Fad Diets

I would would guess the Standard American Diet would have a lot more oil. I must confess that the beginning of this video was annoying. I thought that it was a rather typical defense of the standard American diet, often called SAD. But the presenter was providing a basic history of diet theories, and as she progressed I found more and more agreement.

One area of disagreement is the current mania to include more grains in the diet. While there is some difference in how the body handles the digestion of grains that are whole grains versus grains that are not, the difference was surprisingly small. Also the amount of fiber in these whole grain products are not as large as one might think. The high fiber cereals one can purchase are artificially constructed to include extra fiber. I am not necessarily against this, but it does run counter to one of my assumptions, that natural is better than artificial. But then again I did just finish a Quest bar which I eat for the almost full daily allotment of fiber each bar contains.

While I do try to incorporate some starch, I find that to do so I end up reducing my vegetables. This is not what I want to do.

One area of strong agreement is her conclusion that different diets work for different people and that in fact one is better off not to diet at all. But I will leave that for the next time I talk about health.

Milk Is a Scam

I often post or embed videos with which I disagree. This is one.

Some of the arguments here I found extremely unconvincing. While I think Dr. McDougal made a strong case against babies drinking cow's milk, I am not a baby.

On the other hand I see no reason to use milk as a beverage. Drinking any form of protein, carbohydrate, or fat in a liquid form is in my opinion a mistake. The calories so consumed do not seem to properly signal, at least to me, that I have eaten.

But I see no reason not to eat some dairy occasionally. I do so. I eat Greek Yogurt, as long as sugar is not added. I also use cheese as a way to get my vegetables past my lips, not always an easy thing for a manly man like me.

This brings me to McDougal's final point. It is true that male humans have prostates and seminal vesicles, and this is common mostly in vegetarian mammals. All primates have this--vegetarian or not. Many primates, like us, are omnivores. That is, we eat plants and animal products. This does not fit the template that McDougal is pushing, veganism.

But it does fit the template I am using: eat your fruit and vegetables, add some meat, dairy, and enough fat to keep one satiated.

So while I disagree with the premise of the speaker,I find it interesting enough to embed it here on my blog.

Quantitative Wheezing

One reason that I am skeptical about a lot of health studies was brought to my mind by an economic survey I read. The survey concluded that a smoker earns 19% less than a nonsmoker. I hope it is obvious that smoking does not cause a drop in income.

Instead someone who smokes, statistically speaking, tends to be of a lower socioeconomic class. If a smoker quits, they will not suddenly change classes. Their net income might go up as smoking is expensive, but not their job description or their class.

Health studies show consistently people who exercise are healthier than those who don't. This seems rather obvious. However it is not clear what they are measuring. It is just as logical to infer the opposite. Rather than conclude that exercise leads to heath, it is just as logical to conclude that health leads to exercise. Recovering from gout this week you can be assured that I did not walk my normal 2 miles three times a week, in fact I did not walk at all unless I had to!

But back to smoking, I think we need to help smokers out by having the government give them income price supports. It seems unfair that they have a smaller income. We need to help. Instead of quantitative easing, which only helps the banks, I suggest a program of quantitative wheezing to help smokers.

This makes about as much sense as our current economic policies.

Note that I am not saying to light up that smoke, nor I am saying that you should become a couch potato. I am saying that you cannot trust the statistics or the health stories you are hearing. They are not reliable. If you want to know the truth you have to look deeper.

So I am using these two examples, just to prove a point ...



I will post the full show this is from next Tuesday, just to prove the point of the large number of videos that are available without watching commercial TV. If you can't trust it, why watch it? 

Fruits

One interesting aspect of sugar is that fruit sugar is not turned into blood sugar. Instead it is turned directly into fat. For our ancestors this was a good thing. It allowed them to gain weight in the summer and fall to help survive the winter. Most people today do not need to gain weight in the summer to survive the winter. Thus eating sugar, of any type, is a little dangerous if you feel that you weigh too much. The metabolism of this is discussed in a previous blog post where I discuss the video—The Bitter Truth About Sugar.

Still fruit is better for you than grains. Why? The grains, having no fruit sugar, are turned into sugar in the blood much quicker than fruits. This is counter intuitive. Thus bread or rice are converted into blood sugar quicker than sugar is. Whether it is whole grains or not does not matter as much as one would expect. There are some exceptions to this, as there always are. Barley is converted into sugar slowly, and grapes are converted into blood sugar more quickly. I will talk about this more in a future blog post. 

This brings us to the video I am posting today. The idea that humans need 6 to 11 servings of whole grains is nuts. Since most grains are converted into blood sugar quickly this is the same as saying eats lots of sugar. Grains do have a few advantages over sugar, a few artificially added vitamins and fiber, but trust me, if you are eating your vegetables, neither fiber nor vitamins will be a problem.

Personally I eat one or two servings of grain a day. if I had my own personal Food Pyramid, grains and starches would be a smallish sliver above nuts and below herbs. (Note that as I am gluten sensitive this does not include wheat.) My goal of 9 servings of vegetables a day has been hard to achieve. It is doable. The government recommendation of 2 to 3 servings of fruit a day actually seems about right. Remember that a banana is two servings. Also remember that alcohol and the fake sugar alcohol are digested exactly like fruit sugar and are converted directly into fat. Thus I try to limit my intake of fruit, alcohol, and alcohol sugars to 3 servings a day as my triglycerides in my blood are too high. Triglycerides are an end product of fruit, alcohol, and sugar alcohol metabolism.

The main point of this video is that it makes no sense to use the fake gluten-free products as they are still converted rapidly into sugar. We have some of these products, but use them infrequently. 

Is a Gluten Free Diet Dangerous?

It is a common mistake to extrapolate one's own experience and try to enforce it on others.  So I will try not to do that in my introduction to the video I am sharing today. 

I am writing to the 10 to 30% of my readers that have problems with wheat. 80% of you have no idea that this is a problem. I certainly had no idea. 

Since about 20% of the modern US diet is from wheat, this is a problem for wheat-sensitive people. With what do you replace the wheat? As this video advocates, replacing processed wheat products with wheat-free processed products does not accomplish much, if anything. 

Instead I suggest you follow your mother's advice and eat your vegetables. In fact doubling or tripling your intake is probably called for, if you eat like the mythical "average US consumer." This is how I replaced the wheat. Increased vegetable consumption is not harmful for anyone because our consumption of this food group is very low.  So even if you still eat wheat, and most of you will and maybe should, cutting back on all processed foods of any food group and eating your vegetables is what you should be doing. 

I have a feeling you already know this. 

Soon I will talk about fruit, which while healthy does have some problems that should be discussed.