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Head-Lies: Headlines that Mislead

headliesLast week a friend sent me some links to a story trumpeting that vegetarians are not healthier than carnivores. She felt this story justified her meat consumption. I disagree.

I am not against eating meat. But I am against misleading information.

This story is a classic example of a Head-lie, a misleading headline: one that rings true but upon further investigation, it’s fishy.

First there are many significant studies that show otherwise, that vegetarians have lower rates of modern diseases like cancer and heart disease. In light of dozens of studies showing that reducing meat consumption brings health benefits, I would not change my life because of this one study.

In fact it wasn’t a study but a survey. Big difference. A study has a chance of following good scientific protocol, not that it automatically does; but a survey has little chance of being accurate.

Then there is the ambiguous definition of vegetarian. I once worked with a man whose wife was a “vegetarian”. When I met her I was surprised to see she was overweight and looked unhealthy in general, unlike the vegetarians I know.

I asked him about her diet. It turns out she was a vegetarian who hated vegetables. She lived on vegetarian pizza (hold the veggies!), cereal, Kraft dinner, frozen dinners, chips, crackers, soft drinks, milkshakes, ice cream and French fries.

No meat. But no nutrition. Grain-heavy, like feedlot cattle. Not “vegeta”rian, but simply a person who doesn’t eat meat! If the vegetarians surveyed ate like she did I don’t doubt the “study” is accurate.

I know vegans who shun animal products but they eat “fake“ meats like hot dogs and luncheon “meats” and fake cheese made with vegetable oils. They are full of chemical fillers, artificial flavours and colours. I call this stuff “unfood”.

I do eat meat. I know my meat. I know my farmer. My small servings of grass-fed beef and lamb are far healthier than a vegan hotdog or most veggie burgers in restaurants or in the freezer aisle.

I’m not a great fan of labels like vegan, vegetarian, or carnivore. If I have to choose a label for myself it is “flexitarian”. I eat a variety of foods, as I believe our bodies were designed to secure nutrients from many available sources.

Apparently there are 80,000 edible real foods (I don’t think of processed foods as real or edible in the sense of nutrition). About 3000 of those foods are commonly eaten.

Sadly the average North American’s diet is derived 90% from only twelve foods, including wheat, corn, soy, and milk, incidentally some of the most modified and processed of foods.

Consequently we are deficient in micronutrients: vitamins, minerals, phyto-nutrients. The ensuing malnourishment leads to all kinds of mysterious conditions and diseases.

Because mainstream medicine refuses to see the food-health connection they blindly treat symptoms with drugs. Many people still are in god-like awe of their doctors, despite their ignorance of food and any “medicine” other than what they prescribe.

Media collaborates by running head-lies like this one. People don’t know what to believe and eventually give up trying to understand. My advice is:

1. Broaden your sources of information. We live in the Internet age. Snoop around. Go beyond the first Google page! Sign up for a variety of health newsletters. Find opposing views and information and weigh it yourself.

2. Don’t ever change your life or your diet based on one news story. Investigate.

3. Read widely about both (or many) sides of issues. Coconut oil was once vilified as a heart-disease-causing-saturated-fat. When evidence began to emerge that coconut is actually more beneficial than so-called-healthy-processed-vegetable-oils, I was skeptical. I began to research it for myself and found much evidence supporting the use of coconut oil.

4. Remember that there is no single right way to do anything. What works for me may not work for you. In fact pharmaceutical medicines are allowed on the market if as few as one third of patients realize desired results, often regardless of side effects. (The other two-thirds may have no benefit, but still suffer from side effects.)

5. Try things. Nothing crazy. But if you’ve been plagued with something and tried everything the doctor suggests, what have you got to lose by removing gluten or dairy or sugar from your diet for a month?

I tried coconut oil. Now I use it in my cooking and baking, on my skin and to oil pull (swishing oil in mouth to improve mouth/teeth health). I stopped using all processed oils like corn, sunflower and canola, regardless of their health claims, which I’ve learned are simply marketing tactics.

Articles like the one heralding unhealthy vegetarians are often designed to get out a message, an agenda, propaganda for a product or industry. In fact, they mention that the study authors are suspected of working for the meat industry.

Be cautious. Don’t believe the head-lies!

Besides eating does not have to be so complicated. Food writer, Michael Pollan says: “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.”

I like that.

My policy is:

Eat the Food, the Whole Food and Nothing but the Food.

Links:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/vegetarians-are-less-healthy-and-have-a-lower-quality-of-life-than-meateaters-scientists-say-9236340.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Pollan

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The Real Estate of Your Plate

realestateoriginally posted October 27, 2011, Revised Oct 2013

Think about your usual dinner. Look closely at the food on your plate.

How would you describe the real estate of your plate?

Is your plate one big ghetto of factory food?

Or is it an estate of whole real food?

Food is a huge issue in our society. Billions of dollars are made manufacturing food.

Basic commodities are heavily subsidized. We all would like to think those subsidies are going towards ensuring small family farms avoid what seems inevitable: extinction.

The truth is huge corporations receive most subsidies because they run most of the farming operations in Canada and the USA. The small independent farmer is an anomaly and the few left aren’t making a living on the farm nor can they compete with the large companies.

Heavily subsidized commodities like sugar, wheat, corn, and vegetable oils cost very little so they are ideal ingredients in factory food. What little nutrition these foods have is stripped in the manufacturing process. Synthetic vitamins are added but they’re usually not as effective as vitamins from natural sources.

Machines spit out food products en masse. In the end the packaging is often the most expensive part of factory food, and truth be told, often as tasty and nutritious as what’s inside.

Then there’s the marketing. Words like “light” and “natural” and even, alarmingly, “organic”, have been rendered impotent by food companies using every trick in the book to fool their customers into believing their food is good for them and that it is good value. Sadly most people believe their hollow claims.

If people only thought about what goes into that box of cereal and what they’re getting out of it for $6 or $7 a box, they would be outraged! So many products are nothing more than a handful of different sugars with chemical flavourings and colours.  So-called “kids” cereal is almost pure garbage; you might as well feed them candy for breakfast.

Then we have the diet industry, also worth billions, that strives to convince us their products will help us not be fat. Their food makes us sick and sick leads to fat. The body, in its desperation to partition itself from all the toxins, stores those toxins in fat cells. I also think that’s why we feel so terrible when we’re losing weight. It’s part of the reason diets don’t work; it’s hard to stay on them when you feel so toxic.

Back to the plate. For me learning how to eat healthy food has been a lifelong process, requiring basic knowledge of food, what’s in it and where it comes from, how food affects the body, and how the body feels.

When I was young I was ignorant of the impact food has on the body. I scoffed when people said eating candy could make me sick. I had a stomach of steel and thankfully, a young healthy body that could recover from the abuse of a candy binge.

I remember confiding to the older ladies at my first job that I routinely had Rice Krispie squares and root beer for breakfast. I argued I was getting cereal into my body and I wondered why they were horrified. (I haven’t had root beer or Rice Krispies in my house in decades.)

As I grew older, I figured out that certain foods caused certain outcomes. My first daughter was borderline ADHD so I educated myself and found the most probable contributors were reactions to sugar and chemicals, including colours, flavours, and preservatives.

Without being too much of a food nazi I limited my children’s intake of those substances and therefore I was more conscious of my own consumption. My children grew up to shun fake food.

The real estate of my plate has evolved to a minimum footprint of three-quarters plant- derived foods including at least one raw vegetable.

I’ve found I feel better when I don’t have many grains. The grains I do eat are always whole, never white or processed. I’ve eaten brown rice for over three decades. To me, white rice is tasteless, like eating the box and about as nutritious.

The older I get the more important it is for me to ensure that my portions are smaller than they were when I was 20. The fact is if you don’t change your portions, you’ll gain a pound a year after age 30.

Paying attention to how I feel is also an important part of assessing the real estate of my plate.  I like peppers but they don’t like me. When I eat wheat I bloat like a balloon. A quarter glass of wine puts me into a coma-like state. So I avoid these foods, rather than taking drugs to handle my indigestion, as we are so often encouraged to do by drug-pushing television commercials.

I often consume meat-free meals. My plate used to always include a huge portion of meat; growing up in a meat-and-potatoes family will do that. We only need 30 to 70 grams of protein each day but most people in the western world eat far more. A hamburger patty is 115 grams; many people consume two or three in one sitting.

While there’s no question that having adequate amounts of protein is beneficial, for some reason we think more is better. It’s not. Too much protein triggers minerals to leach from bones and stresses kidneys and adrenal glands.

Animal protein is a good source of concentrated protein but it is hard for our bodies to digest, with many unfavourable “side effects” including making our body’s natural pH more acidic.  Some theorize that an acidic environment in our bodies contributes to many of our modern chronic diseases, like cancer, diabetes and heart disease. High protein diets may even increase the risk of osteoporosis and kidney disease.

Contrary to popular belief, there is protein in grain and vegetables. (All living cells are constructed of protein). They also contain fibre, vitamins and minerals, essential components of a healthy diet. Table of Protein Content in Vegan Foods

I urge you to pay close attention to the real estate of your plate. Hopefully it is dominated by a meadow of fresh raw plant food with no more than tiny enclaves of simple carbs (sugars and starches), meats and processed foods.

My observation is that unhealthy food or “Unfood” catches up with the human body eventually and that many aches, pains, diseases and conditions are preventable, treatable or manageable with improved lifestyle, including revolutionizing the real estate of your plate.

Believe me; living on an estate beats living in the slums!

 

Recommended Reading:  These are just some of the books about food I recommend.

Body for Life                              Harvey and Marilyn Diamond
Living Foods for Optimum Health            Brian R. Clement
Food Inc.                                  Karl Weber
Fast Food Nation                           Eric Schlosser
The Thrive Diet                            Brendan Brazier
The End of Overeating                     David A. Kessler MD
The Botany of Desire                       Michael Pollan
In Defense of Food                         Michael Pollan

 

Other sources:

 

http://exercise.about.com/cs/nutrition/a/protein.htm

http://www.vrg.org/nutrition/protein.htm

http://www.cornucopia.org

www.NaturalNews.com

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Change Your Oil Revised July 2013

oilchangeMany people think “healthy fats” is an oxymoron largely because fat was demonized in the eighties by many health professionals. Food manufacturers were quick to recognize opportunities to make huge profits and “low-fat” foods were created. The vilification of dietary fat is now suspected of contributing to the obesity epidemic partially because food manufacturers replaced fat with sugar, which comes with its own issues.

Furthermore, saturated fats were once believed to cause heart disease, thanks to a faulty study by Dr. Ancel Keyes, which was adopted by most health professionals as the word of dietary law.  This motivated health conscious people to switch to vegetable oils. Now there is evidence that switching from saturated fats to polyunsaturated fats, common in processed vegetable oils, has contributed to higher rates of cancer.

 

One reason is that polyunsaturated oils are highly unstable and vulnerable to oxidation and turning rancid.  Oxidation causes cancer. Oils that are rancid are highly toxic to humans (and pets. Sadly, most pet food is made using rancid fats).

 

To add to the danger, conventionally produced vegetable oils are processed using toxic chemicals like hexane, heptane, caustic soda, and other chemicals, the safety of which is unproven, to mask the rancid smell of processed oils.

In addition to the dangers of oxidation and rancidity, there are also concerns about the omega-6 content of polyunsaturated oils. A recent San Francisco study demonstrated that under laboratory conditions, omega-6 fatty acids could accelerate the growth of prostate tumor cells.  They are also suspected of contributing to breast cancer in post-menopausal women.

 

Other studies show that improving the omega-3 to omega-6 ratio can lower the risk of certain cancers. Specific recommendations vary, but most experts suggest a ratio of between 1:1 and 1:4 at most. The average modern diet has an omega-3 to omega-6 ratio of 1:20 or more!

 

The rapid increase of vegetable oils in our diets during the past century is largely responsible for this imbalance. While some vegetable oils do contain small amounts of omega-3 fatty acids, for the most part, they consist of omega-6. Some experts recommend increasing omega-3 consumption, but it is more effective to reduce omega-6 intake, by eliminating or drastically decreasing polyunsaturated oil consumption, including canola, soy, corn, and sunflower oils.

 

Further compounding the unhealthy fat issue is the hydrogenation of vegetable oils.  Hydrogenated oils and any foods made with them are the leading cause of heart disease and a major contributor to neurological disorders. Simply put, hydrogenated oils (or trans fats) are poison in the human body. They accelerate the buildup of plaque in the arteries and are suspected of causing cancer.

Food producers create hydrogenated oils for the convenience of food producers, primarily so that those foods taste good and can sit on the shelf for months without going bad. Therefore they significantly contribute to profits.

High-fat, low-fat, saturated fat, hydrogenated fats, polyunsaturated fats, omega 3, omega 6; it’s all very confusing. So what are we supposed to do?

 

First we need to recognize that healthy fats are an integral part of a complete diet. Avoiding fats actually causes chronic disease. Your brain is made of fat and it needs saturated fat. Even brain-friendly omega-3 fatty acids can’t be utilized without ample saturated fat. In addition, saturated fat facilitates nerve signals and hormone production. All of these systems rely on saturated fat to function, and to keep you healthy and ultimately, alive.

 

A diet rich in saturated fats protects your heart. Saturated fat reduces Lp(a), which is associated with increased risk for heart disease, and contributes to higher levels of HDL (good) cholesterol, which keep your heart healthy. In traditional cultures saturated fat was revered and even coveted as a source of vital energy.

Many nutrients are fat-soluble and failure to include healthy fats in meals results in many of the nutrients consumed not being absorbed by the body. Beta carotene, Vitamin D, and Vitamin E are three nutrients that require fat in order to be absorbed and used by the human body.  We need saturated fat to transport calcium to our bones, which is why dairy products naturally contain both calcium and saturated fat. Calcium supplements don’t do much good if saturated fat is lacking in our diet. By consuming fats with nutritional supplements, the effectiveness of the phytonutrients in supplements multiplies.

It doesn’t take much fat to aid the absorption of important vitamins and nutrients. Eating just five or ten nuts, or one-fourth of an avocado, provides plenty of dietary fat for transporting nutrients and aiding their absorption.

Saturated fats also boost our immune systems because they contain specialized fatty acids, which are naturally antifungal, antimicrobial and antiviral. These important fatty acids include lauric acid, myristic acid and caprylic acid. A diet rich in these beneficial fats provides the body with essential building blocks to fight pathogenic substances.

 

It is vitally important to choose the right kind of fats for your diet and the right amount because fats are high in calories. Healthy fats include real butter, (ideally from grass-fed cows), virgin (meaning cold-pressed) coconut oil, extra-virgin olive oil, flax seed oil, hemp-seed oil and other fats from plant sources such as nuts, seeds, and avocados. These healthy fats should be consumed with every meal. Oils from fatty fish like wild salmon are also beneficial. Even the fat in beef can be called healthy if eaten in moderation and if those animals were grass-fed, not grain-fed.

It is advisable to give up cheap fats such as low-cost vegetable oils. To do so requires the abandonment of most processed foods as they are almost always made with cheap, usually hydrogenated, vegetable oils. Say good-bye to crackers, deep-fried foods, baked goods, indeed, the entire snack aisle of your local grocery store.

Healthy fats are more expensive than unhealthy fats but this is one case where spending extra money significantly protects your health.

Finally, use oils appropriately. For example, extra-virgin olive oil is ideal for salad dressings and dishes that will simmer because it has a low flash point (or temperature at which it begins to burn). Flax oil should never be heated. Butter, coconut oil and peanut oil can stand higher temperatures and are more appropriate for cooking at high temperatures. Ideally, it is best to give up fried foods, because all fried fats contain trans fatty acids.

Sadly most people are more careful about the condition of the oil in the engines of their cars than about the oils they consume to fuel their bodies.  Changing your oil is an integral part of maintaining good health.

Sources for this article include: www.NaturalNews.com, www.Wikipedia.com, www.totalhealthbreakthroughs.com, www.alive.com

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Butter vs. Margarine

butterpicRevised July 2013

Margarine is the generic term used for butter substitutes. Its history goes back almost 200 years to the discovery of margaric acid from whence margarine derives its name. Over the years various ingredients have been used to concoct a less expensive spread than butter including beef tallow, whale, seal, and fish oils, vegetable oils and sometimes even a little butter.

Both butter and margarine are water-in-oil emulsions; they have similar calories, depending on the amount of water in the margarine or “spread”. Sadly, most people erroneously think they are interchangeable.

Margarine consumption surpassed that of butter in the late 1950’s when some scientists proposed a correlation between the consumption of saturated fats and blood-serum cholesterol levels with heart disease. Doctors began advising their patients to use margarine instead of butter.

Many people still believe in this supposed cause and effect but the explosion of heart disease in our society would suggest otherwise. Food manufacturers seized the opportunity to increase profits by using cheaper inferior ingredients while proclaiming the health benefits of their products.

Margarine is a manufactured “food”, generally accomplished by passing hydrogen through (often) inferior quality oil in the presence of a nickel, cadmium, or palladium (all toxic heavy metals) catalyst. The addition of hydrogen to the unsaturated bonds results in saturated bonds, effectively increasing the melting point of the oil and thus hardening it.

This process creates trans fats, which the body does not recognize as food and ironically are now known to contribute to heart disease and other diseases like cancer. Furthermore, the oil is extracted at high temperature, which damages the oil and destroys the vitamin E in it. The advertisements and the packaging for margarine are usually deceptive lies, stating it contains ‘polyunsaturated oil’, when the processing saturates or partially saturates the oil.

Butter has many nutritional benefits, where margarine has few. Butter contains antioxidants, which help offset free-radical damage to cells. It is a source of vitamin A, D, E, and K, calcium, selenium, and conjugated linoleic acid, which helps maintain lean body mass, prevents weight gain and may reduce certain cancers. Butter fat helps the absorption of certain vitamins and minerals. And it tastes better.

Although many people are sensitive to cow’s milk dairy products, often butter is well-tolerated because butter is almost a pure fat, and does not contain many of the allergens found in other milk products.

 

One issue is the treatment of dairy cows. They are often pumped full of antibiotics and hormones which naturally land in the milk.

 

The argument that margarine helps control cholesterol is a myth as most cholesterol is manufactured within the body; a maximum of about 4% of all cholesterol comes from the diet.  Cholesterol is the raw material for the adrenal stress hormones and the sex hormones. The body often reacts to stress by producing more cholesterol allowing the body to make more stress-fighting hormones. Therefore it is quite likely that the consumption of trans fats stresses the body to produce more cholesterol.

 

The human body is not designed to consume manufactured food but thrives on a diet of whole, real food. Butter is a natural food and one of the best sources of important fat-soluble vitamins. You will pay more for butter, but nutritionally, for its purity, and its taste it is well worth it. Just remember, all things in moderation; the body is not served by eating any fat, including butter, by the pound.

 

 

Sources for this article include:

http://www.naturodoc.com/library/nutrition/margbutt.htm

Aviva:

http://www.healthcastle.com/butter-or-margarine.shtml

http://www.homemakers.com/health-and-nutrition/nutrition-and-diet/margarine-vs-butter-the-debate-continues/a/27133

http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/002114.htm

This site is sponsored by margarine producers who proclaim the “debate is over”.  It is included in this list in the interest of balance:

http://www.choosemargarine.com/latestSpread_marg_vs_butter.html

http://www.drlwilson.com/Articles/butter.htm

http://www.chatham-kent.ca/community+services/Public+Health/keeping+you+healthy/healthy+eating/Butter+or+Margarine.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margarine