Dr. Jonny Recommends Q&A

In your opinion, what's the most overrated health food?

It's a tie between canola oil and agave nectar/syrup. Both are pretty much a triumph of marketing over facts. Starting with the former, the processing of commercial canola oil is like sausage making-the de-gumming, deodorizing and other hideous high heat procedures it undergoes in order to make it palatable make its reputation as a "health" oil pretty questionable. The only canola oil I consider even mildly acceptable is cold pressed and organic, and even then just as a salad oil, but there are much better ones. As for agave, it's funny to me that the same people who are outraged about the overuse of high fructose corn syrup are wild about this stuff. The composition of high fructose corn syrup is 55% fructose 45% glucose, while agave is between 55-90% fructose!

Thinking about the adage of breakfast being the most important meal (and we'll just call it "very important")-what foods go into yours?

Anything from a piece of wild salmon; to an egg, spinach, and apple scramble; to a raw food bonanza of berries, coconut flakes, nuts, and Greek yogurt sprinkled with probiotic powder.

So you're, er, "pro" probiotics, even in powder form?

Absolutely. Probiotic powders (or in some cases capsules) are on many nutritionists top ten-even top five-supplement lists. Health begins in the gut, where nutrients are absorbed, and if the gut is overrun with bad bacteria and has a limited amount of good bacteria, many systems are affected (including immunity). Probiotics have a nice research resume for being effective for many things-and we don't get enough of them because we don't eat enough fermented foods like yogurts, pickles, and kim chee.

What's your favorite new food find-anything you've just discovered and can't get enough of?

I'm a serial monogamist when it comes to food, and I've been in love with frozen cherries for a while now. Mixed with raw milk or yogurt they're my favorite edible nighttime treat. Cherries contain a whole family of beneficial plant chemicals called anthocyanins; some of which are particularly effective as anti-inflammatories. This is why cherries are so well known as a folk remedy for gout. Because frozen vegetables and fruits are picked and frozen at the height of ripeness, they're always a very good alternative when you can't get fresh.

How about a top health mistake people tend to make?

Believing high cholesterol causes heart disease. Fully half of the people who have heart attacks have normal cholesterol. And fully half of the people with "elevated" cholesterol have no cardiovascular disease. In my book that makes cholesterol a pretty lousy predictor for heart disease, even though lowering it produces 20 billion in revenue for the makers of Lipitor and Zocor combined.

Supplements. What's your take?

The standard party line from the dinosaurs at the American Dietetic Association is that you can get everything you need from food. Try getting a decent dose of COQ10 from food-or alpha lipoic acid, or saw palmetto, or even vitamin D. Those people are idiots. You can get all you need from food if by "all you need," you're talking about enough to prevent a severe vitamin deficiency disease. Supplements allow us to handcraft a program that provides nutritional support for a wide variety of conditions. You might be able to manage without supplements, but you can manage without indoor plumbing also. The question is why would you?

What are three amazing foods we should be eating more of-and why?

I like blueberries, wild salmon, and grass-fed beef. Blueberries, for all the reasons you've heard before. Wild (not farmed) salmon, for its omega-3s, the antioxidant astaxathin (which gives it that pink color), and the protein. And grass-fed beef because it has none of the problems associated with commercial supermarket meat-no antibiotics, steroids, hormones and other potential carcinogens-along with a higher omega-3 content, some CLA (conjugated linolenic acid, an anti-cancer anti-obesity fat), and it's humanely raised on top of it.

Many thanks to Camille and Sara at Svelte Gourmand for this interview.

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FDA Warning about Tainted Weight Loss Products

A continuing investigation by the FDA has prompted consumer warnings and recalls by some distributors of dozens of so-called "weight loss supplements", many of them imported from China. According to the FDA- which I don't always agree with, but is on the money with this one- many of these supplements contain hidden and potentially harmful drugs. To which I would add- and most of them aren't even effective.

I was personally delighted to see "Star Caps" on the warning list. This overpriced, ridiculous product was aggressively marketed by one Nikki Haskel. Who is Nikki Haskel and what does she know about nutrition? Glad you asked. Back when I lived in NY, Nikki Haskell was an "in-crowd" wannabe, a perpetual hanger on at all the "in" clubs, and the host of a low-rent cable TV show where she interviewed B list celebrities and pretended to be part of the "in crowd". Next thing you know she turns up as a "diet guru" marketing a pill whose ingredients were basically papaya and garlic for 100 bucks a pop.

And people bought it- at least until recently, when it was revealed that Star Caps also contains a substance on the "banned" list of the NFL. But Star Caps isn't the only culprit. The FDA now lists 72 tainted weight-loss supplements. "A large percentage of these products either contain dangerous undeclared ingredients or they might be outright fraudulent on the ingredients and have no effect at all", said Michael Levy, the director of the FDA's division of New Drugs and Labeling Compliance.

Now I'm no fan of the FDA. But it's worth pointing out that many of the ingredients on their warning list do in fact have a lot of serious problems associated with them, including high blood pressure, tachycardia (rapid hearbeat), palpitations and even stroke.

One of the controlled substances found in many of the listed products is Sibutramine, the same ingredient in the prescription drug Meridia, only at an even higher dosage. Fenproporex, another controlled substance found in many of the products, can cause arrhythmia and possible sudden death.

Here is a partial list of the products on the FDA's list of "tainted" weight loss products:

• 3 Day Diet
• 7 Day Herbal Slim
• 21 Double Slim
• 24 Hours Diet
• Fatloss Slimming
• Perfect Slim
• Royal Slimming Formula
• Slim 3 in 1 Extra Slim Formula
• Starcaps
• Super Fat Burner

There's nothing wrong with using products to help with weight loss- particularly safe, effective products like Green Tea Extract, Super Citrimax, CLA-Tonalin and the like.

But they're not magic.

Used in conjunction with a lower calorie, low-carb diet and a sensible exercise program, they can give you an edge.

Best of all, they're completely safe. And- unlike Star Caps and others like it- they don't cost a fortune, promise the moon and deliver substances that may seriously harm your health.