Diet / Fats / Health / Nutrition — 0 Comments
12
May 09

Diet: Another Four Letter Word

It seems these days that any mention of the word diet brings a common look of skepticism from whoever you’re talking to. Why has this happened? Is it because the market is over-saturated with fad diets? The fact that the diet section in the book store is slowly consuming more and more floor space? Or is it because so many of these so called “diets” simply don’t work?

Popular media is filled with reports on “the newest health study”, and ” the latest health product”, and the sad truth is that we eat it up. We have become lazy as a society, and are always looking for the next magic pill that will make us look better, or feel more healthy. The hard to swallow (no pun intended) reality is that there is no magic pill, and healthy eating can be achieved only through smart choices and hard work.

The general vibe I get from people when talking about nutrition and their diet is a feeling of being overwhelmed, and understandably so. It is hard not to feel overwhelmed by today’s health crazed media constantly feeding us study after study after study all based loose correlations and bad science.

I am here to tell you that it doesn’t have to be so difficult. You may not know it, but your body knows exactly what is and isn’t good for you. Acne, allergies, diabetes, heart disease, cancer… the list is long on human ailments that have been linked to a Western diet that is high on carbohydrates and refined sugar. A short search on Google Scholar reveals study after study showning that cultures with diets that have remained relatively unchanged for hundreds if not thousands of years show little to no signs of most common Western diseases. Could it be that perhaps our brains have gotten too smart, and left our bodies in the evolutionary dust? I would argue yes.

If we look at the time line of human existence on Earth (roughly 2 million years), modern agriculture, cooking, and food production practices have only been around for about 10 000 years. That’s less than 1% of out time on this planet. Taking this into consideration, it should come as no surprise then when our radically changed diet causes all kinds of diseases to pop up. Our bodies simply haven’t had time to adjust. Though we may be sending people into space with our brains, we are still living in caveman bodies, and it is for this reason of slow digestive evolution that I advocate a Paleolithic way of eating.

Meat, vegetables, nuts and seeds, some fruit, little starch and NO SUGAR!

Pretty simple.

Don’t be fooled by the four letter word, this is not a diet in the modern definition of the word. This is the way your body wants to eat. It is the way we have evolved to eat. It requires no special foods, no book you must follow, has no late night infomercials, and no easy payments of $49.99. All it requires is a choice. A decision to choose not to eat products that aren’t food. Everything you really need to know about diet, nutrition, and food is summed up in these simple words:
YOU ARE WHAT YOU EAT.

Feed your body crap, feel like crap. Simple.

Eat real food.

Carbohydrates / Diet / Fats / Nutrition / Video — 0 Comments
10
May 09

Gary Taubes Defends Eating Fat.

Gary Taubes, author of Good Calories, Bad Calories: Fats, Carbs, and the Controversial Science of Diet and Health defends his position that fat is not the cause behind North America’s obesity epidemic, but rather that fat may be a key to mitigating many of the problems cause by a poor, carbohydrate rich diet. Taubes discusses how refined carbohydrates are the elephant in the room that health officials fail to acknowledge as the root cause of many ailments associated with a Western diet. Watch Taubes speak on Getting Your Money’s Worth with Judith West.

Diet / Nutrition / Video — 0 Comments
10
May 09

Paleo Diet in a Nutshell.

A brief synopsis of what the Paleo Diet is all about. Everyone learns differently, and if you require moving pictures to sink the benefits of Paleo eating habits into your head, then here they are. Watch and learn.

Meat, vegetables, nuts and seeds, some fruit, little starch, an NO SUGAR. Quite simply the easiest and cheapest change you can make to your lifestyle if you want to mprove your overall quality of life.

Nutrition / Questions — 0 Comments
09
May 09

Supplementation. Macronutrients vs. Micronutrients.

I have received a few questions lately about various supplements and which are the best to take. My general stance on supplementation is that it’s not needed… but let me elaborate:

Supplementation implies that you have a void in your basic diet that needs to be filled. It is a solution to a symptom, and not a cause.

Nutrition is at the foundation of health and well being, and every culture in the world already knows the secret to good health: You are what you eat!There is little room for argument surrounding the fact that your body can only repair and fuel your body with the food that you are feeding it. If you are feeding yourself refined, modified, denatured, and otherwise chemically altered variations of food, then how do you expect your body to perform? To use an analogy, would you pour dirty gas into your car and expect it to perform at an optimal level? Probably not.

To restate what I have said in earlier posts, food should not be broken down into micronutrients. There is a popular trend in the media right now to tout the latest magic bullet pill, vitamin, or antioxidant as the cure to X health risk. The problem with this approach is that our place in nature is a part of a larger system. Our genome didn’t evolve to eat the extracted vitamin C from citrus fruits, or isolate whey protein from milk, or iron pills, we evolved to eat the WHOLE FRUIT, and drink WHOLE MILK, and eat WHOLE VEGETABLES… seeing a trend here?

The three macronutrients of protein, carbohydrate, and fat are the building blocks of human life. Keeping your food in the rawest form you can before digestion ensures that you are getting as much nutrition as you can from the food you eat. Excessive heating, processing, and nutrient isolation removes much of the digestive enzymes from food that helps your body process and break down these foods into useful compounds. Without these enzymes, many foods get treated by the digestive system as a threat and trigger a stress response.

Supplements often lack many of the chemical components that allow the body to use them properly. To compensate for this, most supplements increase the amount of raw product you have you ingest to absorb a significant amount of whatever nutrient you are supplementing for. This practice can often lead to allergies caused by repetitive exposure to compounds that agitate the digestive system.

If you feel that you need to supplement your diet with a protein source, or vitamin, you should probably step back and take a look at where your real food diet is failing. A paleo based diet of meat, vegetable, nuts and seeds, some fruit, little starch and no sugar, combined with proper proportions for your body type, should be providing all of the macronutrients, and consequently all of the micronutrients that you need to thrive.

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20
Mar 09

Milk. Part 2

Continuing from Part 1 on Milk…

Just as our diet affects our health and performance, the diet of our dairy source is equally important. Cows belong to a class of animal called ruminants, meaning they poses an organ called the rumen that digests grasses by initially softening it before is is regurgitated and chewed again for further digestion.

The key ingredient in the process of creating good quality meats and dairy from cows is grass. Grasses are the natural food source for cows, and the reason they have rumens. Modern factory farming however, has decided to go over the head of nature.

Factory farmed dairy cows are now fed mixtures of corn, soy, grains, and other “high energy” feed stocks to make sure the cows are producing as much milk as possible, for as little money as possible. A major problem with this diet is that many non-grass foods (such as soy and alfalfa) contain compounds that mimic the actions of the female hormone, estrogen. While these can cause cows to produce more milk than they normally would (and thus increase profit per animal), some studies have called into question possible impacts on animal health and nutrient content of the milk.

Also, a major issue with cows eating mostly a grain based diet has to do with the cow’s biology. As I mentioned before, cows have an organ called the rumen, that functions to break down cellulose in grass into simple sugars through a mixed process of mechanical churning, and a symbiotic relationship with plant digesting microbes. The problem comes with the fact that these microbes perform best in a pH neutral environment, like the one created in the rumen when cow saliva mixes with fermenting grass. When cows are feed too much grain, the pH balance in the rumen turns acidic, and the bacteria that break down cellulose can no longer do their job, and bacteria that can survive in an acidic environment flourish and begin eating the walls of the rumen. This is where all the antibiotics come in.

What does this mean for human?

Humans have an acidic stomach for a reason, to kill harmful bacteria. It is a safety mechanism that evolved partly because of our taste for meat. Because cows that eat grass grow bacteria that thrive in a pH neutral environment, most bacteria that was left on the meat after slaughter could not survive in our acid stomach. It was a fine balance.

Does the problem now become evident?

Factory farmed cows, which are fed a net acidic producing diet of grains, grow bacteria in their rumens that THRIVE in acidic conditions. This means that any bacteria that is left on the meat when we eat it can no longer be killed by our acidic stomachs.

The message to be taken away from all this info is do your research, and look for high quality sources of meat and dairy. There has been a movement recently back to pasture, or grass-fed beef, and many small farms are beginning to raise cattle again as the demand for high quality meat grows. A Google serach is your best bet to find grass-fed beef in your area.

The issue of factory farming and it’s effects on the health of our society is no stranger to controversy. Corn surplus, a high demand for dairy, and cheap antibiotics have all contributed to the relatively recent decline in nutrition and quality of a food source that has been a staple of the human diet for hundreds of thousands of years.

Michael Pollan talks extensively about the corn and dairy industry’s intimate relationship and how it is degrading out standard of living in his excellent book The Omnivore’s Dilemma. The book is also a must read for anyone concerned about what they are putting in their mouths (read: EVERYONE).

Fats / Nutrition / Questions — 0 Comments
17
Mar 09

Milk. Part 1

Shannon recently asked:

What is the truth behind chocolate milk? I have heard that it is better for you than regular milk, and that you should drink it after a hard work out.

The answer to this question requires some background information on milk, so lets take a step back and look at the broader topic of dairy in general.

The verdict on dairy’s effectiveness as a healthy nutrient source has not been passed yet. There seems to be a war raging between those for the consumption of milk, mainly the dairy industry, and those against it, mainly vegan activists, and People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA).

As in most wars unfortunately, truth is usually the first victim, and the dairy battle is no exception. Propaganda put out by both parties of the debate have left little room for objective investigation, and truthful reporting of the facts.

Milk, it would seem is yet another case of the West’s industrial complex destroying a food that was once a valuable source of nutrients. Much like beef, chicken, and pork, our quest to squeeze the most profits out of a resource has left it barren of nutrients, and full of unknown additives. This shift is not just happening in animal products. Fruits and vegetables have long been selected for genes that express themselves as the best looking, best tasting, and longest lasting produce. Sounds good doesn’t it? Unfortunately, these traits have come at the detriment of our nutrition and health, as nutrients were needlessly bred out in favour of a taste (Read: Higher sugar content).

Similarly, through the processeses of pasteurization and homogenization, milk has been effectively stripped of most of it’s natural enzymes and bacteria that are necessary for the proper digestion of dairy products.

Furthermore, the common misconception that fat is evil has lead to the mass production of reduced fat milk.

Never drink reduced fat milk. (skim, 1%, 2%…)

Fat is taken out milk through a process that over-heats the milk until is it becomes a powder. The fat is separated, and then water is added back to the powder until a milk like consistency returns. You are essentially drinking water with milk ingredients to it. Not milk.

The heat, and exposure to oxygen during the powdering process also damages cholesterol in the milk, which can cause injury to your arterial cells, as well as cause a pathological buildup of plaque in the arteries similar to having high triglycerides.

Heating milk also:

  • Alters milks amino acids, lysine and tyrosine, making the proteins in milk less available for use.
  • Lowers Vitamin C content as much as 50%.
  • Lowers the water-soluable vitamin content as much as 80%.
  • Destroys vitamin B12 completely.

To mention just a few…

These destroyed vitamins are added in artificially after the pasteurization and fat reduction processes so that they may appear on the nutrition label.

If you would still like to consume milk, your best option is to try and find a source of raw milk. Unfortunately, raw milk is illegal to buy in Canada, however, the option does exist to buy a share in a cow. Drinking raw milk from a cow that you own is not illegal. Also, cheese is still allowed to be made from unpasteurized, raw milk. Emmental and Gruyere are just a few of the options.

The second best alternative to raw milk is to buy whole milk, or switch to goats milk which can still be bought in a raw form.

It seems like many other foods, paying attention to the source is the best way to ensure you are eating quality dairy. Furthermore, just as our diet affects our health and performance, the diet of our dairy source is equally important. I will cover importance of what cows are built to eat, and how that is important to humans in the second part of this series.

I admit I have digressed from Shannon’s original question, but it was necessary to formulate a complete answer. As you have read, milk is a good source of protein and vitamins… in it’s original state. Commercial production however, has destroyed most of what is good about milk, and the nutrients that it does contain are artificially inserted backing into the milk product.
Also milk, being high in lecithin produces a high glycemic load, and thus a high insulin response. Adding chocolate syrup (sugar) to milk adds to insulin response, and should thus be avoided.

There was a study however, published in 2006 which indicated that chocolate milk aids in recovery when taken after intense athletic workouts. The study authors believe this to be due to its ratio of carbohydrates to protein, among other nutritional properties. The study was small in scale and partially funded by the dairy industry, but the results may warrant further study. (“Chocolate Milk: The New Sports Drink?”, Associated Press, 24 February 2006)

Diet / Nutrition / Video — 0 Comments
17
Mar 09

Alice Waters on Slow Food

Alice Waters, author of The Art of Simple Food, owner of world famous restaurant Chez Panisse, and matriarch of the Slow Food Movement in the US was recently features on the popular investigative reporting show 60 Minutes. In the interview Leslie Stahl draws the conclusion that perhaps the ever passionate Waters is living in a parallel universe filled with luxury, where the average consumer can afford $4/lb locally grown, organic grapes.  While I agree that the lifestyle that Waters advocates is a bit out of reach for many people who have to work with a limited food budget, she does make a good point at 6:56mins about the often attacked price of organic and sustainably grown food.

To paraphrase:

We all make decisions about what we want to eat and how we spend our money…some people want to buy Nike Shoes, two pairs. Others want to eat good, sustainable food.


Watch CBS Videos Online

The point being made here is that good food should not be some elitist luxury, but rather a restructuring of our priorities. Do you need another pair of Nike’s? Or would you be better off spending that money on good quality food?

From the perspective of a recent university student, a lifestyle often associated with late nights of partying and frequent binge drinking, it has been my experience that people are very quick to call organic food expensive, and complain about being unable to afford it. A claim not often grounded in logic however, as most students will spend more money in one night at the bar than on a typical grocery bill.

Good food should be the last item sent to the chopping block when funds are tight. In a down economy, the best resource you can invest in is your health.

Carbohydrates / Nutrition / Video — 0 Comments
16
Mar 09

Robb Wolf of CrossFit HQ on Insulin Resistance

Today’s CrossFit WOD post came with a video on insulin resistance that nicely coincides with the post I wrote a few days ago about the insulin response.

In the video Robb Wolf explains how our body’s resistance to insulin happens very much analogous to they way our olfactory reaction to perfume is very strong when we first smell a new scent. That smell fades however as our noses become desensitized to the perfume’s aroma. To experience the smell with the same intensity as the first inhale, we either have to increase the amount of perfume (similar to having to increase drug dosages to maintain effectiveness), or decrease our exposure to it. The sad reality is that most people choose the former when it comes to insulin levels.

When insulin resistance occurs, the body has trouble releasing the energy that it has already stored in fat cells, and thus asks for more food to burn as instant energy in the form of hunger pangs. If this demand is satiated by carbohydrates, as is common in North American eating habits, the cycle continues to repeat itself, and fat stores grow while energy levels need continuous “topping-up” with more carbs.

To elaborate what I said in the post on the insulin response, eating low Glycemic Index (GI) carbohydrates, in conjunction with fats and protein, will keep your blood glucose levels low, and thus maintain a normal insulin response.

You body is stuck in an evolutionary past where sugar was relatively non-existent. Due to this environmental scarcity, when a sugar source was eaten your digestive system became very good at instantly storing it as fat, not knowing when the next opportunity for such a high energy intake would be.

If you would not like to be in a constant battle with your genetics, limit your intake of high GI carbs, and cut the refined sugar.

Robb Wolf is both a scientist and athlete as a personal trainer at NorCal Strength & Conditioning. Robb is an NSCA Certified Strength and Conditioning Specialist. In addition, he is a USAW Olympic Weightlifting coach, and a certified CrossFit Coach, the highest level of CrossFit training certification, possessed only by a handful of strength & conditioning coaches throughout the world.

Additionally, Robb is co-publisher and editor-in-chief of The Performance Menu.

Diet / Health / Nutrition — 0 Comments
14
Mar 09

The Insulin Response

You have just finished a long hard day at work, and return home to a familiar smell wafting from your kitchen. Someone has prepared your favourite meal for supper, fettucine alfredo. You serve yourself a heaping portion and proceed in devouring it, barely slowing to enjoy the pasta in all it’s creamy glory. You finish your plate, and are left thinking that if you ate another morsel, you may explode! However, only a few short hours later you have a craving for something sweet? A cookie perhaps?

If this sounds like a familiar situation, fear not, for this is the work of insulin, the bodies Master Hormone. Sounds menacing doesn’t it? Insulin has earned this title, as it is the key player in both the processing of carbohydrates, and the body’s inflammation response due it’s control over what gets into and out of cells. Inflammation is an underpinning element in many diseases and immune deficiencies. Control your insulin response, and you can help control inflammation.

Fun fact: Carpel tunnel syndrome is an inflammatory response to insulin resistance.

Back to carbohydrates. When we eat a meal rich in carbs, blood sugar levels increase as the carbohydrates are broken down into their basic components – sugars. As blood sugar levels increase, insulin is released in response. Insulin is a storage hormone which moves glucose (sugar) from the blood into the muscles and fat cells for use as energy. In order to visualize this relationship better, take a look at the picture below.

insulin-response-to-carbohydrates2
The red and green shaded boxes point out the discrepancies between the peak blood glucose and peak blood insulin levels. This creates a lag in the time it takes for both processes to reach normal levels again (red box).

It is this lag time in normalization of insulin levels which gives us those sugar cravings after carbohydrate rich meals. This is because blood sugar levels are normal but we still have insulin present in the blood and that insulin needs something to do – without sugar to store it gets bored! So it has the effect of asking the body for more sugar. That’s why we get hungry even though we just ate a few hours ago.

If you read my post on triglycerides you will remember that carbohydrates get broken down into simple sugars (glucose) for use as instant energy. When your cells have absorbed all the glucose that they need, a process that is facilitated by insulin, the gatekeeper hormone, the excess is converted to glycogen via the liver. Glycogen is insulin’s antagonist in that it releases fatty acids from storage in response to protein and hunger, and acts to normalize energy levels.

Insulin is also very important for muscle gain (many bodybuilders artificially inject insulin to gain mass), but if you are constantly causing an insulin response by consuming lots of carbohydrates, you run the risk of developing insulin resistance.

Like many processes in out bodies, insulin has an effectiveness threshold, a level at which our bodies perform optimally. The mechanism is analogous drug tolerance, and why drug addicts never again reach the pleasure if their first high with out significantly increasing the intake levels. Our bodies are very quick at adapting to over stimulation, and if insulin is constantly in your blood stream, your cells develop a resistance. Your body tries to counter act this by pumping more insulin into your blood stream.

Why is this bad?

When too much insulin is in your blood stream, and resistance occurs, nothing gets into or out of your cells. This means that all the glucose from the carbs you keep consuming is turned directly into glycogen. Since glycogen stores have limited space in your muscles and liver, the extra glycogen is converted to fat, which has unlimited storage space (especially in the abdomen and love-handles). Furthermore, with nothing getting into, and more importantly, out of your cells, your body can not get at the fat it has already stored for use as energy, and thus tells you to eat more carbohydrates. It’s a vicious cycle, but one that you can get out of.

You have to learn how to control the insulin response to some degree. If you can decrease the amount of sugar you dump into our blood, thereby decreasing the size of the peak in blood glucose levels, the insulin response will decrease accordingly. By leveling off the peaks and valleys in insulin during the day you’ll be able to exit that ‘hunger rollercoaster’ that plagues millions, and reduce your risk of developing insulin resistance.

So how do I manage my insulin levels?

  • Lower your carbohydrate intake and CUT THE SUGAR! I can not stress this enough. If you want to lose fat, and increase your insulin sensativity, this must be your first step.
  • Choose your carbohydrates wisely. Leafy green plants, and other vegetables that are high in fiber do not trigger a large insulin response.
  • Eat carbohydrates in conjunction with fats and protein. Both fat and protein do not cause much of an insulin response and will slow it’s release.
  • Get some good sleep!

Chronic high blood pressure, prolonged exposure to low level stress, and lack of sleep all impair tissue sensitivity to insulin. Understanding the relationship between insulin and glycogen is important for understanding why fat loss while maintaining a high carbohydrate diet is nearly impossible. Hopefully you now have a better grasp on what happens when you eat that twinkie, and why saying “it goes straight to my hips” is not just a figure of speech.

If you have further questions, head over to the Ask a Question page and leave one.

Fun fact: Have you ever noticed how long distance runners, while usually very trim, never really get “six pack” abs? This is because the layer of fat around the abdomen is typically cause by increased cortisol levels, a stress hormone that is triggered by lack of sleep and over training.

Common Interest / Health / Questions — 0 Comments
13
Mar 09

Can you determine your economic status by how healthy you are?

Brandon, who writes Coachbjl’s blog, recently asked me:

Can you determine your economic status by how healthy you are?

In my opinion, the answer to this question is NO, because health is independent of socioeconomic status (SES).**

Eating well, and being conscious of your health should be a top priority in everyone’s life. If you agree with Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, it is easy to see how failing to satisfy the needs of good food and health will cause a major weakness in your personal pyramid.

We live in a world in which obesity has reached epidemic proportions. With more than 1 billion adults overweight (at least 300 million of them clinically obese), this extra bulk is a major contributor to the global burden of chronic disease and disability. Often coexisting in developing countries with under-nutrition, obesity is a complex condition, with serious social and psychological dimensions, affecting virtually all ages and socioeconomic groups.

We as North Americans pride ourselves on being part of the developed world and having the resources to feed our population. It is sad that the way we have chosen to feed these people is with refined corn products such as high fructose corn syrup, and meat that has been so pumped full of antibiotics that it’s slowly destroying our immune systems. Combined this with an increasingly sedentary lifestyle and it is easy to see why obesity rates are exploding across all socioeconomic levels.

Figuratively speaking, yes everyone eats, but most of them eat crap!

To get back to Brandon’s question, just as economic status doesn’t determine health, health can’t determine your economic status. It works similar to trying to judge SES by looking at the clothes someone is wearing, or the car they are driving. Almost impossible in today’s credit supported, culture of stuff.

What health can determine or at least positively affect however, is a person’s happiness.

A healthy body, fueled by good food is an excellent vehicle for fun. You will be able to take part in more experiences, not miss out due to illness, and living your life upright and able instead of overweight and in a chair.

If you are worried about how to finance your new healthy way of eating, consider this: An apple cost less than a bag of chips, water is free, and when you stop spending money on cheap carbohydrates which have little food value, and only make you feel more hungry. You will have all that money to spend on good quality protein and fats.

** In the developed world.

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