In Defense of Food Part 5 of 10: Going Back to Basics
August 19, 2009 by dr. lam · 2 Comments
We oftentimes cite the greater life expectancy today as evidence at least in part that our dietary knowledge and change in dietary habits maybe accounting for this improvement. Has scientific tinkering with nature truly succeeded? Pollan argues that for people of the same age bracket, there is increasing evidence of cancer and diabetes than those who lived at the turn of the 20th century, a hundred years ago. The rate of heart disease in 1900 is not widely reported, so comparisons are harder to establish. However, today we live with the idea that these modern diseases are a fact of life.
A group of ten Australian Aboriginals who had left the Outback for Western society started to develop obesity, diabetes, and were chronically ill. As part of a study, they were asked to return to their native tribes for 7 weeks part of the time split between the coastlands and part of time further inland to see what would happen. Without prepackaged foods, they subsisted on turtles, crocodiles, fish, shellfish, indigenous plants, and even insects. After 7 weeks in the wilds of Australia, the average weight loss was 17.9 pounds, diabetes disappeared, blood pressure was dramatically lowered, and their blood levels of omega-3 skyrocketed into the stratosphere.
Weston Price, a Canadian dentist, travelled the world in the 1930s to investigate the incidence of dental decay in less “civilized” cultures. Surprisingly, he found in cultures that had no processed flour, sugars, and other packaged goods, there was almost no evidence of tooth decay despite an absence of brushing and flossing. In fact, it did not matter if the diet consisted of meats, blood, and milk like the Masai of Africa or fruits and vegetables in other cultures, there was almost no dental compromise. Even in mountaineers who had a thick coating of green ooze covering their teeth, underneath it all, their teeth were in almost pristine condition.
In summary, what we tout to be Western advances for our health actually may only be a mask that has, in general, despite the advances of medicine and technology actually led to the demise of our health. Just look at the statistics: 2/3 of Americans are overweight or obese; ¼ have a metabolic syndrome; 54 million are prediabetic; and the incidence of type 2 diabetes has climbed from 4 to 7.7% in the adult population (which is equivalent to more than 20 million Americans). We need to get back to basics: whole grains, plants, and fewer sugars and fast food detours.
In Defense of Food Part 4 of 10: Puritanism and Food
August 18, 2009 by dr. lam · 3 Comments
Pollan argues that the more packaged our food becomes and the more refined no matter what ingredients are contained within, the greater the problem we face with our health and heart status. He believes that tinkering chemically with God’s foods oftentimes leads to greater problems. He speculates that the reason why the U.S. in particular suffers from “nutritrionism” is our puritanical relationship with food: it should not be savored but should be a perfunctory item to facilitate our growth and well-being. It runs counter to how Europeans dine casually and longingly without the semi-religious bent toward food components that Americans focus on. To me, it is a brilliant thesis and on this flight leaving Europe after a week of eating less quantity of food, eating only naturally prepared foods, eating less quickly, and walking a lot more, I feel the weight (pun intended) of Pollan’s words and the charge to change a lifestyle.
A study was conducted in America with the first word response that occurred in one’s mind after hearing “chocolate cake”. Americans instinctively said, “Guilt”. The French given the same query said, “Celebration”. I, like many Americans, have an adversarial relationship with food. “I can’t eat that, I’ll feel guilty.” “That I could eat, but I know I won’t like it but I should.” These thoughts pollute my mind and create an unnatural relationship with food that, well, can’t be healthy. I believe that my intention in the coming days, weeks, months and hopefully for perpetuity is to remove the shackles of my puritanical mindset and give up a large degree of guilt about food and just savor freshly prepared meals without calorie-counting: “Oh I ate too much fat” and “I need to workout tomorrow” mentality that divides us Americans from those Europeans. I believe the timing of my reading In Defense of Food and my concurrent travels abroad is no coincidence. We have a lot to learn from other cultures, as much as other cultures have a lot to gain from ours.
In Defense of Food Part 3 of 10: Science Gone Wrong
August 14, 2009 by dr. lam · 2 Comments
We all know people that eat like a horse and not gain any weight, or the individual who eats almost nothing and packs on weight. We know that people who struggle to reduce their cholesterol through diet and exercise but to no avail; while another person eats greasy meals without a bump in his/her cholesterol profile. What is the variable? We all are genetically different and that accounts for a lot.
When we try to apply science to food through nutritionism, we get too many variables because the interaction of various components within food acts through mechanisms we may not understand and this is the same with how food interacts with us. For example, studying cultures that eat lots of plants and fruits we see a low incidence of cancer. So nutritionists try to extract the elements of “anti-oxidants” within these food items to deliver a scientific menu of what we should consume. However, some studies have actually shown that ingesting just plain beta-carotene as an anti-oxidant can in fact raise the risk of cancer, whereas ingesting it within plants and fruits can lower that risk. Why? We don’t know. The way that nature has created a piece of fruit or plant is so complex that scientists may never know what precise interaction within the myriad ingredients of a food item leads to nutritional benefit when an engineered version does not or could actually cause harm.
Why do nutritionists focus on nutrients? Simply put, a scientist must have measurements of definable subunits otherwise there is no longer any science. Pollan calls for this kind of science to be dismissed (to some degree at least) and refocus on eating more plants, eating less food overall, and eating less processed food to get the right mix. Stop tinkering with Mother Nature he exhorts.
In Defense of Food Part 2 of 10: Nutritionism Defined
August 13, 2009 by dr. lam · 7 Comments
Nutritionism is the science of breaking down food into its macro-components (fat, protein, and carbohydrates) and micro-components (vitamins, minerals, etc.) and using those components to define guidelines for dietary habits to improve health and reduce heart risks. The rise of nutrition can be traced to a man named Leibig, a nineteenth-century German scientist, who focused on the macrocomponents of food and pitted fat against protein (the latter of which he loved) and carbohydrates against fat (sound familiar?). He created baby formulas that were heavily constructed of proteins but led to a failure to thrive in that he missed some essential amino acids and fats. He also forgot about important vitamins and wondered how sailors coming back from long voyages who had all the protein, fat, and carbohydrates were suffering from symptoms of deprivation. Ever since that time, we have continued to refine our understanding of food by creating an in-depth chemical analysis and using that information to concoct how we should eat.
The “lipid hypothesis” of the 1960s and 1970s – that has persisted into the early 2000s and is now only being recently challenged and is in the process of unraveling – has been the force behind our low fat craze showing up in the form of Snackwell’s and other famed low fat foods. But is eating low fat foods going to help stave off heart disease? Actually, maybe no. In the process, we developed the engineered butter known as margarine that was touted to replace the saturated fats of butter with polyunsaturated fats. Little did we know that through a process of hydrogenating the vegetable oils, we developed a lethal fat known as trans fats that we probably would have avoided doing so. Now trans fats have been removed and vitamins added. Is that concocted recipe that much better?
In 2001, a Harvard School of Public Health review entitled “Types of Dietary Fat and Risk of Coronary Heart Disease: a Critical Review” concluded “It has now been increasingly recognized that the low-fat campaign has been based on little scientific evidence and may have caused unintended health consequences.” The study looking at the slew of studies in the past came to the following conclusions in short: very little connection between the intake of saturated fat and coronary heart disease (CHD), between the benefit of taking polyunsaturated fats and reducing CHD, and between the serum cholesterol levels and CHD. The conclusion of the study found that only one element had a significant impact on the risk of thrombogenesis (creating clots in the heart) and heart disease was the presence of trans fats in the diet, that could in turn lead to higher triglycerides in the blood and promote insulin resistance, leading to heart disease. Interestingly, trans fats were unwittingly touted as being favorable for over 30 years until this report. In addition, the desire to replace fat with carbohydrates led to increasing weight gain in a population already overweight.
In Defense of Food Part 1 of 10: Introduction
August 12, 2009 by dr. lam · 7 Comments
Michael Pollan, a writer on food and a contributor to the New York Times magazine, wrote a fascinating book entitled, In Defense of Food: An Eater’s Manifesto. Although a lot of my blogs are geared toward self-development of the mind and heart, this is self-development of the heart so to speak and the body (that nourishes the mind). Pollan’s thesis as he opens the book in short can be summarized as follows: “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.”
It is rather a propos that I am writing this first blog on a plane ride out of France, where I spent the past few days indulging in French cuisine that may be steeped in butter but may have far more potent health claims than the foods we Americans eat burdened with nutritionist claims, which will be discussed in the coming blogs. When I lived in New York, I ate far less than in Texas and I walked far more. That combination was a great one for my body and mind. In Texas I gained weight as soon as I returned due to eating heaping amounts of processed foods in indescribable quantities then getting into my car and driving around. What a terrible combination.
Pollan argues that we are not suffering heart disease and cancer from a high-fat diet but from a highly processed diet of refined sugars and other terrible chemicals (unfortunately also bathed in bad fat). In fact, in this blog series, we will challenge the thesis that fat is a bad thing in and of itself, i.e., the “lipid hypothesis” generated in the 1970s that still holds doctrinal sway in the U.S. As Pollan says, if the book were written before the 1960s, the book would not make sense since a lot of the food was fresh. If the book were written in the 1980s, there would be no options to get fresh food. Today in what he describes as a “post-industrial era” for food, we have access to relatively fresh options that are still not quite as good as those in France or other countries. However, as I sat in a small bistro in the Place du Tertre in Monmartre district of Paris, my waitress opined that unfortunately the era of French farming of fresh foods is rapidly giving way to the chemically treated, overly refined processing that is common place throughout the U.S. Quel dommage!