live well on delicious foods and most likely die in my 70s, than worry about this and derive satisfaction from pride in piety and devotion to some food religion.
And for the record, I'm not obese, nor am I overweight (BMI of 21). But I'll be damned if I'm going to give up one of the greatest sources of pleasure I have ever known just to eke out a few more years on this planet.
We're also not talking about being old and immobile... you could feasibly enjoy an excellent quality of life in your 90s and beyond. Think of it... you could get a Ph.D at 80 if you wanted to, while your contemporaries had been dead for around a decade.
You also may not realize this, but eating optimally offers immediate, pleasurable benefits. How would you like 25% more energy, vitality, and endurance? How would you like a more sharply focused mind?
Mind and body are one... you can't expect to experience true pleasure if you neglect either one.
He is likely the foremost nutritional researcher, not only of our time, but of history. The work he and his team did in the decades-long China Study research has not been paralleled.
Some of the notable discoveries they made was that a particular protein found in dairy products, casein, enabled tumor growth. When removed from the diet, the tumors stopped.
A similar tumor on/off mechanism was found with regards to the percentage of calories from protein in the diet. When the protein went over a certain threshold, tumor growth was enabled, but not at the lower levels.
Excellent summary of his work, btw. I cannot imagine how difficult it must be for him professionally to have exhibited all the courage he did in going against the status quo only to remain in relative obscurity.
I guess great insights sometimes don't catch on right away.
This was before the China Study research, and I do not know if it was covered in the book, but he talks about this in at least one talk that is available online.
I think this is the talk here: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1308977765978236346...
In addition to being sincere and extremely knowledgable about his subject matter, a characteristic of T. Colin Campbell is that, despite the respect and acclaim (more so in recent years) he has garnered, he comes across as quite humble.
I must confess it is a pretty frustrating task to try and gain a well-informed, well-balanced general understanding of nutrition with an accompanying good idea of "what to eat". I've become pretty interested in the subject of late and in my research came across another source, Gary Taubes, whose theory I thought was pretty damn compelling. Unfortunately, the Campbell position seems pretty much directly opposed to the Taubes hypothesis.
I have no idea what to think. If anyone can point me to a fair, informed criticism of either or both, by someone who knows what they are talking about and is not obviously writing in defense of some preconceived partisan allegiance, I would be delighted to read it.
Right now I would say I find Taubes more convincing, simply because I tend to mistrust any statistics I didn't do myself. There could be any number of factors causing the strong correlations Campbell is graphing; without the full data they are close to useless.
I'm only in the introduction now, but something on page 4 struck me:
More than forty years ago, at the beginning of my career, I would have never guessed that food is so closely related to health problems.
Contrast that to a popular saying in Japan, 医食同源: medicine and food have the same origin. Compare that to the common refrain, that the difference between medicine and poison is the dose.
I find it hard to believe that Western societies have always overlooked the relationship between diet and health. Perhaps it is a recent phenomenon. When did we lose our wisdom?
And, per the line you mention, the established view at the time was that the cure for worldwide malnutrition, etc, was to figure out better ways of producing protein. This was actually what TCC was trying to do initially in his research before he discovered that animal protein causes health problems.
Notice that today everything is marketed as a health food. I was watching TV earlier and saw a commercial for "Sunny D" that essentially sells it (yucky orange flavored sugar water) as a health food :)
One note: The first bit of the book is a bit sensational, but stick with it -- the claims are all nicely substantiated.
He who does not know food, how can he understand the diseases of man?
...so that answers half my question.
I'm about a third of the way through now. I found the chapters on animal protein and the China Study very interesting and well presented.
Thank you very much. I've read a bit online re: diets, nutrition and health, and Campbell presents a very compelling argument for vegetarianism, or at least very moderate consumption of meat.
It occurs to me that traditionally cured meats have a much stronger taste, and naturally lend themselves to lower levels of consumption--just a little for flavoring, the same way one would use blue cheese. I wonder if there's more to it.
I would guess that if you're going to eat meat, eating small quantities is probably far better than eating larger quantities. Maybe at some point there will be a more detailed epidemiological study that can tell us if small quantities of meat cause proportionally less harm.
As omnivores, do we share any of these processes, or are we really just herbivores that have become omnivores through cooking?
Do you know of any research in this area?
Any species has some set of foods it is capable of digesting. The set of such foods is a function of the environment in which the species has evolved.
All of these specializations/tradeoffs of an organism's design (fangs, intestinal tract length, stomach composition, etc.) are a function of the species' unique evolutionary environmental history, and should be viewed as optimizations over past environmental factors.
There is also the important factor of calorie scarcity as a driver of selection -- through most of evolutionary time, simply getting enough calories was paramount for all species, including the human species. Also note that there is significantly greater selection pressure for characteristics that facilitate survival through reproductive age even at the expense of overall longevity... so being able to eat (or even craving) a food that causes disease at age 60 historically offered a benefit well through the reproductive age and thus offered a net selection advantage.
So, if one takes the list of foods a species is capable of eating and removes the notion of calorie scarcity, one can determine which foods are most optimal for vitality and longevity...
Most of the arguments for why humans should eat meat, fats, etc., are based on the implicit assumption of calorie/nutrient scarcity. Of course if you're stranded in the arctic it's a great idea to eat some seal blubber... and it makes sense from an evolutionary perspective to crave it or to enjoy the smell of cooking meat.
But when you're living in an advanced, rich society with essentially no calorie/nutrient scarcity, it becomes possible (and fun) to address the question of optimal nutrition.
I've gone ahead and started eating that way now. I'll be long dead before nutrition science actually comes up with dietary recommendations that they don't overhaul or reverse ten years later.
The real problem is just eating one type of cheep food, with a long shelf life, that's easy to prepare, is bad for you in excess. But people already know that and it's not going to sell a book.
I was also raised on the typical foods: white bread, frosted flakes, white rice, etc. However, although cutting out the starches was difficult, it was not impossible. The hardest part was during the first two to three weeks. Probably partially because of chemical factors as well as psychological. Since then, it hasn't been too difficult at all.
I feel much healthier now and have lost a lot of extra weight I had been carrying around for years.
On the other hand, my diet is much more expensive. It takes a lot more protein to feel full than carbs, and proteins are more expensive.
The best thing about this diet is that, budget notwithstanding, I can actually live the rest of my life on it. It's not a binge type of diet which cannot be used for prolonged periods of time. It's very practical, as long as you can find the foods you need.
One reason protein is filling is it signals a hormone PPY for satiety [2]. Ever try eating a jumbo can of tuna? You'll feel a lump in your throat. You can't eat much.
Hormones usually are dismissed as wonky, but they actually do factor in weight loss.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rabbit_starvation
[2] http://scienceandreason.blogspot.com/2007/10/peptide-yy-and-...
Today, I can still notice the drop in concentration and the intense desire to take a nap after eating the occasional high GI food. But my mind is very clear when I eat correctly, so that's enough motivation to keep it up. Of course, the health benefits are a nice side-effect - I became quite skinny from losing what little fat I had, so I had to work out to pick up some weight.
A few points to address some of the other comments: It's not necessary to go extremely high protein, and increasing your fat intake may do more harm than good if you don't work hard to exclude saturated fats. Don't limit your total carb intake, but choose the right carbs and spread them out across meals / snacks.
And some very important points the article doesn't mention: Never skip a meal. Eat breakfast within an hour of waking up. This will help prevent spikes in your blood sugar.
I would suggest googling the glycemic index as well as the glycemic load of foods before making any changes to your diet. Apart from giving preference to food that's higher in fibre, healthy fat and proteins, there are some surprises.
Once you've passed through the proverbial dip, your taste changes. The cravings for sweet or highly processed carbs are similar to the cravings when giving up smoking. They do pass.
http://drmcdougall.com Dr. John McDougall's site
An excellent presentation that he gave is available here:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2348910096409126100 John McDougall MD on the perils of dairy products
He has advocated a low fat, whole foods, plant based site for decades, and this type of diet has been clinically shown to prevent and even reverse heart disease (see studies by Dr. Dean Ornish, probably others).
The diet consists of fruits and vegetables, with starches such as potatoes, yams, beans, and oats featuring as the staple calorie source.
The pre-1950s Okinawan diet was like this, with the staple being sweet potato. Their percentage of calories from fat was in the single digits, with carbohydrates being over 80% of calories. Okinawa has been known as having one of the highest number of centenarians, not to mention healthy long-lived people overall. Sure there are more factors than diet, but it is worth considering what they ate.
The "Star McDougallers" area of the site has many testimonials of people helped with their health problems far beyond weight loss, such as rheumatoid arthritis and lupus.
Taking it to the next level:
The 80/10/10 diet
also low fat and plant based, but all raw (fruits instead of starches, basically)
http://vegsource.com/talk/raw Message board for the 80/10/10 diet, by Doug Graham
http://foodnsport.com Doug Graham's site
http://30bananasaday.com 80/10/10 enthusiast forum & social network
Having normal potatoes as a staple will reduce your lifespan.
Glycemic load has been considered by some to be more important.
Chocolate cake has been measured to have a glycemic index of 38, while a baked potato is 85. Heck, fructose, pure sugar, has a glycemic index of 19, while brown rice is at 87.
( Numbers from "International table of glycemic index and glycemic load values: 2002" Am J Clin Nutr. 2002 Jul;76(1):5-56.)
I don't think anyone is going to say chocolate cake or pure fructose is healthier than a baked potato or brown rice.
So there is certainly more to a food's nutritional value than the glycemic index, which has been shown to be on shaky ground.
http://www.drmcdougall.com/misc/2006nl/july/glycemic.htm ( Glycemic Index - Not Ready for Prime Time )
> Having normal potatoes as a staple will reduce your lifespan.
Reference please? The assertion that potatoes will reduce one's lifespan is utter nonsense. Reduce it compared to what? An Atkins diet? How well did that work out for Dr. Atkins?
Peruvians have traditionally used potatoes as a staple, and even in modern times they have 1/4 the heart disease death rate of the USA. As heart disease is the leading cause of death, this is significant. In fact, this "potato capital of the world" has obesity and diabetes rates which pale in comparison to the USA.
As we have such an abundant variety available to us today, it is possible to pick our own staples, and I personally prefer fruits or sweet potatoes to regular potatoes. However, the fact remains that even regular potatoes are a healthy choice, provided they are consumed unrefined. French fries are a disaster of a food, but nobody is advocating these highly processed potatoes as a staple food.
The below articles clearly demonstrate that potatoes are healthy and will not "reduce your lifespan". Many references are provided within.
http://www.drmcdougall.com/misc/2008nl/may/potato.htm ( International Year of the Potato, 2008 )
http://www.nealhendrickson.com/mcdougall020400pupotatoesarep... ( Potatoes Are Pillars of Worldwide Nutrition )
Pretty much contradicts everything said by the page on glycemic index on www.drmcdougall.com and also addresses the points you raised above. I guess the question now is: Who do you trust? WikiPedia or a guy peddling DVDs and books?
> Pretty much contradicts everything said by the page on glycemic index on www.drmcdougall.com and also addresses the points you raised above.
Care to enumerate any contradictions? You haven't given a single example.
[D]: Worldwide, populations of hundreds of millions of people who eat high GI potatoes (Peruvians) and rice (Asians) are trim and active for a lifetime. [W]: The high consumption of legumes in South America and fresh fruit and vegetables in Asia likely lowers the glycemic effect in these individuals. The mixing of high and low GI carbohydrates produces moderate GI values.
[D]: the American Diabetic Association dismisses the value of GI in treating diabetes. [W]: The glycemic index is supported by leading international health organisations including the American Diabetes Association.
If you read Dr. McDougall's material carefully, you'll see him stringing together sets of unrelated facts and strawmen in such a way that it almost appears that a valid argument is being made. Like this gem: [D]: "For the most efficient means of replenishing spent glycogen reserves, athletes have learned to choose foods that have a high GI. Selecting foods with a high GI is just as sound advice for anyone yearning to be strong and energetic throughout the day—not just for athletes."
The second statement does not follow from the first. Doing what athletes do to replenish their reserves when you haven't even used yours is incredibly bad advice. I'm speechless.
With regards to the American Diabetes Association reference by Dr. McDougall, one has to take into consideration when his article was written. Secondly, the reference you provided hardly shows much support for the glycemic index by the ADA, other than acknowledgement as a possible useful tool.
> The findings of a meta-analysis indicate that implementing a low-glycemic
> index diet lower A1C values by 0.43% when compared with a high-glycemic index diet.
0.43 PERCENT? Hardly a groundbreaking discovery.
> QUALIFYING STATEMENTS
> At this time, there is insufficient information to determine whether
> there is a relationship between glycemic index or glycemic load of diets
> and the development of diabetes. Prospective randomized trials will be
> necessary to confirm the relationship between the type of carbohydrate
> and the development of diabetes.
Harldy a strong endorsement.
> FINANCIAL DISCLOSURES/CONFLICTS OF INTEREST
> Janette C. Brand-Miller, PHD is on the board of directors of Glycemic Index Limited.
That report is not free of conflicts of interest.
Here is an article about the glycemic index currently at the ADA website.
http://www.diabetes.org/glycemic-index.jsp
> The Glycemic Index debate: Does the type of carbohydrate really matter?
> by Janine Freeman, RD, CDE
> As the low-carbohydrate-diet fad slowly loses steam, another may be moving in to take its place: the glycemic index fad.
...
> Some studies show small improvements in A1Cs among people who are attentive
> to the glycemic index. But reducing calories, weight loss, and basic
> carbohydrate counting have been shown to be more effective in improving
> A1Cs among people with type 2 diabetes than basing diet decisions on the GI.
> I don't suggest eliminating "high GI" foods in favor of "low GI" foods to
> gain better blood glucose levels for two reasons. First, there is not
> enough evidence yet to show that such an action actually will improve your
> blood glucose levels; and second, choosing foods based solely on GI will
> compromise healthy eating.
So it is evident that the ADA does not outright support and recommend the glycemic index.
Your final criticism is simply ridiculuous. Dr. McDougall writes of athletes and follows up with a recommendation for "anyone yearing to be strong and energetic". Hardly unrelated. I am speechless at your incredulity here. Secondly, he is not referring to old sports myths, such as carb loading, but replensihing glycogen reserves, which should be done after substantial activity, such as for one who is yearning to be "strong and energetic throughout the day."
Lastly, this has veered off topic - please provide a reference for your claim above that potatoes will "reduce your lifspan." I provided historical evidence of societies that lived on potatoes as a staple, with better health than the USA. You have done nothing other than nitpick and provide a Wikipedia URL that does not back up your claim, pretending that it contradicts an entire article by Dr. McDougall, without showing a single example.
The feats of logic required to go from after substantial activity to such as for one who is yearning to be "strong and energetic throughout the day." are just too much for me to bear.
To get back on topic, just by citing the original article that this post is about, I can tell you that eating sweet potato instead of normal potatoes will extend your life, unless the change excludes some very important nutrients (unlikely).
I'm sure I just need to learn new habits and have some will power, but sometimes I wish they'd just outlaw or ration unhealthy food too. It's just too damn abundant...
It's really difficult to re-train myself for a more modern understanding of nutrition.
Everybody has to die of something, but if people were able to pick, nobody would pick the most common causes: heart disease, cancer, and stroke.
If diet can play a part in avoiding these, and evidence suggests that the role is significant, we probably should eat what we like, as long as we learn to like that which is good for us.
I haven't really studied the subject, but I know from experience that the food I used to have at home (basically, the mediterranean diet) keeps me healthy and with no overweight. So I still follow my mother's wisdom: eat a bit of everything, with ingredients around olive oil, vegetables, fruit, bread, fish and some meat.
High-carb is actually the killer, and it's not a coincidence that has our diet got higher and higher in simple carbohydrates, our obesity levels have tripled (since 1970).
Of course, since we evolved to be hunter-gatherers and live off of high-fat, high-protein diets, it's sort of bizarre that medical professionals ever thought that high-carb was healthy in the first place. But that's what you get when you let doctors do the research instead of scientists. Iatrogenic disease has a long and sordid history.
High carb: food that contains a lot of carbs, saying nothing about the effect on blood sugar.
High glycemic index: carbs that cause blood sugar spikes.
High glycemic load: the (very bad) combination of the above 2 factors.
In other words, it's possible for one food with the exact same amount of carbs as another to have a much lower glycemic index.
High-carb is NOT the killer. High GI carbs are. Low GI carbs are good for you. That is the point of the article.
We know the body treats glucose in the bloodstream like a poison in the sense that it tries it's damnedest to get it out. Interesting articles:
The point is that the body tries to predict the amount of glucose ingested to minimise peaks. A long term marker of the bodies success at this is hba1c.
I'd love to see a reference for your last claim. Surely the mechanism of fat storage in periods of high sugar availability would be a desirable trait?
Low GI carbs are good because they release energy slowly, which means the blood sugar rises less but for a longer period, which doesn't strain your body's insulin production capabilities. Which means none of the complications normally associated with carbs, like weight gain, the need for even more high GI after a crash, diabetes, etc.
Straining insulin production facilities may not be the real issue, as most people over-produce insulin (in response to all the high-GI carbohydrate they've eaten over their lifetime). A bigger problem is insulin insensitivity, which leads to high insulin levels.
Yes, insulin "natural" but that's no argument. Fever is a natural response of the body too, but high fever can kill you.
Now maybe the problem is what is called "low-GI." Stuff with GIs around 10 aren't that harmful. Green vegetables mainly. But get up to 30-50 (low-GI range) and you're nearly to white bread.
The best advice, in the absence of better studies than we've got is probably: eat like your ancestors evolved to eat. They didn't have any of this crap. They didn't have breads or pastas. They didn't have vegetables like potatoes or corn. They ate a good amount of meat, a reasonable amount of green vegetables, nuts, and berries once or twice a year when they could get them.
It's textbook knowledge that this is an incorrect claim.
Corn was developed in Central Mexico at least 7000 years ago and eaten throughout North, Central, and South America since.
http://www.campsilos.org/mod3/students/c_history.shtml
Potatoes have been dated to 13,000 years ago in Chile and eaten throughout South America since.
http://www.accessmylibrary.com/coms2/summary_0286-5474753_IT...
How do you think our ancestors ate? Like the Massai and Inuit, isolated cases of peoples forced to eat as carnivores? Anthropology shows that these are exceptions, and that humans have been eating from plants, primarily starches as the bulk of their calories, for over 10,000 years.
> They ate a good amount of meat, a reasonable amount of green vegetables, nuts, and berries once or twice a year when they could get them.
How about fruits, vegetables, tubers, and later, grains?
Do you have commonly accepted references that our ancestors ate mostly meat and a negligble amount of calories from plants? Greens provide little calories, and you claim berries only once or twice a year, so basically you are saying 95%+ of their calories were from meat. A bold assertion - any references?
More importantly, 10,000 years is enough time to see some evolution, but when we are talking about the "diet we evolved for" the time-scale to look for is probably 100,000 years at least. 10,000 years is enough time to have evolved resistance, but not much more: Europeans get less obesity and diabetes on the "Western diet" than other peoples who have had agriculture for shorter periods of time. But that doesn't make the Western diet great for them. Agriculture was the biggest human health disaster ever recorded (read Jared Diamond's essay on this).
Grains were not a substantial part of the human diet until agriculture. Tubers and vegetables were to some degree. Fruits like anything you'd find in a modern supermarket were simply not available in most climates.
95% of calories from meat is too high for anybody except the Inuit. I think estimates are closer to 60% or so. But the Cambridge world history of food volume one is a good resource. Basically, it's a matter of looking at those hunter-gatherers who are left over and seeing what they eat. Of course, the hunter-gatherers who are left are naturally in the most inhospitable areas of the globe (otherwise the agriculturalists would have killed them all by now). So it's not an exact science by any means.
I came up with the 95% number as an estimate based on what you wrote, as the food sources you listed did not allow for anything besides meat and greens.
I still don't see a reference that humans ate mostly meat and then only later mostly plants.
I did not say that I did not know where you came up with your number.
I know you didn't see a reference. For that, you'd have to read my post. 4th paragraph, 2nd sentence. You apparently read and responded to a completely different post.