In my home state of Arizona, a restaurant named "Heart Attack Grill" does brisk business in Chandler, a Phoenix suburb. Waitresses in nurse-themed uniforms with miniskirts deliver single, double, triple and quadruple "bypass burgers" (featuring one, two, three and four hefty patties, respectively) dripping with cheese, to patrons who wear hospital gowns that double as bibs. The motto: "Taste Worth Dying For!"
Now, there is much for a medical doctor (as opposed to "Dr. Jon," the stethoscope-wearing, burger-flipping owner) to dislike in this establishment. If you visit, I implore you to steer clear of the white-flour buns, the sugary sodas and the piles of "flatliner fries" that accompany the burgers in the restaurant's signature bedpan plates. This is precisely the sort of processed-carbohydrate-intensive meal that, via this and other fast-food establishments, is propelling the epidemic of obesity and diabetes in America.
But the Grill's essential, in-your-face concept is that the saturated fat in beef clogs arteries, and hamburger meat is consequently among the most heart-damaging foods a human being can consume. As the Grill literature puts it, "The menu names imply coronary bypass surgery, and refer to the danger of developing atherosclerosis from the food's high proportion of saturated fat..." Aimed at a certain crowd, this is clever, edgy marketing. Some people enjoy flirting with death.
The problem? It's not true. The saturated fat lauded in this menu won't kill you. It may even be the safest element of the meal.
Saturated fat is made of fatty acid chains that cannot incorporate additional hydrogen atoms. It is often of animal origin, and is typically solid at room temperature. Its relative safety has been a theme in nutrition science for at least the last decade, but in my view, a significant exoneration took place in March of this year. An analysis that combined the results of 21 studies, published in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition found that "saturated fat was not associated with an increased risk" of coronary heart disease, stroke or coronary vascular disease.
Although this was not a true study, it was a big analysis. It aggregated information from nearly 348,000 participants, most of whom were healthy at the start of the studies. They were surveyed about their dietary habits and followed for five to 23 years. In that time, 11,000 developed heart disease or had a stroke. Researcher Ronald M. Krauss of the Children's Hospital Oakland Research Center in California found that there was no difference in the risk of heart disease or stroke between people with the lowest and highest intakes of saturated fat.
This contradicts nutritional dogma we've heard repeated since 1970, when a physiologist named Ancel Keys published his "Seven Countries" study that showed animal fat consumption strongly predicted heart attack risk. His conclusions influenced US dietary guidelines for decades to come, but other researchers pointed out that if 21 other countries had been included in that study, the association that Keys observed would have been seen as extremely weak.
Meanwhile, in the years since, there has been increasing evidence that added sweeteners in foods may contribute to heart disease. Sweeteners appear to lower levels of HDL cholesterol (the higher your HDL, the better) and raise triglycerides (the lower the better). That's according to a study of more than 6,000 adults by Emory University and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and published in April in The Journal of the American Medical Association.
People who received at least 25 percent of their daily calories from any type of sweetener had more than triple the normal risk of having low HDL levels than those who consumed less than five percent of their calories from sweeteners. Beyond that, those whose sugar intake made up 17.5 percent or more of daily calories were 20 to 30 percent more likely to have high triglycerides.
Science writer Gary Taubes has done more than anyone else to deconstruct the Keys mythos and replace it with a more sensible view, informed by better science. I recommend his book, Good Calories, Bad Calories: Challenging the Conventional Wisdom on Diet, Weight Control and Disease. It presents more than 600 pages of evidence that lead to these conclusions:
My point here is not to promote meat consumption. I've written here previously about humanitarian and ecological reasons to avoid a meat-centric diet, especially if the meat comes from factory-farmed animals. Instead, my purpose is to emphasize that we would be much healthier as a nation if we stopped worrying so much about fats, and instead made a concerted effort to avoid processed, quick-digesting carbohydrates -- especially added sugars. The average American consumes almost 22 teaspoons of sugars that are added to foods each day. This obscene amount is the principal driver of the "diabesity" epidemic, sharply increases coronary risks and promises to make this generation of children the first in American history that will die sooner than their parents.
My Anti-Inflammatory Food Pyramid emphasizes whole or minimally processed foods -- especially vegetables -- with low glycemic loads. That means consuming these foods keeps blood sugar levels relatively stable, which in turn lowers both fat deposition and heart-disease risk. If you make a concerted effort to eat such foods and avoid sugar, you'll soon lose your taste for it. The natural sugars in fruits and vegetables will provide all the sweetness you desire.
While saturated fat appears to have no effect on heart health, eating too much can crowd out vitamins, minerals and fiber needed for optimal health. So I recommend sticking to a "saturated fat budget" which can be "spent" on an occasional steak (from organic, grass-fed, grass-finished cattle, see LocalHarvest for sources), some butter, or, as I do, high quality, natural cheese a few times a week.
Andrew Weil, M.D., invites you to join the conversation: become a fan on Facebook, follow him on Twitter, and check out his Daily Health Tips Blog. Dr. Weil is the founder and director of the Arizona Center for Integrative Medicine and the editorial director of www.DrWeil.com.
Follow Dr. Andrew Weil on Twitter: www.twitter.com/DrWeil
Darya Pino, Ph.D: 10 Reasons You Hate To Cook (And What To Do About Them)
Healthy Eating: Easy Tips for Planning a Healthy Diet & Sticking to It
EatingWell Homepage | Eating Well
Healthy Recipes and Meal Ideas : Food Network
Heart-healthy diet: 8 steps to prevent heart disease - MayoClinic.com
According to Michael Pollan, about 40% of agricultural income now is subsidy ("Like laundering money for Cargill and ADM"... he quotes one farmer saying), and the bulk of that subsidy goes to insuring a calorie of high-fructose corn syrup is cheaper than a calorie of carrot.
So meat subsidies make our meat consumption artificially cheap. ... and I haven't even mentioned the subsidy we provide by letting feedlots consume 60% of the antibiotics Americans use. Could we possibly be doing more antibiotic research than necessary because feedlots continue to breed super drug-resistant germs?
Gosh, I wonder....
Also worth considering is Marcia Angell's conclusion (from:http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2009/jan/15/drug-companies-doctorsa-story-of-corruption/?pagination=false). A relevant excerpt:
The problems I’ve discussed are not limited to psychiatry, although they reach their most florid form there. Similar conflicts of interest and biases exist in virtually every field of medicine, particularly those that rely heavily on drugs or devices. It is simply no longer possible to believe much of the clinical research that is published, or to rely on the judgment of trusted physicians or authoritative medical guidelines. I take no pleasure in this conclusion, which I reached slowly and reluctantly over my two decades as an editor of The New England Journal of Medicine.
Yow!
Dr Krauss who did the research referred to here has spent his entire life aligned with the beef and dairy industries and he is an expert at designing studies to confuse and obsfucate reality. He is professional grade.
Likewise Weston Price which is nothing but a beef and dairy lobby group posing as nutrition experts.
So sad. Americans have little chance of ever figuring it out.
Please people do not believe the assertions of the beef and dairy industries. They are manipulative and deceptive and they know it.
You can read The China Study or The Engine 2 Diet for a look into what a healthy diet can actually do for you, and if you want to be disease free, please read these excellent books for starters.
I'm glad that Dr. Weil has recognized that saturated fat does not deserve it's bad reputation, though I'm wondering if he's really read Taubes 'Good Calorie, Bad Calories', since he's still pushing lots of carbs in his 'Anti-inflammatory Pyramid.' And 'No thank you' on the soy!
Now all that author has to answer is http://www.drmcdougall.com‘s anecdotal evidence that moving from meat eating to vegan diet helps many people get off diabetes and heart medication. Watch the testimonial videos…
She’s also got to deal with all the global warming problems stemming from the way we raise livestock now (according to a recent U.N. report, raising livestock accounts for more global warming than all human transportation combined…see: http://www.newsreview.com/sacramento/content?oid=775299 for one footnote).
But if you want some bitter controversy, just try to talk about diet with people. Sure, my Dad had a stroke (and macular degeneration) when he went on the (high-meat) Adkins diet, and the macular degeneration halted as soon as he ended the diet. And sure, my arthritis went away when I stopped eating animal protein (I'm not a purist, but the results were pretty dramatic)... But those are just anecdotes.
I just read a group of string theory physicists suggests Einstein's conclusions about gravity (experimentally tested to be correct within 1 part in 2 billion) are flawed, so the debate that is science continues unabated.
Try cutting back on the meat yourself, and see what happens is what I say...
It can be found in his book, Nutrition and Physical Degeneration, free online at http://journeytoforever.org/farm_library/price/pricetoc.html
In this study, increased fat (probably from natural sources such as lard, pork, goat, and goat milk) correlated with increased longevity.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1407826
"Nutrient intakes in 94 Japanese centenarians investigated between 1972 and 1973 showed a higher proportion of animal protein to total proteins than in contemporary average Japanese. 2. High intakes of milk and fats and oils had favorable effects on 10-year (1976-1986) survivorship in 422 urban residents aged 69-71. The survivors revealed a longitudinal increase in intakes of animal foods such as eggs, milk, fish and meat over the 10 years. 3. Nutrient intakes were compared, based on 24-hour dietary records, between a sample from Okinawa Prefecture where life expectancies at birth and 65 were the longest in Japan, and a sample from Akita Prefecture where the life expectancies were much shorter. Intakes of Ca, Fe, vitamins A, B1, B2, C, and the proportion of energy from proteins and fats were significantly higher in the former than in the latter. Intakes of carbohydrates and NaCl were lower."
"The Okinawan diet might well amaze Americans. The average citizen consumes at least seven servings of vegetables daily, and an equal number of grains (in the form of noodles, bread, and rice—many of them whole grains). Add to this two to four servings of fruit, plus tofu and other forms of soy, green tea, seaweed, and fish rich in omega-3s (three times weekly). Sweet potatoes, bean sprouts, onions, and green peppers are prominent in the diet. Vegetables, grains, and fruits make up 72% of the diet by weight. Soy and seaweed provide another 14%. Meat, poultry, and eggs account for just 3% of the diet, fish about 11%. The emphasis is on dark green vegetables rich in calcium (Okinawans, like other Japanese, don't eat much dairy). Okinawans do drink alcohol, but women usually stick to one drink a day, while men average twice that. Moderation is the key.
In short, the average Okinawan's diet is far richer in complex carbohydrates and plant-based foods, and lower in fat, than the average American's. (It's completely different from low-carbohydrate plans like the Atkins and Zone diets.) "
The study says, "a sample from Okinawa Prefecture."
Okinawa Prefecture is Okinawa.
The "proportion of energy from proteins and fats were significantly higher" in Okinawa.
English translation: He's got no real medical expertise at all and is a voodoo practitioner.
Erik
http://eaprince.blogspot.com
"Food" here meaning real, whole, unprocessed foods (whole grains, vegetables, but also fish and meat if that's your thing).
What's depressing about the nutrition debate is that people throw up their hands and just go on eating like crap, as if there's no middle ground between perfection and no rules at all. If everyone just followed the very basic guideline Pollan presents, we'd be many times more healthy than we are now, even if we weren't eating according to the nutrition study of the week.
http://winningtheobesitybattle.wordpress.com/
total-anonymity.es.tc