In Defense of Food Part 10 of 10: Eat Less
August 27, 2009 by dr. lam · 10 Comments
What I found enlightening was the reason Pollan proposes to eat less. It has been found that individuals who eat less also tend to have less risk of heart disease, cancer, and aging. By eating a lot in a gluttonous fashion, we encourage our cells to enter a state of unbridled replication that in turn can accelerate our aging.
The French Paradox of eating saturated fats and drinking wine without the risk of heart disease found in America may not be related to the polyphenols in red wine or some other mystical factor. Instead, it might be related to how the French eat. Most French take their time to eat. They eat far smaller amounts than we Americans do, and they hold a taboo about eating seconds. They also do not snack; whereas Americans are chained to a lifeline of endless drinks and food on their desk at work and at home near the television.
Americans stop eating when the plate is empty or when the television program is over, which are external cues. Interestingly, the French respond that they stop eating when “I am full”, an internal cue. Not very complex on that one. The reason the French can eat smaller portions and be full than their American counterparts has to do with the speed of their eating. It has been known that it takes 20 minutes for the brain to realize you are full. Unfortunately, most American meals are well over by that time interval. If you slow down your meal, you will eat less.
Further, the French have built a culture around eating at the table. Americans today do not prepare meals but shovel them. The Normal Rockwall painting of the family dinner is now splintered into the kids eating a different meal from the parents at a different time at a different location while doing different other activities. The cohesive social element of food in the American family has been torn asunder.
I hope all of you have learned as much as I have from this fantastic book, In Defense of Food. It has changed the way I think about food and nutrition, and it has facilitated a revolution in my own life, as much as my recent trip to Europe has reinforced these concepts.
In Defense of Food Part 9 of 10: The Rules
August 26, 2009 by dr. lam · 4 Comments
Concluding In Defense of Food, Pollan outlines general guidelines for a prospective shopper of food to stay out of the treacherous waters he has discussed earlier in the book. He cites the principle problem is that Americans are eating faster, cheaper, and more prepared foods than most other countries. In the past, Americans would eat less processed foods that were more expensive and that actually required time to prepare. Here are some of his guidelines:
- Don’t eat anything that your great-great grandmother would not recognize.
- Don’t eat anything on the label that you cannot pronounce or cannot recognize, especially anything with high-fructose corn syrup.
- Avoid food that makes health claims.
- Stay away from the center of the grocery store (where processed food reigns) and circumscribe the periphery (where fresher food flourishes but still can be invaded by refined foods today.)
- Better yet stay away from grocery stores, and go to farmer’s markets or be involved with community-supported agriculture (CSA).
- Eat more leafy plants.
- Eat well-grown food from healthy soils. Pollan argues that the word “organic” is important in that the food was not subjected to chemical fertilizers, but it is not the last word on quality. Organic oreos are not healthy, and some farmers who are not certified organic still grow exceptional food. In Omnivore’s Dilemma (which I shall be covering a couple of months from now), he goes into great detail of how a lot of organic food is truly not organic but a quasi “industrial organic” served up in reputable establishments like Whole Foods…frightening!.)
- Eat wild foods when you can like wild animals (which dine on leaves) and sturdier, wild plants that may have more nutritional value.
- Be the kind of person who takes supplements (not that you have to take supplements but just be in the mindset of those individuals who care enough that they would). Most nutrients should come from food but if you don’t eat a lot of fish consider taking fish oil capsules (see last Friday’s blog), or if you are getting older and need more to supplement your diet, then do so if need be.
- Eat more like the French, Italians, or traditional food cultures. This means as much of what we eat as how we eat it: slow, social, and relaxed.
- Have a glass of wine with dinner.
These are great rules to live by. Tomorrow we conclude our series on this wonderful, inspiring (and perspiring) book!
In Defense of Food Part 8 of 10: Food Ratios, Eat Less Meat and Eat Quality Meat
August 25, 2009 by dr. lam · 2 Comments
Sometimes it is not what we are eating that is bad but what we are eating that is shoving out what we are not that is the problem. Conventional wisdom today says, “Give me a big slab of meat and garnish it with a twig of vegetable on the side.” Some of the nitrosamines in the meat could lead to risks over the long haul (then again so can the mercury in fish), but also the absence of vegetables could be equally lethal. Perhaps we should challenge the Western concept of the large dead animal in the center of our plate with a side dish of some miniscule vegetable item.
Think about cutting down the dead animal portion (not necessarily getting rid of it unless you are already a vegetarian) and increasing our focus on vegetables. I myself am a big fan of the big dead animal in front of me and don’t quite feel it constitutes a meal unless I have that carcass in front of me. However, having finished my journeys through Europe and seeing a more egalitarian representation of food items, I am beginning to appreciate that we need to save room not for dessert but for green stuff in our bellies and perhaps make it the centerpiece of our meals.
It is not only important to cut down meat but to eat only quality meat. Meat that is fed grain instead of plant leaves has higher Omega 6s than Omega 3s, which as we discussed last Friday is bad for you. Cows were meant to eat grass as they are ruminators. Instead, man has forced cows to eat grain to get fatter faster at the expense of Omega 3s. Eating grains make a cow sick and therefore require antibiotics to keep them from getting sick. So it is not only important to eat quality animals but it is important what food your animal eats too. Pay more for pastured animals even chickens or other livestock. The more grass they eat the better it is for you. Obviously, eating organic products that are free from pesticides and other chemicals is very important too but hard to be certain if you are getting the real deal.
He encourages once you find great quality meat, get a deep freezer and keep it there. The elements of produce and meat do not get affected from freezing. That will help in the long run.
Interestingly, we can attain all the ingredients we need from plants without meat except for B12. But there is trace amounts of B12 in produce that also is manufactured from your own bacteria in your gut. Although great amounts of meat can lead to heart disease, a single serving a day has not been established to be detrimental to your health. If one does not want to get rid of meat from the diet, one does not need to do so. It is just important to eat better meat in smaller quantities with enough leafy plants along with that meat.
In Defense of Food Part 7 of 10: Omega 3s and 6s
August 21, 2009 by dr. lam · 2 Comments
I found this chapter to be the most fascinating of many in the book, In Defense of Food. We think Omega 3 fatty acids come from fish, which they do. But ultimately they come from leaves, which fish eat in the form of algae. Omega 3s were discovered in the 1980s for their health benefit in mental activity/neurologic functioning, cell membrane permeability and flexibility, visual acuity, and decreasing inflammation. Omega 6s come principally from seeds and work to reverse the benefits of Omega 3s, specifically to store fat, stiffen walls, and to increase inflammation.
What is truly fascinating is that it is believed that our body’s access to Omega 3s and 6s is a zero-sum game. If we eat too many food items with Omega 6s in them, then we get very little benefit from any ingested Omega 3s. The ratio is what counts. Unfortunately, in our Western diet, we consume on average 10 to 1 Omega 6 to 3 ratios, whereas in the pre-refined grain era we were consuming about a 3 to 1 ratio.
In Japanese and Eskimo cultures that consume vast quantities of fish compared with grain items, their level of heart disease is remarkably lower. In fact, it is known that Omega 3 receptors are found plentifully in the heart tissue that can lead to a more stable heart rhythm, less thrombogenesis (clot formation), and a smoother arterial wall. Unfortunately, with all of the processed foods we are eating we are displacing our Omega 3s making them practically useless. This goes against the grain (sorry for the pun) that some nutritionists argue that the Omega 6 found in seed oil is still so much better than consuming saturated fats. But this may not be the case. Rising Omega 6s may lead to poor bioavailability of Omega 3s.
Omega 3s may cut the chance of heart disease and heart attacks by a full third. That is amazing. I have incorporated Omega 3s as supplements (this is about the only supplement I currently take, 4 pills a day to total 2000 mg of combined EPA/DHA fatty acids, other than Vitamin D since I am sun deprived) into my diet but now I realize the importance of reducing my Omega 6 exposure. In short, eat more leaves and eat fewer seeds.
What is very interesting too is that most processed foods take any remaining Omega 3s out of the equation. Omega 3s have short shelf life and cannot be maintained well. The reason that many diets of the world have moved to higher Omega 6 to 3 ratios (that is a Western diet) is that Omega 3s are rapidly processed in the body and can lead to repeat hunger, whereas Omega 6s typically satiate better. However, all of us need to be more conscious of how Omega 3s can help us for better cardiovascular health, brain/neurological health, and to limit the chances of chronic diseases.
In Defense of Food Part 6 of 10: Refining Grains and Declining Health
August 20, 2009 by dr. lam · 4 Comments
Since the Industrial Revolution, grains have become more and more refined. Corn and cereal grains have been pulverized into powder with all the nutritional content squeezed out. Rice has been freed from its healthy brown shell into a whitened significantly less beneficial product. By making our digestive systems work less, these refined products are quickly converted into glucose, which leads to our insulin resistance and weight gain. Making corn into corn syrup is perhaps the most blatant offense.
Realizing that diseases like beriberi and pellagra were a direct result of a loss of B vitamins from these refined products, millers started to add B vitamins back into powdered grain and rice products. But what valuable nutrients have we lost in the process? A study from the University of Minnesota by David Jacobs and Lyn Steffen found that despite adjusting for dietary fiber, vitamin E, folic acid, phytic acid, iron, zince, magnesium, and manganese in the diet (all the good things that we get from whole grains), there was still considerable health benefit to just eating the whole grains themselves, as none of the sum of these nutrients alone could explain. As they concluded, “This analysis suggests that something else in the whole grain protects against death.”
Interesting, the absence of these micronutrients that we can’t even label or understand how their synergestic actions may work may lead to even more hunger. Bruce Ames, a Berkeley biochemist, purports a theory that the hunger we experience in eating large quantities of non-nutritious food may stem from our body’s unrelenting desire to attain these missing ingredients so we consume more of bad food to get what we need and are missing.
A diet high in whole grains leads to fewer chronic diseases like diabetes, heart disease, and cancers; whereas the inverse is certainly true. One of the biggest changes in American diet since 1909 has been the rise of calories coming from sugars, from 13 to 20 percent. Then add the percentage of calories coming from carbohydrates (about 40 percent, or ten servings, nine of which are refined!), we see that Americans are consuming a diet that is at least half sugars in one form or another. With the rise of fructose along with glucose, we have the perfect storm for our diseased state. The high sugars spikes our insulin levels leading to a crash as the glucose enters are cells, returning us to hunger.
It is not fat that is killing us, it is refined sugars and grains in our diet that no amount of scientific tinkering can overcome.