Are Blue Tortilla Chips a Health Food?

I've read at least three reports recently that claim that blue tortilla chips are actually much healthier than the regular white kind of tortilla chips you routinely get in Mexican restaurants. Higher in protein, claimed the stories, and lower in glycemic impact.

Well it's true. But it's a distinction without a difference.

Here's the background. A team of Mexican researchers decided to analyze tortillas made from blue corn and compare them to those made from white. They prepared both kinds, put identical amounts of the two tortillas in test tubes and, by observing the breakdown of the starch by enzymes, were able to predict the glycemic index of the two varieties. They also measured the protein content.

Here's what they found: The white tortillas had a predicted glycemic index of 98. The blue kind had a predicted GI of 86. They also found that the blue tortillas contained 20% more protein.

So how do you get from that finding to the conclusion that blue tortilla chips are "healthy"? Answer: you don't, unless you didn't read the research very carefully.

First of all they tested the actual tortillas, not the fried chips that are made from them. Second of all, even though a glycemic index of 86 is 12 percent lower than a glycemic index of 98, it's still extremely high. By no means is 86 a low glycemic index food. And third of all, white tortilla chips have all of about 2 grams of protein per ounce. Even if the blue chips had "20% more protein" they'd only weigh in at 2.4 gram per ounce, hardly the equivalent of a hunk of salmon.

A fried chip is still a fried chip, and not much of a health bonanza. That said, if tortilla chips are your favorite snack and you're not about to give them up you're probably marginally better off buying the blue ones rather than the white ones, especially if you can get the baked variety.

But a health food? Kid me easy.

Diet Soda No Bargain

The link between soda drinking and obesity is now well established. But what about the diet kind? Two years ago, a study at the University of Texas Health Science Center found that there was a 41% increase in the risk for being overweight for every single can of diet soda a person consumed daily.

But how can something with no calories increase the risk for obesity and heart disease?

There are several possible ways.

One theory is that the sweet taste works in the brain to create a conditioned response, and the body responds as it usually does to normal sugar—with insulin, the fat storing hormone. Those circuits in the brain are pretty primitive—as far as your brain is concerned, sweet means sugar. It's entirely possible that physiologically, you would respond to aspartame in the same way as you would to table sugar. It's only a theory, but it makes sense.

Second, sweetness creates its own cravings. Just as a taste of rum creates an unstoppable craving in an alcoholic, it's entirely possible that the taste of sweet—even if it's fake—creates the same cascade of cravings in a carb addict that regular sugar does, leading to overeating and binging and all the rest of the reasons people put on weight.

Third, many people think that by drinking diet beverages they're "saving" calories and they subconsciously allow themselves to eat more, figuring it's not doing as much harm because overall their meal has less calories since they're drinking a diet drink. The diet drink gives them subconscious "permission" to eat more. This isn't conscious, but it's totally real.

Then there's the heart disease connection. Aspartame is primarily made from three ingredients—aspartic acid, phenylalanine and methanol. Methanol—an alcohol—breaks down in the body to formaldehyde, a poison if there ever was one. Exposing children to formaldehyde levels as low as .75 mg daily for several months has been shown to cause gradual toxicity. Plus, diet soda is frequently stored in hot warehouses, causing even more breakdown that went undetected in the original studies that looked at "ideal" conditions.

I don't know about you, but I don't need a double blind randomized controlled study to prove to me that water puts out fire. Soda is bad news, whether regular or diet. Period.

With diet soda—as with sugar—less is more and none is better.

If you're going to use sweetener, I suggest you try Xylitol. It actually tastes like sugar, can be used for cooking and baking, has some health benefits (like preventing bacterial adhesion which is why it's so good in chewing gums) and as a sugar alcohol, has a very low glycemic load.

Meanwhile, forget about the diet Cokes. They don't help you lose weight and they may be contributing to a host of other problems you don't want or need.

Dietary Calcium and Bones- not a slam dunk?

Recently, a study was published claiming that if you want to protect your bones, you're better off getting your calcium from food rather than supplements. But that headline is far from the whole truth.

The current study focused on estrogen and bones.

Estrogen has long been thought to have a protective effect on bones (one of the reasons hormone replacement therapy was thought to be a good idea). But what many people don't know is that estrogen in the body has three potential fates. It can metabolize into any of three different compounds (called metabolites) and these have very different effects, some pro, some con.

Researchers asked 168 healthy postmenopausal women to fill out detailed food questionnaires. They then figured out the calcium intake of each of the women, and determined where the calcium was coming from—diet, supplements or a combination of both.

The results? Women in the "diet" group and the "diet plus supplements" group had higher bone density readings, but they also had higher amounts of the highly estrogenic metabolite 16-hydroxyestrone and lower amounts of the estrogen metabolite 2-hydroxyestrone.

Not such a good thing if you're trying to protect against breast cancer.

That estrogen metabolite (16-hydroxyestrone) that measured highest in both the "diet" group and the "diet-plus-supplements" group—the same one that seems to protect bones—is also potentially carcinogenic. It's exactly the metabolite you don't want to see elevated if you're at risk for hormone dependent cancers. In fact, the wonderful anti-cancer compounds in vegetables like broccoli work precisely because they act as traffic cops, directing estrogen metabolism into the "2" pathway rather than the "16", and thus producing a less cancer-prone estrogen environment. Unfortunately, the ratio of 2:16 metabolites that's most protective for bones is also the least desirable from a breast cancer point of view.

But here's the thing. In both the diet and the diet-plus-supplement groups, over 90 percent of dietary calcium came from dairy. That could very well be a source of additional hormones that you don't need to be taking in. The increase in the 16-hydroxyl estrogen metabolites might have been related to the presence of active estrogen metabolites in milk products.

So what's the take-home if you want to protect both breasts and bones? Get your calcium from a combination of foods and supplements, and reduce your reliance on dairy as a calcium source! Add to that regimine the best bone-builder in the world—exercise like weight training.

The supplement plus diet combo will protect both breasts and bones, especially if you avoid the possible estrogenic dairy products.

Healthy bones need a mix of calcium, magnesium, vitamin D, manganese, boron, silica, and protein. Eliminate some of the calcium robbers from your diet—like sugar and soda—and add some weight training, and you'll do just fine.

Unhealthy Science

Whatever you do, don't miss my friend Gary Taubes excellent cover story in the NY Times magazine section today, "Unhealthy Science: Do We Really Know What Makes Us Healthy?".

A careful reading- which it deserves- will illuminate just why the majority of the studies that make headlines (i.e. "antioxidants of no benefit in heart disease", "St. John's Wort useless against depression", "cholesterol causes heart disease") are deeply, deeply suspect. Taubes- one of the best science writers in America- explains the difference between correlation (the fact that two things are found together) and causation (the idea that one causes the other) as well as I've ever seen it explained in a general article.

Bottom line: In Denmark, the more storks the more babies. Diabetes went up during the Clinton presidency. The best spellers in grade school have the biggest feet. These are all examples of correlations- associations- in which the result (babies, diabetes, spelling ability) is clearly not caused by the thing it's associated with. We need to look deeper. Those examples are obvious. The ones Taubes discusses are less so.

Worth reading. And remember it well the next time you hear something utterly and completely counterintuitive, like fruits and vegetables don't make any difference to your health or vitamins don't "do" anything.

doctors and nutrition

If anyone still labors under the illusion that the average doctor has the slightest idea what he's talking about when it comes to nutrition and supplements consider this:

I just heard from my colleague, Ray Sahelian, MD, a really smart doctor/ nutritionist who sits with me on the editorial advisory board of Total Health Breakthroughs . Like all docs, Sahelian has to take a test every 7 years to maintain his medical board certification.

This is what he wrote in his newsletter:

"This test is prepared by the American Board of Family Medicine. The last time I took the test I clearly remember a multiple choice question regarding osteoarthritis. The choice of answers disturbed me. The question basically asked the ideal long term treatment for osteoarthritis. The choices were a) The use of aspirin, b) The use of NSAIDs such as naproxen or ibuprofen (Motrin), c) The use of acetaminophen (Tylenol) up to 4 grams a day, and d) Combination of aspirin and other NSAIDs. What disturbed me was that there was no option provided for glucosamine and chondroitin or other natural methods. In fact, throughout the whole test, I hardly remember any questions regarding the use of nutrition or nutritional supplements in the treatment of common medical conditions. Later I found out their "correct" answer was c) Acetaminophen.

FYI, a new research study just came out comparing glucosamine to acetaminophen). Researchers from Madrid, Spain, compared the benefit of glucosamine sulfate versus acetaminophen (Tylenol) on the symptoms of knee osteoarthritis during a 6-month treatment course. Patients were randomly assigned to receive oral glucosamine sulfate 1,500 mg once daily, acetaminophen 3 gm a day, or placebo. There were more responders to glucosamine sulfate (39%) and acetaminophen (33%) than to placebo (21%). The findings of this study indicate that, in the long run, glucosamine sulfate is more effective than placebo and as or more effective than acetaminophen in treating knee osteoarthritis symptoms.


I just finished the manuscript for "The Most Effective Natural Cures on Earth" where i did a massive amount of research about research- i.e. combing journals, PubMed, etc for any research I could find on any of the vitamins, minerals, phytonutrients, herbs and natural treatments that have been used to help prevent disease, treat disease or ease the symptoms of disease. There's an enormous amount of this research and much of it is very compelling. Yet go to any doctor in America who has been conventionally trained, and they'll tell you it doesn't exist.

Meanwhile, acetaminophen- Tylenol- is the most common cause of admittance for liver poisoning in US hospitals and in my opinion can do damage to the liver at doses commonly consumed. It's a ridiculous thing to routinely prescribe, especially when the same people prescribing it sound like Larry Craig talking about homosexuality when you bring up the subject of vitamins for the masses.

As you'll read in "The Most Effective Cures on Earth"-- asking your doctor about nutritional supplements is like asking your accountant to recommend a tennis racket.

I hope it changes- but i'm not really optimistic.

If you want an MD who really knows nutrition- and they do exist, I know them and talk to them all the time- you'll have to find one who has taken the time to educate him or herself on his own, with seminars, courses, books and graduate degrees. That's the only place they'll find out about nutrition.

They certainly don't get that info in med school.

Low GI breakfast linked to eating less calories

A study conducted at Oxford Brookes University and published in this month's British Journal of Nutrition gave children between eight and 11 years of age low- and high- glycemic index (GI) breakfasts and subsequently found a slight difference in their calorie intake at lunchtime.

Though the results were not statistically significant, the researchers said they point to the need for more investigation into this area in order to combat the growing global problem of childhood obesity.

You can try this at home and see for yourself. Try eating a breakfast with protein and fat and fiber- say salmon and vegetables- and notice what your cravings and energy levels are like for the rest of the day. (And if that's too far out for you, go with eggs and vegetables, hold the toast and potatoes). Guaranteed you'll feel better and eat less, even without trying.