Dr. Jonny Bowden

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  • The Red Meat Scare: What Do We Make Of It?

    The Red Meat Scare: What Do We Make Of It?

    Over 100 of you wrote to me to ask my opinion of the latest “Red Meat Will Kill You” scare, a study which was published March 12 in the Archives of Internal Medicine, and gleefully reported by the mainstream media and commented on by just about everyone on both sides of the red meat controversy.

    Now this study has been expertly and brilliantly debunked by a number of extremely smart people, so let’s start by giving credit where it’s due. Denise Minger, as always, has written a superb piece on it, as have Gary Taubes and Zoe Harcombe. And look for my good friend Mike Eades, MD to put something up soon- his take on this stuff is always on-the-money.

    So rather than repeat what these brilliant folks have already done so well, I’ll just summarize some of the highlights of what they’ve already covered, add my own two cents, and call it a day. Believe me, this won’t be the last you ever hear of the “red meat will kill you” debate, but hopefully it will give you, dear thoughtful reader, a good place to start if you really want to debunk this stuff at your next cocktail party.

    The first thing to know about that as epidemiology goes, it was quite good.

    But, as science– frankly it sucks.

    And why it sucks, unfortunately, is  a much bigger issue than just this study from Harvard. Why it sucks has to do with the whole nature of these kinds of epidemiological studies, which are called observational studies, and are as different from real science as baseball is from thermodynamics. (Nothing against baseball, mind you, and nothing against thermodynamics. They’re just very different things.)

    Science is about finding out what causes what. You take a hypothesis—i.e. spaghetti eating cause heart disease—and then you test it. You take two identical groups- of rats, people, monkeys—make sure they’re identical in every way that you can think of—put them into identical conditions except that one group gets a drug, or eats spaghetti, or performs an exercise, or takes a spin class, or does whatever the heck you’re trying to investigate—and then you observe the results. If there’s a big difference between the two groups, you can be pretty sure (not positively sure, mind you, but pretty darn sure) that the one thing that was different between the groups was actually responsible for the results. If, for example, all the rats taking the drug died while all the rats who didn’t take the drug did just fine, it’s a good bet that the drug killed them. If two groups of “identical” kids are assigned different 8th grade English teachers, and Group A aces the English finals while Group B fails miserably, you can be fairly sure the teachers had something to do with it.

    This was not such a study.

    This study—like many, many before it—is an observational study. No one was put into matching groups, no diet was given out and tested, no one came into a clinic. Instead, thousands of people filled out food frequency questionnaires a few times over the course of thirty years or so. (Food questionnaires that are known to be notoriously unreliable. And why wouldn’t they be? How reliably can you remember what you had for breakfast last month?)

    Before we go on to the specifics of this particular study on red meat, let me quote Denise Minger on observational studies in general. Hard to say it much better than this:

    “In case you’re skeptical that observational studies can run disturbingly contrary to reality, look no further than the hormone replacement therapy (HRT) craze that peaked a few decades ago. By 1991, 30 observational studies—including this one— based on none other than the Nurses’ Health data—collectively showed that women taking estrogen seemed to have a 44% reduction in heart disease risk compared to their non-hormone-replacing counterparts. Naturally, this led literally millions of women to jump on the estrogen bandwagon in pursuit of better health and longer lives. A very unfortunate oopsie-daisy sprouted up later when some randomized, controlled trials finally emerged and revealed that rather than being protective, hormone replacement therapy actually increased heart disease risk by 29%!”

    So back to the red meat study.

    The participants answered dozens of questions like “how many vitamins do you take?”, “do you take birth control?”,  “have you ever been diagnosed with heart disease?”, and “how many times a week did you eat meat last month?”. (You can view the actual questionnaires here.) These people were followed for decades, and hundreds of “data points” collected, such as how many people died, how many people got cancer and how many people got heart disease. Then the researchers “correlate” (or associate) all these data points in an attempt to find some patterns that will eventually generate hypotheses that can be tested in randomized, controlled studies.

    Like the hypothesis that “red meat leads to early death”.

    This study did not test that hypothesis. Studies that have tested it—and there have been quite a few—have found quite the opposite. In much research done over the past decade, the Atkins diet (or a variation of it) has been tested against a conventional low-fat diet in randomized, controlled clinical studies and in study after study, every measure of “risk” for heart disease has improved, not declined. (For a start, just Google research by the likes of Jeff Volek, RD, PhD of the University of Connecticut, or Eric Westerman, MD of Duke University, the A-Z study out of Stanford, or look at the copious research reported in “The Art and Science of Low-Carb Living”.)

    The first thing every eighth grade science class learns is that correlation is not cause. Because two things are found together, or “associated”, does not mean one causes the other. Best example of this was one I learned from my college psych professor, Dr. Scott Fraser, and I’ve never found a better one. Here it is:

    In Denmark, the number of storks is positively correlated with the number of babies. That is to say, the more storks in an area, the more babies are found there, and this correlation (association) has held up year after year for decades.

    Yet no one seriously thinks that one causes the other. At least I hope not.

    (I know you’re dying to know the real reason storks and babies are found together in Denmark so I won’t keep you in suspense. In Denmark, the cities are pretty much inhabited by single people, and when these folks marry and start a family, they move to the suburbs. The suburbs of Denmark are filled with homes that have sloped roofs. Storks love sloped roofs and flock to areas where there are plenty of them. Mystery solved.)

    OK, once again, back to Haaarvard and red meat.

    What the Harvard researchers found was that people who report eating more meat also have a slightly higher rate of dying. But if we all weren’t so sure red meat is “bad” we might have examined this association a little more carefully.

    The researchers broke the participants up into quintiles, from the 20% who reported eating the least meat (virtually vegetarians) to the 20% who reported eating the most, with three quintiles in the middle.

    As we go up the “meat-eating” scale, quintile by quintile from lowest-meat-eaters to highest-meat-eaters, we notice that other things go up as well (it’s right there in the data). Meat eaters smoked more, drank more and exercised less. They also had higher BMI and higher blood pressure. And, as a group, they ate a lot more calories. (A lot more.)

    Oh, and by the way. They also had lower cholesterol.

    Yes, you read that right. The high meat eaters had the lowest cholesterol of any group (and the vegetarians had the highest).

    How come the media didn’t proclaim “Red Meat Lowers Cholesterol?”

    Because they already believe red meat kills you.

    We call this, affectionately, “Doing a Campbell”. This is exactly what Colin Campbell did in his book about a massive study called “Mortality, Biochemistry, Diet and Lifestyle in Rural China”, a book he called “The China Study”. Out of 100,000 statistical associations in the original 894 page tome, he chose to report in his book only the ones that supported his vegan beliefs, while omitting the ones that did not. Did you know, for example, that wheat flour had a higher correlation (.67) with heart disease than meat? You certainly wouldn’t know it from “The China Study”, but it’s right there in the data.

    You mean Campbell left that one out? Whoops.

    Speaking of correlations left out in the reporting, the people who ate the least amount of meat in the Harvard study were also the most likely to take vitamins. Interesting that the media didn’t call this study “Proof that taking vitamins helps you live longer!”

    (If you’d like to skip all the mind-numbing numbers in the original study, they’re presented here in a very-easy-to-read graph form, courtesy of Denise Minger.)

    What’s also interesting is that the size of the effect was about 1/100th of the association found in similar studies between smoking a pack a day and lung cancer. Those early studies were also observational, but the size of the effect—20 fold increase of lung cancer that pack-a-day folks have compared to non-smokers—was so enormous, and duplicated so consistently, that it was absolutely impossible to ignore. The association between reporting meat eating and death was a .02 increase as opposed to a 20-fold increase.

    And if you’re still in love with association studies and want to base your eating preferences on them, consider that years ago, the great British doctor John Yudkin showed that sugar was far more associated with heart disease than fat was. So, for that matter, was the purchase of a television set.

    Meat eating could be a marker for people who are more or less likely to adopt what they think are healthy habits. As Gary Taubes wryly points out, this is like comparing people who choose to be vegetarians and eat at Alice Waters’ restaurant in San Francisco every night after yoga class, with truckdrivers from West Virigina whose idea of a night out is Denny’s, and to then say the difference in their health outcomes is the red meat.

    Back in the 60’s when this study started– and certainly in the 70’s and 80’s– the conventional advice about health was to cut back on red meat, don’t smoke, exercise and eat a lot of vegetables. Health conscious people who listened to the “authorities” ate less meat, exercised more, stayed slimmer and didn’t smoke.

    It’s only in the past decade or so that health conscious people have realized that grass-fed meat is an entirely different “animal” than the crap we buy in the supermarket or the fast food restaurants. And no study—not even these quasi-scientific epidemiological ones—has looked for associations between grass-fed meat eating and early death.

    Look, I’m no shill for animal protein. I wouldn’t touch the stuff they sell at McDonald’s with a ten-foot fork. Feedlot meat- i.e. meat that comes from factory farms—is filled with antibiotics, steroids and bovine growth hormone. The fat is high in inflammatory omega-6’s and virtually absent of omega-3’s. And processed meat is even worse, filled with sodium and nitrates. If that were the only meat available to me, I’d probably become a vegetarian.

    But until the day I see a single randomized, clinical study showing that a diet of grass-fed meat and a ton of vegetables produces a single percentage point increase in early death, heart disease, cancer or diabetes, I’m sticking to the same diet that I’ve been on for over a decade: grass-fed meat, wild salmon, tons of vegetables, berries, nuts, full-fat yogurt and as little sugar and grains as I can manage to live without.

    That’s kept me healthy, energetic and without a single serious medical condition for 60-something years.

    I realize that’s not much of a scientific experiment—but then again, neither was the study from Harvard.

  • Supplements Lousy for Fat Loss

    Supplements Lousy for Fat Loss

    Newsflash: there’s no magic bullet for fat loss. (But you already knew that.)

    That’s what Melinda Manore concluded after examining America’s $2.4 billion weight-loss supplement industry. Her results appear in the International Journal of Sport Nutrition and Exercise Metabolism.

    Manore, a professor of nutrition and exercise sciences at Oregon State University, began this study by categorizing supplements into four categories:

    1. Blockers such as carb blockers or fat blockers
    2. Stimulants: caffeine and ephedra, for instance, which increase metabolism
    3. Body composition changers: supplements like conjugated linoleic acid (CLA) that reduce fat
    4. Appetite suppressants like fiber

    Manore found several problems with these supplements. One is that many of them lacked clinical trials to prove they work.

    Two, the studies that showed a particular supplement did work more often than not yielded an unimpressive two-pound or less weight loss benefit compared to the supplement placebo.

    In other words, hardly the rapid fat burners some supplements claim to be.

    “What people want is to lose weight and maintain or increase lean tissue mass,” Manore said. “There is no evidence that any one supplement does this. And some have side effects ranging from the unpleasant, such as bloating and gas, to very serious issues such as strokes and heart problems.”

    Not all of Manore’s news was grim. She found green tea and fiber, for instance, could stimulate fat loss, but only when you combine them with the right diet and exercise.

    Now, if you’ve read my book Living Low Carb, you know I call fiber the number-one supplement for weight loss. Most of us don’t get enough of this important nutrient that helps promote satiety, lower your hunger hormone ghrelin, and balance blood sugar levels.

    I’m also a big fan of green tea and green tea supplements for fat loss.

    But you can’t swallow a glassful of psyllium husk and then go down in the Krispy Kremes. Likewise, you can’t chug green tea with your Starbucks scone and watch the pounds melt away.

    In other words, you’ve got to combine fiber and green tea with optimal foods and exercise for effective, lasting fat loss.

    (Read my take on a recent study where they fed green tea extract to obese mice »)

    Manore inevitably provides advice for fat loss, most of which is decent even if you’ve heard it before: move more, eat more vegetables, start your meal with a salad, eat fruit rather than fruit juice, and ditch the processed crap. Sound familiar?

    Can’t argue with any of that.

    However, she seriously misfires when she recommends reducing high-fat foods to lose weight. Manore evidently never got the memo that the right fats, such as almonds, coconut oil, and avocado, can actually help burn fat.

    The take-home here – again, this is nothing new – is that some weight loss supplements prove more effective than others if you use them with an effective diet and exercise plan. Otherwise, you’re just throwing money away.

    In my experience, a lower-carb diet with optimal protein and fat, combined with burst training and weight resistance, provides amazing results.

    Adding fiber and green tea to that plan can give you an extra boost to reduce cravings and step up fat burning. Just don’t expect them to do much if you don’t step up your diet and exercise.

  • 5 Simple Rules for Eating at Restaurants

    A recent study in the Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior concludes you can eat out and still burn fat.

    In this study, 35 healthy middle-aged women participated in a six-week program called Mindful Restaurant Eating, which teaches people how to eat out healthfully.

    Now, keep in mind the goal of Mindful Restaurant Eating was to prevent weight gain in these women, who fell into that perimenopausal age range where weight gain and ensuing problems like diabetes and heart disease more frequently occur.

    In other words, researchers did not intend Mindful Restaurant Eating as a weight-loss program.

    But that’s exactly what happened.

    Researchers found these women who completed this program lost much more weight, ate fewer calories, and had fewer issues when they ate out. The program taught them how to choose healthy entrees and resist going face down in the peanut butter brownie bottom cheesecake.

    You’re probably asking how these women lost weight eating out. After all, restaurant food often proves notorious for being loaded with sugar, trans fat, heavy sauces, and all kind of other things that don’t promote fat loss.

    The answer is hardly groundbreaking. These women learned to make smart choices in restaurants with fewer calories and lower fat.

    While I’m all for reducing the gargantuan portion sizes most restaurants serve, I don’t think you need to focus so scrupulously on calories, and you need to worry even less on fat.

    Don’t get me wrong. Some of those entrees at places like Cheesecake Factory have 3,000 calories and are loaded with damaged and even trans fats. You definitely need to pay attention to those things.

    But rather than obsess over numbers, I want you to focus on quality foods when you eat out. Choose whole, unprocessed foods your great-grandparents might have prepared.

    By making smart substitutions, you can easily customize your plate in restaurants for optimal fat loss.

    Employ these five strategies the next time you eat out and you’ll get similar (and probably even better) benefits as the women did in that study:

    • Swamp the breadbasket for olives. You know as soon as your server puts down that breadbasket, you’re going to dive right in. Don’t let that happen. (If your friends insist, ask them to take one piece and ask your server to remove the rest.) Olives, raw vegetables with salsa, and even a cheese plate make far better starter options.
    • Swap the app for a salad. A study in the Journal of the American Dietetic Association showed women who eat a 100-calorie salad ate less food during their meal. I’m talking a small salad here, not one of those zillion-calorie salads loaded with creamy dressing and dried fruit.
    • Swap the pasta for lean protein. A big plate of fettuccini Alfredo is a surefire way to spike and crash your blood sugar and store fat. Choose a lean protein instead such as salmon, poultry, lamb, or steak. And avoid any meat with the words “breaded” or “battered” beside it.
    • Swap the starch for another vegetable. Rather than the rice pilaf or baked potato, request sautéed spinach with garlic or whatever other vegetable sounds good. You’ll spike your nutrient quota while reducing the meal’s glycemic load. And I bet that spinach will be just as delicious as the potato.
    • Swap the sugary dessert for fresh fruit. The easiest way to undo a healthy meal is a big, gooey dessert. Ask instead for fresh berries in cream or the fruit-and-cheese plate along with a cup of green or herbal tea.

    Sources:

    • http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/01/120110093557.htm
    • Rolls BJ, et al. Salad and satiety: energy density and portion size of a first-course salad affect energy intake at lunch. J Am Diet Assoc. 2004 Oct;104(10):1570-6.

  • Obscure Nutrient Protects Against Heart Disease

    Next time you serve a rotisserie chicken or turkey, don’t pass up the dark meat. It could protect you against heart disease.

    A recent study published in the European Journal of Nutrition found that higher levels of taurine in women significantly lowered coronary heart disease (CHD) risk in women with high cholesterol.

    These women with sufficient taurine levels were 60% less likely to develop or die from CHD compared to women with lower serum taurine levels. If you haven’t heard, heart disease is the number one cause of natural death in America. You want to take every potential measure to prevent it.

    A few things I want to note about this study. Almost 80% participants were Caucasian women, so we can’t apply this information to men or even non-Caucasian women. Also worth noting is that taurine, for whatever reason, didn’t provide CHD protection in women with low cholesterol.

    But don’t dismiss this study because it doesn’t apply to you. Other studies also confirm taurine benefits heart health.

    An overview in the appropriately titled Experimental and Clinical Cardiology, for instance, describes numerous experimental and several clinical studies that show taurine boosts cardiovascular health by, for instance, improving lipid profile and acting as a powerful antioxidant.

    Now, at this point you’re either really fascinated with these studies or wondering what the heck taurine is, so let me explain.

    Taurine is a sulfur-containing amino acid that your body requires for numerous functions. Among its many roles, taurine maintains a healthy immune system, helps your gallbladder produce adequate amounts of bile, and contributes to optimal glucose metabolism.

    I recommend taurine in The Most Effective Natural Cures on Earth for its anti-bloating abilities as part of my PMS cocktail.

    Taurine also works as a powerful antioxidant and anti-inflammatory agent.

    You get my point: you want optimal amounts of taurine to get its numerous benefits.

    Now, here’s the deal. Taurine is classified as a conditionally essential nutrient, which means theoretically your body can synthesize adequate amounts with enough vitamin B6 as well as the amino acids methionine and cysteine.

    I say theoretically, because vegetarians and people with certain illnesses don’t always make enough taurine and aren’t getting it in their diets. Rich dietary sources of taurine include shellfish like claims and oysters as well as meat, so it’s no surprise vegetarians sometimes become deficient.

    Energy drinks like Red Bull have popularized taurine. Combined with other ingredients like caffeine and ginseng, taurine can potentially boost athletic performance and brain function.

    But studies here are mixed. One in the journal Amino Acids, for instance, found taurine-containing drinks like Red Bull can boost mental performance and mood. A later study in that same journal, however, found these drinks have no effect on short-term memory.

    I’m not a huge fan of energy drinks, and I certainly don’t think they’re the best way to get taurine.

    Even if you’re eating enough meat and other taurine food sources, you might consider supplementing to get therapeutic amounts of this important amino acid.

    Depending on your needs, I want to recommend two products:

    • Taurine 1000mg from Designs for Health, which provides a therapeutic gram of this amino acid to fight inflammation, boost heart health, and all the other great things taurine does.
    • Lipoic Synergy (also from Designs for Health) is a great formula that combines 200 mg of taurine with the powerful antioxidant lipoic acid and the B-vitamin biotin. If you want to balance blood sugar and support your liver, try Lipoic Synergy.

    Sources:

    • Bichler A, et al. A combination of caffeine and taurine has no effect on short term memory but induces changes in heart rate and mean arterial blood pressure. Amino Acids. 2006 Nov;31(4):471-6.
    • Lourenço R, et al. Taurine: a conditionally essential amino acid in humans? An overview in health and disease. Nutr Hosp. 2002 Nov-Dec;17(6):262-70.
    • Seidl R, et al. A taurine and caffeine-containing drink stimulates cognitive performance and well-being. Amino Acids. 2000;19(3-4):635-42.
    • Wójcik OP, et al. Serum taurine and risk of coronary heart disease: a prospective, nested case-control study. Eur J Nutr. 2012 Feb 10.
    • Xu YJ, et al. The potential health benefits of taurine in cardiovascular disease. Exp Clin Cardiol. 2008 Summer;13(2):57-65.

  • People With Low DHA Have Smaller Brains

    A new study in the journal Neurology found low levels of omega-3 fatty acids can age your brain faster as well as lower your memory and thinking abilities.

    The study involved 1,575 people with an average age of 67, all of whom were healthy and free of dementia.

    Researchers used several measures to test brain function, including an MRI brain scan, mental function tests, body mass, and of course omega-3 levels.

    Turns out people with low levels of DHA, one of the two essential fatty acids in fish, also had smaller brains. These same unlucky participants scored lower on visual memory, problem solving, abstract thinking, and other mental tests.

    That’s not all. The study showed low DHA levels increase your brain’s “age” by two years. So if you’re, say, 65, you theoretically have a brain of a 67 year old. Aging improves wine and cheese. For your brain, not so much.

    On the opposite spectrum, people with the highest levels of DHA fared much better on these tests and dramatically reduced their risk for Alzheimer’s and dementia.

    Adequate DHA levels for brain health make sense when you consider your brain is about 60% fat. According to my friend Dr. Joe Mercola, DHA alone makes up about 15 – 20% of your brain’s cerebral cortex.

    You’d have to live on another planet not to know how omega 3 fatty acids benefit everything from cardiovascular disease to diabetes. Inflammation, circulation, memory you name it, omega-3s can probably improve the condition, which is why I recommend them to nearly everyone.

    So what’s the most effective way to get these crucial omega 3s? If you eat a lot of wild salmon and other non-farm raised fish (I’m talking every day or every other day), you’re probably getting adequate amounts.

    For years, people consumed flaxseed and flaxseed oil to get omega 3s. However, scientists eventually discovered your body does a lousy job of converting the alpha-linolenic acid (ALA) in these plant sources to the EPA and DHA fatty acids in fish oil.

    Now, don’t get me wrong. ALA provides anti-inflammatory and other benefits. I want you to eat plenty of ALA-rich foods, including walnuts, flaxseed, and omega-3 enriched organic eggs, to balance out the pro-inflammatory omega 6s so prevalent in our diets.

    But despite what vegan websites might claim, humans evolved getting optimal amounts of EPA and DHA through fish and wild game, not plant sources. Hey, don’t shoot the messenger.

    If you’re not a fish eater and you want to get the numerous benefits of omega 3s, you need to supplement. You can buy fish oil in softgels or liquid. But bulky softgels can be hard to swallow. And oils are, well, oily.

    I have a delicious solution that even a finicky kid or squeamish partner will love. I know: you don’t often see the word “delicious” beside fish oil.

    This fish oil tastes like lemon custard!

    Barlean’s Lemon Flavored Omega Swirl tastes almost like lemon custard. No kidding. It’s the next best thing to eating dessert but far healthier.

    You can toss a spoonful of this Swirl into a smoothie or enjoy it alone. It provides an amazing texture and tart flavor with absolutely no hint of fishiness.

    You’re getting a high-quality fish oil with an impressive 730 mg of EPA/ DHA blend in each serving that’s naturally sweetened with xylitol. You can trust the Barleans name that you’re getting the freshest, highest-quality fish oil available.

    So stock up on wild salmon and other fish at your local market to get the omega 3s that boost your mind and body. And if fish isn’t your cup of tea, Barlean’s Lemon Flavored Omega Swirl provides an excellent, delicious alternative to get these essential fatty acids.

    Sources:

    • Tan ZS, et al. Red blood cell omega-3 fatty acid levels and markers of accelerated brain aging. Neurology. 2012 Feb 28;78(9):658-64.
    • http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2012/02/06/without-krill-oil-your-brain-could-degenerate.aspx

  • Take a Vacation From Your Low-Carb Diet?

    Can you take a five-day “vacation” from your low-carb diet every week and still burn fat? A new study suggests that possibility.

    Researchers here found women who cut carbs for just two days each week lost more weight than women who stuck with a permanent calorie-restricted diet. In other words, for five days every week, the low-carb groups ate what they wanted and still lost weight.

    The study, presented at the San Antonio Breast Cancer Symposium, randomly assigned 115 women with familial histories of breast cancer (in other words, they’re considered high risk) to one of three diets for four months.

    1. One group ate a 1,500-calorie Mediterranean-type diet.
    2. The second group ate their normal diet, but two days a week they cut carbs and also calories to about 650 on those two days.
    3. The third group also ate as they pleased and low-carbed two days a week, but without any caloric restrictions.

    Just to clarify, during these two low-carb days, researchers allowed the two groups 50 grams of carbohydrate. They could eat one piece of fruit each day as well as non-starchy vegetables. I say this because studies fluctuate wildly over what they define as a low-carb diet.

    Besides weight loss, practicality was a big reason researchers chose this diet. They wanted a diet these women at high risk for breast cancer could stick with long term.

    All three groups lost weight. But whereas the low-calorie Mediterranean group lost an average of five pounds, both low-carb groups almost doubled that loss with a nine-pound average weight loss.

    Now, if you’re a low-carb devotee or even tried this diet for a short period of time, your response to this study is likely Duh! Of course the low-carb groups would do better. You’ve seen firsthand how effectively this diet can be for fat loss.

    And then you reason if they had done low carb every day, rather than two days a week, that weight loss would be even better.

    Indeed, this study proves how powerful a low-carb diet really is. Even though these intermittent low-carb groups ate Zeus knows what on their “off” days, they still lost more weight than the other group who cut their calories every day.

    Another interesting observation in this study is that both low-carb groups had improved insulin and leptin levels compared to the Mediterranean group. Both hormones have linked to breast cancer risk.

    A study in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, for instance, concluded high insulin levels increased breast-cancer risk in postmenopausal women.

    Insulin is also the key to why these low-carb groups lost more weight. I don’t care how low you restrict your calories. (Actually, I do, but that’s a different article.) The point is, every time you eat carbohydrates, you raise insulin levels. And insulin does one thing really well: it stores fat.

    With a low-carb diet, on the other hand, you don’t have those blood sugar spikes and crashes. You keep insulin levels balanced, which decrease your risk for breast cancer and, as these women discovered, helps you better burn fat.

    Intermittent low-carbing might work for people who want to “flirt” with low-carb but can’t bear the thought of sacrificing pasta or cheesecake.

    But the take-home here is not to eat low-carb two days a week and then load up on whatever junk foods you want the other days. Besides being effective for fat loss, a low-carb diet packed with vegetables, lean protein, low-glycemic fruits, and nuts and seeds is the healthiest, most nutrient-rich diet you can eat.

  • Fructose Vindicated for Obesity Epidemic?

    Are we unfairly blaming fructose for the obesity epidemic?

    That’s what researchers from St. Michael’s Hospital suggested in the Annals of Internal Medicine when they reviewed over 40 published fructose studies.

    In 31 of these studies, people ate the same number of calories as either pure fructose or non-fructose sugar. The fructose group did not gain any more weight than the non-fructose group in these studies.

    In the remaining studies, one group ate their normal diet while the other group added fructose to their diet. As you might guess, the fructose group (those who ate the extra calories) gained weight.

    Keep in mind that none of these studies looked at high-fructose corn syrup, which is about 55% fructose. Participants in every one of these studies, rather, consumed pure fructose baked into food or sprinkled on cereals and beverages.

    Reality check. You rarely eat fructose alone. Table sugar and high-fructose corn syrup, for instance, are a combination of fructose and glucose. Even fruit, which is higher in fructose, contains some glucose.

    In other words, these studies weren’t an accurate measure of how you actually consume fructose.

    The study’s lead author, Dr. John Sievenpiper, admitted most of the studies they examined were small, poor quality, and happened over too short a time period to be significant.

    I’ll sum it up: these studies were practically useless, and Dr. Sievenpiper’s meta-analysis proved nothing.

    That didn’t stop the media, however, from picking up this story and suggesting that perhaps we’ve been wrong all along in putting fructose on trial.

    Fructose apologists were also quick to defend this study. “This study lends some further support to the view that weight gain is not caused by any one particular component of the diet, and that fructose… is safe at normal dietary levels,” said cardiologist Dr. James Rippe, a consultant for the Corn Refiners Association, which represents high-fructose corn syrup. “Obesity is the result of consuming too many calories from all sources, without compensating exercise.”

    Indeed, you might conveniently conclude that a calorie is a calorie, and that if you eat too many calories, you gain weight, period. So stop picking on fructose or high-fructose corn syrup or whatever food the press vilifies.

    And, after all, an apple contains about 15 grams of fructose, so how bad could it really be?

    Here’s the deal with fructose. Yes, it’s sometimes innocuously labeled as fruit sugar. But fructose in an apple comes packaged with fiber and nutrients. Your body recognizes an apple because it’s real food, not chemically processed barcoded crap loaded with high-fructose corn syrup.

    Your liver can efficiently process a tiny amount of fructose, but beyond a certain point it does a lousy job breaking it down.

    For a while, experts recommended fructose for diabetics since it doesn’t raise blood sugar levels like glucose. But we eventually discovered what fructose does do is just as bad if not worse.

    For one, fructose contributes to uric acid build-up, triggering cardiovascular disease. Fructose also raises triglycerides, which your body stores as fat. And because your liver poorly metabolizes it, fructose can create fatty liver disease. Fructose also decreases insulin sensitivity in overweight people. And if all that isn’t bad enough, cancer cells thrive on fructose.

    Listen, pinning the obesity epidemic on one culprit is much easier than acknowledging the complex, multi-factorial problem it really is. High-fructose corn syrup is certainly a key player, but a combination of diet and lifestyle issues make people fat.

    Ultimately, the debate about whether high-fructose corn syrup is equivalent to sugar means choosing the lesser of two evils and completely misses the point that both are unhealthy and absolutely unnecessary in our diet.

  • Revamped School Lunch Menus a Mixed Bag

    If you’ve ever stepped foot in a school cafeteria, you likely bore witness to the chicken nuggets, tater tots, and other Frankenfoods that somehow pass for nourishment for our kids.

    Recently the government gave a much-needed cleanup to federally subsidized school lunches for the first time in 15 years.

    Many critics, along with First Lady Michelle Obama, applauded the changes. Obama, along with Rachael Ray, appeared at Parklawn elementary school in Alexandria, Virginia and posed with “healthy” turkey tacos based on Ray’s recipe.

    But not everyone seemed so thrilled about these dietary revisions. Conservatives balked that government shouldn’t tell kids what to eat. And some school districts claimed this overhaul was a bit extreme and way too pricey.

    The final guidelines are, if you’ll pardon the pun, a mixed bag. Congress nixed the USDA’s proposal, for instance, to limit starchy vegetables and declassify pizza as a vegetable.

    But let’s start with the good. I’m happy that school lunchrooms expanded their fruit and vegetable repertoire beyond French fries and syrupy peaches. Among the improved selection include broccoli, cauliflower, green beans, and kiwi.

    And hey, they even swapped tater tots for healthier sweet potato fries. That’s a mild thumbs-up in my book.

    The improved menu also decreased sodium, which runs rampant in most processed foods. Trans fats are out the door. And lunchrooms more carefully monitor the calories kids eat.

    That’s where the problems begin. I’m all for eating fewer processed, fried foods, but giving kids five chicken nuggets rather than eight does not suddenly make chicken nuggets healthy.

    I’m all about the quality of the foods rather than counting calories, particularly for growing kids. But I digress.

    Lunchrooms now serve a healthier pizza. I’m a little skeptical, however, about what constitutes “healthy” after a bill passed last November that counts tomato paste on pizza as a vegetable. And switching from white to whole-wheat crust does not significantly up the nutrient factor.

    The new guidelines only permit schools to serve low-fat milk, and flavored milks (like chocolate milk) must be non-fat. Never mind the high levels of lactose intolerance and other problems with milk.

    And chocolate milk (particularly fat-free chocolate milk) packs as much sugar as a soda. How is this healthier?

    These dubious improvements aren’t much of a shock when you find out potato growers and frozen-pizza manufacturers heavily influenced these new guidelines. These guys aren’t exactly going to promote fresh broccoli and apple slices.

    While I’m happy the revamp took several steps in the right direction, these “improved” guidelines also revealed how much more we have to do to make school lunches healthy.

    On a positive note, I’m thrilled to see more parents taking control over the processed chemical crap that passes for kids’ foods. They’re ditching the Lunchables and processed foods cafeterias serve for a kid-friendly Paleo approach.

    I know asking school lunchrooms to go Paleo is wish fulfillment, but you can pack your own kid’s lunch and teach healthy habits for life.

    A Paleo lunch might include grilled chicken fingers, sliced sweet potatoes, asparagus, and raw almonds. Kids love it, and they’ll love you since they no longer have to fall victim to soggy, lukewarm lunchroom chicken nuggets.

  • Tip 281: Increase Fat Burning During Exercise

    Tip 281: Increase Fat Burning During Exercise

    The following is a guest article by my good friend and colleague, Charles Poliquin.

    Tip 281: Increase Fat Burning During Exercise with Strategic Nutrition to Get Lean

    by Charles Poliquin

    Increase your rate of fat burning while strength training with optimal pre-workout nutrition to get lean. By eating the right nutrients before working out, you can increase work capacity, performance, and speed recovery from intense exercise. Many misconceptions exist about the best way to burn the most fat during exercise but a review in the British Journal of Nutrition provides a guide to get leaner and stronger.

    Proven strategies to boost fat burning with pre-workout nutrition include the following:

    1. Eat low-glycemic carbs with protein before training
    2. Avoid fructose and milk
    3. Load l-carnitine in the muscles
    4. Drink caffeinated green tea
    5. Take fish oil

    Pre-workout nutrition may influence the rate of fat burning when exercising by as much as 66 percent. Burning fat rather than carbohydrates during strength training is best because it can lead to the best body composition. If you’re doing endurance or high-intensity interval training, burning fat will increase your performance and time to exhaustion because increasing the use of fat for fuel spares glycogen (fuel source from carbohydrates).

    Eat low-glycemic carbs with protein at least an hour before training to maximize fat burning. Low-glycemic carbs include green vegetables, some fruits, and grains that have a glycemic-lowering nutrient added to them like rye bread with fenugreek. Low-glycemic carbs will produce a slow, gradual increase in blood sugar to support energy levels and fat burning because it will reduce pre-exercise muscle glycogen concentration and increase the availability of fat use for fuel. Basically, by eating this way, you’re telling your body what to burn and when to burn it to produce the most energy.

    Fructose is a sugar that is found in fruit and is everywhere in processed foods in the form of high-fructose corn syrup. Avoid it pre-workout. Limit fructose in your diet because it blunts fat burning but it also lowers the glycemic response of carbohydrates—just not in a favorable way for overall metabolism. Eating fructose actually inhibits fat burning during and after exercise to a greater extent than eating high-glycemic carbs with glucose like bread or cereal. Not only does fructose stop the use of fat for energy, it makes the cells more resistant to insulin, putting you at risk for diabetes. It also leads to higher blood lactate concentrations during exercise. Greater lactate production will impede performance and is counterproductive.

    Along with avoiding fructose, stay away from milk proteins because they are particularly “insulinotropic,” which means that they will cause persistently high insulin levels. This puts you at greater risk of insulin resistance and diabetes.

    On the flipside, regularly taking fish oil in your pre-workout meal will improve fat burning and insulin sensitivity. Fish oil improves gene activity that tells the body to use fat for energy within minutes of ingesting it. Fish oil also increases blood flow to fat tissue, which is considered a limiting factor in the use of fat for fuel during exercise. Basically, fish oil is a highly liquid and permeable fat and it helps everything to move more fluidly in the body (like a well-oiled machine).

    Together with the amino acid composite l-carnitine, fish oil increases the transport of fats into the cells to be used for energy in the body. By raising the level of muscle carnitine, you make the body more efficient at processing fuel so that it can burn more fat, spare glycogen, clear lactate and bump up anabolic hormone response. Ideally, you want to take carnitine regularly to “load” it into the muscles, but you can also take it with your pre-workout meal for best results.

    Carnitine availability is reduced when muscle glycogen content is elevated, making it all the more important to ensure you are moderating your glycemic load before training. Carnitine will boost performance for strength athletes, but it’s especially effective at increasing performance during endurance exercise. One study indicated a 55 percent reduction in muscle glycogen use after carnitine loading for six month. The glycogen sparing effect of burning more fat means endurance athletes will be able to “tap into” these glycogen stores at the later stages of a race or training run.

    Green tea with caffeine is an awesome addition to any athlete’s diet because the antioxidant content in the tea combined with the caffeine can increase fat burning by up to 15 percent. It has also been shown to elevate fat burning for 24 hours after ingestion. Caffeinated coffee can also boost performance and fat burning, but recent evidence suggests green tea may be better. Include caffeine from both sources for best results.

    References:

    Gonzalez, J., Stevenson, E. New Perspectives on Nutritional Interventions to Augment Lipid Utilization during Exercise. British Journal of Nutrition. 2012. 107, 339-349.

    Fernandez, J., Da Silva-Grigolettos, M. A Dose of Fructose Induces Oxidative Stress During Endurance and Strength Exercise. Journal of Sports Science. 2009. 27(12), 1323-1334.

    Charles Poliquin, M.Sc., is one of the top strength and conditioning experts in the world. He’s trained olympic medalists in 12 different sports and has written many books and over 500 columns. His site,  http://www.strengthsensei.com/charles-poliquin/, is a terrific resource for real, science-based information about physical fitness.

  • Dessert With Breakfast Helps You Lose Weight? Hmm…

    Will a heaping slice of Entenmann’s cheese Danish with your vegetable omelet help you get lean and sexy?

    Researchers at Tel Aviv University recently discovered that having dessert with your breakfast could help you lose weight. When you enjoy that chocolate cake in the morning, they argue, your body can burn off the sugar throughout the day.

    During the 32-week long study, researchers assigned 193 obese, non-diabetic adults to one of two identical-calorie diets. Men ate 1,600 calories and women ate 1,400 calories a day.

    One group, however, ate a 300-calorie breakfast while the other had a 600-calorie breakfast that included dessert.

    During the first half of the study, both groups lost an average of 33 pounds. But the second half dramatically changed the game.

    Whereas the low-carb breakfast group regained about 22 pounds, the dessert-for-breakfast group actually lost an additional 15 pounds, or a total of about 40 more pounds than the low-calorie breakfast group. What’s more, they kept off those pounds longer.

    Researchers also noticed that unlike the smaller-breakfast group, the dessert-for-breakfast people “experienced few if any cravings for these foods later in the day.”

    Here’s my opinion. The higher-calorie breakfast group lost more fat and kept it off not from eating chocolate cake, but because they ate a bigger breakfast, period. Numerous studies show people who eat a substantial breakfast are leaner and stay fuller throughout the morning.

    A study in the American Journal of Nutrition, for instance, showed people who ate a hearty protein-based breakfast like a vegetable omelet were less likely to go down in that mid-morning box of Krispy Kremes their co-workers bring in than people who ate a bowl of Special K with skim milk.

    Despite what these researchers claim, having that cheese Danish for breakfast can set you up for a metabolic disaster. For one, you’re going to have a blood sugar spike and crash that leaves you running for a Starbucks low-fat muffin and a grande latte about 10 a.m.

    And how many people stop with just one doughnut? You’re more likely after you eat that Krispy Kreme (or whatever your breakfast indulgence includes) to say to hell with it and recklessly abandon your healthy eating the rest of the day.

    And if you have any aspect of metabolic syndrome – and most of us do – dessert at breakfast will just exacerbate that insulin resistance and the host of problems that accompany it.

    I’m not a fan of total deprivation, however, and I want to tell you about the next best thing to a chocolate milkshake for breakfast.

    I love to toss a scoop of whey protein into the blender with some frozen berries along with some unsweetened coconut or almond milk and – bam! – I get a cold, creamy drink that isn’t a milkshake but is pretty rock and roll and far healthier.

    But I don’t want you using one of those hulking store-bought tubs of whey, which are often packed with sugar, artificial sweeteners, trans fat, and other crap.

    Whey Cool from Designs for Health, on the other hand, is the absolute best whey protein on the market. It’s non-denatured and low-temperature produced to protect the immune-boosting amino acids. And it comes loaded with 20 – 24 grams of the highest-quality protein in every scoop.

    This is the whey protein I use every morning.

    The milk used in this whey comes from grass-fed cows. Whey Cool also contains excellent amounts of the glutathione precursor cysteine, as well as other immune-boosting components like lactoferrin, immunoglobulins, and serum albumin.

    Let’s talk taste. Unlike others on the market, Whey Cool doesn’t have a weird or chemical aftertaste. The natural chocolate and vanilla flavors are low in sugar and sweetened with xylitol and stevia, two beneficial sweeteners.

    Best of all, a Whey Cool shake won’t send your blood sugar on a rollercoaster ride like that cheese Danish. The protein keeps you full and focused all morning, while the delicious flavors will satisfy your sweet tooth.

    Check out Whey Cool and let me know if you agree that it’s the next best thing to a milkshake without the sugar crash.