Filed under: Food and it's Impact on Our Health
A few days ago I had a young man ask me about the carb count in the food I was servings to him, but something in the way he said it made me quickly glance up…he looked frightened. Something didn’t compute…he was about 6’ 2”, in perfect physical shape, young, about 24 or so. I asked’ “You have a blood sugar problem”?
He replied, “ I was just released from Mayo this morning, I was taken to the hospital when I passed out, they said I have diabetes. I asked him what they had told him to eat and how to manage it. As he told me the answer I started getting madder and madder. “They told me”, he said, “ To eat the same foods I am eating now but to eat half the amount!” I was incredulous. He said, his face becoming animated, “But I’m sooo hungry”! When asked what he had for breakfast that morning at the hospital, he told me he had had half of an English Muffin with margarine, half a bowl of oatmeal with 2% milk, and a fruit cup!
As I explained to him how excess carbs and the wrong fats, and lack of fats had gotten him to where he was today…it dawned on him..they were creating a patient for life. I told him my experiences when doctors had told me they were not interested in teaching people top get well to the degree that I did, that they didn’t have time and that they would lose out on income.
So I went on with the conversation, explaining about organic meat, grass fed beef, coconut oil…and why…he just grinned, “I can eat, I don’t have to try to be hungry the rest of my life!”
I obtained a flyer from the company Sanofi Aventis, clearly a company who makes pharmaceuticals..although it never mentions that on the flyer, The accompanying flyer was an advertisement for Insulin.
Here’s the Diet they recommended for a diabetic;
Breakfast; white egg omelet with low fat cheese, spinach, onions, a slice of whole wheat toast, 1 teaspoon light margarine spread, 2/3 cup light yogurt, half a grapefruit and coffee with artificial sweetener.
The Nutrition breakdown;
229 calories- woefully inadequate, he should be getting a third of his calories for the day!
30% of his calories were from fat- too low.
23% of calories were from protein- too low.
And 47% of his calories were from CARBOHYDRATES! No wonder they recommend this diet along with the insulin…he’s gonna need it! Plus he has gotten 17% of needed calcium, 7% of needed iron…this isn’t looking good for his health. He took in 41 mg. of Vitamin C, kinda scary. And he took in 438 IU. of Vitamin A..you need 50,000 a DAY! And it is easily gotten through diet alone.
Next; Lunch; 2 slices rye bread, 2 ounces turkey, 2 slices tomato, low fat cheese, light mayonnaise, small apple and a diet beverage! I swear, it really says that!
Lunch was 367 calories- kinda puny..and who eats 2 ounces of meat on a sandwich?
19% was from fat- way too low.
23% was from protein- are you seeing a pattern here…since these too numbers are always too low…guess what that does to the carb percentages? You guessed it!
Carbs were 58% of this persons intake. Eeeekkk! No way to handle diabetes, and a good way to develop more diabetics.
He did get 59 mg of Vitamin C, big whoop. And 2638 IU of Vitamin A, far short still of that 50,000. He took in 14% of needed calcium, and along with the inadequate Vitamin C…no or low absorption of calcium…which he’s not getting enough of anyway.
So lets look at the whole day,. Dinner was 3 OUNCES of broiled salmon with 2 teaspoons canola oil, a whole wheat dinner roll. mixed greens with olive oil, 2/3 cup brown rice and a packet of sugar free chocolate pudding.
This poor man had 1200 calories. I’d starve to death. 29% was from fat, too low for good health and most of high fats were monounsaturated fats, those fats that make cholesterol stick together in the arteries, leads to heart disease, have no nutrition in them, are rancid and unsafe to ever heat at all.
18% of his calories were from protein, too low. And carbs were at 53%. They should be between 15 and 20% for healthy individuals, which is also ideal for diabetics…doesn’t THAT make sense?
But let’s take a look at the nutrition; the vitamins and minerals he got this day;
122 mg of Vitamin C for the whole day! Dismal.
4271 IU of Vitamin A, we need 50,000 to 75,000 from our diet each day.
He took in 54% of needed calcium…(he’ll need Boniva, Lipitor and then Viagra…)
He took in 51% of needed Iron.
And the FDA, the American Heart Association, the Diabetic Association will tell you this is good nutrition.
It’s a joke, and it pisses me off. They lie to sell drugs, keep the doctors offices and hospitals full. It’s time we all got mad and gave feedback about the way you have been duped into thinking that these illnesses “just happen”…they are preventable!
but not with the FDA approved “diet”.
Filed under: Environmental Issues, Food and it's Impact on Our Health, In The Kitchen with Millie- How To's
Many of ya”ll may not have been born by 1969. Those of us who were adults at that time know the extent to which the "new foods" really are imitation foods even though they are not labeled as such.
Crisco- a crappy, dangerous version of lard.
Margarine- A mix of vegetable oils chemically hardened to make it seem like butter..kinda.
Bouillon cubes- nothing like real stocks. Yucky and salty, and they sure don’t have that same mouth feel..mmmm.
Soy- one of the most dangerous foods; highly processed, too many dangers to go into here.
And all the other hellish stuff that man has created and people have actually learned to like..; shake and bake chicken, TV dinners, instant mashed potatoes, Kool-aid, Hawaiian punch…eeeoooowww. I learned to cook at a young age because my mom couldn’t…and I love great food, like at my grandmothers house..it was filling, healthy…at my parents I was always hungry. I whined to get apple juice instead of Kool-aid, honey instead of sugar, butter instead of margarine, Roman Meal bread instead of all the white stuff. Turns out that traditional is best..that’s why it’s a tradition. Pretty basic.
And it turns out that yes, those kitchen arts that are almost lost, stock making, canning, rendering fats, soap making…doing it from scratch is best, healthiest and saves the environment…and us. And my kids have made fun of me for loving to do things from scratch..but I love it all, paper-making, distilling flowers, making my own skin care products, using a clothesline, sewing…just has always made sense to me…and is immensely satisfying.
My next class is on Traditional Arts; Eat a Traditional Diet, How and Why, Stock and Sauce Making, Yogurt making, The Right Fats and how to use them.
I received this comment on my blog;
“Everyone has they’re opinion on what is right or wrong to eat? "God" speaks in the bible about what is clean and unclean to eat of that of which was provided to us. And also, the grains,fruits,etc.. Anything beyond that would be bad for you. So, it’s not what we eat or don’t eat that is detrimental or not to our health, but the man-made additives that are put into making the foods we eat so it will taste better. I do not condone the slaughter industry and the way they produce meat, however, I am not a vegetarian, but I do try to stay more vegan than meat. I’m still learning how to balance what is better, in a long run,for my health, for our bodies are not our own”.
I replied;
While I do appreciate your opinion and input, but it just so happens that humans get very sick on just eating grains and vegetables. That’s science, not religion. I have my own "belief" system when it comes to God, but I study science and nutrition. If God had not provided meat for us to eat, and the knowledge to prepare it, the human race would not have evolved this far. Since we need meat and fats to be healthy, and God has instructed us to eat well and treat out body as a temple…so we can go forth and do his work, it cannot be wrong morally for us to eat meat.
I speak from the perspective of a recovering vegetarian. I followed that way of eating for almost 25 years…because we had no clean meat to eat! I had problems with it, it didn’t give me the right fats, I developed an allergy to EVERY SINGLE PROTEIN SOURCE associated with a vegetarian diet; SOY (after eating it for 15 years it made me start going into anaphylactic shock), DAIRY (I became seriously allergic to all dairy), NUTS (same reaction as to soy, after eating them all my life). I also became highly sensitized to grains. I got well when I stopped eating these very common allergens. Meats, fats and meats broths have enabled me to repair my immune system. I now eat a diet that man has been evolving on for thousands of years; meat, meat stocks, vegetables and fruits. Remember we have only been eating more grains after we stopped living as hunter-gatherers and began living in cities, somewhere around 1000 to 1100 AD>
Even though Kosher meat is killed kindly, it is not organic. Grass-fed gives me meat and fats that are clean; organic, full of life preserving, immune system building Vitamins A,D and E, and the right composition of fats.
I totally agree with the part of your statement about the additives and chemicals doing us harm. It is PART of the picture…but the most crucial nutrients that Americans are deficient in (calcium, Vitamin A and D, saturated fats) are only available in meat and fats from animals that have been raised in the sun!
So hang on to the limited diets that you are eating in the name of “a belief system”, but know that you will develop health problems and deficiencies as you age… Living on mostly carbs (grains and vegetables) will lead to obesity, a breakdown in your immune system, delicate skin that is prone to dryness and skin cancer, depression for lack of the right saturated fats and lack of energy and endurance.
Please read- The Ethics of Eating Meat by Charles Eisenstein
I put a glycemic index up on my site for ya’ll to work off of. Many of the sites on line has a bazillion things to wade through because they list everything..all the breads, cereals, junk foods, sugar, candies…..stuff I don’t eat, and neither should you. So just follow the percentages; get 50% of your calories from fat, 30% from eggs, grass fed meats, and 20% from low glycemic vegetables. Never go above 50 on the glycemic index…or not very often. I always have fruit at breakfast with my fats and proteins, and veggies with lunch and dinner.
Filed under: Food and it's Impact on Our Health
The process by which agave glucose and inulin are converted into “nectar” is similar to the process by which corn starch is converted into HFCS.
The skinny on natural sugar alternatives is that they are a big, fat business opportunity and therefore worth a closer look. You know that our species is genetically programmed to eat sweets until we pretty much explode. Savvy consumers are constantly trying to avoid not only the dizzying amount of sugar and high-fructose corn syrup in our food supply, but also spooky artificial sweeteners, most of which were discovered by accident by people wearing safety goggles and lab coats. This leaves us to appease our sweet tooth with natural sweeteners, a few of which are having a “moment.” But are they—like Ponzi schemes, unnaturally muscular athletes, and Tequila-born love affairs—just too good to be true?
Ina word…YES!
In spite of manufacturers’ claims, agave “nectar” is not made from the sap of the yucca or agave plant but from the starch of the giant pineapple-like, root bulb. The principal constituent of the agave root is starch, similar to the starch in corn or rice, and a complex carbohydrate called inulin, which is made up of chains of fructose molecules. Technically a highly indigestible fiber, inulin, which does not taste sweet, comprises about half of the carbohydrate content of agave. 34
The process by which agave glucose and inulin are converted into “nectar” is similar to the process by which corn starch is converted into HFCS. 35
The agave starch is subject to an enzymatic and chemical process that converts the starch into a fructose-rich syrup—anywhere from 70 percent fructose and higher according to the agave nectar chemical profiles posted on agave nectar websites.
36
(One agave manufacturer claims that his product is made with “natural” enzymes.) That’s right, the refined fructose in agave nectar is much more concentrated than the fructose in HFCS. For comparison, the high fructose corn syrup used in sodas is 55 percent refined fructose. (A natural agave product does exist in Mexico, a molasses type of syrup from concentrated plant nectar, but availability is limited and it is expensive to produce.)
According to Bianchi, agave “nectar” and HFCS “are indeed made the same way, using a highly chemical process with genetically modified enzymes. They are also using caustic acids, clarifiers, filtration chemicals and so forth in the conversion of agave starches.” The result is a high level of highly refined fructose in the remaining syrup, along with some remaining inulin.
In a confidential FDA letter, Dr. Martin Stutsman of the Food and Drug Administration’s Offce of Labeling Enforcement, explains the FDA’s food labeling laws related to agave nectar: “Corn syrup treated with enzymes to enhance the fructose levels is to be labeled ‘High Fructose Corn Syrup.’” According to Mr. Stutsman, agave requires the label “hydrolyzed inulin syrup.”37
Corn Syrup.’” According to Mr. Stutsman, agave requires the label “hydrolyzed inulin syrup.”37 Even though, like corn, agave is a starch and fber food processed with enzymes, it does not require the label “High Fructose Agave Syrup.” Agave “nectar” is a misnomer; at the very least, it should be labeled “agave syrup.”
Agave syrup comes in two colors: clear or light, and amber. What is this difference? Mr. Bianchi explains: “Due to poor quality control in the agave processing plants in Mexico, sometimes the fructose gets burned after being heated above 140 degrees Fahrenheit, thus creating a darker, or amber color.” However, the labels create the impression of an artisan product—like light or amber beer.
THE SAPONIN PROBLEM
Yucca species are known to contain large quantities of saponins. The industry describes saponins in agave syrup as beneficial: “Agave’s rich density of saponins increases hydration as the soapy, surfactant nature of saponins change the wetting angle of water it contacts. This eases and accelerates cellular water uptake, especially when used with a high-quality salt.”38
However, the truth is that the saponins found in many varieties of agave plants are toxic steroid derivatives, capable of disrupting red blood cells and producing diarrhea and vomiting,39 Agave should be avoided during pregnancy or breastfeeding because they might cause or contribute to miscarriage by stimulating blood flow to the uterus.40 At the very least, agave products should carry a warning label indicating that the product may cause a miscarriage.
JUST SAY NO TO AGAVE
Since the FDA makes no effort to enforce food-labeling laws, consumers cannot be certain that what they are eating is what the label says it is. New sweeteners like agave syrup were introduced into the market to make a profit, not to make consumers healthy. Clever marketing has led mane consumers to believe that the high level of fructose in agave syrup makes it a safe and a natural sweetener. Agave syrup labels do not conform to FDA labeling requirements, thus deepening the false illusion of an unprocessed product. As we have demonstrated here, if a sweetener contains manufactured fructose, it is neither safe, nor natural, especially at levels up to 70 percent.
Agave syrup is a manmade sweetener which has been through a complicated chemical refining process of enzymatic digestion that converts the starch and fiber into the unbound, manmade chemical fructose. While high fructose agave syrup won’t spike your blood glucose levels, the fructose in it may cause mineral depletion, liver inflammation, hardening of the arteries, insulin resistance leading to diabetes, high blood pres-sure, cardiovascular disease and obesity.
If you want something sweet, eat a piece of fruit, not a candy bar labeled as a “health food.”
If you want to create something sweet, use sweeteners that are known to be safer. For uncooked dishes, unheated raw honey or dates work well. For cooked dishes or sweet drinks, a good organic maple syrup, or even freshly juiced apple
juice or orange juice can provide delicious and relatively safe sweetness; dehydrated cane sugar juice or maple sugar may be used in moderation in cookies and desserts that contain nutritious ingredients and good fats such as butter, egg yolks and nuts.
However, to be healthy, we cannot eat sugar all day, no matter how natural the form. One should limit total sweetener consumption to less han fve percent of daily calories. For a diet of 2500 calories per day, that’s less than three tablespoons of honey, maple syrup or dehydrated cane sugar juice, or several pieces of fruit. And many people do best by avoiding sweeteners completely.
The lack of standards in the health food world comes as depressing news; but let this news encourage you to consume more pure and unrefined foods and sweetener sources. Good health depends on wise food choices, and wise food choices depend on constant vigilance.
More on the Agave Industry
In the year 2000, with warrants in hand, federal agents from the Office of Criminal Investigations of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) came banging on the door of North America’s largest agave nectar distributor, Western Commerce Corporation in California. In an extremely rare case of the FDA protecting consumer interests (rather than supporting big business, while shutting down legitimate and health consciousness competition), they discovered that Western Commerce Corporation was adulterating their agave syrup with high fructose corn syrup (to lower the cost even more and increase profit margins). While the federal agents confiscated material in the warehouse, the owners of Western Commerce Corporation were nowhere to be found. Those who ran the company fled the country with millions of dollars in assets to avoid criminal prosecution.
This adulterated agave syrup (refined fructose) was also labeled as certified organic to fool consumers into thinking they were getting a pure product. This shows you how unverified organic labels are used in the USA. Today, high fructose agave syrup is made primarily by two companies: Nekutli, and IIDEA. A third agave marketer, by the name of Volcanic, has a suspicious claim on their website. “If your agave comes from one of the other two companies in Mexico, something has been added.” They are referring to Nekutli and IIDEA. Their claim is based upon an analysis, which they say shows that Volcanic’s agave nectar has a lower level of refined fructose.
When Western Commerce Corporation was shut down, the large retail establishments in the food industry stayed away from agave syrups. They knew better than to risk lawsuits and consumer fraud. “They understood that agave was criminally mislabeled per the U.S. Code of Federal Regulation labeling laws, with an untried sweetener, new to the market, that contained saponins, and was not clearly approved as safe for use,” explains Mr. Bianchi. For many years following this bust, the supermarket and health food store industry avoided using agave.
But recently, some sellers in the agave syrup field, once quiet, have begun sneaking back into the food and beverage chains. And retail food giants like Whole Foods, Wegman’s, Trader Joe’s and Kroger, who should know better, and who should know the food labeling laws and requirements, still have no hesitation in selling the toxic, unapproved and mislabeled refined fructose agave syrup, as well as products containing it.
Source: Russ Bianchi and the Weston Price Foundation
For References click HERE
Filed under: Food and it's Impact on Our Health, In The Kitchen with Millie- How To's
The huge bones are simmering on the stove..I felt like a cave woman in my kitchen last night…browning huge beef shank bones in my Dutch oven, in luscious coconut oil. So tonight it has been sloowly bubbling for 24 hours..I added carrots, onions, celery..all organic, with bay leaves, crushed peppercorns…Celtic salt.
And as I just tasted it for the first time…I realized that I have never tasted a true beef stock before…the mouth feel is nothing like the insipid, salty stuff I have had. The grass fed beef is heavenly to cook with…amazingly nutritious. The gelatin is developing, it’s silky texture is amazingly satisfying.
Another 24 hours to go…the house smells amazing.
I’m making beet salad from beets I grew, then roasted with the beef bones in the oven last night. I added dill and rice vinegar, light salt. Mmmm
While it’s bubbling….I’m making a flourless chocolate cake. Here’s the recipe;
Flourless Chocolate Cake Topped with Raspberries
- 12 oz semisweet chocolate chips
- 1/2 cup butter
- 1/4 cup sugar
- 1/4 cup water
- 1 teaspoon instant coffee granules
- 3 eggs
Preheat the oven to 425 F.
Butter the bottom and sides of a 9 inch pie plate.
Place a 12 inch square sheet of waxed paper in the plate and butter the waxed paper.
In a medium sized saucepan, combine the chocolate chips, 1/2 cup butter, sugar, water, and coffee granules. Heat over medium heat for 2 to 3 minutes, until the chocolate and butter are melted, stirring constantly.
Remove from the heat and stir in the eggs until the mixture is smooth. Pour into the waxed paper-lined pie plate. Bake for 10 minutes; the cake will not be completely set in the middle. Cool, cover loosely, then chill for 6 to 8 hours, or overnight.
When ready to serve, remove the cake from the refrigerator and allow to sit for 10 minutes. Invert the cake onto a large flat serving dish and remove the waxed paper.
Top with raspberries across the whole top, begin in the middle and work out…letting the raspberry tips straight up.
Filed under: Food and it's Impact on Our Health
Close friends of mine began nagging me a few years ago to check out the company that they were getting coconut oil from, Tropical Traditions. They said the thier coconut oil was the best they’d ever had; unprocessed, made by hand, organic… I had only a few years before began researching saturated fats and the role they play in the body, and eating coconut oil…and was pleased with the organic coconut oil I was already eating. Plus, money was tight and I saw no reason to change to a more expensive product…until I went on the site and read about this wonderful product, and began looking into the differences in virgin oils compared to processed oils.
About 3 weeks ago my friends told me they were having an awesome sale, half off on coconut cream, so I ordered some of thier virgin oil. They sent me a book on the company, how the coconut oil was handmade and the health benefits of unprocessed virgin oil.
First of all, the service was wonderful, customer service was excellent, I got my order quickly…the coconut oil and the cream were in glass jars, not plastic. The packaging was all cardboard, no Styrofoam, no plastic.
I love it. I like the taste, the coconut cream is amazing…I made Coconut Fudge Sauce and it is to die for! The cream is coconut concentrate, I use it just like I would heavy cream in a recipe.
The oil I cook with, bake with, use on my hair, my face, my legs after shaving… Coconut cream has always been my favorite oil, mixed with olive oil..to make bar soap or shampoo.
They also carry coconut; shredded, chips, flour (WAY lower on the glycemic index than other flours, a dream to bake with and gluten free!), They carry organic unrefined palm oil, sesame, extra virgin olive oil, soaps, grass fed meat, organic foods.
Here is what info from thier website;
Independent laboratory analysis shows this to be one of the highest quality coconut oils on the market, having the highest levels of antioxidants. This enhanced Virgin Coconut Oil is now in the US market under the Tropical Traditions Gold Label brand. It meets our strictest standards to earn this designation. Today when you buy Tropical Traditions Gold Label Virgin Coconut Oil, you are buying the highest quality coconut oil we have to offer, and it is still made by hand and benefiting families in the rural areas of the Philippines where the coconuts grow.
Is Virgin Coconut Oil the healthiest oil on earth?
Read the research here!
Read what Weston Price has to say about Coconut Oil.
Characteristics of Our Gold Label Virgin Coconut Oil
This Tropical Traditions Gold Label Virgin Coconut Oil is a truly unrefined coconut oil. This coconut oil is made on Mt. Banahaw and surrounding areas from organic coconuts. Coconuts are used fresh (within 24-48 hours of harvest) from small family farms on Mt. Banahaw and other rural places in Quezon Province, the coconut capital of the Philippines. Only the highest quality coconuts are hand-picked from each harvest. The volcanic soil of Mt. Banahaw makes these organic coconuts some of the most nutritionally rich coconuts in the world! Testing done in independent laboratories reveals higher levels of phenolic antioxidants than other coconut oils. The fresh coconut meat is shredded (wet milled), and then cold-pressed using the water from inside the coconuts to make coconut milk. The milk is then allowed to sit for about half a day, while the oil naturally separates from the heavier water. The oil is then filtered from the curds (coconut solids). No chemical or high-heat treatment is used, and this oil contains no trans fatty acids. We do NOT mass produce this oil. It is made by families who are coconut farmers using old-fashioned traditional methods that have been used in the Philippines for hundreds of years. Our coconut trees and family producers are certified organic according to strict USDA standards.
Tropical Traditions also has a Referral Program, so if you place an order with them as a first-time customer, please select “Referred by a friend” and in the box that says “How did you hear of us?” enter my sponsor ID number… 5541380. By telling Tropical Traditions that I referred you, you will receive a complimentary copy of the book Virgin Coconut Oil: How it has changed people’s lives and how it can change yours! by Brian and Marianita Shilhavy with your first order! This book is filled with testimonies and research showing how healthy coconut oil is, and it also includes over 85 recipes showing how one can incorporate coconut into their diet.
I am thrilled to have found this product and recommend it highly.
Filed under: Basics, Food and it's Impact on Our Health, In The Kitchen with Millie- How To's
I have been happily making chicken stock for quite some time now.. About a year and a half ago, while working at Native Sun, I kept bugging the employees in the meat department about finding me a case of grass fed beef shank bones. Months this went on, to no avail. They said they couldn’t get an answer…then they said no.
I could find them on the internet, but I’ll go to extremes to keep from having something shipped to me..for environmental reasons mainly..but also wanting really fresh bones. The local co-ops want 35. to 50. to join.. What to do? I finally sucked up and went to Whole Foods…whom I certainly don’t trust for lots of reasons, preferring to shop local, not chains..
But a friend called and said she had asked them about the bones and they had them…so I got up the next morning and schlepped all the way out there. and was told they didn’t have them. They apologized and gave me the meat managers card, who would be in the next afternoon. So I waited til then and called, spoke to him and made arrangements to drive out the next afternoon to get them..he would hold them for me.
He didn’t…or rather when I got there, again, the next afternoon in 5 o’clock traffic…he wasn’t there. Seems he had been taken to the hospital for diabetes. Why don’t health food stores teach people how to eat? Classes on nutrition? Anyway, I whine, they look all over, can’t find them. They talked to the store manager, who had them cut 4 the meat off of 3 shanks…a 40 minutes wait…but t5hey did it. While hanging out at the meat counter, I noticed that bison was on sale for 3.99 a POUND. Wow… bought three pounds… Finally heaved the bones out to the car, with help…and at a great price.
The burger I had that night was the best bison burger I’ve ever had, very fresh, perfect. Wow.
And this afternoon I came home and browned, then slow roasted all those shanks and they are gently simmering for the next 2 days..mmmmmmmm.
Beef Stock
about 5 pounds beef shank bones
2 Tablespoons coconut oil
3 pounds meaty rib or neck bones
5 or more quarts cold filtered water
1/2 cup vinegar
3 onions, coarsely chopped
3 carrots, coarsely chopped
several sprigs of fresh thyme, tied together
Heat coconut oil to slightly above medium heat, place shanks bones in oil to brown. Brown on all sides, even the ends of marrow. Then place in a roasting pan, covered, and brown at 325 degrees in the oven for 1 hour.
Place the knuckle and marrow bones in a large pot with vinegar and cover with water. Let stand for one hour.
Place roasted bones the water with them knuckles and stuff. Slowly bring up to a soft simmer and simmer, covered for…the longer the better..up to 72 hours.
Pour the fat out of the roasting pan. Deglaze the roasting pan, add liquid to pot., Add additional water, if necessary, to cover the bones; but the liquid should come no higher than within one inch of the rim of the pot, as the volume expands slightly during cooking. Bring to a boil.
A large amount of scum will come to the top, and it is important to remove this with a spoon. After you have skimmed, reduce heat and add the thyme and crushed peppercorns.
Simmer stock for at least 12 and as long as 72 hours. You will now have a pot of rather repulsive-looking brown liquid containing globs of gelatinous and fatty material. It doesn’t even smell particularly good. But don’t despair. After straining you will have a delicious and nourishing clear broth that forms the basis for many other recipes.
After you have made the stock and reduced it as much as you want, place the pot in the refrigerator and let it cool overnight. All the fat will rise to the top. Boil that fat with twice the amount of water as fat, let it solidify again, and THEN store it in the fridge or freezer. This removes a good amount of the meaty taste, and whatever sediment is in the fat will sink to the bottom of the pot. Use it like you would schmaltz or any other solid fat — especially for frying or in pie crusts!
You can do this with bacon grease, too, although I don’t know why you would want to get RID of bacon flavor!! 
The Response-to-Injury Rabbit Never Developed Atherosclerosis — Why Not?
by Chris Masterjohn
From Cholesterol and Health.com
The pop science version of cholesterol goes something like this: when you eat fatty foods, especially foods rich in animal fat, the saturated fat and cholesterol in these foods wind up in your blood and stick to your arteries. Since saturated fats are solid outside your body, they will be solid inside your body too — depsite the 30-degree increase in average temperature. Arteries are much like pipes. When they get caked up with grease, blood flow is impaired, and a heart attack ensues.
None of the prominent scientists who promoted the idea that cholesterol is a critical factor in the development of heart disease ever believed anything remotely resembling this nonsense. From the beginning, they recognized that atherosclerotic plaque accumulates behind the layer of the artery in contact with the blood, called the endothelium, and that the cholesterol and fat within it is engulfed in white blood cells.
The theory these scientists promoted looked something like this: when the cholesterol level in the blood increases, it penetrates the arterial wall and gets stuck; white blood cells circulating in the blood then enter the arterial wall and gobble up the cholesterol; the accumulation of lipid-loaded white blood cells causes local injury, leading to cell death, calcification, and the development of a collagen-laden "fibrous cap" over the atherosclerotic lesion. When the cap ruptures, the blood clots, blocking the artery and causing a heart attack. This is called the lipid hypothesis.
But is this true? Books and web sites devoted to debunking this theory have come out of the woodwork over the last decade; books defending it have followed suit. Consider the following titles to see just how controversial the idea really is:
- The Cholesterol Myths: Exposing the Fallacy That Saturated Fat and Cholesterol Cause Heart Disease by Uffe Ravnskov, MD, PhD (2000).
- The Great Cholesterol Con: Why everything you’ve been told about cholesterol, diet, and heart disease is wrong! by Anthony Colpo (2006).
- The Cholesterol Wars: The Skeptics vs. the Preponderance of the Evidence by Daniel Steinberg, MD, PhD (2007).
- The Great Cholesterol Con: The Truth About What Really Causes Heart Disease and How to Avoid It by Malcolm Kendrick, MD (2007).
So is the theory that cholesterol causes heart disease just a myth? Or are the skeptics truly waging a war against the preponderance of the evidence?
The Cholesterol Debate — What Causes Atherosclerosis?
The truth is that each of these authors makes important points. Were there never any good evidence that cholesterol was involved in heart disease, there would be no National Cholesterol Education Program, no statin empire, and Daniel Steinberg could never have written a book plus over 200 scientific papers on the subject. On the other hand, were there never anything seriously wrong with the mainstream dogma on the issue, Ravnskov, Colpo, Kendrick, and many other authors could never have built their careers around pointing out the gaping holes in the theory.
There is no one cause of "heart disease." "Heart disease" is a heterogeneous compliation of diseases of the heart and blood vessels with many different causes. Some of these include disturbances of the rhythm of the heart, calcification of the middle portion of the blood vessels and calcification of the heart valves, and congestive heart failure. The question I address in this article is whether and in what sense cholesterol is involved in atherosclerosis, the development of fatty and calcified plaques in isolated, raised lesions, which can cause heart attacks by rupturing, clotting, and blocking arteries.
In 1933, the famous proponent of the cholesterol-fed rabbit model Nikolai Anitschkov declared that atherosclerosis had been shown to be of an "infiltrative" character rather than a "degenerative" character and was driven by lipids (fatty substances) rather than by inflammation. He did not deny inflammation was involved, but believed that it was secondary to lipid infiltration. Many opponents continue to claim that the root cause driving heart disease has nothing to do with lipids and everything to do with inflammation and that it is degenerative rather than infiltrative in character.
As we will see below, these are all correct! Atherosclerosis is largely driven by the degeneration of lipids which infiltrate the blood vessel and thereby cause inflammation. Inflammation from other sources may accelerate the process or further the degeneration of the atherosclerotic plaques once they are formed, but the initiating factor for fatty plaques appears to be the degeneration of lipids — especially the degeneration of polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFA).
In order to begin looking at the evidence, we must go back a century in time to the cholesterol-fed rabbit. The cholesterol-fed rabbit model came on the heels of extensive investigations into what would later be termed the "response-to-injury hypothesis."
The Response-to-Injury Rabbit Model
Around the turn of the twentieth century, research into the cause or causes of heart disease was in full throttle. A 1933 compilation edited by E.V. Cowdry entitled Arteriosclerosis: A Survey of the Problem (New York: Macmillan) contained twenty reviews of investigations into the matter, including statistical relationships, the distribution of the disease in wild animals, the distribution in humans according to race and climate, nutritional influences, the physical and chemical nature of the changes that occur in atherosclerotic tissues, and experimental models of the disease.
Nikolai Anitschkov, who developed the cholesterol-fed rabbit model, wrote the 50-page review of experimental animal models.1 Much of this research was published in German, so Anitschkov’s review is an invaluable resource.
According to Anitschkov, early ideas about the origin of arteriosclerosis — a general term for hardening and damage to the arteries, of which atherosclerosis is a specific type — saw the diseases as a response to injury. The injury was primarily seen as either a mechanical or a toxic factor, and was sometimes believed to be injury to the nerves rather than injury to the blood vessels. Researchers carried out a multitude of experiments on rabbits and other animals, including the following:
- Mechanical damage to the blood vessels including ligating, pulling, pinching, and wounding them, and cauterizing them with galvanic wire or silver nitrate.
- Increasing blood pressure by constricting the blood supply through the aorta, damaging the kidneys, or hanging rabbits up by their feet.
- Severing or irritating certain nerves.
- Injecting rabbits with adrenalin.
- Injecting rabbits with a multitude of toxic factors, including digitalin, strophanthin, adonidin, ergotin, theocin, barium chloride, hydrastin, nicotine, caffeine, formalin, ergosterol, and various salts of acids and heavy metals.
- Injection of diphtheria toxin and many other bacteria cultures or bacterial byproducts.
Most of these methods caused substantial damage to the arteries and resulted in a "regenerative thickening" of one or another type. So the response-to-injury concept is quite real.
Atherosclerosis is Just One Type of Arteriosclerosis
None of these methods, however, produced anything resembling human atherosclerosis. While arteriosclerosis refers to hardening and degeneration of the arteries in general, atherosclerosis is a specific type of arteriosclerosis in which a plaque rich in lipid-loaded white blood cells, cholesterol, fatty acids, calcium, various debris — called an atheroma — invades the innermost layer of the blood vessel wall called the intima, just behind the one-cell-thick layer called the endothelium. If you are not familiar with the anatomy of a blood vessel, you can see a diagram of it here.
The research in Anitschkov’s day suggested that, while various types of arteriosclerosis occurred in humans, atherosclerosis was a much more important cause of death. Anitschkov thus concerned his research with what caused atherosclerosis.
The mechanical injuries to blood vessels or nerves produced a local repair process that involved the proliferation of cells, their congregation around the damaged area, and a resultant thickening of the vessel wall. The results were local rather than systemic, however, and never produced a lesion resembling an atheroma.
Injections of adrenalin produced much more interesting changes that were much more relevant to humans. They produced necrosis (death) of cells in the media followed by extensive calcification. A similar process was observed in some of the blood pressure experiments and in many of the experiments involving injections of metallic, bacterial, or other toxins. These changes, however, were fundamentally different from atherosclerosis, which occurs in the intima.
Medial Calcification and the Vitamin K2 Connection
That does not mean this research is irrelevant. Humans experience this type of medial calcification in diabetes, kidney disease, and aging. It appears to assault the media of arteries and the valves of the heart together. It increases arterial stiffness and decreases the artery’s ability to accomodate moderately high levels of blood pressure. One of the most important factors in this type of calcification appears to be vitamin K2.
Vitamin K-dependent proteins protect against cell death, help clear away the debris that cells leave behind when they do die, and protect against the calcification of soft tissues. In the absence of sufficient vitamin K, these proteins are deformed and fail to work properly. It appears that vitamin K2, found in animal fats and fermented foods, is far more important in this respect than vitamin K1, found in green plant foods. I have written extensively on this subject and argued that vitamin K2 is the "activator X" of Weston Price in my article, On the Trail of the Elusive X Factor: Vitamin K2 Revealed.
Despite the research in Anitschkov’s day suggesting that only atherosclerosis had major clinical importance, research in our own day shows that calcification of the media and valves is critically important to, at a minimum, the 324 million people worldwide who will be diabetic come 2025. For the US population born in 2000, the estimated lifetime risk of type 2 diabetes is one in three.2 In type 2 diabetics, medial calcification increases the risk of mortality from heart disease, stroke, and all causes. It also predicts the incidence of heart disease and stroke, including events that do not produce fatalities, and predicts the likelihood that peripheral artery disease will require limb amputation.3
So the response-to-injury hypothesis has a solid basis of evidence for arteriosclerosis of the media, and this is clinically important — but what causes atheroma, that is, the fatty plaque that causes raised lesions in the intima of the blood vessels?
To answer this question, we must look to the cholesterol-fed rabbit.
The Cholesterol-Fed Rabbit Controversy
In 1909, a researcher at the Military Medical Academy in St. Petersburg named Ignatowski produced atherosclerosis in rabbits by feeding them a diet of meat, eggs, and milk. He was pursuing a hypothesis put forward by Nobel Prize-winning microbiologist I. Metchnikov that dietary protein accelerated aging.4
In 1913, Anitschkov and his partner Chalatov were studying at the same academy and were assigned to follow up Ignatowski’s work. They progressively narrowed down the causative factor to cholesterol by feeding different foods and fractions of foods, finally producing the diease by feeding pure cholesterol dissolved in sunflower oil.4
Rabbits fed sunflower oil alone did not develop atherosclerosis. In the cholesterol-fed rabbits, however, lesions developed that exhibited a remarkable similarity to the human disease. They began as fatty streaks in the intima; circulating white blood cells then invaded the intima and engulfed the cholesterol and fat deposited there, eventually growing into large phagocytic cells that Anitschkov called xanthoma cells and we now call foam cells; eventually the developing plaque protruded into the intima in the form of a raised lesion. The lesion possessed a fatty core rich in crystalized and calcified cholesterol deposits and was covered with a fibrous cap.1
The lesions did not appear everywhere equally, but occurred in specific areas. They were most prominent in the aorta and other large arteries, especially in the areas of the artery wall that experience disturbed blood flow such as the points where the arteries branch. While they did not occur in exactly the same places as human atherosclerotic lesions, the pattern was largely similar and the underlying physiological principle dictating the location of the lesions — mainly the type of blood flow experienced by the artery wall — was the same.1
The rabbits developed cholesterol deposits all throughout their bodies, in their eyes and internal organs. Anitschkov produced a more mild form of the disease, however, by feeding the rabbits milk. In these experiments, the rabbits received a much more moderate amount of cholesterol over a much longer period of time and the resulting disease was much more focused in the arteries.1
One curious difference between rabbits and humans is that when rabbits develop atherosclerosis, their plaques never rupture and they never get heart attacks. The main determinant of plaque rupture according to the current scientific literature is the balance between collagen degradation and collagen synthesis.5 Collagen synthesis requires vitamin C. Most animals, including rabbits, make their own vitamin C, but humans do not.
Atherosclerosis itself probably diminishes the quality of life in many different ways by impeding blood flow and blood vessel function, but it clearly does not inexorably lead to heart attacks. The reason why atherosclerosis produces heart attacks in humans and not rabbits or many other animals might be that humans cannot produce their own vitamin C.
Cholesterol in the Blood, Not the Food
Anitschkov argued against calling cholesterol "the cause" of atherosclerosis, but he considered cholesterol the primary causal factor and the necessary causal factor. Mechanical injuries, adrenalin injections, and other methods used to induce various types of arteriosclerosis would accelerate the development of atheroma when they were combined with cholesterol-feeding, but they would never result in human-like atherosclerosis by themselves.
Anitschkov never concluded from his experiments that cholesterol in the diet caused atherosclerosis in humans, however. To the contrary, he wrote the following:
[I]n human atherosclerosis the conditions are different. It is quite certain that such large quantities of cholesterin are not ingested with the ordinary food. In human patients we have probably to deal with a primary disturbance of the cholesterin metabolism, which may lead to atherosclerosis even if the hypercholesterinemia is less pronounced, provided only that it is of long duration and associated with other injurious factors.
Cholesterol skeptics often argue that the rabbit is irrelevant to the human because it is an herbivore. Cholesterol-feeding has failed to produce atherosclerosis in many other species. This is true, but it misses the point. In the species where cholesterol-feeding alone does not produce atherosclerosis, the blood level of cholesterol does not rise as much as in rabbits. But in all of these species when the level of cholesterol in the blood rises high enough, atherosclerosis ensues. For example, feeding dogs cholesterol alone does not produce atherosclerosis because they turn the cholesterol into bile acids; but inhibiting thyroid hormone stops them from making this conversion, and when combined with cholesterol-feeding, it induces atherosclerosis.
As Steinberg points out, raising blood levels of cholesterol has produced atherosclerosis in baboons, cats, chickens, chimpanzees, dogs, goats, guinea pigs, hamsters, monkeys, mice, parrots, pigs, pigeons, rabbits and rats.
The role of blood cholesterol in human heart disease was supported by research showing that people with a disorder that would eventually be called familial hypercholesterolemia had dramatically increased blood levels of cholesterol and, in youth and middle age, dramatically increased relative risks of heart disease and atherosclerosis. But what caused their high cholesterol levels, and did those levels cause the atherosclerosis, and if so, did this phenomenon have any relevance to the rest of us?
And, if cholesterol was somehow the culprit in all of this, was it merely its concentration in the blood that was at play, or was something very different going on?
Lessons From Familial Hypercholesterolemia
Familial hypercholesterolemia (FH) bears a striking resemblance to the cholesterol-fed rabbit model. In mild cases, it produces earlier and more rapidly developing atherosclerosis compared to the general population. In its severe cases, it results in cholesterol deposits all throughout the body, especially in the liver, kidneys, and eyelids.4
In the mid-1970s, Brown and Goldstein discovered that FH resulted from a single genetic defect in the LDL receptor that made the cells unable to absorb LDL from the bloodstream. Steinberg argues that, since cells jealously guard their cholesterol concentrations by adjusting their synthesis of cholesterol as needed, this showed that FH patients differed from the general population in only one single way: the concentration of cholesterol in their blood.4
The finding drew several more parallels between FH and Anitschkov’s cholesterol-fed rabbits. Anitschkov argued that it was not the mere feeding of cholesterol to the rabbits that produced atherosclerosis, but the overwhelming of their capacity to use and dispose of that cholesterol. FH cells could absorb free cholesterol, but not cholesterol from LDL. Anitschkov’s rabbits developed atherosclerosis when they ate cholesterol, but not when they were injected with it — in which case it would not be packaged into lipoproteins such as LDL, which contain many other substances besides cholesterol. Looking backward, it appears that the common thread running through each model was that the level of LDL in the blood exceeded the capacity of the LDL receptors to move that LDL from the blood to the cells.
The LDL receptor highway was blocked, and the LDL traffic was jammed.
Is Steinberg correct, however, that this changes nothing but the concentration of LDL in the blood? Consider what happens in a traffic jam:
- The concentration of cars in the road increases.
- It takes you longer to get home.
When LDL can’t get from the blood into the cells, its concentration in the blood rises, but it also spends a longer amount of time in the blood. Why would that matter? This would become clear just several years later. At the end of the 1970s, the role of oxidative stress in heart disease would finally become clear.
The Role of Oxidized LDL in Heart Disease
Anitschkov believed that his research showed that atherosclerosis was of an infiltrative character rather than a degenerative character. He believed that cholesterol and other substances naturally permeated the endothelium in order to nourish the other layers of the blood vessels, and proceeded from there into the lymph fluid. When the blood level of cholesterol rose sufficiently, he argued, it entered the intima at a faster rate than it could exit and began to accumulate.
Anitschkov was correct that the disease was driven by an infiltration of lipid, and he was correct that the degeneration of the blood vessel wall was secondary to this infiltration. What he failed to realize, and could not have realized at the time, was that the entire process depended on the degeneration of the lipid.
The Discovery of Oxidized LDL
Beginning in 1979, investigators made a series of revolutionary discoveries revealing this degenerative process. When they incubated cells with LDL in the absence of other serum components, the cells underwent severe damage and began to die within 24 hours. Adding serum or HDL prevented the toxicity.4
In 1981, these researchers discovered that culturing endothelial cells with LDL caused dramatic changes to the LDL, making it denser, more electronegative, and giving it a dramatic ability to accumulate in white blood cells called macrophages. Macrophages are phagocytic, meaning they like to gobble up other things, and they are the precursors to the "foam cells" that populate atherosclerotic plaques. The researchers called this LDL "endothelial cell-modified LDL." Soon after, they discovered that the LDL was being "oxidatively modified" and that not only HDL but vitamin E (which HDL is rich in) prevented the effect.4
Oxidized LDL Causes Injury and Inflammation
Since those early findings, thousands of papers have now been published on the role of oxidized LDL in the development of atherosclerosis. Oxidized LDL causes endothelial cells to secrete "adhesion molecules" and "chemoattractants" that allow white blood cells called monocytes to penetrate in between the endothelial cells and stick to them in the subendothelial space where fatty streaks and atherosclerotic plaques develop.6
Oxidized LDL turns on the expression of genes in monocytes which cause them to convert into macrophages and eventually into foam cells, which makes them gobble up more and more oxidized LDL endlessly — but these macrophages use "scavenger receptors" rather than LDL receptors, so they never take up meaningful amounts of non-oxidized LDL; they only take up oxidized LDL, and it is oxidized LDL itself that initates this endless cycle.7
Oxidized LDL initiates the inflammatory process by causing foam cells to secrete molecules that attract T cells and other inflammatory cells.6 Oxidized LDL enhances the process whereby T cells, foam cells, smooth muscle cells and endothelial cells decrease collagen production and increase collagen degradation, which leads to the rupture of the fibrous plaque.5
Endothelial cells produce nitric oxide, a gas that protects LDL from oxidation, increases blood flow, decreases the adhesion of monocytes to the endothelium, and decreases blood clotting. Oxidized LDL impairs the endothelial cell’s ability to produce nitric oxide.8
In short, oxidized LDL contributes to the entire atherosclerotic process from start to finish. Writers who argue that atherosclerosis has nothing to do with lipids but is all about inflammation and response to injury must contend with the fact that oxidized LDL injures endothelial cells and causes inflammation!
Small, Dense (Pattern B) LDL and Oxidation — Which Comes First?
If it is oxidized LDL rather than LDL per se that contributes to atherosclerosis, the question arises of what causes LDL to oxidize. Since polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFA) in the LDL membrane are the components that are most vulnerable to oxidation, excess PUFA and insufficient antioxidants would seem to be the most obvious culprits. Endothelial cells, however, secrete a number of oxidative enzymes such as myeloperoxidase and lipoxygenase. LDL is always exposed to endothelial cells in the blood, but if it makes its way into the subendothleial space where it can get stuck in a network of sugary proteins called proteoglycans, it would be exposed to them even more directly. Some researchers have therefore put forward the "response-to-retention hypothesis," wherein the LDL oxidizes in response to getting stuck in the subendothelial space.
In 1988, a case-control study showed that people with a preponderance of small, dense LDL were three times more likely to suffer from a heart attack.9 Researchers subsequently showed that the smaller and denser LDL gets, the more quickly it oxidizes when they subject it to oxidants in a test tube.10 Then the "response-to-retention" crowd jumped in on the game a few years later and showed that small, dense LDL were much more likely get stuck in test tube versions of the proteoglycan network of the subendothelial space.11
If the response-to-retention hypothesis is true, we are back to the infiltration hypothesis where the accumulation of LDL in the subendothelial space is driving the whole process because the accumulation causes the oxidation. This would be a convenient way of circumventing the enormously embarassing fact that the medical establishment has been pushing highly oxidation-prone PUFA oils for fifty years.
The question is, how are these LDL getting small and dense?
Within the response-to-retention paper, the authors stated that "with decreasing size and increasing density the LDL particles have less of the non-polar core covered with a surface monolayer made of phospholipids and cholesterol."
Where did the phospholipid membrane go?
A group working on lipoprotein (a), or Lp(a), published a paper in July of this year showing that virtually all oxidized LDL in the blood circulates attached to Lp(a). Lp(a) is essentially LDL stuck to a protein called apolipoprotein (a) or apo(a). This group showed that when oxidized LDL and apo(a) are incubated together, many of the oxidized phospholipids transfer directly to the apo(a).12 In other words, when the membrane of LDL begins to oxidize, parts of it hop right off the LDL particle. Could that explain why "less of the non-polar core" would be "covered with a surface monolayer" on some LDL particles?
When Steinberg and his coworkers first described the characteristics of "endothelial cell-modified LDL," one of the most conspicuous changes that occurred to the LDL particles was a marked increase in density.13
A 1997 study confirmed that the LDL taken from people with a preponderance of the small, dense type does indeed oxidize quicker in a test tube, but the oxidation status of the LDL was different before they subjected it to oxidation. The predominantly small, dense LDL had a higher ratio of oxidized-to-reduced coenzyme Q10 and a lower CoQ10-to-vitamin E ratio.14 Since CoQ10 is the first line of defense against LDL oxidation, this study strongly suggested that oxidation of the small, dense LDL had already started.
So here we have a chicken-and-egg question. Does small, dense LDL oxidize more rapidly in a test tube because it is small and dense, or because it is already partially oxidized, and its antioxidant defenses are already partially depleted? Is small, dense LDL more vulnerable to oxidation, or does LDL become small and dense when it becomes oxidized?
If LDL becomes small and dense through oxidation, then even if the test tube studies on its "stickiness" are correct and small, dense LDL is more likely to get stuck in the sugary protein network behind the endothelium, it is the oxidation driving the stickiness and not the stickiness driving the oxidation.
So we are back to square one wondering why the medical establishment never announed an emergency measure to put all the research dollars into discovering just how much damage it had done to everyone who followed its recommendations to use high-PUFA vegetable oils in place of saturated animal fats over the last fifty years.
Oxidized LDL and the PUFA Connection
Let us return to the traffic analogy for a moment. Why would an "LDL traffic jam," wherein the "LDL receptor highway" is blocked contribute to atherosclerosis?
The membrane of LDL contains polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFA), which are highly vulnerable to oxidation. Cells continuously make antioxidant enzymes and other antioxidant compounds to protect their membrane PUFA. If PUFA start to oxidize, the cell ramps up its antioxidant production. When the liver packs cholesterol into a VLDL particle and secretes it into the blood (where it eventually becomes an LDL particle after delivering some of its nutrients to other tissues), it puts some antioxidants into the package. The PUFA have now left the comparative safety of the liver cell and have only a limited supply of antioxidants. When those antioxidants are used up, the PUFA begin to oxidize, and their oxidation products proceed to damage other components of the lipoprotein. When the oxidation becomes severe, the oxidized LDL winds up in a foam cell in an atherosclerotic plaque.
Let’s draw another analogy, this time to a jar of oil. If you use a jar of oil, you open it, exposing the PUFA within it to the oxygen in the air, but quickly put the cap back on and put it back in the fridge. What would happen if you opened the jar and let it sit on the table at room temperature? Over time, the limited amount of antioxidants in the oil would run out and the PUFA would begin to oxidize. The oil would go rancid.
Pumping LDL into the blood but letting it sit there circulating round and round exposed to oxidants rather than taking it into the shelter of the cell is like opening a jar of oil and leaving it on the table.
LDL taken from people who consume more PUFA, whether from vegetable oil or fish oil, oxidizes more easily in a test tube. Alpha-tocopherol, the major form of vitamin E, does not help.15
The specific components of the oxidized LDL particle that interact with the DNA of monocytes to transform them into macrophages and then into foam cells are oxidized derivatives of linoleic acid, a PUFA found in vegetable oils.16
A 2004 study from Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard School of Public Health showed that in postmenopausal women, the more PUFA they ate, and to a much lesser extent the more carbohydrate they ate, the worse their atherosclerosis became over time. The more saturated fat they ate, the less their atherosclerosis progressed; in the highest intake of saturated fat, the atherosclerosis reversed over time.17
I will cover the topic of saturated fat, PUFA, and heart disease in greater detail in another article on the diet-heart hypothesis. Additionally, I have written a Special Report entitled How Essential Are the Essential Fatty Acids? that provides accurate and thoroughly researched information on the true requirement for PUFA, which is negligible for healthy adults. As part of my Special Reports series, I will be publishing a second PUFA Report later this year that will cover the benefits and dangers of consuming PUFA in amounts larger than the minimum requirements.
Shear Stress Explains the Locations of Plaques and the Benefits of Exercise
As in the cholesterol-fed rabbit, human atherosclerosis occurs in discrete plaques at specific locations. In both species, these plaques occur in locations that experience disturbed blood flow, such as the points where the arteries branch.
Anitschkov showed that the endothelium was more permeable to molecules labeled with dye at these points. Experimental vessel injuries that caused inflammatory responses made the endothelium even more permeable, but even in the absence of any treatment, the endothelium was naturally permeable in these areas.1
Sections of the arterial wall in these areas experience a lower level of shear stress than sections in other areas. Shear stress is the type of pressure that is caused by laminar blood flow, or the flow of blood parallel to the blood vessel wall. Shear stress decreases the permeability of the endothelium by stimulating the production of the proteins that form the junctions between the endothelial cells. Under levels of shear stress approximating those that exist at locations where atherosclerosis develops, easily visualizable gold particles the size of LDL particles slip right in between the endothelial cells, whereas the permeability to these particles is very low under levels of shear stress approximating those that exist where plaques do not develop.18
Shear stress also increases nitric oxide production. Nitric oxide increases blood vessel dilation and blood flow, decreases the adhesion of monocytes to the endothelium, decreases blood clotting, and prevents the oxidation of LDL.6
By increasing blood flow, exercise increases shear stress. Since the average shear stress over time seems to be the critical factor, exercise might help prevent atherosclerosis by decreasing the permeability of the endothelium and increasing nitric oxide production in those areas of the blood vessels where the resting level of shear stress is insufficient for protection.
What About Correlations with High Cholesterol?
Much of the cholesterol debate focuses on correlations with cholesterol. How strong are they? How consistent are they? Why do they show up in young people but not in old, in men more than women?
The debate really misses the point, because since the early 1980s the molecular evidence has made very clear that it is oxidized LDL that contributes to atherosclerosis.
Correlations with cholesterol are likely to be confounded by a variety of factors that simultaneously increase cholesterol levels and contribute to heart disease, like stress and inflammation. In fact, inflammation seems to increase cholesterol synthesis essentially as an accidental byproduct of activating the stress response through an enzyme called Rho. Rho slashes nitric oxide production and thus almost certainly makes a contribution to atherosclerosis. For more information on Rho activation, click here.
Researchers have only recently developed methods for testing levels of oxidized LDL. One group has developed an antibody that recognizes oxidized but not non-oxidized phospholipids. They have shown that the proportion of LDL-associated phospholipids that are oxidized is a much more impressive risk factor for heart disease than LDL, and when it is multiplied by the level of LDL, thus indicating the total concentration of oxidized phospholipids, it is even better. Its predictive value is lower in older people, but still strong.19
Why would the association decline with age? If we look at the totality of the evidence about the mechanisms of atherosclerosis, it appears that oxidized LDL is the necessary initiating factor, but that we should expect its prominence as a contributing factor to decrease over time. Atherosclerosis probably does not develop in the absence of oxidized LDL. Once it does develop, however, and once the oxidized LDL stimulates the formation of foam cells, those foam cells recruit T cells that make their own contribution to the inflammatory process. Animal experiments show that independent sources of inflammation cannot initiate atherosclerosis, but they can aggravate it or accelerate it. Vitamin C deficiency, systemic infection, stress, and many other factors likely make contributions alongside oxidized LDL to the weakening and rupture of the fibrous cap that ultimately leads to a heart attack.
Virtually everyone develops substantial atherosclerosis by the time they are old. In people with more oxidized LDL, it occurs faster, and consequently reaches an advanced stage at a younger age. Inflammation will not help rupture a plaque that does not exist, so it will be much less likely to cause a heart attack in a younger person unless that person has high levels of oxidized LDL and consequently advanced atherosclerosis. In an older population wherein most people have advanced plaques, the factors that weaken the plaque will become much more important than the factors that create the plaque.
Studying the issue is complicated by the fact that we are looking at oxidized LDL in the blood. Once LDL gets oxidized enough, presumably it will wind up in arterial plaque. If there are factors that protect circulating LDL from contact with the tissues it could harm, they could confound the association.
Finally, studies looking at cardiovascular incidence or mortality are confounded by the fact that atherosclerosis is only one type of arteriosclerosis, and arteriosclerosis is only one cause of cardiovascular disease. Medial calcification, arrhythmia, congestive heart failure, or other causes of emboli (particles that can cause vessels) may all contribute to cardiovascular events. Oxidized LDL should only, or at least primarily, correlate with those events caused by atherosclerosis.
So is the Lipid Hypothesis Correct?
So is the lipid hypothesis correct? Not in its original form. The weight of the evidence clearly supports a role for the oxidation of LDL and not the concentration of LDL in the blood in the development of atherosclerosis.
The oxidized lipid hypothesis has an enormous amount of evidence supporting it. The cholesterol-fed rabbit model was a model not merely of hypercholesterolemia but of hyper-oxidized-lipoproteinemia. Antioxidants cause major decreases in atherosclerosis in cholesterol-fed or Watanabe familial hypercholesterolemic rabbit models independent of cholesterol levels.4,20
We should not expect antioxidants to be fully capable of preventing the oxidation of LDL by themselves. As I discuss in my PUFA Report, antioxidants can stop oxidized PUFA from damaging other PUFA, but they can never fully repair the oxidized PUFA. The best they can do is convert it to a hydroxy-fatty acid, and it is the hydroxy versions of linoleic acid that have been shown to convert monocytes to foam cells!
Thus, all three of the following critical factors must be addressed:
- Increasing antioxidant status, especially coenzyme Q10, but also alpha- and gamma-tocopherol.
- Reducing PUFA intake.
- Increasing LDL receptor function to minimize the amount of time LDL spends in the bloodstream.
If concentrations of LDL rise in the blood because the LDL is not being utilized — for example, in familial hypercholesterolemia — then the LDL is exposing its vulnerable PUFA to conditions promoting oxidative stress for too long. The solution should not be to diminish cholesterol synthesis, imparing CoQ10 synthesis along with it, but to increase LDL utilization. The appropriate nutritional strategies for increasing LDL utilization desperately need to be researched.
A recent study showed that curcumin, a component of tumeric, increases the expression of the LDL receptor. This study may provide valuable clues. Thyroid hormone is important to the function of the LDL receptor, and many people likely have suboptimal thyroid status.
The irony in all of this is that there is no evidence to suggest that cholesterol is the culprit. In the rabbit, consuming large amounts of cholesterol increases the exposure of LDL membrane-associated PUFA to oxidation because it causes their translocation from the liver to the blood where they are detached from the cellular environment and less protected. In humans, eating cholesterol in the form of several eggs per day probably decreases the vulnerability of LDL to oxidation. See here.
The higher the concentration of free cholesterol within the LDL particle, the less vulnerable it is to oxidation. By contrast, the higher the concentration of cholesterol that is linked to fatty acids, called "esterified cholesterol," the more vulnerable the LDL is to oxidation.9 Esterified cholesterol primarily exists in the core of the particle. Free cholesterol primarily exists in the surface membrane where the initial oxidation takes place, so cholesterol seems to protect the PUFA from oxidation.
So, does cholesterol cause atherosclerosis? No!
But do blood lipids? Yes. Atherosclerosis is a disease in which degenerating lipids infiltrate the blood vessel wall and cause inflammation and degeneration of the local tissue once they arrive there. Solid evidence has amassed in favor of this view for the last 100 years.
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References
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13. Henriksen T, Mahoney EM, Steinberg D. Enhanced macrophage degradation of low density lipoprotein previously incubated with cultured endothelial cells: Recognition by receptors for acetylated low density lipoproteins. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA. 1981;78(10):6499-6503.
14. de Rijke YB, Bredie SJH, Demacker PNM, Vogelaar JM, Hak-Lemmers HLM, Stalenhoef AFH. The Redox Status of Coenzyme Q10 in Total LDL as an Indicator of In Vivo Oxidative Modification. Arteriosclerosis, Thrombosis, and Vascular Biology. 1997;17:127-133.
15. Nenseter MS, Drevon CA. Dietary polyunsaturates and peroxidation of low density lipoprotein. Curr Opin Lipidol. 1996;7(1):8-13.
16. Nagy L, Tontonoz P, Alvarez JG, Chen H, Evans RM. Oxidized LDL regulates macrophage gene expression through ligand activation of PPARgamma. Cell. 1998;93(2):229-40.
17. Mozaffarian D, Rimm EB, Herrington DM. Dietary fats, carbohydrate, and progression of coronary atherosclerosis in postmenopausal.
18. Conklin BS, Vito RP, Changyi C. Effect of Low Shear Stress on Permeability and Occludin Expression in Porcine Artery Endothelial Cells. World J Surg. 2007;31:733-43.
19. Tsimikas S, Brilakis ES, Miller ER, McConnell JP, Lennon RJ, Kornman KS, Witztum JL, Berger PB. Oxidized phospholipids, Lp(a) lipoprotein, and coronary artery disease. N Engl J Med. 2005;353(1):46-57.
20. Wang Z, Zou J, Cao K, Hsieh TC, Huang Y, Wu JM. Dealcoholized red wine containing known amounts of resveratrol suppresses atherosclerosis in hypercholesterolemic rabbits without affecting plasma lipid levels. Int J Mol Med. 2005;16(4):533-40.
Two nutrition experts argue that you can’t take marketing campaigns at face value
By Adam Voiland
With America’s obesity problem among kids reaching crisis proportions, even junk food makers have started to claim they want to steer children toward more healthful choices. In a study released earlier this year, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported that about 32 percent of children were overweight but not obese, 16 percent were obese, and 11 percent were extremely obese. Food giant PepsiCo, for example, points out on its website that "we can play an important role in helping kids lead healthier lives by offering healthy product choices in schools." The company highlights what it considers its healthier products within various food categories through a "Smart Spot" marketing campaign that features green symbols on packaging. PepsiCo’s inclusive criteria—explained here—award spots to foods of dubious nutritional value such as Diet Pepsi, Cap’n Crunch cereal, reduced-fat Doritos, and Cheetos.
But are wellness initiatives like Smart Spot just marketing ploys? Such moves by the food industry may seem to be a step in the right direction, but ultimately makers of popular junk foods have an obligation to stockholders to encourage kids to eat more—not less—of the foods that fuel their profits, says David Ludwig, a pediatrician and the co-author of a commentary published in this week’s Journal of the American Medical Association that raises questions about whether big food companies can be trusted to help combat obesity. Ludwig and article co-author Marion Nestle, a professor of nutrition at New York University, both of whom have long histories of tracking the food industry, spoke with U.S. News and highlighted some things that junk food makers don’t want you to know about their products and how they promote them.
1. Junk food makers spend billions advertising unhealthy foods to kids.
According to the Federal Trade Commission, food makers spend some $1.6 billion annually to reach children through the traditional media as well the Internet, in-store advertising, and sweepstakes. An article published in 2006 in the Journal of Public Health Policy puts the number as high as $10 billion annually. Promotions often use cartoon characters or free giveaways to entice kids into the junk food fold. PepsiCo has pledged that it will advertise only "Smart Spot" products to children under 12.
2. The studies that food producers support tend to minimize health concerns associated with their products.
In fact, according to a review led by Ludwig of hundreds of studies that looked at the health effects of milk, juice, and soda, the likelihood of conclusions favorable to the industry was several times higher among industry-sponsored research than studies that received no industry funding. "If a study is funded by the industry, it may be closer to advertising than science," he says.
3. Junk food makers donate large sums of money to professional nutrition associations.
The American Dietetic Association, for example, accepts money from companies such as Coca-Cola, which get access to decision makers in the food and nutrition marketplace via ADA events and programs, as this release explains. As Nestle notes in her blog and discusses at length in her book Food Politics, the group even distributes nutritional fact sheets that are directly sponsored by specific industry groups. This one, for example, which is sponsored by an industry group that promotes lamb, rather unsurprisingly touts the nutritional benefits of lamb. The ADA’s reasoning: "These collaborations take place with the understanding that ADA does not support any program or message that does not correspond with ADA’s science-based healthful-eating messages and positions," according to the group’s president, dietitian Martin Yadrick. "In fact, we think it’s important for us to be at the same table with food companies because of the positive influence that we can have on them."
4. More processing means more profits, but typically makes the food less healthy.
Minimally processed foods such as fresh fruits and vegetables obviously aren’t where food companies look for profits. The big bucks stem from turning government-subsidized commodity crops—mainly corn, wheat, and soybeans—into fast foods, snack foods, and beverages. High-profit products derived from these commodity crops are generally high in calories and low in nutritional value.
5. Less-processed foods are generally more satiating than their highly processed counterparts.
Fresh apples have an abundance of fiber and nutrients that are lost when they are processed into applesauce. And the added sugar or other sweeteners increase the number of calories without necessarily making the applesauce any more filling. Apple juice, which is even more processed, has had almost all of the fiber and nutrients stripped out. This same stripping out of nutrients, says Ludwig, happens with highly refined white bread compared with stone-ground whole wheat bread.
6. Many supposedly healthy replacement foods are hardly healthier than the foods they replace.
In 2006, for example, major beverage makers agreed to remove sugary sodas from school vending machines. But the industry mounted an intense lobbying effort that persuaded lawmakers to allow sports drinks and vitamin waters that—despite their slightly healthier reputations—still can be packed with sugar and calories.
7. A health claim on the label doesn’t necessarily make a food healthy.
Health claims such as "zero trans fats" or "contains whole wheat" may create the false impression that a product is healthy when it’s not. While the claims may be true, a product is not going to benefit your kid’s health if it’s also loaded with salt and sugar or saturated fat, say, and lacks fiber or other nutrients. "These claims are calorie distracters," adds Nestle. "They make people forget about the calories." Dave DeCecco, a spokesperson for PepsiCo, counters that the intent of a labeling program such as Smart Spot is simply to help consumers pick a healthier choice within a category. "We’re not trying to tell people that a bag of Doritos is healthier than asparagus. But, if you’re buying chips, and you’re busy, and you don’t have a lot of time to read every part of the label, it’s an easy way to make a smarter choice," he says.
8. The food industry funds front groups that fight antiobesity public health initiatives.
Unless you follow politics closely, you wouldn’t necessarily realize that a group with a name like the Center for Consumer Freedom (CCF) has anything to do with the food industry. In fact,Ludwig and Nestle point out, this group lobbies aggressively against obesity-related public health campaigns—such as the one directed at removing junk food from schools—and is funded, according to the Center for Media and Democracy, primarily through donations from big food companies such as Coca-Cola, Cargill, Tyson Foods, and Wendy’s.
9. The food industry works aggressively to discredit its critics.
According to the new JAMA article, the Center for Consumer Freedom boasts that "[our strategy] is to shoot the messenger. We’ve got to attack [activists'] credibility as spokespersons." Here’s the group’s entry on Marion Nestle.
The bottom line, says Nestle, is quite simple: Kids need to eat less, include more fruits and vegetables, and limit the junk food.
What I want to tell you is to NOT buy food out of packages, if it needs are label to list all the ingredients, you don’t want it! Buy unprocessed food; meat, coconut oil, butter, eggs, vegetables…and a tiny amount of fruit. That’s it, leave the cereals, granola bars, chips, sodas, juices on the grocery shelf. Eat enough healthy fat and protein at each meal, the rest should be veggies. And include traditionally made meat stocks for calcium and iron (think soup from scratch).
Filed under: Food and it's Impact on Our Health, In The Kitchen with Millie- How To's
Yep, it’s true…I’m opening a brothel…LOL!
About a month ago I began offering beef and chicken stocks to my clients. They are an essential part of eating a traditional human diet..there is simply no other way to get the calcium you so desperately need. Since the 50’s people have stopped making stocks. All those stupid commercials for drugs like Boniva say, “when diet and exercise are not enough”….
Guess what? Diet and exercise ARE ALWAYS ENOUGH!! Period! No exceptions..
The response has been incredible, I am now making close to 15 quarts of stock each week. I offer them for pick-up each Monday evening…so let me know what you want…go to my webpage for details.. Please order by Thursday of the week before… Optimum Nutrition – Meat Stocks
I also offer raw butter, coconut milk yogurt, salad dressings and fresh mayonnaise, along with gluten free wedding cakes and desserts.
Filed under: Food and it's Impact on Our Health
For the Overweight, Bad Advice by the Spoonful
By GINA KOLATA in the New York Times
Robyn Beck
And I’m making comments in red….
Two-thirds of Americans are overweight or obese. For most, research shows, neither diets nor moderate exercise brings significant long-term weight loss.
At least they get this right, “diets” don’t work…because people diet by cutting caloric intake, which in turn, cuts nutrient intake…and most people do that while lowering fat and protein intake, thinking it is healthier…it’s not….it only leads to eating carbs (fruits and veggies are 95% carbohydrates)…the body goes into starvation mode, not trusting that you are going to keep eating…and no weight loss occurs. Quite the contrary.
In Brief:
Weight control is not simply a matter of willpower. Genes help determine the body’s "set point," which is defended by the brain.
Health and Weight loss are a matter of cause and effect; our bodies react to what we are doing day to day. I was an extremely unhealthy and fat baby…and now am extremely thin and have been since I was 5 years old. I have had clients who weighed over 500 pounds and through proper nutrition took it off easily and have kept it off…and NOT through caloric restriction…but good solid traditional diet. Your bone size is a set point, it’s not going to change (unless you experience bone loss through poor nutrition)…but fat? Completely controllable through getting off empty carbs and eating enough fat6 and protein to get healthy and maintain perfect weight.
Dieting alone is rarely successful, and relapse rates are high. See above.
Moderate exercise, too, rarely results in substantive long-term weight loss, which requires intensive exercise.
And it takes burning 3500 calories to burn off one pound of body fat. I can run 10 miles at a 10 minute a mile clip and only burn about 450 top 500 calories!
Americans have been getting fatter for years, and with the increase in waistlines has come a surplus of conventional wisdom. If we could just return to traditional diets, if we just walk for 20 minutes a day, exercise gurus and government officials maintain, America’s excess pounds would slowly but surely melt away.
If we could just return to traditional diets they say! YES!!! A diet like your grandmother probably cooked…at least mine did, lots of meat, pan dripping and gravies, rich soups, eggs, lots of greens. But we also had lots of breads and sweets. But it wasn’t every day we had sweets, and when we did they were made with butter or lard (NOT Crisco!). In other words, real food.
When I say a traditional diet, I mean what is traditional for humans going back thousands of years; meat, fat, vegetables, fruits, nuts, herbs… Not stuff out of a box, nothing processed.
Scientists are less sanguine. Many of the so-called facts about obesity, they say, amount to speculation or oversimplification of the medical evidence. Diet and exercise do matter, they now know, but these environmental influences alone do not determine an individual’s weight. Body composition also is dictated by DNA and monitored by the brain. Bypassing these physical systems is not just a matter of willpower.
Body composition is fixed..in other words, I’m never going to be stocky, taller, muscular…but my weight I can control….. and so can everyone else. It’s called choices, making the choice to give up the sodas all day, cookies, cereals, sports drinks, ice cream, corn syrup, McDonalds, 750 calorie lattes, energy drinks, granola (cardboard glued together with corn syrup), granola bars (cardboard glued together with corn syrup, pressed into bars and coated with corn syrup), cheese food, cheese whiz…I could go on and on…..
More than 66 percent of Americans are overweight or obese, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in Atlanta. Although the number of obese women in the United States appears to be holding steady at 33 percent, for most Americans the risk is growing. The nation’s poor diet has long been the scapegoat. There have been proposals to put warning labels on sodas like those on cigarettes. There are calls to ban junk foods from schools. New York and other cities now require restaurants to disclose calorie information on their menus.
But the notion that Americans ever ate well is suspect. In 1966, when Americans were still comparatively thin, more than two billion hamburgers already had been sold in McDonald’s restaurants, noted Dr. Barry Glassner, a sociology professor at the University of Southern California. The recent rise in obesity may have more to do with our increasingly sedentary lifestyles than with the quality of our diets.
But the notion that Americans ever ate well is suspect??? Of course we did, read on….
Here is A Brief History of Nutrition, it will let you see how we have gotten to the “diet” Madness we are at today-
Over the last 90 years we have seen a bewildering array of information on what we should eat. This information has come from any sources; the academic world, the Food and Drug Administration, countless “diet” books. When food “manufacturers” began advertising for the “food” they wanted us to buy, the whole subject became really confusing. We bought into all of it. We went from a diet based on real food which we had eaten throughout time, to breakfast cereals, cookies, candy, processed or instant food. By the 1980’s, 60% of American children’s diets were “non-food”. Manufactured foodstuff, chemicals, and preservatives. Then came fast food, transfats, out sugar intake took a major upswing. The rate of obesity began to climb.
In the mid-1900’s, the academic world, funded by the food processing industry, macronutrients (proteins, fats and carbohydrates) began to loom very large, food quality was pushed to the background and the notion that fats should be limited.
The first to attempt simple dietary guidelines were the dieticians, who came up with the Four Food Groups—meats, poultry, fish and beans; milk and cheeses; vegetables and fruits; and breads and cereals—an innocuous construct that offended no one and completely avoided making any judgments on dietary fats. Emphasis on macronutrient ratios came in with the USDA Food Guide Pyramid in 1992, which reflected the pro-grain conclusions of the McGovern Committee by giving prominence to carbohydrates and relegating animal foods to the smaller areas at the top of the pyramid. Fats and oils are mysteriously put with sweets (which are carbohydrates)—for reasons unknown except to government bureaucrats—and placed at the top of the pyramid with the admonition to "eat sparingly."
Both the US government and the American Heart Association (AHA) now preach fat restriction as the key to good health. Both recommend that less than 30 percent of dietary calories come from fat, with 15 percent from protein and the balance—up to 60 percent—from carbohydrates such as bread, pasta, rice, cereal, fruits and vegetables. (Milk products, nuts and beans are also sources of carbohydrates.)
To the average consumer, these guidelines might seem entirely reasonable.
If we take the governments recommendations on how we should eat the only way to achieve the dietary guidelines with foods that Americans enjoy eating is to drastically reduce meat and fat and pile on the carbs. If we follow this argument to its logical conclusion, we are led to one of two choices—either add lots of sugar to standard American meals or cut way back on animal foods and eat heaps of beans and pasta.
The latter course is the one advocated by extremists like Dean Ornish and John McDougal (and backed by Dr. Neil Barnard of the Physicians’ Committee for Responsible Medicine). Using logic that if a little is good, then even less is better, Ornish and McDougal promote a diet containing only 10 percent of calories as fat, a proposal that makes normal eating impossible. Even nuts are taboo on such a diet. Since beans can contain up to 25 percent protein and have less than 5 percent fat, they are given as the ideal protein source. If you want the complete protein provided by animal foods, your only choices are skim milk, egg whites and shellfish. These diets were invented by academicians, not cooks, and are too unpalatable—not to mention deficient in nutrients—to be taken seriously.
Diets high in carbohydrates and low in fat don’t stick to the ribs. Unimpeded by fats, which have the effect of slowing down digestion, carbohydrate foods flood the bloodstream and quickly raise the blood sugar. Without adequate fat in the diet, the blood sugar is likely to drop shortly thereafter, causing intense hunger and food cravings that are satisfied either by more high-carb foods—or by giving in to fats. Either way, the result is more calories. It’s no coincidence that as Americans have tried to avoid dietary fats; the rate of obesity has climbed. That’s because we’re eating too many calories, say the dieticians, wagging their fingers with disapproval. Unfortunately, only those with iron wills can eat high-carb and low-cal for any length of time. The weak-willed raid the cupboard or the refrigerator, bingeing and splurging on snack foods and sweets.
“The meals we romanticize in the past somehow leave out the reality of what people were eating,” he said. “The average meal had whole milk and ended with pie…. The typical meal had plenty of fat and calories.”
The typical meal had plenty of fat and calories.” DUH!!! Our diets are SUPPOSED to have plenty of calories (about 2000 a day) and plenty of fat (50% of our caloric intake should be from high quality, organic fat)!
“Nostalgia is going to get us nowhere,” he added.
Neither will wishful misconceptions about the efficacy of exercise. First, the federal government told Americans to exercise for half an hour a day. Then, dietary guidelines issued in 2005 changed the advice, recommending 60 to 90 minutes of moderate exercise a day. There was an uproar; many said the goal was unrealistic for Americans. But for many scientists, the more pertinent question was whether such an exercise program would really help people lose weight.
The leisurely after-dinner walk may be pleasant, and it may be better than another night parked in front of the television. But modest exercise of this sort may not do much to reduce weight, evidence suggests.
“People don’t know that a 20-minute walk burns about 100 calories,” said Dr. Madelyn Fernstrom, director of the weight-management center at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. “People always overestimate the calories consumed in exercise, and underestimate the calories in food they are eating.”
Exercise has little effect on weight. Don’t get me wrong, it great for a lot of things…cardio-vascular health, muscle fitness and tone, makes you happy, feels great. But to take off 1 pound of body weight you have to burn 3500 calories! Yes…that is a lot of calories. At my weight, 109 pounds, I can run 10 mph, and run for an hour and burn 791 calories in 1 hr. I am not prepared to run 3 1/2 hours a day to take off a pound of body fat…when I can eat perfect, or close to it…and just garden, practice yoga, dance a lot, hula hoop some, ride my bike when I want…and stay in great shape!
I found a site online to do check my body mass index, they say for my height, 5 ft 5, I should weight 130 pounds! Yuck, at even 5 more pounds my waistline thickens (and it’s 24 inches, the same as before I had 5 children!) and I start losing my shape….no way!!!
Tweaking the balance is far more difficult than most people imagine, said Dr. Jeffrey Friedman, an obesity researcher at Rockefeller University. The math ought to work this way: There are 3,500 calories in a pound. If you subtract 100 calories per day by walking for 20 minutes, you ought to lose a pound every 35 days. Right?
Wrong. First, it’s difficult for an individual to hold calorie intake to a precise amount from day to day. Meals at home and in restaurants vary in size and composition; the nutrition labels on purchased foods — the best guide to calorie content — are at best rough estimates. Calorie counting is therefore an imprecise art.
Second, scientists recently have come to understand that the brain exerts astonishing control over body composition and how much individuals eat. “There are physiological mechanisms that keep us from losing weight,” said Dr. Matthew W. Gilman, the director of the obesity prevention program at Harvard Medical School/Pilgrim Health Care.
Scientists now believe that each individual has a genetically determined weight range spanning perhaps 30 pounds. Those who force their weight below nature’s preassigned levels become hungrier and eat more; several studies also show that their metabolisms slow in a variety of ways as the body tries to conserve energy and regain weight. People trying to exceed their weight range face the opposite situation: eating becomes unappealing, and their metabolisms shift into high gear.
The body’s determination to maintain its composition is why a person can skip a meal, or even fast for short periods, without losing weight. It’s also why burning an extra 100 calories a day will not alter the verdict on the bathroom scales. Struggling against the brain’s innate calorie counters, even strong-willed dieters make up for calories lost on one day with a few extra bites on the next. And they never realize it. “The system operates with 99.6 percent precision,” Dr. Friedman said.
The temptations of our environment — the sedentary living, the ready supply of rich food — may not be entirely to blame for rising obesity rates. In fact, new research suggests that the environment that most strongly influences body composition may be the very first one anybody experiences: the womb.
According to several animal studies, conditions during pregnancy, including the mother’s diet, may determine how fat the offspring are as adults. Human studies have shown that women who eat little in pregnancy, surprisingly, more often have children who grow into fat adults. More than a dozen studies have found that children are more likely to be fat if their mothers smoke during pregnancy.
The research is just beginning, true, but already it has upended some hoary myths about dieting. The body establishes its optimal weight early on, perhaps even before birth, and defends it vigorously through adulthood. As a result, weight control is difficult for most of us. And obesity, the terrible new epidemic of the developed world, is almost impossible to cure.
THIS is the Best ‘They” Can Come Up With??????
They are basically saying obesity is almost impossible to cure? That is just stupidity…plain and simple. Americans eat carbs constantly, they act as if the have the “right” to eat anything they want and expect different results..the definition of neurosis!
The government and big Agra-food companies have sold us a bill of goods, that we need whole grains, that bread is healthy, that cereal is a decent breakfast, that granola bars are healthy…they are wrong; they are just feeding thier pocketbooks, growing the medical and pharmaceutical companies, the cancer “industry”, ….at YOUR expense.
In my career as a nutrition coach, spanning 26 years, I have had 2 different doctors tell me that they were not interested in teaching people to get well to the degree that I teach…that thier patients saw them an average of 7 times a year, and that paid the bills! I had one doctor in Ormond Beach get furious that I taught her best friend how to get rid of systemic yeast…in a month she was yeast free…and this doctor had been treating her for 3 years! And it was her best friend!! And this doctor was a nutritionist!
It’s not that complicated! Eat organic meat, rich meat broths for calcium and iron, healthy organic raw butter and unprocessed coconut oil, lots of low glycemic vegetables (green leafy veggies, mushrooms, onions, peppers, tomatoes) very small amounts of fruits and nuts, healthy organic grass fed or free range meats, organic eggs, small amounts of fermented foods (I make coconut milk yogurt, sauerkraut and kombucha tea).
That’s it, it’s that simple.We have NOT lost the “war” on obesity, we have simply gotten too lazy or too rushed to cook. We have gotten so spoiled by packaged foods that we are ruining our health…and our children’s health…
Filed under: Food and it's Impact on Our Health
For the Overweight, Bad Advice by the Spoonful
By GINA KOLATA in the New York Times
Robyn Beck
And I’m making comments in red….
Two-thirds of Americans are overweight or obese. For most, research shows, neither diets nor moderate exercise brings significant long-term weight loss.
At least they get this right, “diets” don’t work…because people diet by cutting caloric intake, which in turn, cuts nutrient intake…and most people do that while lowering fat and protein intake, thinking it is healthier…it’s not….it only leads to eating carbs (fruits and veggies are 95% carbohydrates)…the body goes into starvation mode, not trusting that you are going to keep eating…and no weight loss occurs. Quite the contrary.
In Brief:
Weight control is not simply a matter of willpower. Genes help determine the body’s "set point," which is defended by the brain.
Health and Weight loss are a matter of cause and effect; our bodies react to what we are doing day to day. I was an extremely unhealthy and fat baby…and now am extremely thin and have been since I was 5 years old. I have had clients who weighed over 500 pounds and through proper nutrition took it off easily and have kept it off…and NOT through caloric restriction…but good solid traditional diet. Your bone size is a set point, it’s not going to change (unless you experience bone loss through poor nutrition)…but fat? Completely controllable through getting off empty carbs and eating enough fat6 and protein to get healthy and maintain perfect weight.
Dieting alone is rarely successful, and relapse rates are high. See above.
Moderate exercise, too, rarely results in substantive long-term weight loss, which requires intensive exercise.
And it takes burning 3500 calories to burn off one pound of body fat. I can run 10 miles at a 10 minute a mile clip and only burn about 450 top 500 calories!
Americans have been getting fatter for years, and with the increase in waistlines has come a surplus of conventional wisdom. If we could just return to traditional diets, if we just walk for 20 minutes a day, exercise gurus and government officials maintain, America’s excess pounds would slowly but surely melt away.
If we could just return to traditional diets they say! YES!!! A diet like your grandmother probably cooked…at least mine did, lots of meat, pan dripping and gravies, rich soups, eggs, lots of greens. But we also had lots of breads and sweets. But it wasn’t every day we had sweets, and when we did they were made with butter or lard (NOT Crisco!). In other words, real food.
When I say a traditional diet, I mean what is traditional for humans going back thousands of years; meat, fat, vegetables, fruits, nuts, herbs… Not stuff out of a box, nothing processed.
Scientists are less sanguine. Many of the so-called facts about obesity, they say, amount to speculation or oversimplification of the medical evidence. Diet and exercise do matter, they now know, but these environmental influences alone do not determine an individual’s weight. Body composition also is dictated by DNA and monitored by the brain. Bypassing these physical systems is not just a matter of willpower.
Body composition is fixed..in other words, I’m never going to be stocky, taller, muscular…but my weight I can control….. and so can everyone else. It’s called choices, making the choice to give up the sodas all day, cookies, cereals, sports drinks, ice cream, corn syrup, McDonalds, 750 calorie lattes, energy drinks, granola (cardboard glued together with corn syrup), granola bars (cardboard glued together with corn syrup, pressed into bars and coated with corn syrup), cheese food, cheese whiz…I could go on and on…..
More than 66 percent of Americans are overweight or obese, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in Atlanta. Although the number of obese women in the United States appears to be holding steady at 33 percent, for most Americans the risk is growing. The nation’s poor diet has long been the scapegoat. There have been proposals to put warning labels on sodas like those on cigarettes. There are calls to ban junk foods from schools. New York and other cities now require restaurants to disclose calorie information on their menus.
But the notion that Americans ever ate well is suspect. In 1966, when Americans were still comparatively thin, more than two billion hamburgers already had been sold in McDonald’s restaurants, noted Dr. Barry Glassner, a sociology professor at the University of Southern California. The recent rise in obesity may have more to do with our increasingly sedentary lifestyles than with the quality of our diets.
But the notion that Americans ever ate well is suspect??? Of course we did, read on….
Here is A Brief History of Nutrition, it will let you see how we have gotten to the “diet” Madness we are at today-
Over the last 90 years we have seen a bewildering array of information on what we should eat. This information has come from any sources; the academic world, the Food and Drug Administration, countless “diet” books. When food “manufacturers” began advertising for the “food” they wanted us to buy, the whole subject became really confusing. We bought into all of it. We went from a diet based on real food which we had eaten throughout time, to breakfast cereals, cookies, candy, processed or instant food. By the 1980’s, 60% of American children’s diets were “non-food”. Manufactured foodstuff, chemicals, and preservatives. Then came fast food, transfats, out sugar intake took a major upswing. The rate of obesity began to climb.
In the mid-1900’s, the academic world, funded by the food processing industry, macronutrients (proteins, fats and carbohydrates) began to loom very large, food quality was pushed to the background and the notion that fats should be limited.
The first to attempt simple dietary guidelines were the dieticians, who came up with the Four Food Groups—meats, poultry, fish and beans; milk and cheeses; vegetables and fruits; and breads and cereals—an innocuous construct that offended no one and completely avoided making any judgments on dietary fats. Emphasis on macronutrient ratios came in with the USDA Food Guide Pyramid in 1992, which reflected the pro-grain conclusions of the McGovern Committee by giving prominence to carbohydrates and relegating animal foods to the smaller areas at the top of the pyramid. Fats and oils are mysteriously put with sweets (which are carbohydrates)—for reasons unknown except to government bureaucrats—and placed at the top of the pyramid with the admonition to "eat sparingly."
Both the US government and the American Heart Association (AHA) now preach fat restriction as the key to good health. Both recommend that less than 30 percent of dietary calories come from fat, with 15 percent from protein and the balance—up to 60 percent—from carbohydrates such as bread, pasta, rice, cereal, fruits and vegetables. (Milk products, nuts and beans are also sources of carbohydrates.)
To the average consumer, these guidelines might seem entirely reasonable.
If we take the governments recommendations on how we should eat the only way to achieve the dietary guidelines with foods that Americans enjoy eating is to drastically reduce meat and fat and pile on the carbs. If we follow this argument to its logical conclusion, we are led to one of two choices—either add lots of sugar to standard American meals or cut way back on animal foods and eat heaps of beans and pasta.
The latter course is the one advocated by extremists like Dean Ornish and John McDougal (and backed by Dr. Neil Barnard of the Physicians’ Committee for Responsible Medicine). Using logic that if a little is good, then even less is better, Ornish and McDougal promote a diet containing only 10 percent of calories as fat, a proposal that makes normal eating impossible. Even nuts are taboo on such a diet. Since beans can contain up to 25 percent protein and have less than 5 percent fat, they are given as the ideal protein source. If you want the complete protein provided by animal foods, your only choices are skim milk, egg whites and shellfish. These diets were invented by academicians, not cooks, and are too unpalatable—not to mention deficient in nutrients—to be taken seriously.
Diets high in carbohydrates and low in fat don’t stick to the ribs. Unimpeded by fats, which have the effect of slowing down digestion, carbohydrate foods flood the bloodstream and quickly raise the blood sugar. Without adequate fat in the diet, the blood sugar is likely to drop shortly thereafter, causing intense hunger and food cravings that are satisfied either by more high-carb foods—or by giving in to fats. Either way, the result is more calories. It’s no coincidence that as Americans have tried to avoid dietary fats; the rate of obesity has climbed. That’s because we’re eating too many calories, say the dieticians, wagging their fingers with disapproval. Unfortunately, only those with iron wills can eat high-carb and low-cal for any length of time. The weak-willed raid the cupboard or the refrigerator, bingeing and splurging on snack foods and sweets.
“The meals we romanticize in the past somehow leave out the reality of what people were eating,” he said. “The average meal had whole milk and ended with pie…. The typical meal had plenty of fat and calories.”
The typical meal had plenty of fat and calories.” DUH!!! Our diets are SUPPOSED to have plenty of calories (about 2000 a day) and plenty of fat (50% of our caloric intake should be from high quality, organic fat)!
“Nostalgia is going to get us nowhere,” he added.
Neither will wishful misconceptions about the efficacy of exercise. First, the federal government told Americans to exercise for half an hour a day. Then, dietary guidelines issued in 2005 changed the advice, recommending 60 to 90 minutes of moderate exercise a day. There was an uproar; many said the goal was unrealistic for Americans. But for many scientists, the more pertinent question was whether such an exercise program would really help people lose weight.
The leisurely after-dinner walk may be pleasant, and it may be better than another night parked in front of the television. But modest exercise of this sort may not do much to reduce weight, evidence suggests.
“People don’t know that a 20-minute walk burns about 100 calories,” said Dr. Madelyn Fernstrom, director of the weight-management center at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. “People always overestimate the calories consumed in exercise, and underestimate the calories in food they are eating.”
Exercise has little effect on weight. Don’t get me wrong, it great for a lot of things…cardio-vascular health, muscle fitness and tone, makes you happy, feels great. But to take off 1 pound of body weight you have to burn 3500 calories! Yes…that is a lot of calories. At my weight, 109 pounds, I can run 10 mph, and run for an hour and burn 791 calories in 1 hr. I am not prepared to run 3 1/2 hours a day to take off a pound of body fat…when I can eat perfect, or close to it…and just garden, practice yoga, dance a lot, hula hoop some, ride my bike when I want…and stay in great shape!
I found a site online to do check my body mass index, they say for my height, 5 ft 5, I should weight 130 pounds! Yuck, at even 5 more pounds my waistline thickens (and it’s 24 inches, the same as before I had 5 children!) and I start losing my shape….no way!!!
Tweaking the balance is far more difficult than most people imagine, said Dr. Jeffrey Friedman, an obesity researcher at Rockefeller University. The math ought to work this way: There are 3,500 calories in a pound. If you subtract 100 calories per day by walking for 20 minutes, you ought to lose a pound every 35 days. Right?
Wrong. First, it’s difficult for an individual to hold calorie intake to a precise amount from day to day. Meals at home and in restaurants vary in size and composition; the nutrition labels on purchased foods — the best guide to calorie content — are at best rough estimates. Calorie counting is therefore an imprecise art.
Second, scientists recently have come to understand that the brain exerts astonishing control over body composition and how much individuals eat. “There are physiological mechanisms that keep us from losing weight,” said Dr. Matthew W. Gilman, the director of the obesity prevention program at Harvard Medical School/Pilgrim Health Care.
Scientists now believe that each individual has a genetically determined weight range spanning perhaps 30 pounds. Those who force their weight below nature’s preassigned levels become hungrier and eat more; several studies also show that their metabolisms slow in a variety of ways as the body tries to conserve energy and regain weight. People trying to exceed their weight range face the opposite situation: eating becomes unappealing, and their metabolisms shift into high gear.
The body’s determination to maintain its composition is why a person can skip a meal, or even fast for short periods, without losing weight. It’s also why burning an extra 100 calories a day will not alter the verdict on the bathroom scales. Struggling against the brain’s innate calorie counters, even strong-willed dieters make up for calories lost on one day with a few extra bites on the next. And they never realize it. “The system operates with 99.6 percent precision,” Dr. Friedman said.
The temptations of our environment — the sedentary living, the ready supply of rich food — may not be entirely to blame for rising obesity rates. In fact, new research suggests that the environment that most strongly influences body composition may be the very first one anybody experiences: the womb.
According to several animal studies, conditions during pregnancy, including the mother’s diet, may determine how fat the offspring are as adults. Human studies have shown that women who eat little in pregnancy, surprisingly, more often have children who grow into fat adults. More than a dozen studies have found that children are more likely to be fat if their mothers smoke during pregnancy.
The research is just beginning, true, but already it has upended some hoary myths about dieting. The body establishes its optimal weight early on, perhaps even before birth, and defends it vigorously through adulthood. As a result, weight control is difficult for most of us. And obesity, the terrible new epidemic of the developed world, is almost impossible to cure.
THIS is the Best ‘They” Can Come Up With??????
They are basically saying obesity is almost impossible to cure? That is just stupidity…plain and simple. Americans eat carbs constantly, they act as if the have the “right” to eat anything they want and expect different results..the definition of neurosis!
The government and big Agra-food companies have sold us a bill of goods, that we need whole grains, that bread is healthy, that cereal is a decent breakfast, that granola bars are healthy…they are wrong; they are just feeding thier pocketbooks, growing the medical and pharmaceutical companies, the cancer “industry”, ….at YOUR expense.
In my career as a nutrition coach, spanning 26 years, I have had 2 different doctors tell me that they were not interested in teaching people to get well to the degree that I teach…that thier patients saw them an average of 7 times a year, and that paid the bills! I had one doctor in Ormond Beach get furious that I taught her best friend how to get rid of systemic yeast…in a month she was yeast free…and this doctor had been treating her for 3 years! And it was her best friend!! And this doctor was a nutritionist!
It’s not that complicated! Eat organic meat, rich meat broths for calcium and iron, healthy organic raw butter and unprocessed coconut oil, lots of low glycemic vegetables (green leafy veggies, mushrooms, onions, peppers, tomatoes) very small amounts of fruits and nuts, healthy organic grass fed or free range meats, organic eggs, small amounts of fermented foods (I make coconut milk yogurt, sauerkraut and kombucha tea).
That’s it, it’s that simple.We have NOT lost the “war” on obesity, we have simply gotten too lazy or too rushed to cook. We have gotten so spoiled by packaged foods that we are ruining our health…and our children’s health…
September 2, 2009
The 4 or 5-digit number that you’ll find on the little sticker on your produce is a Price Look-Up, or PLU, code. They’ve been used by grocery stores for about 20 years to identify produce for pricing at the cash register. (I always did wonder how grocery clerks could spot the difference between Bosc and Bartlett pears on sight.) These days, the International Federation for Produce Standards (IFPS), a voluntary organization of those associated with the fresh produce industry, coordinates the use of standardized codes throughout the world.
PLU codes are used for fruits and vegetables sold individually and for other items like nuts and dried fruit sold in bulk. (You won’t see a PLU code on anything with a fixed weight, like a pint of blueberries, or that’s been processed, like a fruit salad or juice.) The code signals to the retailer the information needed to determine the price – so “4131″ indicates not only the type of fruit (“apple”) but also the variety (“Fuji”) and even the size (“extra large”). If you’re a produce nerd like me, you can even look up the exact variety of what you’re eating on the IFPS website.
Organic & GMO
As you’re no doubt well aware, organic or not factors into the price of what you’re buying. As a result, the IFPS decided that organic produce would be identified with a “9″ in front of the standard 4 digits traditionally used for the fruit or veggie. So if that big Fuji is organic, the code won’t just be “4131″ but “94131.”
Similarly, an “8″ as the first of a five-digit code indicates genetically-modified produce. If that Fuji was created using GM technology, the code would be “84131.”
Retailer Codes, not Regulations
Keep in mind that these codes are administered by a voluntary organization (the International Federation for Produce Standards) that’s made up largely of produce trade associations. Their main purpose is not to inform consumers but to facilitate grocery transactions.
Produce advertised as organic must comply with the standards of the USDA National Organic Program, but there are no labeling requirements for genetically-modified foods. No need to get too worried about looking for number 8’s, though: given current technology, there is very little PLU-coded produce that would have been genetically engineered. Thought there’s plenty of GMO corn and soybeans out there, GM technology hasn’t yet made inroads on the individually-sold fruits and veggies like tomatoes, apples, etc.
The awesome image (that was) above is by Artist Cheri Kopp; see more of her work at- http://www.cherikopp.com/index.html She wanted me to take it down, but you should check out her work…
Filed under: Food and it's Impact on Our Health
From TruthOut;
Wednesday 16 September 2009
by: Tom H. Hastings, t r u t h o u t | Perspective
While $1 trillion is being spent on war, unemployment continues to rise and people continue to lose their health care. (Photo: Troy Page / t r u t h o u t)
We see the spectacle of the US Congress unable to manage decent health care reform that will actually enable the American citizenry to join the rest of the industrialized world in having health care for all. The problems, it is clear, come from those who are lying.
Death panels? That’s true – we already have them. Insurance companies deny care to Americans, who then die as a result. It happens every day, Sarah Palin – but ascribing that to the Obama plan is untrue. In fact, those corporate death panels would be outlawed.
Find the language in Obama’s bill that says that illegal aliens are covered or admit it’s a canard – God forbid we should help some migrant worker who is stricken by illness or accident while laboring in service to Americans. South Carolina’s Joe Wilson is just the Tourette tip of a dissembling iceberg.
We can’t afford the plan? That is a whopper. It’s all choice.
If every child in America doesn’t have health care, but we own more than 6,000 nuclear weapons, more than half of them on board a fleet of 18 extremely expensive Trident submarines ready to fight the Soviets (Hey! Where’d they go?), isn’t it time to ask some fundamental questions? One is: Why spend $16.5 billion just on the Department of Energy nuclear weapons budget for FY 2010 with 50 million uninsured citizens? Does US Sen. Jim DeMint (R-South Carolina) speak for us all when he calls health care a privilege (and presumably threatening life on Earth is a human right for the US military)?
When our working poor are so often without either the money to pay for health insurance or the high costs of health care for ailing family members, and yet we somehow manage to justify spending in excess of $915 billion on the so-called War on Terror, shouldn’t we engage in some national discussion about priorities?
$1 trillion for war while unemployment pushes ten percent in more and more states is unconscionable. Unemployment means a loss of health care for a high percentage of those who lose jobs and more foreclosures on the American dream of home ownership every month. Historically, it naturally correlates with increases in crime. The US is the last of the so-called developed countries to fail to insure the unemployed and underemployed, and we have the highest crime rates. So many thousands of us are shot each year that we more than qualify to be considered at war inside our own borders. Much of that carnage relates to social problems like unemployment, lack of health care and simple hopelessness.
Does it not seem that when the US can afford and not question nearly 1,000 military bases on other people’s sovereign soil – 287 of them in Germany alone – that we can afford to create jobs? Rather than have our young people learning how to hurt others in the military, we could end economic conscription, lower the crime rate, drastically reduce the numbers of uninsured, reverse the home foreclosure numbers and enhance our nation’s productivity by offering minimum wage jobs to anyone willing to work. Those jobs would include housing in some cases, health care benefits in all cases and on-the-job training and supplementary education for those needing it. Closing foreign military bases until these programs were paid for would be a giant leap for the US back toward the health of our workforce, our economy, our educational system and our very citizenry.
No one is talking about this? True. So, it’s time to start.
Filed under: Nourishment
By ALFIE KOHN in the New York Times
Published: September 14, 2009
More than 50 years ago, the psychologist Carl Rogers suggested that simply loving our children wasn’t enough. We have to love them unconditionally, he said — for who they are, not for what they do.
As a father, I know this is a tall order, but it becomes even more challenging now that so much of the advice we are given amounts to exactly the opposite. In effect, we’re given tips in conditional parenting, which comes in two flavors: turn up the affection when they’re good, withhold affection when they’re not.
Thus, the talk show host Phil McGraw tells us in his book “Family First” (Free Press, 2004) that what children need or enjoy should be offered contingently, turned into rewards to be doled out or withheld so they “behave according to your wishes.” And “one of the most powerful currencies for a child,” he adds, “is the parents’ acceptance and approval.”
Likewise, Jo Frost of “Supernanny,” in her book of the same name (Hyperion, 2005), says, “The best rewards are attention, praise and love,” and these should be held back “when the child behaves badly until she says she is sorry,” at which point the love is turned back on.
Conditional parenting isn’t limited to old-school authoritarians. Some people who wouldn’t dream of spanking choose instead to discipline their young children by forcibly isolating them, a tactic we prefer to call “time out.” Conversely, “positive reinforcement” teaches children that they are loved, and lovable, only when they do whatever we decide is a “good job.”
This raises the intriguing possibility that the problem with praise isn’t that it is done the wrong way — or handed out too easily, as social conservatives insist. Rather, it might be just another method of control, analogous to punishment. The primary message of all types of conditional parenting is that children must earn a parent’s love. A steady diet of that, Rogers warned, and children might eventually need a therapist to provide the unconditional acceptance they didn’t get when it counted.
But was Rogers right? Before we toss out mainstream discipline, it would be nice to have some evidence. And now we do.
In 2004, two Israeli researchers, Avi Assor and Guy Roth, joined Edward L. Deci, a leading American expert on the psychology of motivation, in asking more than 100 college students whether the love they had received from their parents had seemed to depend on whether they had succeeded in school, practiced hard for sports, been considerate toward others or suppressed emotions like anger and fear.
It turned out that children who received conditional approval were indeed somewhat more likely to act as the parent wanted. But compliance came at a steep price. First, these children tended to resent and dislike their parents. Second, they were apt to say that the way they acted was often due more to a “strong internal pressure” than to “a real sense of choice.” Moreover, their happiness after succeeding at something was usually short-lived, and they often felt guilty or ashamed.
In a companion study, Dr. Assor and his colleagues interviewed mothers of grown children. With this generation, too, conditional parenting proved damaging. Those mothers who, as children, sensed that they were loved only when they lived up to their parents’ expectations now felt less worthy as adults. Yet despite the negative effects, these mothers were more likely to use conditional affection with their own children.
This July, the same researchers, now joined by two of Dr. Deci’s colleagues at the University of Rochester, published two replications and extensions of the 2004 study. This time the subjects were ninth graders, and this time giving more approval when children did what parents wanted was carefully distinguished from giving less when they did not.
The studies found that both positive and negative conditional parenting were harmful, but in slightly different ways. The positive kind sometimes succeeded in getting children to work harder on academic tasks, but at the cost of unhealthy feelings of “internal compulsion.” Negative conditional parenting didn’t even work in the short run; it just increased the teenagers’ negative feelings about their parents.
What these and other studies tell us, if we’re able to hear the news, is that praising children for doing something right isn’t a meaningful alternative to pulling back or punishing when they do something wrong. Both are examples of conditional parenting, and both are counterproductive.
The child psychologist Bruno Bettelheim, who readily acknowledged that the version of negative conditional parenting known as time-out can cause “deep feelings of anxiety,” nevertheless endorsed it for that very reason. “When our words are not enough,” he said, “the threat of the withdrawal of our love and affection is the only sound method to impress on him that he had better conform to our request.”
But the data suggest that love withdrawal isn’t particularly effective at getting compliance, much less at promoting moral development. Even if we did succeed in making children obey us, though — say, by using positive reinforcement — is obedience worth the possible long-term psychological harm? Should parental love be used as a tool for controlling children?
Deeper issues also underlie a different sort of criticism. Albert Bandura, the father of the branch of psychology known as social learning theory, declared that unconditional love “would make children directionless and quite unlovable” — an assertion entirely unsupported by empirical studies. The idea that children accepted for who they are would lack direction or appeal is most informative for what it tells us about the dark view of human nature held by those who issue such warnings.
In practice, according to an impressive collection of data by Dr. Deci and others, unconditional acceptance by parents as well as teachers should be accompanied by “autonomy support”: explaining reasons for requests, maximizing opportunities for the child to participate in making decisions, being encouraging without manipulating, and actively imagining how things look from the child’s point of view.
The last of these features is important with respect to unconditional parenting itself. Most of us would protest that of course we love our children without any strings attached. But what counts is how things look from the perspective of the children — whether they feel just as loved when they mess up or fall short.
Rogers didn’t say so, but I’ll bet he would have been glad to see less demand for skillful therapists if that meant more people were growing into adulthood having already felt unconditionally accepted.
Alfie Kohn is the author of 11 books about human behavior and education, including “Unconditional Parenting” and “Punished by Rewards.”
Filed under: Nourishment
Always a big fan of Psych Central (I get thier newsletters), here is a great article by one of my favorite writers on that site.
By Christine Stapleton
September 12, 2009
I do not like to make sweeping generalizations but after this week, I am comfortable saying this:
We are not nice. We are not tolerant. We do not play well together.
- I had to sign a permission slip to allow my 17-year-old daughter to listen to the President of the United States at the conservative Christian school she attends.
- Someone seeded a road beloved by local cyclists – which cuts through one of the richest towns on the planet – with small carpet tacks. The town, Jupiter Island, doesn’t want groups of riders on its beautiful roads.
- I listened to a grown man with a few beers in his belly use the “N” word indiscriminately in front of his 10-year-old son.
What the heck is going on? For some reason, people assume that because my daughter attends a conservative Christian school that I am a Limbaugh-lovin’ dittohead. Others assume that because I am a journalist at a left-leaning newspaper that I am a Jane Fonda wannabe. I wear preppy clothes, but underneath I have a tattoo. I was born in Gerald Ford’s Republican hometown, but I live in the gayest neighborhood in town. I have no bumper stickers and I am registered as an independent voter.
I am not what people think I am but because they mistakenly assume I am, I get to hear and see people in their most honest state, when their guard is down. My liberal friends are as pedantic and self-righteous as the conservatives they bash. My conservative friends send me horrible emails and jokes about liberals and minorities.
What does any of this have to do with my mental illnesses? Plenty. One of the first tools I was given when I got sober was this: Identify, don’t compare. I did not know what it meant. I had trained my brain to cop to the negative, to look for differences rather than what we have in common. This kind of thinking breeds anger, resentment and intolerance – ingredients for a perfect batch of depression or mania. I convince myself that I am either better than you or not as good as you. I am holier than thou or not worthy of a scratch behind the ear.
The solution: find something in common, even if it is just an anatomical or geographical similarity: “I live in Palm Beach county, Rush Limbaugh lives in Palm Beach county” or “I have a nose and my religion-bashing atheist co-worker has a nose.” It sounds silly, but it works. Just approaching a person or situation with the intent of finding common ground has made a huge difference in my mental health.
This tool, and others I have learned in therapy, are as important as my medications. Antidepressants alone will not make me well. I have had to change – rewire -the way I think. It isn’t easy, but it works. Now, what do that N-word slinging father and I have in common?
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A big part of green eating is slowing down the entire process.
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One of the most visible examples of any green lifestyle is eating. What we choose to eat can serve as the motivating power of example. The same can be said for how we choose to eat: fast or slow. Fast food has been around so long that a full generation of humans can’t remember life without it. I’d say the time is long overdue for a major slow food comeback.
"The slow food movement works to reconnect people to the food they eat. Local food, and local food traditions are central to reclaiming our relationship with nature," declare the good folks at TreeHugger.com. And there’s nothing slow about this movement with over 83,000 members in 122 countries. Some of the objectives sought by those 83,000 slowpokes include lobbying for the inclusion of organic farming concerns within agricultural policy, lobbying against government funding of genetic engineering, and lobbying against the use of pesticides.
When we shorten the distance–both literal and figurative–that our food travels to get to our bellies, we are participating in the Slow Food movement. (And it can all start with nice slow breakfast.)
5 Ways to Be a Slow Eater
1. Say no to fast food.- For starters, fast food cooking alone is worse for the air than all the trucks on the road. How’s that for an apropos statistic?
So passing that greasy burger joint by means sparing the air.
Fast food restaurants also contribute to reckless consumption and destruction of resources—check out this article that follows the chain from rainforest destruction to chicken nuggets ending up in the UK. And then there’s the poor animal treatment, the immense shipping programs emitting harmful gases, the millions of tons of waste generated annually, and the total lack of nutritional value in fast food restaurant’s most popular menu items.
Of course some of this is null and void if you happen to pass by an organic fast food joint. In which case, eat organically away, I say. But until the day when we see these organic outposts right off the highway regularly—drive on by, friend. Just drive on by, even if you’re hungry.
How about packing a picnic? That what I always did when my children and I took road trips. That way you can eat in the car or stop at a rest stop and let the kids run around and eat outdoors.
2. Eat locally grown food whenever possible. Again, local food traditions help reclaim our relationship with nature.
3. Choose organic. It’s good for the farmers, the soil, the local food tradition, and the health of all involved.
4. Avoid GMOs. Slow food is all about reconnecting people to the food they eat. That’s food, not frankenfood.
5. Find time to slowly savor your meals.- One of the problems in our daily lives is that many of us rush through the day, with no time for anything … and when we have time to get a bite to eat, we gobble it down. That leads to stressful, unhealthy living. And with the simple but powerful act of eating slower, we can begin to reverse that lifestyle immediately. How hard is it? You take smaller bites, you chew each bite slower and longer, and you enjoy your meal longer.
It takes a few minutes extra each meal, and yet it can have profound effects.
If you read the Slow Food Manifesto, you’ll see that it’s not just about health — it’s about a lifestyle. And whether you want to adopt that lifestyle or not, there are some reasons you should consider the simple act of eating slower:
- Lose weight. A growing number of studies confirm that just by eating slower, you’ll consume fewer calories — in fact, enough to lose 20 pounds a year without doing anything different or eating anything different. The reason is that it takes about 20 minutes for our brains to register that we’re full. If we eat fast, we can continue eating past the point where we’re full. If we eat slowly, we have time to realize we’re full, and stop on time. Now, I would still recommend that you eat healthier foods, but if you’re looking to lose weight, eating slowly should be a part of your new lifestyle.
- Enjoy your food. This reason is just as powerful, in my opinion. It’s hard to enjoy your food if it goes by too quickly. In fact, I think it’s fine to eat sinful foods, if you eat a small amount slowly. Think about it: you want to eat sinful foods (desserts, fried foods, pizza, etc.) because they taste good. But if you eat them fast, what’s the point? If you eat them slowly, you can get the same amount of great taste, but with less going into your stomach. That’s math that works for me. And that argument aside, I think you are just happier by tasting great food and enjoying it fully, by eating slowly. Make your meals a gastronomic pleasure, not a thing you do rushed, between stressful events.
- Better digestion. If you eat slower, you’ll chew your food better, which leads to better digestion. Digestion actually starts in the mouth, so the more work you do up there, the less you’ll have to do in your stomach. This can help lead to fewer digestive problems.
- Less stress. Eating slowly, and paying attention to our eating, can be a great form of mindfulness exercise. Be in the moment, rather than rushing through a meal thinking about what you need to do next. When you eat, you should eat. This kind of mindfulness, I believe, will lead to a less stressful life, and long-term happiness. Give it a try.
- Rebel against fast food and fast life. Our hectic, fast-paced, stressful, chaotic lives — the Fast Life — leads to eating Fast Food, and eating it quickly. This is a lifestyle that is dehumanizing us, making us unhealthy, stressed out, and unhappy. We rush through our day, doing one mindless task after another, without taking the time to live life, to enjoy life, to relate to each other, to be human. That’s not a good thing in my book. Instead, rebel against that entire lifestyle and philosophy … with the small act of eating slower. Don’t eat Fast Food. Eat at a good restaurant, or better yet, cook your own food and enjoy it fully. Taste life itself.
Filed under: Food and it's Impact on Our Health
Though I in now way agree with the statement this write makes when he says, “Thus a diet that puts more emphasis on whole grains and fresh vegetables, with meat as a side dish or condiment rather than the center of the plate is, as ever, the only healthy, viable alternative”…. at least our awful school lunches are coming under fire.
Chowing down for better school lunches in Iowa City.Photo: Kurt Michael Friese
All across the country this past Labor Day, folks gathered for picnics. That’s no surprise, of course. After all, it was a holiday, and the weather was grand across nearly the whole continent. But there was something unique about one group of picnics; 307 of them to be exact, in all 50 states. They were dubbed “Eat-Ins” (modeled on the sit-ins of the ‘60s), and they were a call to action by Slow Food USA
At those picnics, including one right here in Iowa City, more than 20,000 people gathered around tables in parks and farms and school grounds to tell Congress to fix the School Lunch Program. Most of the discussions at these events and in the press afterwards centered on improving the food itself through increased Federal spending and local food initiatives. But there was another topic directly relevant to Labor Day: the call to create green jobs with a “School Lunch Corps.”
As the platform promoted by Slow Food states:
We can’t serve real food in schools without investing in school kitchens and the people who prepare and serve lunch. This spring, President Obama signed the Serve America Act, which expanded Americorps and reinforced his call for Americans to serve their country. Right now, our nation has an opportunity to train young and unemployed Americans to be the teachers, farmers, cooks and administrators we need to ensure the National School Lunch Program is protecting children’s health. President Obama has called for an end to childhood hunger by 2015; let’s answer that call by putting Americans to work building and working in school kitchens nationwide.
It bears emphasizing that the School Lunch Corps idea is not an attempt to vilify today’s lunch ladies—or squeeze them out of a job. No one at Slow Food is devaluing the hard work of the thousands of people who work in school kitchens, commissaries, and cafeterias. These folks are dedicated laborers, many of them Union members, whose hands are tied by sometimes outlandishly picayune regulations.
For example, to be permitted to serve a simple but healthy dish of red beans and rice in a school cafeteria—according to Iowa City Schools food service director Diane Duncan-Goldsmith—kitchen workers must add meat or cheese. Doesn’t matter that the dish is already a complete protein. Regulations, serving no one but dairy and beef interests, insist that main dishes must contain meat or cheese. This raises the cost and the calorie count, but adds little to the nutritional value of the meal.
Most of the food served in school cafeterias comes packaged in paper or plastic or cans, and is shipped in from an average of 1500 miles. Multiply that by the 30 million meals served in schools everyday and the impact on greenhouse gasses and the waste stream become readily apparent.
All this doesn’t even touch on the potential health effects of the food our children are eating. The keynote address at our Eat-In was delivered by Rep. Dave Loebsack (D-IA), who sits on the House Education and Labor Committee, the panel with jurisdiction over the Child Nutrition Act reauthorization. Mr. Loebsack emphasized the connection between healthy kids and the future of our entire health care system, noting that one in three kids born after 2000 will contract diabetes before they’re old enough to vote; among minorities that number rises to one in two.
Thus a diet that puts more emphasis on whole grains and fresh vegetables, with meat as a side dish or condiment rather than the center of the plate is, as ever, the only healthy, viable alternative. As an example, the dish I brought to our Eat-In was a slight twist on classic tabouleh, with everything but the grain coming from my restaurant’s garden (I haven’t tried to grow quinoa yet).
Kurt Michael Friese is chef/owner of Devotay in Iowa City, serves on the Slow Food USA Board of Directors, and is editor-in-chief of the magazine Edible Iowa River Valley. His new book, A Cook’s Journey: Slow Food in the Heartland, was published in August 2008. He lives with his wife Kim in rural Johnson County.
Filed under: Food and it's Impact on Our Health, Going Green; How and Why...
From The Grist
NPR’s Guy Raz: What if health care is overhauled and it doesn’t change the American diet in any way?
Michael Pollan: We’ll go broke. If we don’t get a handle on these health care costs, the new system or the old system, we’ll go broke. And that’s why I think that really food is the elephant in the room when we’re talking about health care.
First in The New York Times last week and then on NPR this weekend, Michael Pollan made that point that if we want to fix our health-care system, we have to fix our food system.
From his op-ed in the Times:
[T]he fact that the United States spends twice as much per person as most European countries on health care can be substantially explained, as a study released last month says, by our being fatter. …
That’s why our success in bringing health care costs under control ultimately depends on whether Washington can summon the political will to take on and reform a second, even more powerful industry: the food industry. …
Cheap food is going to be popular as long as the social and environmental costs of that food are charged to the future. There’s lots of money to be made selling fast food and then treating the diseases that fast food causes. One of the leading products of the American food industry has become patients for the American health care industry.
But even with that grim diagnosis, Pollan is optimistic about the future, arguing that if insurance companies are required to accept everyone, as called for by even weak health-reform legislation now in Congress, then the insurance industry will become a powerful ally in fight for better food and against the agribusiness lobby.
Grist’s Tom Laskawy is less optimistic, noting that the poor and the elderly—the most unhealthy groups—are likely to keep getting their health coverage from the government (Medicare, Medicaid, and the VA) and not the insurance industry.
Still, both Pollan and Laskawy are encouraged by New York City’s new anti-soda ad campaign, which Laskawy says is supported by health insurance companies. Will we see more such public-health campaigns around the country, no matter what happens with health-care reform in Washington, D.C.?
Here’s an ad from NYC’s campaign:
I say low fat milk is as bad a choice as the soda…both are products of corn! Eat grass fed meat and only eat dairy if it’s organic and straight from the cow!
