https://kimberlysnyder.com/blog/2017/07/19/why-you-need-soil-based-probiotics-sbos/
Why You Need Soil Based Probiotics (SBOs)
Interest in the benefits of probiotics has skyrocketed in recent years, and for good reason. Research has linked the gut microbiome to a variety of physical diseases and even mental disorders. Exposure to a wide range of bacteria, especially during infancy and childhood, appears to build a healthy immune system [1].
Recent research suggests that a lack of these beneficial bacteria may contribute to a weakened immune system and digestive disorders. Probiotics are formulations that contain healthy gut bacteria to replace or improve our digestive microorganisms. Soil based organisms (SBOs) are the most beneficial of any probiotics.
What are Soil Based Probiotics (SBOs)?
Soil based probiotics (SBOs) are bacterial microorganisms that are necessary for a healthy gut microbiome. Some strains of bacteria are especially important in supporting various aspects of our physical and mental health.
Soil based probiotics (SBOs) are “good” bacteria that:
Besides soil depletion, fruits and vegetables are often sprayed with microbe killing agents and, even if they aren’t, they are washed clean of the beneficial bacteria they had originally.
In 2009, microbiologist M. Gloria Dominguez-Bello along with her research colleagues from New York University School of Medicine and a medical team from the Venezuelan government took a helicopter to a remote Yanomami tribe at the border of Venezuela and Brazil. The tribe had lived as hunter-gatherers for more than 11,000 years in that area of the Amazon rain forest. This was the first time that particular tribe had direct contact with modern society [3].
The research team took samples from the villagers’ fecal matter and analyzed it to figure out which species thrived in the tribe’s guts. They were astonished to find that the tribe had about 50 percent more ecological diversity than the average American has. As cultures around the world become more “Western,” they lose bacteria species in their guts, Dominguez-Bello says.
At the same time, they start having higher incidences of chronic illnesses connected to the immune system, such as allergies, Crohn’s disease, autoimmune disorders and multiple sclerosis. “The concern is that we’re losing keystone species, “ says Dominguez-Bello. One missing microbe helps metabolize carbohydrates. Another communicates with our immune system.
Jens Walter, a microbiologist at the University of Alberta, studied the gut microbes in two indigenous populations in Papua New Guinea. Similarly, he found that the Papua New Guineans’ microbiome had about 47 species that are essentially absent in the Americans they studied [4].
The indigenous Papua New Guineans and the Yanomami tribe have many more species of microbiota than modern humans because, like our earliest ancestors, they are in continual contact with the earth. The foods they eat come directly from the soil and are consumed with much of that soil still present. They don’t fastidiously wash the soil off of their food like we do today.
Their hands would be teeming with soil based organisms (SBOs) and those SBOs would go directly into their mouths as they eat their food with their hands. Their soil also more closely represents the soils of our ancestors, rich in nutrients and bacteria that have not been depleted by commercial farming and other forms of development.
Hopefully studies like these will help us not only identify missing microbe strains but also possibly culture them for reintroduction to our modern microbiome. If there is a link between so many modern day disorders and diseases and the gut microbiome, as evidence suggests, this could be a huge breakthrough for treatment and prevention of many of today’s ills.
What is a microbiome?
Since 2007, scientists at the National Institute of Health (NIH)’s Human Microbiome Project have been focused on the phenomenon of bacteria. In 2008, the European Commission and China created the Metagenomics of the Human Intestinal Tract Project (MetaHIT) to join this study.
Scientists have known for centuries that antibiotics can destroy at least some “bad” bacteria. Now, DNA sequencing and the Human Genome Project have made it possible to study the enormous world of germs, greatly expanding our previous knowledge.
We inherit more than 22,000 genes from our parents. The bacteria that exist in — and on — our bodies contain at least eight million bacterial genes. That’s 360 times more bacterial genes than human genes! The bacteria that we carry inside and outside of the human body are known as the human microbiome [5].
The “gut microbiome” is a collection of many types of bacteria that live in our gastrointestinal tract – also called the digestive tract. This includes the mouth, esophagus, stomach, small intestine, and large intestine. Scientists estimate that we each carry 100 trillion bacteria in our digestive tract alone!
We have a symbiotic relationship with our gut microbiome. We (the host) provide an environment for bacteria to thrive. In return, gut-dwelling bacteria keep pathogens (harmful micro-organisms) in check, aid digestion and nutrient absorption, and contribute to immune function. Soil based probiotics (SBOs) are the most beneficial bacteria for our gut microbiome.
Why do we need soil based probiotics (SBOs)?
In 2010, the Human Microbiome Project published an analysis of 178 genomes from bacteria that live in or on the human body. 10,000 different types of bacteria in the human body have been identified, many of which serve functions in human health and disease. The vast numbers of bacteria discovered appear to provide benefit to the human body, not harm [6].
Martin J. Blaser, chairman of the Department of Medicine and a professor of microbiology at the New York University School of Medicine states: “Germs make us sick, but everyone focuses on the harm. It’s not that simple, because without most of these organisms we could never survive” [7].
Further, he adds: “I have been a practicing physician and medical researcher for more than thirty years, and this is the most exciting and important work of my lifetime.”
As scientists map the human microbiome, they are beginning to understand the ecological and evolutionary processes involved in shaping the diversity of the human microbiome. Proper bacterial balance provided by soil based microorganisms (SBOs) is vital to healthy immune function, providing appropriate protection against potential infections and playing a critical role in the digestion and absorption of food and nutrients [8].
The interaction of multiple strains of soil based bacteria (SBOs) is an essential element in health and wellbeing. Problems arise when we lack the diversity of bacteria. Other types of probiotic formulas are not as hardy or diverse as soil based probiotics (SBOs). Regular probiotics, like acidophilus for example, seldom make it all the way through the digestive tract to the lower intestine to become a part of the crucial microbial community. The natural microbiome that kept our ancestors healthy came from soil based organisms (SBOs).
The latest hypothesis that researchers are investigating, is that allergies are on the rise due to a lack of bacterial diversity in our environments and therefore in our digestive tracts. With people spending more time indoors and less and less time outside in nature, we are being exposed to far fewer species of soil based bacteria (SBOs). This is unfortunate given what we now understand about bacteria being absolutely vital for so many aspects of our health.
The bacteria that live on our skin and in our mouths, digestive tracts and urinary tracts, all communicate with our immune systems and therefore play a large part in the development and regulation of our immunity. Early exposure to beneficial bacteria is vital to a child’s immune function, and therefore to the prevention of allergies.
Children born via caesarean section have a 60% greater risk of developing allergies due to the lack of exposure to the strains of Lactobacillus present in the vagina and birth canal. Of course, our health is not just determined by how we are born; it is greatly influenced by how babies are nurtured in their first months of life and beyond, into childhood [9].
Babies that are breast-fed are exposed to the 700 different species of bacteria that are present in breast milk. Those bacteria are not replicated in baby formula. Babies with less immunity from fewer strains of bacteria often undergo increased use of antibiotics for childhood illnesses such as tonsillitis and ear infections. Antibiotics administered in the first year of a child’s life have been shown to increase their likelihood of developing an allergy by as much as 50%.
Researchers believe changes in gut bacteria may even affect the brain and personality. Germ-free mice have been shown to be dramatically more anxious and hyperactive than their counterparts with a normal microbiome. They concluded that the presence or absence of intestinal microbiota influences the development of behavior, and is accompanied by neurochemical changes in the brain [10].
More recently, researchers at the University of Cork, looked at whether or not the fear response was altered in mice that were raised in a completely germ-free environment, and therefore had a deficient microbiome.
They found that the amygdala – which is the area of the brain responsible for emotional ‘regulation’, appears to be hyperactive in microbiota deficient subjects. This can lead to an unmodulated response to fearful memories, and therefore create a tendency towards phobias or post-traumatic stress disorders for example.
One of the lead researchers on this study, Dr. John Cryan said:
“It is turning upside down how we might develop strategies for fear and anxiety. It is a very exciting time for us’’ [11].
While more work is still needed to fully understand the mechanisms behind the relationship between the microbiota and fear responses, Dr. Cryan said it was likely ‘’that key signals from the gut to the brain act as regulators of the fear response.’’
He added that: “We are very excited about this because it is probably one of the first direct links to fear pathways,” and “We now know that for normal fear responses we need to have appropriate microbes in our gut.”
A healthy microbiota balance can also have a large impact on metabolic processes. The gut microbiome has a definite impact on nutrient acquisition and absorption and overall energy regulation.
Research has pointed to the impact of Firmicutes and Bacteroidetes strains on fat mass and obesity. As fat mass increases so does the release of powerful signaling molecules called cytokines, which are linked to inflammation. Appropriate signaling is essential to maintaining healthy metabolism and, when malfunctioning, could trigger the development of metabolic syndrome [12].
Why soil based probiotics (SBOs) are better than other probiotics
Some characteristics which are unique to SBO probiotics include:
Lactobacillus, acidophilus and bifidobacteria, the bacterial species typically found in yogurt and traditional probiotic supplements, do not have the naturally protective shell that is inherent to all soil based, spore-forming bacteria, so they cannot withstand gastric acids. While these types of bacteria can have benefits, unfortunately very few of these organisms ever reach the lower intestine.
Research has demonstrated that yogurt and other products based on these probiotic strains aren’t as hardy as spore-forming probiotic bacteria. A recent study found that such yogurt products have only minimal effects on gut bacteria. The study involved seven pairs of identical twins. One in each pair ate twice-daily servings of yogurt containing five strains of lactic-acid bacteria. The research team performed DNA sequencing on the bacteria in the twins’ stool samples [15].
They found that the yogurt bacteria did not take up residence in the young women’s guts and there was no evidence the bacteria became part of the microbial community in the intestines. The researchers concluded that the yogurt, heavily fortified with billions of lactic acid probiotic bacteria, had no effect on the women’s health, which mimics similar study results performed with mice.
SBO probiotics have a simple, natural advantage. “Bacterial spores offer the advantage of a higher survival rate during the acidic stomach passage and better stability during the processing and storage of the food product,” writes researcher Johannes Bader, from the Technische Universitat Berlin [16].
Why You Need Soil Based Probiotics (SBOs)
Interest in the benefits of probiotics has skyrocketed in recent years, and for good reason. Research has linked the gut microbiome to a variety of physical diseases and even mental disorders. Exposure to a wide range of bacteria, especially during infancy and childhood, appears to build a healthy immune system [1].
Recent research suggests that a lack of these beneficial bacteria may contribute to a weakened immune system and digestive disorders. Probiotics are formulations that contain healthy gut bacteria to replace or improve our digestive microorganisms. Soil based organisms (SBOs) are the most beneficial of any probiotics.
What are Soil Based Probiotics (SBOs)?
Soil based probiotics (SBOs) are bacterial microorganisms that are necessary for a healthy gut microbiome. Some strains of bacteria are especially important in supporting various aspects of our physical and mental health.
Soil based probiotics (SBOs) are “good” bacteria that:
- Aid in digestion
- Assist in nutrient absorption
- Support a healthy immune system by triggering antibodies that act as our main defenders.
- Support healthy energy levels
- Support mood and mental health
- Prior to modern agricultural, the diet consisted primarily of wild plant foods; vegetables, roots, fruit and berries gathered from bushes, trees, and from the ground.
- The food was eaten as it was found, without washing.
- Soil based bacteria would have been on anything that had contact with the ground. Roots, low growing leaves, and any fruits that fell to the ground would have soil based bacteria. Even people’s hands would have soil-based bacteria from having contact with dirt and they probably didn’t wash their hands multiple times a day as we do in modern times. The bacteria was ingested along with the food, and traveled to the digestive tract where it colonized the human gut and supported a symbiotic relationship humans shared with the bacteria.
- This continued contact ensured a continuous supply of the bacterial spores naturally found in the soil.
Besides soil depletion, fruits and vegetables are often sprayed with microbe killing agents and, even if they aren’t, they are washed clean of the beneficial bacteria they had originally.
In 2009, microbiologist M. Gloria Dominguez-Bello along with her research colleagues from New York University School of Medicine and a medical team from the Venezuelan government took a helicopter to a remote Yanomami tribe at the border of Venezuela and Brazil. The tribe had lived as hunter-gatherers for more than 11,000 years in that area of the Amazon rain forest. This was the first time that particular tribe had direct contact with modern society [3].
The research team took samples from the villagers’ fecal matter and analyzed it to figure out which species thrived in the tribe’s guts. They were astonished to find that the tribe had about 50 percent more ecological diversity than the average American has. As cultures around the world become more “Western,” they lose bacteria species in their guts, Dominguez-Bello says.
At the same time, they start having higher incidences of chronic illnesses connected to the immune system, such as allergies, Crohn’s disease, autoimmune disorders and multiple sclerosis. “The concern is that we’re losing keystone species, “ says Dominguez-Bello. One missing microbe helps metabolize carbohydrates. Another communicates with our immune system.
Jens Walter, a microbiologist at the University of Alberta, studied the gut microbes in two indigenous populations in Papua New Guinea. Similarly, he found that the Papua New Guineans’ microbiome had about 47 species that are essentially absent in the Americans they studied [4].
The indigenous Papua New Guineans and the Yanomami tribe have many more species of microbiota than modern humans because, like our earliest ancestors, they are in continual contact with the earth. The foods they eat come directly from the soil and are consumed with much of that soil still present. They don’t fastidiously wash the soil off of their food like we do today.
Their hands would be teeming with soil based organisms (SBOs) and those SBOs would go directly into their mouths as they eat their food with their hands. Their soil also more closely represents the soils of our ancestors, rich in nutrients and bacteria that have not been depleted by commercial farming and other forms of development.
Hopefully studies like these will help us not only identify missing microbe strains but also possibly culture them for reintroduction to our modern microbiome. If there is a link between so many modern day disorders and diseases and the gut microbiome, as evidence suggests, this could be a huge breakthrough for treatment and prevention of many of today’s ills.
What is a microbiome?
Since 2007, scientists at the National Institute of Health (NIH)’s Human Microbiome Project have been focused on the phenomenon of bacteria. In 2008, the European Commission and China created the Metagenomics of the Human Intestinal Tract Project (MetaHIT) to join this study.
Scientists have known for centuries that antibiotics can destroy at least some “bad” bacteria. Now, DNA sequencing and the Human Genome Project have made it possible to study the enormous world of germs, greatly expanding our previous knowledge.
We inherit more than 22,000 genes from our parents. The bacteria that exist in — and on — our bodies contain at least eight million bacterial genes. That’s 360 times more bacterial genes than human genes! The bacteria that we carry inside and outside of the human body are known as the human microbiome [5].
The “gut microbiome” is a collection of many types of bacteria that live in our gastrointestinal tract – also called the digestive tract. This includes the mouth, esophagus, stomach, small intestine, and large intestine. Scientists estimate that we each carry 100 trillion bacteria in our digestive tract alone!
We have a symbiotic relationship with our gut microbiome. We (the host) provide an environment for bacteria to thrive. In return, gut-dwelling bacteria keep pathogens (harmful micro-organisms) in check, aid digestion and nutrient absorption, and contribute to immune function. Soil based probiotics (SBOs) are the most beneficial bacteria for our gut microbiome.
Why do we need soil based probiotics (SBOs)?
In 2010, the Human Microbiome Project published an analysis of 178 genomes from bacteria that live in or on the human body. 10,000 different types of bacteria in the human body have been identified, many of which serve functions in human health and disease. The vast numbers of bacteria discovered appear to provide benefit to the human body, not harm [6].
Martin J. Blaser, chairman of the Department of Medicine and a professor of microbiology at the New York University School of Medicine states: “Germs make us sick, but everyone focuses on the harm. It’s not that simple, because without most of these organisms we could never survive” [7].
Further, he adds: “I have been a practicing physician and medical researcher for more than thirty years, and this is the most exciting and important work of my lifetime.”
As scientists map the human microbiome, they are beginning to understand the ecological and evolutionary processes involved in shaping the diversity of the human microbiome. Proper bacterial balance provided by soil based microorganisms (SBOs) is vital to healthy immune function, providing appropriate protection against potential infections and playing a critical role in the digestion and absorption of food and nutrients [8].
The interaction of multiple strains of soil based bacteria (SBOs) is an essential element in health and wellbeing. Problems arise when we lack the diversity of bacteria. Other types of probiotic formulas are not as hardy or diverse as soil based probiotics (SBOs). Regular probiotics, like acidophilus for example, seldom make it all the way through the digestive tract to the lower intestine to become a part of the crucial microbial community. The natural microbiome that kept our ancestors healthy came from soil based organisms (SBOs).
The latest hypothesis that researchers are investigating, is that allergies are on the rise due to a lack of bacterial diversity in our environments and therefore in our digestive tracts. With people spending more time indoors and less and less time outside in nature, we are being exposed to far fewer species of soil based bacteria (SBOs). This is unfortunate given what we now understand about bacteria being absolutely vital for so many aspects of our health.
The bacteria that live on our skin and in our mouths, digestive tracts and urinary tracts, all communicate with our immune systems and therefore play a large part in the development and regulation of our immunity. Early exposure to beneficial bacteria is vital to a child’s immune function, and therefore to the prevention of allergies.
Children born via caesarean section have a 60% greater risk of developing allergies due to the lack of exposure to the strains of Lactobacillus present in the vagina and birth canal. Of course, our health is not just determined by how we are born; it is greatly influenced by how babies are nurtured in their first months of life and beyond, into childhood [9].
Babies that are breast-fed are exposed to the 700 different species of bacteria that are present in breast milk. Those bacteria are not replicated in baby formula. Babies with less immunity from fewer strains of bacteria often undergo increased use of antibiotics for childhood illnesses such as tonsillitis and ear infections. Antibiotics administered in the first year of a child’s life have been shown to increase their likelihood of developing an allergy by as much as 50%.
Researchers believe changes in gut bacteria may even affect the brain and personality. Germ-free mice have been shown to be dramatically more anxious and hyperactive than their counterparts with a normal microbiome. They concluded that the presence or absence of intestinal microbiota influences the development of behavior, and is accompanied by neurochemical changes in the brain [10].
More recently, researchers at the University of Cork, looked at whether or not the fear response was altered in mice that were raised in a completely germ-free environment, and therefore had a deficient microbiome.
They found that the amygdala – which is the area of the brain responsible for emotional ‘regulation’, appears to be hyperactive in microbiota deficient subjects. This can lead to an unmodulated response to fearful memories, and therefore create a tendency towards phobias or post-traumatic stress disorders for example.
One of the lead researchers on this study, Dr. John Cryan said:
“It is turning upside down how we might develop strategies for fear and anxiety. It is a very exciting time for us’’ [11].
While more work is still needed to fully understand the mechanisms behind the relationship between the microbiota and fear responses, Dr. Cryan said it was likely ‘’that key signals from the gut to the brain act as regulators of the fear response.’’
He added that: “We are very excited about this because it is probably one of the first direct links to fear pathways,” and “We now know that for normal fear responses we need to have appropriate microbes in our gut.”
A healthy microbiota balance can also have a large impact on metabolic processes. The gut microbiome has a definite impact on nutrient acquisition and absorption and overall energy regulation.
Research has pointed to the impact of Firmicutes and Bacteroidetes strains on fat mass and obesity. As fat mass increases so does the release of powerful signaling molecules called cytokines, which are linked to inflammation. Appropriate signaling is essential to maintaining healthy metabolism and, when malfunctioning, could trigger the development of metabolic syndrome [12].
Why soil based probiotics (SBOs) are better than other probiotics
Some characteristics which are unique to SBO probiotics include:
- Soil based organisms are resistant to the digestive acids of the upper digestive tract and stomach.
- Probiotics not derived from soil are not as stable and often don’t make it to the lower digestive tract where they are the most effective.
- Soil based probiotics have a natural shell that protects the probiotic spore against harm. When soil based probiotics are ingested, they travel all the way to the lower intestine, where they proliferate. Like a seed, warm temperatures and moisture stimulate germination. Soil-based probiotics thrive in the gut, and remain in the digestive tract providing long-term benefit.Though the best types of SBO probiotics are found in the natural environment or “soil”, supplemental probiotics are instead produced in safe, controlled environments, which ensure production of the most beneficial strains.
Lactobacillus, acidophilus and bifidobacteria, the bacterial species typically found in yogurt and traditional probiotic supplements, do not have the naturally protective shell that is inherent to all soil based, spore-forming bacteria, so they cannot withstand gastric acids. While these types of bacteria can have benefits, unfortunately very few of these organisms ever reach the lower intestine.
Research has demonstrated that yogurt and other products based on these probiotic strains aren’t as hardy as spore-forming probiotic bacteria. A recent study found that such yogurt products have only minimal effects on gut bacteria. The study involved seven pairs of identical twins. One in each pair ate twice-daily servings of yogurt containing five strains of lactic-acid bacteria. The research team performed DNA sequencing on the bacteria in the twins’ stool samples [15].
They found that the yogurt bacteria did not take up residence in the young women’s guts and there was no evidence the bacteria became part of the microbial community in the intestines. The researchers concluded that the yogurt, heavily fortified with billions of lactic acid probiotic bacteria, had no effect on the women’s health, which mimics similar study results performed with mice.
SBO probiotics have a simple, natural advantage. “Bacterial spores offer the advantage of a higher survival rate during the acidic stomach passage and better stability during the processing and storage of the food product,” writes researcher Johannes Bader, from the Technische Universitat Berlin [16].
https://www.dietdoctor.com/different-kinds-bread-affect-blood-sugar-levels-compared-teaspoons-sugar
Think whole-grain bread is a good choice? Could it help you control your blood sugar? Not necessarily.
If you look at the graph above (made by the eminent Dr. David Unwin), you can see that the difference in effect on blood sugar levels is fairly small between different kinds of conventional bread. A single serving of any of them is equal to several teaspoons of sugar. You’d probably be better off avoiding it completely if you have diabetes.https://www.dietdoctor.com/the-calorie-debacle
Think whole-grain bread is a good choice? Could it help you control your blood sugar? Not necessarily.
If you look at the graph above (made by the eminent Dr. David Unwin), you can see that the difference in effect on blood sugar levels is fairly small between different kinds of conventional bread. A single serving of any of them is equal to several teaspoons of sugar. You’d probably be better off avoiding it completely if you have diabetes.https://www.dietdoctor.com/the-calorie-debacle
ttps://mic.com/articles/88015/what-happens-to-your-brain-on-sugar-explained-by-science#.Hjxi7ywoN
On the left is your brain on sugar. On the right side is your brain on drugs. Notice the similarities?
For comparison, this image shows PET scans of obese and cocaine-addicted brains.
Notice that the normal brain has a lot more red stuff highlighted in it — called Dopamine. This chemical is produced in the part of the brain that is associated with reward. When someone experiences a reward — say while eating a really good meal — their Dopamine (red stuff) level spikes. For addicts, the opposite is true: That spike in Dopamine only comes in anticipation of the reward, as opposed to the actual reward itself. Later, once the reward is gotten, the effects are blunted because the brain has been flooded with dopamine as it thought about eating.
Let's take another look:
This PET brain scans show chemical differences in the brain between addicts and non-addicts. The normal images in the bottom row come from non-addicts; the abnormal images in the top row come from patients with addiction disorders. These brain scans show that that addicts have fewer than average dopamine receptors in their brains, so that weaker dopamine signals are sent between cells.
This is what sugar does to your brain — the exact same thing smoking, alcohol and cocaine do.
Just how bad is America's addiction to sugar?
The Centers for Disease Control project a double- or triple-fold increase in the proportions of Americans with diabetes by 2050. On the low end, a study published in Population Health Metrics projects 21% of Americans will have diabetes. On the high end ... 33%.
AdvertisementIn 2013, student-faculty research at Connecticut College found that in lab rats, Oreos, rich in sugar and fat, may be just as addictive as cocaine. Given the option of Oreos and rice cakes, the test rats spent as much time eating cookies as getting high on cocaine or morphine. Furthermore, the rats given Oreos were subjected to a test that measured expression of a protein called c-Fos, a known marker of neuronal activation in the part of the brain that controls the feeling of pleasure. The result was alarming: Oreos beat out both drugs by a significant margin.
"Our research supports the theory that high-fat/high-sugar foods stimulate the brain in the same way that drugs do," said Joseph Schroeder, director of the college's behavioral neuroscience program. "It may explain why some people can't resist these foods despite the fact that they know they are bad for them."
Student Jamie Honohan, who contributed to the study, added that "Even though we associate significant health hazards in taking drugs like cocaine and morphine, high-fat/ high-sugar foods may present even more of a danger because of their accessibility and affordability."
So basically, Oreos are legal crack. A 2013 profile in the New York Times revealed the massive amount of scientific research big food companies have poured into developing tastier, more addictive products. Even the way they talk about marketing sugar-filled foods can sound an awful lot like discussing business with a drug dealer.
Former Coca-Cola executive and COO Jeffrey Dunn explains the sales logic they'd use: "How many drinkers do I have? And how many drinks do they drink? If you lost one of those heavy users, if somebody just decided to stop drinking Coke, how many drinkers would you have to get, at low velocity, to make up for that heavy user? The answer is a lot. It's more efficient to get my existing users to drink more."
The tipping point, he claimed, was when he began making frequent marketing trips to Brazil and realized, "these people need a lot of things, but they don't need a Coke."
And just like illegal drugs, large amounts of sugar can be very bad for you. In addition to obesity and diabetes, sugar can deeply affect your metabolism, impair brain function and make you more susceptible to heart disease and cancer. It can even form premature wrinkles.
Given all this, it's pretty likely you're over-consuming. Almost 40% of children's diets now come from added sugars and unhealthy fats. To put it in perspective, this infographic from OnlineNursingPrograms.com shows just how much sugar the average American consumes.
Fortunately, there are steps you can take to limit your sugar intake, even if the sheer amount of sugary goods on the market makes the sweet stuff nearly impossible to cut out entirely. Brian Wansink and colleagues at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign found that decreasing visibility and convenience helped participants consume less chocolate. Putting it in a drawer, for example, lowered consumption by a third. And these and other findings linking visibility and low barriers to access have major implications for national policy, like removing candy and junk food machines from school. They may be small steps, but they're something. And if the consumption numbers are any indication that change needs to happen, something's better than nothing.
A new film called Fed Up, produced and narrated by Katie Couric and opening on May 9, hopes to shed some light on the massive junk food industry that's fueling America's obesity crisis.
"There are 600,000 food items in America. 80% of them have added sugar," warns the trailer's Dr. Robert Lustig, the University of California in San Francisco's professor of pediatric medicine. Another warns that ours is the first generation of U.S. children expected to live shorter lives than their parents. By 2050, it warns, a third of us will have diabetes.
https://intensivedietarymanagement.com/
The difference between calorie restriction and fasting – Fasting by Jason Fung
Perhaps one of the most common questions we get is what the difference is between calorie restriction and fasting. Many calorie enthusiasts say that fasting works, but only because it restricts calories. In essence, they are saying that only the average matters, not the frequency. But, of course, the truth is nothing of its kind. So, let’s deal with this thorny problem.
The weather in Death Valley, California should be perfect with a yearly average temperature is 25 Celsius. Yet, most residents would hardly call the temperature idyllic. Summers are scorching hot, and winters are uncomfortably cold.
You can easily drown crossing a river that, on average, is only 2 feet deep. If most of the river is 1 foot deep and one section is 10 feet deep, then you will not safely cross. Jumping off a 1 foot wall 1000 times is far different than jumping off a 1000-foot wall once.
In a week’s weather, there is a huge difference between having 7 grey, drizzling days with 1 inch of rain each and having 6 sunny, gorgeous days with 1 day of heavy thundershowers.
It’s obvious in all these examples that overall averages only tell one part of the tale, and often, understanding frequency is paramount. So why would we assume that reducing 300 calories per day over 1 week is the same as reducing 2100 calories over a single day? The difference between the two is the knife-edge between success and failure.
The portion control strategy of constant caloric reduction is the most common dietary approach recommended by nutritional authorities for both weight loss and type 2 diabetes. Advocates suggest that reducing daily caloric consumption by 500 calories will trigger weight loss of approximately one pound of fat per week.
The American Diabetes Association’s main dietary recommendation suggests to “focus on diet, physical activity, and behavioral strategies to achieve a 500–750 kcal/day energy deficit.” The ‘portion control’ advice to reduce calories has been fairly standard since the 1970s. This reduction is average calories should be spread consistently throughout the day, rather than all at once. Dieticians often counsel patients to eat four, five or six times a day. There are calorie labels on restaurant meals, packaged food, and beverages. There are charts for calorie counting, calorie counting apps, and hundreds of calorie counting books. Even with all this, success is as rare as humility in a grizzly bear.
After all, who hasn’t tried to portion control strategy of weight loss. Does it work? Just about never. Data from the United Kingdom indicate that conventional advice succeeds in 1 in 210 obese men and 1 in 124 obese women (4). That is a failure rate of 99.5%, and that number is even worse for morbid obesity. So, whatever else you may believe, constant caloric reduction does NOT work. This is an empirically proven fact. Worse, it has also been proven in the bitter tears of a million believers.
But why doesn’t it work? For the same reason the contestants of The Biggest Loser could not keep their weight off – metabolic slowdown.
Starvation Mode
The Biggest Loser is a long running American TV reality show that pits obese contestants against one another in a bid to lose the most weight. The weight loss regimen is a calorie-restricted diet calculated to be approximately 70% of their energy requirements, typically 1200-1500 calories per day. This is combined with an intensive exercise regimen typically far in excess of two hours daily.
This is the classic ‘Eat Less, Move More’ approach endorsed by all the nutritional authorities, which is why The Biggest Loser diet scores third on the 2015 USA Today’s ranking of best weight loss diets. And, it does work, in the short term. The average weight loss that season was 127 pounds over 6 months. Does it work long-term? Season two’s contestant Suzanne Mendonca said it best when she stated that there is never a reunion show because “We’re all fat again”.
Their Resting Metabolic Rates (RMR), the energy needed to keep the heart pumping, the lungs breathing, your brain thinking, your kidneys detoxing etc., drops like a piano out of a 20 story building. Over six months, their basal metabolism dropped by an average of 789 calories. Simply stated, they burning 789 calories less per day every day.
As metabolism drops, weight loss plateaus. Caloric reduction has forced the body has shut down in order to match the lowered caloric intake. Once expenditure drops below intake, you start the even more familiar weight regain. Ba Bam! Weight is regained despite dietary compliance with the caloric restriction and even as your friends and family silently accuse you of cheating on your diet. Goodbye reunion show. Even after six years, the metabolic rate does not recover .
All of this is completely predictable. This metabolic slowdown has been scientifically proven for over 50 years. In the 1950s Dr. Ancel Key’s famous Minnesota Starvation Study placed volunteers on a ‘semi-starvation’ diet of 1500 calories per day. This represented a 30% caloric reduction from their previous diet. In response, their basal metabolic rate dropped about 30%. They felt cold, tired, and hungry. When they resumed their typical diet, all their weight came right back.
Caloric restriction diets only work in the short-term, before basal metabolism falls in response. This is sometimes called ‘starvation mode’. Daily calorie restriction fails because it unerringly put you into metabolic slowdown. It’s a guarantee. Reversing type 2 diabetes relies upon burning off the body’s excess glucose, so the daily calorie-restricted diet will not work.
The secret to long-term weight loss is to maintain your basal metabolism. What doesn’t put you into starvation mode? Actual starvation! Or at least the controlled version, intermittent fasting.
Fasting triggers numerous hormonal adaptations that do NOT happen with simple caloric reduction. Insulin drops precipitously, helping prevent insulin resistance. Noradrenalin rises, keeping metabolism high. Growth hormone rises, maintaining lean mass.
Over four days of continuous fasting, basal metabolism does not drop. Instead, it increased by 12%. Neither did exercise capacity, as measured by the VO2, decrease, but is instead maintained. In another study, twenty-two days of alternate daily fasting also does not result in any decrease in RMR.
Why does this happen? Imagine we are cavemen. It’s winter and food is scarce. If our bodies go into ‘starvation mode’, then we would become lethargic, with no energy to go out and find food. Each day the situation gets worse and eventually we die. Nice. The human species would have become extinct long ago if our bodies slow down each time we didn’t eat for a few hours.
No, instead, during fasting, the body opens up its ample supply of stored food – body fat! Yeah! Basal metabolism stays high, and instead we change fuel sources from food, to stored food (or body fat). Now we have enough energy to go out and hunt some woolly mammoth.
During fasting, we first burn glycogen stored in the liver. When that is finished, we use body fat. Oh, hey, good news – there’s plenty of fat stored here. Burn, baby burn. Since there is plenty of fuel, there is no reason for basal metabolism to drop. And that’s the difference between long-term weight loss, and a lifetime of despair. That’s the knife edge between success and failure.
Fasting is effective where simple caloric reduction is not. What is the difference? Obesity is a hormonal, not a caloric imbalance. Fasting provides beneficial hormonal changes that happen during fasting are entirely prevented by the constant intake of food. It is the intermittency of the fasting that makes it so much more effective.
Intermittent Fasting vs Calorie Restriction
The beneficial hormonal adaptations that occur during fasting are completely different from simple calorie restriction. The reduction of insulin and insulin resistance in intermittent fasting plays a key role.
The phenomenon of resistance depends not only upon hyperinsulinemia, but also upon the persistence of those elevated levels. The intermittent nature of fasting helps to prevent the development of insulin resistance. Keeping insulin levels low for extended periods of time prevents the resistance.
Studies have directly compared daily caloric restriction with intermittent fasting, while keeping weekly calorie intake similar. A 30% fat, Mediterranean style diet with constant daily caloric restriction was compared to the same diet with severe restriction of calories on two days of the week.
Over six months, weight and body fat loss did not differ. But there were important hormonal differences between the two strategies. Insulin levels, the key driver of insulin resistance and obesity in the longer term, was initially reduced on a calorie restriction but soon plateaued. However, during intermittent fasting, insulin levels continued to drop significantly. This leads to improved insulin sensitivity with fasting only, despite similar total caloric intake. Since type 2 diabetes is a disease of hyperinsulinemia and insulin resistance, the intermittent fasting strategy will succeed where caloric restriction will not. It is the intermittency of the diet that makes it effective.
Recently, a second trial directly compared zero-calorie alternate-day fasting and daily caloric restriction in obese adults. The Caloric Reduction as Primary (CRaP) strategy was designed to subtract 400 calories per day from the estimated energy requirements of participants. The ADF group ate normally on eating days, but ate zero calories every other day. The study lasted 24 weeks.
What were the conclusions? First, the most important conclusion was that this was a safe and effective therapy that anybody could reasonably follow. In terms of weight lost, fasting did better, but only marginally. This is consistent with most studies, where, in the short term, any decent diet produces weight loss. However, the devil is in the details. The truncal fat loss, which reflects the more dangerous visceral fat,was almost twice as good with fasting as opposed to CRaP. In fat mass %, there is almost 6 times (!) the amount of loss of fat using fasting
The other big concern is that fasting will ‘burn muscle’. Some opponents claim (without any evidence) that you lost 1/4 pound of muscle for every single day of fasting you do. Considering I fast at least 2 days a week, and have done so for years, I estimate my muscle percentage should be just about 0%, and I shouldn’t even have enough muscle to type these words. Funny how that didn’t happen. But anyway, what happened in that study? The CRaP group lost statistically significant amounts of lean mass, but not the IF group. Yes, there is LESS lean muscle loss. Maybe it has to do with all the growth hormone and nor adrenalin being pumped out.
Lean mass % increased by 2.2% with fasting and only 0.5% with CRaP. In other words, fasting is 4 times better at preserving lean mass. So much of that old ‘fasting burns the muscle’.
What happens to basal metabolism? that’s what determines long term success. If you look at the change in Resting Metabolic Rate (RMR). Using CRaP, basal metabolism dropped by 76 calories per day. Using fasting, it only dropped 29 calories per day (which is not statistically significant compared to baseline). In other words, daily caloric reduction causes almost 2 1/2 times as much metabolic slowdown as fasting! So much for that old ‘Fasting puts you into starvation mode’.
Fasting has been used throughout human history as a tremendously effective method of controlling obesity. By contrast, the portion control strategy of daily caloric restriction has only been recommended for the last 50 years with stunning failure. Yet, conventional advice to reduce a few calories every day persists and fasting is continually belittled as an outdated, dangerous practice akin to blood-letting and voodoo. The study reports that “Importantly, ADF was not associated with an increased risk for weight regain”. Holy S***. That’s the Holy Grail, Man! The whole problem is obesity and The Biggest Loser is WEIGHT REGAIN, not initial weight loss.
Weight regain differed during fasting vs CRaP. The fasting group tended to regain lean mass and continue to lose fat, while CRaP group gained both fat and lean mass. Part of the issue was that the fasting group reported that they often continued to fast even after the study was done. Of course! It is easier than they though, with better results. Only an idiot would stop. One of the very fascinating things is that ghrelin (the hunger hormone) goes up with CRaP but does NOT during fasting. We’ve known forever that dieting makes you hungrier. It’s not a matter of willpower – it’s a hormonal fact of life – the ghrelin goes up and you are hungrier. However, fasting does not increase hunger. Fascinating. No wonder it’s easier to keep the weight off! You’re less hungry.
Calorie restriction diets ignore the biological principle of homeostasis – the body’s ability to adapt to changing environments. Your eyes adjust whether you are in a dark room or bright sunlight. Your ears adjust if you are in a loud airport or a quiet house.
The same applies to weight loss. Your body adapts to a constant diet by slowing metabolism. Successful dieting requires an intermittent strategy, not a constant one. Restricting some foods all the time (portion control) differs from restricting all foods some of the time (intermittent fasting). This is the crucial difference between failure and success.
So here’s your choices:
- Caloric Reduction as Primary: less weight loss (bad), more lean mass loss (bad), less visceral fat loss (bad), harder to keep weight off (bad), hungrier (bad), higher insulin (bad), more insulin resistance (bad), perfect track record over 50 years unblemished by success (bad)
- Intermittent Fasting: More weight loss, more lean mass gain, more visceral fat loss, less hunger, been used throughout human history, lower insulin, less insulin resistance.
http://authoritynutrition.com/protein-at-breakfast-and-weight-loss/
How Protein at Breakfast Can Help You Lose Weight
By Freydis Hjalmarsdottir, MS
January, 2016Protein is a key nutrient for weight loss.In fact, adding more protein to your diet is the easiest and most effective way to lose weight.
Studies show that protein can help curb your appetite and keep you from overeating.
Therefore, starting your day with a high-protein breakfast may be an effective weight loss tip.
Should You Eat Breakfast?In the past, skipping breakfast has been associated with weight gain.
We now have good evidence showing that recommendations to eat or skip breakfast have no effect on weight gain or loss. You can read more about that in this article (1).
However, eating breakfast may be a good idea for other reasons. For example, it may improve mental performance in school children, teenagers and certain patient groups (2, 3).
This may also depend on the quality of the breakfast. Even if the stereotypical breakfast (like high-sugar breakfast cereal) has no effect on weight, a breakfast that is high in weight loss friendly protein may have different effects.
Bottom Line: Recommendations to eat or skip breakfast have no effect on weight. However, the same may not apply to a high-protein breakfast.
How Protein Helps You Lose Weight
Protein is the single most important nutrient for weight loss.
This is because the body uses more calories to metabolize protein, compared to fat or carbs. Protein also keeps you feeling fuller for longer (4, 5, 6, 7, 8).
One study in women showed that increasing protein intake from 15 to 30% of total calories helped them eat 441 fewer calories per day. They also lost 11 pounds (5 kg) in just 12 weeks (9).
Another study found that increasing protein to 25% of total calories reduced late-night snacking by half and obsessive thoughts about food by 60% (10).
In yet another study, two groups of women were put on weight loss diets for 10 weeks. The groups ate the same amount of calories, but different amounts of protein.
All the women in the study lost weight. However, the high-protein group lost about half a kg (1.1 lbs) more, and a larger percentage of body fat (11).
Protein may also help you maintain weight loss in the long term. A study found that increasing protein from 15 to 18% of calories made dieters regain 50% less weight (12, 13, 14).
Bottom Line: Adding protein to your diet is a very effective way to lose weight. It may also help dieters sustain long-term weight loss.
High-Protein Breakfasts Help You Eat Less Later
Many studies are examining how protein at breakfast affects eating behavior.
Some of them have shown that high-protein breakfasts reduce hunger and help people eat up to 135 fewer calories later in the day (15, 16, 17).
In fact, MRI scans have shown that eating a protein-rich breakfast reduces the signals in the brain that control food motivation and reward-driven behavior (18).
Protein also helps you feel full. This is because it activates the body’s signals that curb appetite, which reduces cravings and overeating.
This is mostly due to a drop in the hunger hormone ghrelin and a rise in the fullness hormones peptide YY, GLP-1 and cholecystokinin (19, 20, 21).
Several studies have now demonstrated that eating a high-protein breakfast changes these hormones throughout the day (4, 16, 22, 23, 24, 25).
Bottom Line: High-protein breakfasts reduce calorie intake later in the day. They improve the levels of your appetite-regulating hormones, leading to reduced hunger and cravings.
How Protein at Breakfast Helps You Lose Weight and Belly Fat
High-protein breakfasts can reduce appetite and cravings. They may also help you lose belly fat.
Dietary protein is inversely related to belly fat, meaning the more high-quality protein you eat, the less belly fat you have (26, 27).
One study of obese, Chinese teens showed that replacing a grain-based breakfast with an egg-based meal led to significantly more weight loss over 3 months.
The higher-protein breakfast group lost 3.9% of their body weight (about 2.4 kg or 5.3 lbs), while the lower-protein group lost only 0.2% (0.1 kg or 0.2 lbs) (23).
In another study, people on a weight loss program received either an egg breakfast or a bagel breakfast with the same amount of calories.
After 8 weeks, those eating the egg breakfast had a 61% higher reduction in BMI, 65% more weight loss and a 34% greater reduction in waist measurements (25).
Bottom Line: Eating protein for breakfast can lead to significant weight loss, especially if you have a lot of weight to lose.
Protein May Slightly Boost Your Metabolism
Speeding up your metabolism can help you lose weight, as it makes you burn more calories.
Your body uses much more calories to metabolize protein (20-30%) than carbs (5-10%) or fat (0-3%) (4).
This means you burn more calories by eating protein than by eating carbs or fat. In fact, a high protein intake has been shown to result in an extra 80 to 100 calories burned each day (8, 28, 29).
A high protein diet can also help prevent muscle loss during calorie restriction, and partly prevent the reduction in metabolism that often comes with weight loss, often referred to as “starvation mode” (11, 30, 31, 32, 33).
Bottom Line: A high protein intake has been shown to boost metabolism by up to 100 calories per day. It can also help you maintain muscle mass and a high metabolism when you restrict calories.
Which High-Protein Foods Should You Eat For Breakfast?
In short, EGGS.
Eggs are incredibly nutritious and high in protein. Replacing a grain-based breakfast with eggs has been shown to help you eat fewer calories for the next 36 hours and lose more weight and body fat (4, 11, 15).
However, fish, seafood, meat, poultry and dairy products are also great sources of protein to include for breakfast.
For a complete list of high-protein foods, read this article.
Here are a few examples of high-protein breakfasts that can help you lose weight:
- Scrambled eggs: with veggies, fried in coconut oil or olive oil.
- An omelette: with cottage cheese and spinach (my personal favorite).
- Stir-fried tofu: with kale and dairy-free cheese.
- Greek yogurt: with wheat germ, seeds and berries.
- A shake: one scoop of whey protein, a banana, frozen berries and almond milk.
Bottom Line: Eggs make a great, high-protein breakfast. However, other high-protein breakfast foods are also good choices.
If You Eat Breakfast, Make it High in ProteinIf you do choose to eat breakfast, eat one that is rich in protein.
The protein content of the breakfast meals in the studies above ranged from 18 to 41% of calories, with at least 20 total grams of protein.
To read more about the health benefits of protein, check out this article: 10 Science-Backed Reasons to Eat More Protein.
http://www.businessinsider.com/experts-eat-more-fat-2014-10
Looks Like The Medical Establishment Was Wrong About Fat
Daniel Duane, Men's Journal
For more than half a century, the conventional wisdom among nutritionists and public health officials was that fat is dietary enemy number one – the leading cause of obesity and heart disease. It appears the wisdom was off.
And not just off. Almost entirely backward.
According to a new study from the National Institutes of Health, a diet that reduces carbohydrates in favor of fat – including the saturated fat in meat and butter – improves nearly every health measurement, from reducing our waistlines to keeping our arteries clear, more than the low-fat diets that have been recommended for generations.
"The medical establishment got it wrong," says cardiologist Dennis Goodman, director of Integrative Medicine at New York Medical Associates. "The belief system didn't pan out."
It's not the conclusion you would expect given the NIH study's parameters. Lead researcher Lydia Bazanno, of the Tulane University School of Public Health, pitted this high-fat, low-carb diet against a fat-restricted regimen prescribed by the National Cholesterol Education Program.
"We told both groups to get carbs from green, leafy vegetables, because those are high in nutrients and fiber to keep you sated," says Bazanno. "We also told everyone to stay away from trans fats." The fat-restricted group continued to eat carbs, including bread and cereals, while keeping saturated fat – common in animal products – below 7 percent of total calories.
By contrast, the high-fat group cut carbs in half and did not avoid butter, meat, and cheese. Most important, both groups ate as much as they wanted – no calorie counting, no going hungry.
One year later, the high-fat, low-carb group had lost three times as much weight – 12 pounds compared with four – and that weight loss came from body fat, while the low-fat group lost muscle. Even more persuasive were the results of blood tests meant to measure the risk of heart disease and diabetes. The high-fat group, despite eating nearly twice as much saturated fat, still saw greater improvements in LDL cholesterol, HDL cholesterol, and triglycerides.
Eating kale doesn't guarantee weight loss. In one study, people on a high-fat diet lost three times as much weight as people on a low-fat diet.
This was enough to improve their scores on the Framingham Risk Calculator, a tool for predicting 10-year risk of heart attack. The low-fat group, by contrast, saw no improvement on their Framingham scores. "I think the explanation lies in how the low-fat dieters filled the hole left by fat – they just ate more carbs," says Bazanno. How a fatty pork chop can trump pasta begins with the fact that our bodies don't process calories from fat, protein, and carbohydrates in the same way. "When we eat carbs, they break down into sugar in the blood; that's true of whole grains, too, though to a lesser extent," says Jeff Volek, a leading low-carb researcher at Ohio State University. The body responds with the hormone insulin, which converts the extra blood sugar into fatty acids stored in the body fat around our middles.
Our blood sugar then falls, and that body fat releases the fatty acids to burn as fuel. But carb-heavy diets keep insulin so high that those fatty acids aren't released, Volek says. The body continues to shuttle sugar into our fat cells – packing on the pounds – but we never burn it. Dietary fat, meanwhile, is the only macronutrient that has no effect on insulin or blood sugar. "This means it's likely excessive carbs, not fat, that plump us up," he adds. Low-carb diets stop that vicious cycle, keeping insulin levels low enough to force the body to burn fat again.
But isn't too much saturated fat bad for your heart? "The evidence for that has really disintegrated," says Dr. Eric Westman, a bariatric physician and director of the Duke Lifestyle Medicine Clinic. It is true that saturated fat can raise cholesterol.
But as we know, there is good cholesterol and bad cholesterol. And it turns out that a diet rich in saturated fat increases the former while decreasing the latter. Carbs, on the other hand, do exactly the opposite. In fact, a new Annals of Internal Medicine review of 72 studies and hundreds of thousands of subjects found no strong evidence that saturated fat causes heart disease.
The NIH report actually adds to research that's been accumulating for years. "It's something like the 25th clinical trial in the last 15 years to come out saying this, with almost none going the other way," says Westman.
High-fat diets have been slow to catch on mostly because of two long-held theories. The first is the calorie-counting theory of weight gain, which came about in the 1950s.
"It looks at the human body as a mathematical counting machine," says Gary Taubes, author of Why We Get Fat: And What to Do About It. "Fat has more calories per gram than carbs or protein, so eating fat must make you fatter. It's a naive view of human physiology."
"We no longer think low-fat diets are the answer," says Dr. Linda Van Horn of the AHA Nutrition Committee.
The second idea, the lipid hypothesis, blamed saturated fat for clogging arteries. This notion emerged from vast population studies in the 1970s that found loose correlations between fat consumption, total cholesterol, and heart disease. Just because two things occur together, however, does not mean that one causes the other. But the lipid hypothesis became so popular at the USDA and the American Heart Association that, says Westman, "there was no money to fund research into anything other than low-fat, low-calorie diets for 20 years." The AHA now acknowledges that refined carbs like flour and sugar threaten your waistline and your cardiovascular health.
"We no longer think low-fat diets are the answer," says Dr. Linda Van Horn of the AHA Nutrition Committee. But, she says, the AHA still recommends keeping saturated fat below 6 percent of total daily calories, or half what the low-carb dieters consumed in the NIH study. "There just haven't been any controlled clinical trials yet showing us how much saturated fat is safe," says Van Horn.
There also haven't been low-carb clinical trials running long enough to reach "hard end points" – heart attack, stroke, or death. That means no one can say with certainty that a high-fat diet will make you live longer. That might be why so few doctors recommend them.
Goodman cites another possible reason: "The idea that fat kills got so ingrained, it became folklore. Your mother told you, your grandmother told you. It's going to take years to get people to believe that was wrong," he says. "We're in a transition, and on the cutting edge. It may take a while, but you'll see new guidelines."
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303678404579533760760481486?mod=trending_now_1
One consequence is that in cutting back on fats, we are now eating a lot more carbohydrates—at least 25% more since the early 1970s. Consumption of saturated fat, meanwhile, has dropped by 11%, according to the best available government data. Translation: Instead of meat, eggs and cheese, we're eating more pasta, grains, fruit and starchy vegetables such as potatoes. Even seemingly healthy low-fat foods, such as yogurt, are stealth carb-delivery systems, since removing the fat often requires the addition of fillers to make up for lost texture—and these are usually carbohydrate-based.
The problem is that carbohydrates break down into glucose, which causes the body to release insulin—a hormone that is fantastically efficient at storing fat. Meanwhile, fructose, the main sugar in fruit, causes the liver to generate triglycerides and other lipids in the blood that are altogether bad news. Excessive carbohydrates lead not only to obesity but also, over time, to Type 2 diabetes and, very likely, heart disease.
The real surprise is that, according to the best science to date, people put themselves at higher risk for these conditions no matter what kind of carbohydrates they eat. Yes, even unrefined carbs. Too much whole-grain oatmeal for breakfast and whole-grain pasta for dinner, with fruit snacks in between, add up to a less healthy diet than one of eggs and bacon, followed by fish. The reality is that fat doesn't make you fat or diabetic. Scientific investigations going back to the 1950s suggest that actually, carbs do.
The second big unintended consequence of our shift away from animal fats is that we're now consuming more vegetable oils. Butter and lard had long been staples of the American pantry until Crisco, introduced in 1911, became the first vegetable-based fat to win wide acceptance in U.S. kitchens. Then came margarines made from vegetable oil and then just plain vegetable oil in bottles.
All of these got a boost from the American Heart Association—which Procter & Gamble, the maker of Crisco oil, coincidentally helped launch as a national organization. In 1948, P&G made the AHA the beneficiary of the popular "Walking Man" radio contest, which the company sponsored. The show raised $1.7 million for the group and transformed it (according to the AHA's official history) from a small, underfunded professional society into the powerhouse that it remains today.
After the AHA advised the public to eat less saturated fat and switch to vegetable oils for a "healthy heart" in 1961, Americans changed their diets. Now these oils represent 7% to 8% of all calories in our diet, up from nearly zero in 1900, the biggest increase in consumption of any type of food over the past century.
This shift seemed like a good idea at the time, but it brought many potential health problems in its wake. In those early clinical trials, people on diets high in vegetable oil were found to suffer higher rates not only of cancer but also of gallstones. And, strikingly, they were more likely to die from violent accidents and suicides. Alarmed by these findings, the National Institutes of Health convened researchers several times in the early 1980s to try to explain these "side effects," but they couldn't. (Experts now speculate that certain psychological problems might be related to changes in brain chemistry caused by diet, such as fatty-acid imbalances or the depletion of cholesterol.)
We've also known since the 1940s that when heated, vegetable oils create oxidation products that, in experiments on animals, lead to cirrhosis of the liver and early death. For these reasons, some midcentury chemists warned against the consumption of these oils, but their concerns were allayed by a chemical fix: Oils could be rendered more stable through a process called hydrogenation, which used a catalyst to turn them from oils into solids.
From the 1950s on, these hardened oils became the backbone of the entire food industry, used in cakes, cookies, chips, breads, frostings, fillings, and frozen and fried food. Unfortunately, hydrogenation also produced trans fats, which since the 1970s have been suspected of interfering with basic cellular functioning and were recently condemned by the Food and Drug Administration for their ability to raise our levels of "bad" LDL cholesterol.
http://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/09/02/health/low-carb-vs-low-fat-diet.html?_r=0
A Call for a Low-Carb Diet That Embraces Fat
By ANAHAD O’CONNOR SEPTEMBER 1, 2014
People who avoid carbohydrates and eat more fat, even saturated fat, lose more body fat and have fewer cardiovascular risks than people who follow the low-fat diet that health authorities have favored for decades, a major new study shows.
The findings are unlikely to be the final salvo in what has been a long and often contentious debate about what foods are best to eat for weight loss and overall health. The notion that dietary fat is harmful, particularly saturated fat, arose decades ago from comparisons of disease rates among large national populations.
But more recent clinical studies in which individuals and their diets were assessed over time have produced a more complex picture. Some have provided strong evidence that people can sharply reduce their heart disease risk by eating fewer carbohydrates and more dietary fat, with the exception of trans fats. The new findings suggest that this strategy more effectively reduces body fat and also lowers overall weight.
The new study was financed by the National Institutes of Health and published in the Annals of Internal Medicine. It included a racially diverse group of 150 men and women — a rarity in clinical nutrition studies — who were assigned to follow diets for one year that limited either the amount of carbs or fat that they could eat, but not overall calories.
“To my knowledge, this is one of the first long-term trials that’s given these diets without calorie restrictions,” said Dariush Mozaffarian, the dean of the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University, who was not involved in the new study. “It shows that in a free-living setting, cutting your carbs helps you lose weight without focusing on calories. And that’s really important because someone can change what they eat more easily than trying to cut down on their calories.”
Diets low in carbohydrates and higher in fat and protein have been commonly used for weight loss since Dr. Robert Atkins popularized the approach in the 1970s. Among the longstanding criticisms is that these diets cause people to lose weight in the form of water instead of body fat, and that cholesterol and other heart disease risk factors climb because dieters invariably raise their intake of saturated fat by eating more meat and dairy.
Many nutritionists and health authorities have “actively advised against” low-carbohydrate diets, said the lead author of the new study, Dr. Lydia A. Bazzano of the Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine. “It’s been thought that your saturated fat is, of course, going to increase, and then your cholesterol is going to go up,” she said. “And then bad things will happen in general.”
The new study showed that was not the case.
By the end of the yearlong trial, people in the low-carbohydrate group had lost about eight pounds more on average than those in the low-fat group. They had significantly greater reductions in body fat than the low-fat group, and improvements in lean muscle mass — even though neither group changed their levels of physical activity.
While the low-fat group did lose weight, they appeared to lose more muscle than fat.
“They actually lost lean muscle mass, which is a bad thing,” Dr. Mozaffarian said. “Your balance of lean mass versus fat mass is much more important than weight. And that’s a very important finding that shows why the low-carb, high-fat group did so metabolically well.”
The high-fat group followed something of a modified Atkins diet. They were told to eat mostly protein and fat, and to choose foods with primarily unsaturated fats, like fish, olive oil and nuts. But they were allowed to eat foods higher in saturated fat as well, including cheese and red meat.
A typical day’s diet was not onerous: It might consist of eggs for breakfast, tuna salad for lunch, and some kind of protein for dinner — like red meat, chicken, fish, pork or tofu — along with vegetables. Low-carb participants were encouraged to cook with olive and canola oils, but butter was allowed, too.
Over all, they took in a little more than 13 percent of their daily calories from saturated fat, more than double the 5 to 6 percent limit recommended by the American Heart Association. The majority of their fat intake, however, was unsaturated fats.
The low-fat group included more grains, cereals and starches in their diet. They reduced their total fat intake to less than 30 percent of their daily calories, which is in line with the federal government’s dietary guidelines. The other group increased their total fat intake to more than 40 percent of daily calories.
Both groups were encouraged to eat vegetables, and the low-carbohydrate group was told that eating some beans and fresh fruit was fine as well.
In the end, people in the low-carbohydrate group saw markers of inflammation andtriglycerides — a type of fat that circulates in the blood — plunge. Their HDL, the so-called good cholesterol, rose more sharply than it did for people in the low-fat group.
Blood pressure, total cholesterol and LDL, the so-called bad cholesterol, stayed about the same for people in each group.
Nonetheless, those on the low-carbohydrate diet ultimately did so well that they managed to lower their Framingham risk scores, which calculate the likelihood of a heart attack within the next 10 years. The low-fat group on average had no improvement in their scores.
The decrease in risk on the low-carbohydrate diet “should translate into a substantial benefit,” said Dr. Allan Sniderman, a professor of cardiology at McGill University in Montreal.
One important predictor of heart disease that the study did not assess, Dr. Sniderman said, was the relative size and number of LDL particles in the bloodstream. Two people can have the same overall LDL concentration, but very different levels of risk depending on whether they have a lot of small, dense LDL particles or a small number of large and fluffy particles.
Eating refined carbohydrates tends to raise the overall number of LDL particles and shift them toward the small, dense variety, which contributes toatherosclerosis. Saturated fat tends to make LDL particles larger, more buoyant and less likely to clog arteries, at least when carbohydrate intake is not high, saidDr. Ronald M. Krauss, the former chairman of the American Heart Association’s dietary guidelines committee.
Small, dense LDL is the kind typically found in heart patients and in people who have high triglycerides, central obesity and other aspects of the so-called metabolic syndrome, said Dr. Krauss, who is also the director of atherosclerosis research at Children’s Hospital Oakland Research Institute.
“I’ve been a strong advocate of moving saturated fat down the list of priorities in dietary recommendations for one reason: because of the increasing importance of metabolic syndrome and the role that carbohydrates play,” Dr. Krauss said.
Dr. Mozaffarian said the research suggested that health authorities should pivot away from fat restrictions and encourage people to eat fewer processed foods, particularly those with refined carbohydrates.
The average person may not pay much attention to the federal dietary guidelines, but their influence can be seen, for example, in school lunch programs, which is why many schools forbid whole milk but serve their students fat-free chocolate milk loaded with sugar, Dr. Mozaffarian said.
Looks Like The Medical Establishment Was Wrong About Fat
Daniel Duane, Men's Journal
For more than half a century, the conventional wisdom among nutritionists and public health officials was that fat is dietary enemy number one – the leading cause of obesity and heart disease. It appears the wisdom was off.
And not just off. Almost entirely backward.
According to a new study from the National Institutes of Health, a diet that reduces carbohydrates in favor of fat – including the saturated fat in meat and butter – improves nearly every health measurement, from reducing our waistlines to keeping our arteries clear, more than the low-fat diets that have been recommended for generations.
"The medical establishment got it wrong," says cardiologist Dennis Goodman, director of Integrative Medicine at New York Medical Associates. "The belief system didn't pan out."
It's not the conclusion you would expect given the NIH study's parameters. Lead researcher Lydia Bazanno, of the Tulane University School of Public Health, pitted this high-fat, low-carb diet against a fat-restricted regimen prescribed by the National Cholesterol Education Program.
"We told both groups to get carbs from green, leafy vegetables, because those are high in nutrients and fiber to keep you sated," says Bazanno. "We also told everyone to stay away from trans fats." The fat-restricted group continued to eat carbs, including bread and cereals, while keeping saturated fat – common in animal products – below 7 percent of total calories.
By contrast, the high-fat group cut carbs in half and did not avoid butter, meat, and cheese. Most important, both groups ate as much as they wanted – no calorie counting, no going hungry.
One year later, the high-fat, low-carb group had lost three times as much weight – 12 pounds compared with four – and that weight loss came from body fat, while the low-fat group lost muscle. Even more persuasive were the results of blood tests meant to measure the risk of heart disease and diabetes. The high-fat group, despite eating nearly twice as much saturated fat, still saw greater improvements in LDL cholesterol, HDL cholesterol, and triglycerides.
Eating kale doesn't guarantee weight loss. In one study, people on a high-fat diet lost three times as much weight as people on a low-fat diet.
This was enough to improve their scores on the Framingham Risk Calculator, a tool for predicting 10-year risk of heart attack. The low-fat group, by contrast, saw no improvement on their Framingham scores. "I think the explanation lies in how the low-fat dieters filled the hole left by fat – they just ate more carbs," says Bazanno. How a fatty pork chop can trump pasta begins with the fact that our bodies don't process calories from fat, protein, and carbohydrates in the same way. "When we eat carbs, they break down into sugar in the blood; that's true of whole grains, too, though to a lesser extent," says Jeff Volek, a leading low-carb researcher at Ohio State University. The body responds with the hormone insulin, which converts the extra blood sugar into fatty acids stored in the body fat around our middles.
Our blood sugar then falls, and that body fat releases the fatty acids to burn as fuel. But carb-heavy diets keep insulin so high that those fatty acids aren't released, Volek says. The body continues to shuttle sugar into our fat cells – packing on the pounds – but we never burn it. Dietary fat, meanwhile, is the only macronutrient that has no effect on insulin or blood sugar. "This means it's likely excessive carbs, not fat, that plump us up," he adds. Low-carb diets stop that vicious cycle, keeping insulin levels low enough to force the body to burn fat again.
But isn't too much saturated fat bad for your heart? "The evidence for that has really disintegrated," says Dr. Eric Westman, a bariatric physician and director of the Duke Lifestyle Medicine Clinic. It is true that saturated fat can raise cholesterol.
But as we know, there is good cholesterol and bad cholesterol. And it turns out that a diet rich in saturated fat increases the former while decreasing the latter. Carbs, on the other hand, do exactly the opposite. In fact, a new Annals of Internal Medicine review of 72 studies and hundreds of thousands of subjects found no strong evidence that saturated fat causes heart disease.
The NIH report actually adds to research that's been accumulating for years. "It's something like the 25th clinical trial in the last 15 years to come out saying this, with almost none going the other way," says Westman.
High-fat diets have been slow to catch on mostly because of two long-held theories. The first is the calorie-counting theory of weight gain, which came about in the 1950s.
"It looks at the human body as a mathematical counting machine," says Gary Taubes, author of Why We Get Fat: And What to Do About It. "Fat has more calories per gram than carbs or protein, so eating fat must make you fatter. It's a naive view of human physiology."
"We no longer think low-fat diets are the answer," says Dr. Linda Van Horn of the AHA Nutrition Committee.
The second idea, the lipid hypothesis, blamed saturated fat for clogging arteries. This notion emerged from vast population studies in the 1970s that found loose correlations between fat consumption, total cholesterol, and heart disease. Just because two things occur together, however, does not mean that one causes the other. But the lipid hypothesis became so popular at the USDA and the American Heart Association that, says Westman, "there was no money to fund research into anything other than low-fat, low-calorie diets for 20 years." The AHA now acknowledges that refined carbs like flour and sugar threaten your waistline and your cardiovascular health.
"We no longer think low-fat diets are the answer," says Dr. Linda Van Horn of the AHA Nutrition Committee. But, she says, the AHA still recommends keeping saturated fat below 6 percent of total daily calories, or half what the low-carb dieters consumed in the NIH study. "There just haven't been any controlled clinical trials yet showing us how much saturated fat is safe," says Van Horn.
There also haven't been low-carb clinical trials running long enough to reach "hard end points" – heart attack, stroke, or death. That means no one can say with certainty that a high-fat diet will make you live longer. That might be why so few doctors recommend them.
Goodman cites another possible reason: "The idea that fat kills got so ingrained, it became folklore. Your mother told you, your grandmother told you. It's going to take years to get people to believe that was wrong," he says. "We're in a transition, and on the cutting edge. It may take a while, but you'll see new guidelines."
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303678404579533760760481486?mod=trending_now_1
One consequence is that in cutting back on fats, we are now eating a lot more carbohydrates—at least 25% more since the early 1970s. Consumption of saturated fat, meanwhile, has dropped by 11%, according to the best available government data. Translation: Instead of meat, eggs and cheese, we're eating more pasta, grains, fruit and starchy vegetables such as potatoes. Even seemingly healthy low-fat foods, such as yogurt, are stealth carb-delivery systems, since removing the fat often requires the addition of fillers to make up for lost texture—and these are usually carbohydrate-based.
The problem is that carbohydrates break down into glucose, which causes the body to release insulin—a hormone that is fantastically efficient at storing fat. Meanwhile, fructose, the main sugar in fruit, causes the liver to generate triglycerides and other lipids in the blood that are altogether bad news. Excessive carbohydrates lead not only to obesity but also, over time, to Type 2 diabetes and, very likely, heart disease.
The real surprise is that, according to the best science to date, people put themselves at higher risk for these conditions no matter what kind of carbohydrates they eat. Yes, even unrefined carbs. Too much whole-grain oatmeal for breakfast and whole-grain pasta for dinner, with fruit snacks in between, add up to a less healthy diet than one of eggs and bacon, followed by fish. The reality is that fat doesn't make you fat or diabetic. Scientific investigations going back to the 1950s suggest that actually, carbs do.
The second big unintended consequence of our shift away from animal fats is that we're now consuming more vegetable oils. Butter and lard had long been staples of the American pantry until Crisco, introduced in 1911, became the first vegetable-based fat to win wide acceptance in U.S. kitchens. Then came margarines made from vegetable oil and then just plain vegetable oil in bottles.
All of these got a boost from the American Heart Association—which Procter & Gamble, the maker of Crisco oil, coincidentally helped launch as a national organization. In 1948, P&G made the AHA the beneficiary of the popular "Walking Man" radio contest, which the company sponsored. The show raised $1.7 million for the group and transformed it (according to the AHA's official history) from a small, underfunded professional society into the powerhouse that it remains today.
After the AHA advised the public to eat less saturated fat and switch to vegetable oils for a "healthy heart" in 1961, Americans changed their diets. Now these oils represent 7% to 8% of all calories in our diet, up from nearly zero in 1900, the biggest increase in consumption of any type of food over the past century.
This shift seemed like a good idea at the time, but it brought many potential health problems in its wake. In those early clinical trials, people on diets high in vegetable oil were found to suffer higher rates not only of cancer but also of gallstones. And, strikingly, they were more likely to die from violent accidents and suicides. Alarmed by these findings, the National Institutes of Health convened researchers several times in the early 1980s to try to explain these "side effects," but they couldn't. (Experts now speculate that certain psychological problems might be related to changes in brain chemistry caused by diet, such as fatty-acid imbalances or the depletion of cholesterol.)
We've also known since the 1940s that when heated, vegetable oils create oxidation products that, in experiments on animals, lead to cirrhosis of the liver and early death. For these reasons, some midcentury chemists warned against the consumption of these oils, but their concerns were allayed by a chemical fix: Oils could be rendered more stable through a process called hydrogenation, which used a catalyst to turn them from oils into solids.
From the 1950s on, these hardened oils became the backbone of the entire food industry, used in cakes, cookies, chips, breads, frostings, fillings, and frozen and fried food. Unfortunately, hydrogenation also produced trans fats, which since the 1970s have been suspected of interfering with basic cellular functioning and were recently condemned by the Food and Drug Administration for their ability to raise our levels of "bad" LDL cholesterol.
http://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/09/02/health/low-carb-vs-low-fat-diet.html?_r=0
A Call for a Low-Carb Diet That Embraces Fat
By ANAHAD O’CONNOR SEPTEMBER 1, 2014
People who avoid carbohydrates and eat more fat, even saturated fat, lose more body fat and have fewer cardiovascular risks than people who follow the low-fat diet that health authorities have favored for decades, a major new study shows.
The findings are unlikely to be the final salvo in what has been a long and often contentious debate about what foods are best to eat for weight loss and overall health. The notion that dietary fat is harmful, particularly saturated fat, arose decades ago from comparisons of disease rates among large national populations.
But more recent clinical studies in which individuals and their diets were assessed over time have produced a more complex picture. Some have provided strong evidence that people can sharply reduce their heart disease risk by eating fewer carbohydrates and more dietary fat, with the exception of trans fats. The new findings suggest that this strategy more effectively reduces body fat and also lowers overall weight.
The new study was financed by the National Institutes of Health and published in the Annals of Internal Medicine. It included a racially diverse group of 150 men and women — a rarity in clinical nutrition studies — who were assigned to follow diets for one year that limited either the amount of carbs or fat that they could eat, but not overall calories.
“To my knowledge, this is one of the first long-term trials that’s given these diets without calorie restrictions,” said Dariush Mozaffarian, the dean of the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University, who was not involved in the new study. “It shows that in a free-living setting, cutting your carbs helps you lose weight without focusing on calories. And that’s really important because someone can change what they eat more easily than trying to cut down on their calories.”
Diets low in carbohydrates and higher in fat and protein have been commonly used for weight loss since Dr. Robert Atkins popularized the approach in the 1970s. Among the longstanding criticisms is that these diets cause people to lose weight in the form of water instead of body fat, and that cholesterol and other heart disease risk factors climb because dieters invariably raise their intake of saturated fat by eating more meat and dairy.
Many nutritionists and health authorities have “actively advised against” low-carbohydrate diets, said the lead author of the new study, Dr. Lydia A. Bazzano of the Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine. “It’s been thought that your saturated fat is, of course, going to increase, and then your cholesterol is going to go up,” she said. “And then bad things will happen in general.”
The new study showed that was not the case.
By the end of the yearlong trial, people in the low-carbohydrate group had lost about eight pounds more on average than those in the low-fat group. They had significantly greater reductions in body fat than the low-fat group, and improvements in lean muscle mass — even though neither group changed their levels of physical activity.
While the low-fat group did lose weight, they appeared to lose more muscle than fat.
“They actually lost lean muscle mass, which is a bad thing,” Dr. Mozaffarian said. “Your balance of lean mass versus fat mass is much more important than weight. And that’s a very important finding that shows why the low-carb, high-fat group did so metabolically well.”
The high-fat group followed something of a modified Atkins diet. They were told to eat mostly protein and fat, and to choose foods with primarily unsaturated fats, like fish, olive oil and nuts. But they were allowed to eat foods higher in saturated fat as well, including cheese and red meat.
A typical day’s diet was not onerous: It might consist of eggs for breakfast, tuna salad for lunch, and some kind of protein for dinner — like red meat, chicken, fish, pork or tofu — along with vegetables. Low-carb participants were encouraged to cook with olive and canola oils, but butter was allowed, too.
Over all, they took in a little more than 13 percent of their daily calories from saturated fat, more than double the 5 to 6 percent limit recommended by the American Heart Association. The majority of their fat intake, however, was unsaturated fats.
The low-fat group included more grains, cereals and starches in their diet. They reduced their total fat intake to less than 30 percent of their daily calories, which is in line with the federal government’s dietary guidelines. The other group increased their total fat intake to more than 40 percent of daily calories.
Both groups were encouraged to eat vegetables, and the low-carbohydrate group was told that eating some beans and fresh fruit was fine as well.
In the end, people in the low-carbohydrate group saw markers of inflammation andtriglycerides — a type of fat that circulates in the blood — plunge. Their HDL, the so-called good cholesterol, rose more sharply than it did for people in the low-fat group.
Blood pressure, total cholesterol and LDL, the so-called bad cholesterol, stayed about the same for people in each group.
Nonetheless, those on the low-carbohydrate diet ultimately did so well that they managed to lower their Framingham risk scores, which calculate the likelihood of a heart attack within the next 10 years. The low-fat group on average had no improvement in their scores.
The decrease in risk on the low-carbohydrate diet “should translate into a substantial benefit,” said Dr. Allan Sniderman, a professor of cardiology at McGill University in Montreal.
One important predictor of heart disease that the study did not assess, Dr. Sniderman said, was the relative size and number of LDL particles in the bloodstream. Two people can have the same overall LDL concentration, but very different levels of risk depending on whether they have a lot of small, dense LDL particles or a small number of large and fluffy particles.
Eating refined carbohydrates tends to raise the overall number of LDL particles and shift them toward the small, dense variety, which contributes toatherosclerosis. Saturated fat tends to make LDL particles larger, more buoyant and less likely to clog arteries, at least when carbohydrate intake is not high, saidDr. Ronald M. Krauss, the former chairman of the American Heart Association’s dietary guidelines committee.
Small, dense LDL is the kind typically found in heart patients and in people who have high triglycerides, central obesity and other aspects of the so-called metabolic syndrome, said Dr. Krauss, who is also the director of atherosclerosis research at Children’s Hospital Oakland Research Institute.
“I’ve been a strong advocate of moving saturated fat down the list of priorities in dietary recommendations for one reason: because of the increasing importance of metabolic syndrome and the role that carbohydrates play,” Dr. Krauss said.
Dr. Mozaffarian said the research suggested that health authorities should pivot away from fat restrictions and encourage people to eat fewer processed foods, particularly those with refined carbohydrates.
The average person may not pay much attention to the federal dietary guidelines, but their influence can be seen, for example, in school lunch programs, which is why many schools forbid whole milk but serve their students fat-free chocolate milk loaded with sugar, Dr. Mozaffarian said.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/science-news/11246112/High-fat-diets-not-as-dangerous-as-high-carbohydrate-plans-claim-scientists.html
High fat diets not as dangerous as high carbohydrate plans, claim scientists Ohio State University find that levels of fat in the blood did not increase with a high fat diet, but did with a high carbohdrate intak.
Saturated fat has long been demonised by doctors and nutritionists who claim that it increases the risk of heart problems.
But decades of official advice may need to be altered, after new research suggested that it may be safe to eat up to three times the maximum amount currently recommended by the NHS.
It means that far from being foods to avoid, butter, cheese, meat and cream, could all form part of a healthy lifestyle.
NHS advice is unequivocal on saturated fat, with guidance stating that it raises the level of cholesterol in the blood and increases the risk of heart disease.
However when researchers at Ohio State University asked volunteers to try out different diets they were surprised to find that raising the intake of saturated fat did not increase fat in the blood. It seems that the body burns up saturated fat quickly as energy.
In contrast, when the level of carbohydrate was raised, dangerous fatty acids did increase in the bloodstream. These have been linked to Type 2 diabetes and heart disease.
Senior author Jeff Volek, professor of human sciences at Ohio State University said the findings ‘challenge the conventional wisdom that has demonised saturated fat.’
"When you consume a very low-carb diet your body preferentially burns saturated fat," Volek said.
"We had people eat two times more saturated fat than they had been eating before entering the study, yet when we measured saturated fat in their blood, it went down in the majority of people. Other traditional risk markers improved, as well."
Saturated fat is the kind of fat found in butter and lard, pies, cakes and biscuits, fatty cuts of meat, sausages and bacon, and cheese and cream.
NHS guidelines state that the average man should eat no more than 30g of saturated fat in a day, and the average woman no more than 20g. A steak contains around 27g, a slice of cheese around 5g and butter on toast would be around 7g.
However even when participants were eating high fat dies which comprised 84g of fat per day, the fat levels in the blood did not rise. Cholesterol levels also did not change. In contrast when they moved towards guideline levels of saturated fat, and increased carbohydrate intake, the levels of Palmitoleic acid, a fatty acid, in the bloodstream rose.
High levels of Palmitoleic acid have been linked to obesity and higher risk for inflammation, insulin resistance, impaired glucose tolerance, metabolic syndrome, type-2 diabetes, heart disease and prostate cancer.
"There is widespread misunderstanding about saturated fat,” added Professor Volek.
“In population studies, there's clearly no association of dietary saturated fat and heart disease, yet dietary guidelines continue to advocate restriction of saturated fat. That's not scientific and not smart.
"People believe 'you are what you eat,' but in reality, you are what you save from what you eat," he said. "The point is you don't necessarily save the saturated fat that you eat.”
The study adds to a growing body of evidence that suggests that saturated fat may not be as dangerous as previously feared.
In March, researchers at Cambridge University have found that giving up fatty meat, cream or butter is unlikely to improve health.
The team, whose results appear in the journal Annals of Internal Medicine, conducted a "meta-analysis" of data from 72 studies involving more than 600,000 participants from 18 countries.
A key finding was that total saturated fat, whether measured in the diet or the bloodstream, showed no association with heart disease.
Earlier this year Dr James DiNicolantonio of Ithica College, New York, called for a new public health campaign to admit ‘we got it wrong.’ He claims carbohydrates and sugar are more responsible.
Naveed Sattar, professor of metabolic medicine at the University of Glasgow, said: "Levels and types of saturated fats in the blood appear to be governed by more than just saturated fat intake and that factors like carbohydrate intake also matter.
"Current evidence favours folk taking less refined carbohydrate and less saturated fat. Evidence also suggests that if one is interested in losing weight, it does not matter what type if diet one undertakes – low fat vs low carbohydrate so long as one sticks to diet so they key is for folk to find a diet or diet mix they can sustain and enjoy."
High fat diets not as dangerous as high carbohydrate plans, claim scientists Ohio State University find that levels of fat in the blood did not increase with a high fat diet, but did with a high carbohdrate intak.
Saturated fat has long been demonised by doctors and nutritionists who claim that it increases the risk of heart problems.
But decades of official advice may need to be altered, after new research suggested that it may be safe to eat up to three times the maximum amount currently recommended by the NHS.
It means that far from being foods to avoid, butter, cheese, meat and cream, could all form part of a healthy lifestyle.
NHS advice is unequivocal on saturated fat, with guidance stating that it raises the level of cholesterol in the blood and increases the risk of heart disease.
However when researchers at Ohio State University asked volunteers to try out different diets they were surprised to find that raising the intake of saturated fat did not increase fat in the blood. It seems that the body burns up saturated fat quickly as energy.
In contrast, when the level of carbohydrate was raised, dangerous fatty acids did increase in the bloodstream. These have been linked to Type 2 diabetes and heart disease.
Senior author Jeff Volek, professor of human sciences at Ohio State University said the findings ‘challenge the conventional wisdom that has demonised saturated fat.’
"When you consume a very low-carb diet your body preferentially burns saturated fat," Volek said.
"We had people eat two times more saturated fat than they had been eating before entering the study, yet when we measured saturated fat in their blood, it went down in the majority of people. Other traditional risk markers improved, as well."
Saturated fat is the kind of fat found in butter and lard, pies, cakes and biscuits, fatty cuts of meat, sausages and bacon, and cheese and cream.
NHS guidelines state that the average man should eat no more than 30g of saturated fat in a day, and the average woman no more than 20g. A steak contains around 27g, a slice of cheese around 5g and butter on toast would be around 7g.
However even when participants were eating high fat dies which comprised 84g of fat per day, the fat levels in the blood did not rise. Cholesterol levels also did not change. In contrast when they moved towards guideline levels of saturated fat, and increased carbohydrate intake, the levels of Palmitoleic acid, a fatty acid, in the bloodstream rose.
High levels of Palmitoleic acid have been linked to obesity and higher risk for inflammation, insulin resistance, impaired glucose tolerance, metabolic syndrome, type-2 diabetes, heart disease and prostate cancer.
"There is widespread misunderstanding about saturated fat,” added Professor Volek.
“In population studies, there's clearly no association of dietary saturated fat and heart disease, yet dietary guidelines continue to advocate restriction of saturated fat. That's not scientific and not smart.
"People believe 'you are what you eat,' but in reality, you are what you save from what you eat," he said. "The point is you don't necessarily save the saturated fat that you eat.”
The study adds to a growing body of evidence that suggests that saturated fat may not be as dangerous as previously feared.
In March, researchers at Cambridge University have found that giving up fatty meat, cream or butter is unlikely to improve health.
The team, whose results appear in the journal Annals of Internal Medicine, conducted a "meta-analysis" of data from 72 studies involving more than 600,000 participants from 18 countries.
A key finding was that total saturated fat, whether measured in the diet or the bloodstream, showed no association with heart disease.
Earlier this year Dr James DiNicolantonio of Ithica College, New York, called for a new public health campaign to admit ‘we got it wrong.’ He claims carbohydrates and sugar are more responsible.
Naveed Sattar, professor of metabolic medicine at the University of Glasgow, said: "Levels and types of saturated fats in the blood appear to be governed by more than just saturated fat intake and that factors like carbohydrate intake also matter.
"Current evidence favours folk taking less refined carbohydrate and less saturated fat. Evidence also suggests that if one is interested in losing weight, it does not matter what type if diet one undertakes – low fat vs low carbohydrate so long as one sticks to diet so they key is for folk to find a diet or diet mix they can sustain and enjoy."
http://authoritynutrition.com/why-do-low-carb-diets-work/
Why do Low Carb Diets Work?
The Mechanism Explained By Kris Gunnars | 62,104 views Low-carb diets work.
That is pretty much a scientific fact at this point. At least 23 high quality studies in humans have shown this to be true. In many cases, a low-carb diet causes 2-3 times more weight loss as the standard low-fat diet that we’re still being told to follow (1, 2). Low-carb diets also appear to have an outstanding safety profile. No serious side effects have been reported.
In fact, the studies show that these diets cause major improvements in many important risk factors (3).
Triglycerides go way down and HDL goes way up. Blood pressure and blood sugar levels also tend to decrease significantly (4, 5, 6, 7). A high percentage of the fat lost on a low carb diet comes from the belly area and the liver. This is the dangerous visceral fat that builds up in and around the organs, driving inflammation and disease (8, 9, 10). These diets are particularly effective for people with metabolic syndrome and/or type 2 diabetes. The evidence is overwhelming.
However, there is a lot of controversy about why these diets work. People like to debate the mechanism, the stuff that is actually going on in our organs and cells that makes the weight go off. Unfortunately, this is not fully known, and chances are that it is multifactorial – as in, there are many different reasons why these diets are so effective (11). In this article, I take look at some of the most convincing explanations for the effectiveness of low carb diets.
Carb Restriction Lowers Insulin Levels Insulin is a very important hormone in the body. It is the main hormone that regulates blood sugar levels and energy storage. One of the functions of insulin is to tell fat cells to produce and store fat, and to hold on to the fat that they already carry.
It also tells other cells in the body to pick up glucose (blood sugar) from the bloodstream, and burn that instead of fat.
So, insulin stimulates lipogenesis (production of fat) and inhibits lipolysis (the burning of fat). It is actually well established that low-carb diets lead to drastic and almost immediate reductions in insulin levels (12, 13).
According to many experts on low-carb diets, including Gary Taubes and the late Dr. Atkins, lower insulin levels are the main reason for the effectiveness of low-carb diets. They have claimed that, when carbs are restricted and insulin levels go down, the fat isn’t “locked” away in the fat cells anymore and becomes accessible for the body to use as energy, leading to reduced need for eating. However, I’d like to point out that many respected obesity researchers do not believe this to be true, and do not think the carbohydrate-insulin hypothesis of obesity is supported by the evidence.
Bottom Line: Blood levels of the hormone insulin go way down when carb intake is reduced. High insulin levels contribute to fat storage, and low insulin levels facilitate fat burning.
Water Weight Drops Rapidly in The Beginning In the first 1-2 weeks of low carb eating, people tend to lose weight very quickly. The main reason for this is reduction in water weight.
The mechanism behind it is two-fold:
The studies clearly show that low-carb diets lead to more fat being lost as well, especially the “dangerous” belly fat found in the abdominal cavity (8, 16). So, part of the weight loss advantage of low-carb diets is explained by reductions in water weight, but there is still a major fat loss advantage as well.
Bottom Line: When people go low-carb, they lose significant amounts of excess water from their bodies. This explains the rapid weight loss seen in the first week or two.
Low Carb Diets Are High in Protein In most studies where low carb and low fat diets are compared, the low carb groups end up eating much more protein. This is because people replace many low-protein foods (grains, sugars) with higher protein foods like meat, fish and eggs.
Numerous studies show that protein can reduce appetite, boost metabolism, and help increase muscle mass, which is metabolically active and burns calories around the clock (17, 18, 19, 20). Many nutrition experts believe that the high protein content of low-carb diets is the main reason for their effectiveness.
Bottom Line: Low carb diets tend to be much higher in protein than low fat diets. Protein can reduce appetite, boost metabolism and help people hold on to muscle mass despite restricting calories.
Low Carb Diets Have a Metabolic Advantage Although this is controversial, many experts do believe that low carb diets have a metabolic advantage. In other words, that low carb diets increase your energy expenditure, and that people lose more weight than can be explained by reduced calorie intake alone. There are actually some studies to support this.
A study conducted in 2012 found that a very low carb diet increased energy expenditure compared to a low fat diet, during a period of weight maintenance (21). The increase was around 250 calories, which is equivalent to an hour of moderate-intensity exercise per day!
However, another study has suggested that it may be the high protein (but not low carb) part of the diet that causes the increase in calories burned (22). That being said, there are other mechanisms that may cause an additional metabolic advantage. On a very low carb, ketogenic diet, when carb intake is kept extremely low, a lot of protein is being transformed into glucose in the beginning, a process called gluconeogenesis (23).
This is an inefficient process, and can lead to hundreds of calories being “wasted.” However, this is mostly temporary as ketones should start replacing some of that glucose as brain fuel within a few days (24).
Bottom Line: Low-carb diets appear to have a metabolic advantage, but most of it is caused by the increased protein intake. In the beginning of a very low carb, ketogenic diet, some calories are wasted when glucose is produced.
Low Carb Diets Are Less Varied, and Lower in “Food Reward” Low carb diets automatically exclude some of the world’s most fattening junk foods. This includes sugar, sugary drinks, fruit juices, pizzas, white bread, french fries, pastries and most unhealthy snacks. There is also an obvious reduction in variety when you eliminate most high-carb foods, especially given that wheat, corn and sugar are in almost all processed foods. It is well known that increased food variety can drive increased calorie intake (25).
Many of these foods are also highly rewarding, and the reward value of foods can impact how many calories we end up eating (26). So, reduced food variety and reduced intake of highly rewarding junk foods should both contribute to a reduced calorie intake.
Bottom Line: Low carb diets exclude many foods that are highly rewarding and extremely fattening. These diets also have less food variety, which may lead to reduced calorie intake.
Low Carb Diets Significantly Lower Your Appetite, Leading to Automatic Reduction in Calorie Intake Probably the single biggest explanation for the weight loss effects of low carb diets, is their powerful effects on appetite. It is well established that when people go low carb, their appetite goes down and they start eating fewer calories automatically (27).
In fact, studies that compare low carb and low fat diets usually restrict calories in the low-fat groups, while the low-carb groups are allowed to eat until fullness (28). Despite that, the low carb groups still usually lose more weight. There are many possible explanations for this appetite reducing effect, some of which we have already covered. The increased protein intake is a major factor, but there is also evidence that ketosis can have a powerful effect (29).
Many people who go on a ketogenic diet feel that they only need to eat 1 or 2 meals per day. They simply don’t get hungry more often. There is also some evidence that low carb diets can have beneficial effects on appetite regulating hormones like leptin and ghrelin (30).
Bottom Line: Low carb diets lead to an automatic reduction in calorie intake, so that people eat fewer calories without having to think about it.
The Long Term Effects on Weight Loss Are Not Very Impressive Even though low carb diets are very effective in the short-term, the long-term results are not that great. Most studies that last for 1-2 years show that the difference between the low-carb and low-fat groups mostly disappears. There are many possible explanations for this, but the most plausible one is that people tend to abandon the diet over time, and start gaining the weight back.
This is not specific to low carb diets, and is a well known problem in most long-term weight loss studies. Most “diets” are incredibly hard to stick to. Take Home Message Some people refuse to accept that low carb diets can work, and that people can eat as much as they want, because that must violate the calories in, calories out model.
However, when you understand the mechanisms behind low carb diets, you can see that the CICO model is not being violated, and the laws of thermodynamics still hold. The truth is, low carb diets work on both sides of the calorie equation.
They boost your metabolism (increasing calories out) and lower your appetite (reducing calories in), leading to automatic calorie restriction. Calories still count, it’s just that low carb diets automate the process and help prevent the biggest side effect of conscious calorie restriction, which is hunger.
Why do Low Carb Diets Work?
The Mechanism Explained By Kris Gunnars | 62,104 views Low-carb diets work.
That is pretty much a scientific fact at this point. At least 23 high quality studies in humans have shown this to be true. In many cases, a low-carb diet causes 2-3 times more weight loss as the standard low-fat diet that we’re still being told to follow (1, 2). Low-carb diets also appear to have an outstanding safety profile. No serious side effects have been reported.
In fact, the studies show that these diets cause major improvements in many important risk factors (3).
Triglycerides go way down and HDL goes way up. Blood pressure and blood sugar levels also tend to decrease significantly (4, 5, 6, 7). A high percentage of the fat lost on a low carb diet comes from the belly area and the liver. This is the dangerous visceral fat that builds up in and around the organs, driving inflammation and disease (8, 9, 10). These diets are particularly effective for people with metabolic syndrome and/or type 2 diabetes. The evidence is overwhelming.
However, there is a lot of controversy about why these diets work. People like to debate the mechanism, the stuff that is actually going on in our organs and cells that makes the weight go off. Unfortunately, this is not fully known, and chances are that it is multifactorial – as in, there are many different reasons why these diets are so effective (11). In this article, I take look at some of the most convincing explanations for the effectiveness of low carb diets.
Carb Restriction Lowers Insulin Levels Insulin is a very important hormone in the body. It is the main hormone that regulates blood sugar levels and energy storage. One of the functions of insulin is to tell fat cells to produce and store fat, and to hold on to the fat that they already carry.
It also tells other cells in the body to pick up glucose (blood sugar) from the bloodstream, and burn that instead of fat.
So, insulin stimulates lipogenesis (production of fat) and inhibits lipolysis (the burning of fat). It is actually well established that low-carb diets lead to drastic and almost immediate reductions in insulin levels (12, 13).
According to many experts on low-carb diets, including Gary Taubes and the late Dr. Atkins, lower insulin levels are the main reason for the effectiveness of low-carb diets. They have claimed that, when carbs are restricted and insulin levels go down, the fat isn’t “locked” away in the fat cells anymore and becomes accessible for the body to use as energy, leading to reduced need for eating. However, I’d like to point out that many respected obesity researchers do not believe this to be true, and do not think the carbohydrate-insulin hypothesis of obesity is supported by the evidence.
Bottom Line: Blood levels of the hormone insulin go way down when carb intake is reduced. High insulin levels contribute to fat storage, and low insulin levels facilitate fat burning.
Water Weight Drops Rapidly in The Beginning In the first 1-2 weeks of low carb eating, people tend to lose weight very quickly. The main reason for this is reduction in water weight.
The mechanism behind it is two-fold:
- Insulin: When insulin goes down, the kidneys start shedding excess sodium from the body. This also lowers blood pressure (15).
- Glycogen: The body stores carbs in the form of glycogen, which binds water in the muscles and liver. When carb intake goes down, glycogen levels in the body go down, and the water follows along.
The studies clearly show that low-carb diets lead to more fat being lost as well, especially the “dangerous” belly fat found in the abdominal cavity (8, 16). So, part of the weight loss advantage of low-carb diets is explained by reductions in water weight, but there is still a major fat loss advantage as well.
Bottom Line: When people go low-carb, they lose significant amounts of excess water from their bodies. This explains the rapid weight loss seen in the first week or two.
Low Carb Diets Are High in Protein In most studies where low carb and low fat diets are compared, the low carb groups end up eating much more protein. This is because people replace many low-protein foods (grains, sugars) with higher protein foods like meat, fish and eggs.
Numerous studies show that protein can reduce appetite, boost metabolism, and help increase muscle mass, which is metabolically active and burns calories around the clock (17, 18, 19, 20). Many nutrition experts believe that the high protein content of low-carb diets is the main reason for their effectiveness.
Bottom Line: Low carb diets tend to be much higher in protein than low fat diets. Protein can reduce appetite, boost metabolism and help people hold on to muscle mass despite restricting calories.
Low Carb Diets Have a Metabolic Advantage Although this is controversial, many experts do believe that low carb diets have a metabolic advantage. In other words, that low carb diets increase your energy expenditure, and that people lose more weight than can be explained by reduced calorie intake alone. There are actually some studies to support this.
A study conducted in 2012 found that a very low carb diet increased energy expenditure compared to a low fat diet, during a period of weight maintenance (21). The increase was around 250 calories, which is equivalent to an hour of moderate-intensity exercise per day!
However, another study has suggested that it may be the high protein (but not low carb) part of the diet that causes the increase in calories burned (22). That being said, there are other mechanisms that may cause an additional metabolic advantage. On a very low carb, ketogenic diet, when carb intake is kept extremely low, a lot of protein is being transformed into glucose in the beginning, a process called gluconeogenesis (23).
This is an inefficient process, and can lead to hundreds of calories being “wasted.” However, this is mostly temporary as ketones should start replacing some of that glucose as brain fuel within a few days (24).
Bottom Line: Low-carb diets appear to have a metabolic advantage, but most of it is caused by the increased protein intake. In the beginning of a very low carb, ketogenic diet, some calories are wasted when glucose is produced.
Low Carb Diets Are Less Varied, and Lower in “Food Reward” Low carb diets automatically exclude some of the world’s most fattening junk foods. This includes sugar, sugary drinks, fruit juices, pizzas, white bread, french fries, pastries and most unhealthy snacks. There is also an obvious reduction in variety when you eliminate most high-carb foods, especially given that wheat, corn and sugar are in almost all processed foods. It is well known that increased food variety can drive increased calorie intake (25).
Many of these foods are also highly rewarding, and the reward value of foods can impact how many calories we end up eating (26). So, reduced food variety and reduced intake of highly rewarding junk foods should both contribute to a reduced calorie intake.
Bottom Line: Low carb diets exclude many foods that are highly rewarding and extremely fattening. These diets also have less food variety, which may lead to reduced calorie intake.
Low Carb Diets Significantly Lower Your Appetite, Leading to Automatic Reduction in Calorie Intake Probably the single biggest explanation for the weight loss effects of low carb diets, is their powerful effects on appetite. It is well established that when people go low carb, their appetite goes down and they start eating fewer calories automatically (27).
In fact, studies that compare low carb and low fat diets usually restrict calories in the low-fat groups, while the low-carb groups are allowed to eat until fullness (28). Despite that, the low carb groups still usually lose more weight. There are many possible explanations for this appetite reducing effect, some of which we have already covered. The increased protein intake is a major factor, but there is also evidence that ketosis can have a powerful effect (29).
Many people who go on a ketogenic diet feel that they only need to eat 1 or 2 meals per day. They simply don’t get hungry more often. There is also some evidence that low carb diets can have beneficial effects on appetite regulating hormones like leptin and ghrelin (30).
Bottom Line: Low carb diets lead to an automatic reduction in calorie intake, so that people eat fewer calories without having to think about it.
The Long Term Effects on Weight Loss Are Not Very Impressive Even though low carb diets are very effective in the short-term, the long-term results are not that great. Most studies that last for 1-2 years show that the difference between the low-carb and low-fat groups mostly disappears. There are many possible explanations for this, but the most plausible one is that people tend to abandon the diet over time, and start gaining the weight back.
This is not specific to low carb diets, and is a well known problem in most long-term weight loss studies. Most “diets” are incredibly hard to stick to. Take Home Message Some people refuse to accept that low carb diets can work, and that people can eat as much as they want, because that must violate the calories in, calories out model.
However, when you understand the mechanisms behind low carb diets, you can see that the CICO model is not being violated, and the laws of thermodynamics still hold. The truth is, low carb diets work on both sides of the calorie equation.
They boost your metabolism (increasing calories out) and lower your appetite (reducing calories in), leading to automatic calorie restriction. Calories still count, it’s just that low carb diets automate the process and help prevent the biggest side effect of conscious calorie restriction, which is hunger.
http://healthimpactnews.com/2013/sweden-becomes-first-western-nation-to-reject-low-fat-diet-dogma-in-favor-of-low-carb-high-fat-nutrition/
January 25, 2014
Study from Sweden Supports High-Fat Low-Carb Nutrition Over the Low-Fat High-Carb Dogma
Swedish meatballs now “OK”
Brian Shilhavy
Health Impact News Editor
Swedish doctor, Andreas Eenfeldt, who runs the most popular health blog in Scandinavia (DietDoctor.com) published some of the highlights reviewing 16,000 studies published through May 31, 2013in English:
Health markers will improve on a low-carbohydrate diet:
…a greater increase in HDL cholesterol (“the good cholesterol”) without having any adverse affects on LDL cholesterol (“the bad cholesterol”). This applies to both the moderate low-carbohydrate intake of less than 40 percent of the total energy intake, as well as to the stricter low-carbohydrate diet, where carbohydrate intake is less than 20 percent of the total energy intake. In addition, the stricter low-carbohydrate diet will lead to improved glucose levels for individuals with obesity and diabetes, and to marginally decreased levels of triglycerides.” (Source.)
Dr. Eenfeldt also translated an article from a local Swedish newspaper covering the committee’s findings:
Butter, olive oil, heavy cream, and bacon are not harmful foods. Quite the opposite. Fat is the best thing for those who want to lose weight. And there are no connections between a high fat intake and cardiovascular disease.
On Monday, SBU, the Swedish Council on Health Technology Assessment, dropped a bombshell. After a two-year long inquiry, reviewing 16,000 studies, the report “Dietary Treatment for Obesity” upends the conventional dietary guidelines for obese or diabetic people.
For a long time, the health care system has given the public advice to avoid fat, saturated fat in particular, and calories. A low-carb diet (LCHF – Low Carb High Fat, is actually a Swedish “invention”) has been dismissed as harmful, a humbug and as being a fad diet lacking any scientific basis.
Instead, the health care system has urged diabetics to eat a lot of fruit (=sugar) and low-fat products with considerable amounts of sugar or artificial sweeteners, the latter a dangerous trigger for the sugar-addicted person.
This report turns the current concepts upside down and advocates a low-carbohydrate, high-fat diet, as the most effective weapon against obesity.
The expert committee consisted of ten physicians, and several of them were skeptics to low-carbohydrate diets at the beginning of the investigation. (Source.)
One of the committee members was Prof. Fredrik Nyström, from Linköping, Sweden – a long-time critic of the low-fat diet and a proponent of the benefits of saturated fat, from sources such as butter, full fat cream, and bacon. Some quotes from Prof. Nyström translated into English from Dr. Eenfeldt:
“I’ve been working with this for so long. It feels great to have this scientific report, and that the skepticism towards low-carb diets among my colleagues has disappeared during the course of the work. When all recent scientific studies are lined up the result is indisputable: our deep-seated fear of fat is completely unfounded. You don’t get fat from fatty foods, just as you don’t get atherosclerosis from calcium or turn green from green vegetables.”
Nyström has long advocated a greatly reduced intake of carbohydrate-rich foods high in sugar and starch, in order to achieve healthy levels of insulin, blood lipids and the good cholesterol. This means doing away with sugar, potatoes, pasta, rice, wheat flour, bread, and embracing olive oil, nuts, butter, full fat cream, oily fish and fattier meat cuts. “If you eat potatoes you might as well eat candy. Potatoes contain glucose units in a chain, which is converted to sugar in the GI tract. Such a diet causes blood sugar, and then the hormone insulin, to skyrocket.”
There are many mantras we have been taught to accept as truths:
“Calories are calories, no matter where they come from.”
“It’s all about the balance between calories in and calories out.”
“People are fat because they don’t move enough.”
“Breakfast is the most important meal of the day.”
“Of course these are not true. This kind of nonsense has people with weight problems feeling bad about themselves. As if it were all about their inferior character. For many people a greater intake of fat means that you’ll feel satiated, stay so longer, and have less of a need to eat every five minutes. On the other hand, you won’t feel satiated after drinking a Coke, or after eating almost fat free, low-fat fruit yogurt loaded with sugar. Sure, exercise is great in many ways, but what really affects weight is diet.” (Source.)
Will the USDA Now Revise Their Guidelines? The scientific literature implicating the dangers of refined carbohydrates and the benefits of healthy fats has been around for decades now. One probable reason why this study was done in Sweden is that a lot of people were obvious already following such a diet. Currently in Sweden, it is estimated that only 14 percent of the population are obese compared with one-third in the USA.
So will the U.S. follow suit and explore revising USDA dietary guidelines? Not likely.
As I have recently pointed out in an article published YOU the Taxpayer are Funding the Agri Business Takeover of our Food Supply, the USDA nutritional guidelines favor the heavily subsidized crops of wheat, soy, and corn. The political forces are just too strong in the U.S. right now to allow any dietary advice that would cut into corporate profits and their production of cheap food to dominate world food supplies. This dietary advice of a low-carb high-fat diet has been around since the 1920s, when the ketogenic diet was developed at John Hopkins Hospital to cure epilepsy in children who did not respond to drugs. With the advent of the USDA diet guidelines, starting with the McGovern Report in the 1970s, fat was condemned and the low-fat diet advice was promoted through the healthcare system. You can see original TV coverage of this report from 1977 in this YouTube clip from The Fat Head movie:
In 2002, science journalist Gary Taubes began writing on the dangers of the high-carbohydrate diet and benefits of a high-fat diet, and his work was published in both the N.Y. Times and Time Magazine. His article title was “What If It Were All a Big Fat Lie!”
With mainstream media now covering the truth about the fallacies of the low-fat diet in the early 2000s, Dr. Atkins and his low-carb high-fat diet, which had been around for many years, gained a huge following. Various forms of the low-carb high-fat diet exist today in the U.S., but they are still considered “fringe” and “extreme.” The low-carb high-fat diet is routinely attacked by the government and medical system, even as pharmaceutical companies rush to make patented drugs that mimic the ketone effects of the diet, particularly in cancer treatment, the largest market share for pharmaceutical companies.
So, while Sweden has taken a huge step forward in following a commission who looked at over 16,000 studies and confirmed science that has been around for many years, don’t expect the U.S. government to do anything similar anytime soon. It is up to you to do your own research to understand the REAL facts about a healthy diet.
January 25, 2014
Study from Sweden Supports High-Fat Low-Carb Nutrition Over the Low-Fat High-Carb Dogma
Swedish meatballs now “OK”
Brian Shilhavy
Health Impact News Editor
Swedish doctor, Andreas Eenfeldt, who runs the most popular health blog in Scandinavia (DietDoctor.com) published some of the highlights reviewing 16,000 studies published through May 31, 2013in English:
Health markers will improve on a low-carbohydrate diet:
…a greater increase in HDL cholesterol (“the good cholesterol”) without having any adverse affects on LDL cholesterol (“the bad cholesterol”). This applies to both the moderate low-carbohydrate intake of less than 40 percent of the total energy intake, as well as to the stricter low-carbohydrate diet, where carbohydrate intake is less than 20 percent of the total energy intake. In addition, the stricter low-carbohydrate diet will lead to improved glucose levels for individuals with obesity and diabetes, and to marginally decreased levels of triglycerides.” (Source.)
Dr. Eenfeldt also translated an article from a local Swedish newspaper covering the committee’s findings:
Butter, olive oil, heavy cream, and bacon are not harmful foods. Quite the opposite. Fat is the best thing for those who want to lose weight. And there are no connections between a high fat intake and cardiovascular disease.
On Monday, SBU, the Swedish Council on Health Technology Assessment, dropped a bombshell. After a two-year long inquiry, reviewing 16,000 studies, the report “Dietary Treatment for Obesity” upends the conventional dietary guidelines for obese or diabetic people.
For a long time, the health care system has given the public advice to avoid fat, saturated fat in particular, and calories. A low-carb diet (LCHF – Low Carb High Fat, is actually a Swedish “invention”) has been dismissed as harmful, a humbug and as being a fad diet lacking any scientific basis.
Instead, the health care system has urged diabetics to eat a lot of fruit (=sugar) and low-fat products with considerable amounts of sugar or artificial sweeteners, the latter a dangerous trigger for the sugar-addicted person.
This report turns the current concepts upside down and advocates a low-carbohydrate, high-fat diet, as the most effective weapon against obesity.
The expert committee consisted of ten physicians, and several of them were skeptics to low-carbohydrate diets at the beginning of the investigation. (Source.)
One of the committee members was Prof. Fredrik Nyström, from Linköping, Sweden – a long-time critic of the low-fat diet and a proponent of the benefits of saturated fat, from sources such as butter, full fat cream, and bacon. Some quotes from Prof. Nyström translated into English from Dr. Eenfeldt:
“I’ve been working with this for so long. It feels great to have this scientific report, and that the skepticism towards low-carb diets among my colleagues has disappeared during the course of the work. When all recent scientific studies are lined up the result is indisputable: our deep-seated fear of fat is completely unfounded. You don’t get fat from fatty foods, just as you don’t get atherosclerosis from calcium or turn green from green vegetables.”
Nyström has long advocated a greatly reduced intake of carbohydrate-rich foods high in sugar and starch, in order to achieve healthy levels of insulin, blood lipids and the good cholesterol. This means doing away with sugar, potatoes, pasta, rice, wheat flour, bread, and embracing olive oil, nuts, butter, full fat cream, oily fish and fattier meat cuts. “If you eat potatoes you might as well eat candy. Potatoes contain glucose units in a chain, which is converted to sugar in the GI tract. Such a diet causes blood sugar, and then the hormone insulin, to skyrocket.”
There are many mantras we have been taught to accept as truths:
“Calories are calories, no matter where they come from.”
“It’s all about the balance between calories in and calories out.”
“People are fat because they don’t move enough.”
“Breakfast is the most important meal of the day.”
“Of course these are not true. This kind of nonsense has people with weight problems feeling bad about themselves. As if it were all about their inferior character. For many people a greater intake of fat means that you’ll feel satiated, stay so longer, and have less of a need to eat every five minutes. On the other hand, you won’t feel satiated after drinking a Coke, or after eating almost fat free, low-fat fruit yogurt loaded with sugar. Sure, exercise is great in many ways, but what really affects weight is diet.” (Source.)
Will the USDA Now Revise Their Guidelines? The scientific literature implicating the dangers of refined carbohydrates and the benefits of healthy fats has been around for decades now. One probable reason why this study was done in Sweden is that a lot of people were obvious already following such a diet. Currently in Sweden, it is estimated that only 14 percent of the population are obese compared with one-third in the USA.
So will the U.S. follow suit and explore revising USDA dietary guidelines? Not likely.
As I have recently pointed out in an article published YOU the Taxpayer are Funding the Agri Business Takeover of our Food Supply, the USDA nutritional guidelines favor the heavily subsidized crops of wheat, soy, and corn. The political forces are just too strong in the U.S. right now to allow any dietary advice that would cut into corporate profits and their production of cheap food to dominate world food supplies. This dietary advice of a low-carb high-fat diet has been around since the 1920s, when the ketogenic diet was developed at John Hopkins Hospital to cure epilepsy in children who did not respond to drugs. With the advent of the USDA diet guidelines, starting with the McGovern Report in the 1970s, fat was condemned and the low-fat diet advice was promoted through the healthcare system. You can see original TV coverage of this report from 1977 in this YouTube clip from The Fat Head movie:
In 2002, science journalist Gary Taubes began writing on the dangers of the high-carbohydrate diet and benefits of a high-fat diet, and his work was published in both the N.Y. Times and Time Magazine. His article title was “What If It Were All a Big Fat Lie!”
With mainstream media now covering the truth about the fallacies of the low-fat diet in the early 2000s, Dr. Atkins and his low-carb high-fat diet, which had been around for many years, gained a huge following. Various forms of the low-carb high-fat diet exist today in the U.S., but they are still considered “fringe” and “extreme.” The low-carb high-fat diet is routinely attacked by the government and medical system, even as pharmaceutical companies rush to make patented drugs that mimic the ketone effects of the diet, particularly in cancer treatment, the largest market share for pharmaceutical companies.
So, while Sweden has taken a huge step forward in following a commission who looked at over 16,000 studies and confirmed science that has been around for many years, don’t expect the U.S. government to do anything similar anytime soon. It is up to you to do your own research to understand the REAL facts about a healthy diet.
http://authoritynutrition.com/8-ridiculous-myths-about-meat-and-health/
8 Ridiculous Myths About Meat Consumption and Health There is a lot of nonsense in nutrition.
One of the worst examples is the constant propaganda against meat consumption.
Here are 8 ridiculous myths about meat consumption and health.
1. Meat Rots in Your Colon Some people claim that meat doesn’t get digested properly and “rots” in your colon.
This is absolute nonsense, probably invented by dishonest vegans in order to scare people away from eating meat. What happens when we eat meat, is that it gets broken down by stomach acid and digestive enzymes. In the small intestine, the proteins are broken down into amino acids and the fats are broken down into fatty acids. After that, they get absorbed over the digestive wall and into the bloodstream. There’s nothing left to “rot” in your colon. If you want to know what really “rots” in your colon, it’s indigestible plant matter (fiber)… from vegetables, fruits, grains and legumes. The human digestive system doesn’t have the enzymes necessary to break down fiber, which is why it travels all the way to the colon. There, it gets fermented (rots) by the friendly bacteria in the intestine, which turn it into nutrients and beneficial compounds like the short-chain fatty acid butyrate (1). This is what keeps the friendly bacteria alive and many studies are showing that feeding these bacteria properly is incredibly important for optimal health (2, 3). So, meat doesn’t rot in the colon. Plants do… and this is actually a good thing.
Bottom Line: The nutrients in meat are broken down and absorbed way before they reach the colon. However, fiber from plants does ferment (“rot”) in the colon, which is actually a good thing as it feeds the friendly bacteria.
2. Meat Is High in Harmful Saturated Fat and Cholesterol One of the main arguments against meat, is that it tends to be high in both saturated fat and cholesterol. But this really isn’t a cause for concern, because new science has shown both of them to be harmless. Despite being seen as something to be feared, cholesterol is actually a vital molecule in the body. It is found in every cell membrane and used to make hormones. The liver produces large amounts of it to make sure we always have enough. When we get a lot of cholesterol from the diet, the liver just produces less of it instead, so the total amount doesn’t change much (4, 5). In fact, in about 70% of people, cholesterol in the diet has negligible effects on cholesterol in the blood (6). In the other 30% (termed hyper-responders), there is a mild elevation in LDL cholesterol, but HDL (which is protective) also goes up (7, 8). The same is true with saturated fat, it also raises HDL (the “good”) cholesterol (9, 10). But even when saturated fat and/or cholesterol cause mild increases in LDL, this is not a problem because they change the LDL particles from small, dense LDL (very bad) to Large LDL, which is protective (11, 12). Studies show that people who have mostly large LDL particles have a much lower risk of heart disease (13, 14). Therefore, it is not surprising to see that in population studies that include hundreds of thousands of people, saturated fat and cholesterol are not associated with an increased risk of heart disease (15, 16). In fact, some studies show that saturated fat is linked to a reduced risk of stroke, another very common cause of death and disability (17). When they put this to the test in actual human experiments, making people cut saturated fat and replacing it with “heart healthy” vegetable oils (which happen to lower cholesterol), it actually increases the risk of death (18).
Bottom Line: It is true that meat tends to be high in saturated fat and cholesterol, but this is not a cause for concern because they do not have adverse effects on blood cholesterol or increase the risk of heart disease.
3. Meat Causes Heart Disease and Type 2 Diabetes Strangely enough, meat is often blamed for Western diseases like heart disease and type 2 Diabetes. Heart disease didn’t become a problem until the early 20th century and type 2 diabetes only a few decades ago. These diseases are new… but meat is an old food. Humans and pre-humans have been eating meat for millions of years (19). Blaming an old food for new health problems makes absolutely no sense. Fortunately, we do have two very large, very thorough studies that can put our minds at ease. In a massive study published in the year 2010, researchers pooled data from 20 studies that included a total of 1,218,380 individuals. They found no link between consumption of unprocessed red meat and heart disease or diabetes (20). Another major study from Europe that included 448,568 individuals found no link between unprocessed red meat and these diseases (21). However, both of these studies found a strong increase in risk for people who ate processed meat. For this reason, it is very important to make a distinction between the different types of meat. Many studies apparently showing that “red meat” is harmful didn’t adequately make the distinction between processed and unprocessed meat. Processed foods in general are pretty awful… this isn’t just true of meat.
Bottom Line: Many massive studies have examined the relationship between meat consumption, heart disease and diabetes. They found a strong link for processed meat, but no effect for unprocessed red meat.
4. Red Meat Causes Cancer One common belief is that meat, especially red meat, causes cancer. This is where things get a bit more complicated. It is true that processed meat is associated with an increased risk of cancer, especially colon cancer (22). But when it comes to unprocessed red meat, things aren’t as clear.
Although several studies suggest that even unprocessed red meat can raise the risk of cancer, review studies that pool the data from many studies at a time show a different picture. Two review studies, one that looked at data from 35 studies and the other from 25 studies, found that the effect for unprocessed red meat was very weak for men and nonexistent for women (23, 24). However… it does appear that the way meat is cooked can have a major effect on its health effects. Several studies show that when meat is overcooked, it can form compounds like Heterocyclic Amines and Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons, which have been shown to cause cancer in test animals (25). There are several ways to prevent this from happening… such as choosing gentler cooking methods and always cutting away burned or charred pieces. So the answer is not to avoid red meat, but to make sure not to burn it. Keep in mind that overheating can cause harmful compounds to form in many other foods. This is NOT exclusive to meat (26).
Bottom Line: The link between unprocessed red meat and cancer is very weak in men and nonexistent in women. This may depend on the way meat is cooked, because overheating can form carcinogens.
5. Humans Are Naturally Herbivores and Not “Designed” For Meat Consumption Some vegans claim that humans aren’t “designed” to eat meat. They say that humans are naturally herbivores like our primate ancestors. However… this is completely false. Humans and pre-humans have been eating meat for a very long time and our bodies are well adapted to meat consumption (27, 28). Our digestive systems really don’t resemble those of herbivores at all. We have short colons, long small intestines and lots of hydrochloric acid in the stomach to help break down animal protein (29). The length of different parts of our digestive system is somewhere in between the lengths typical for both carnivores and herbivores, indicating that humans are “designed” to be omnivores (30). It is also believed that our consumption of animal foods helped drive the evolution of our large brains, which set us apart from any other animal on earth (31). Humans function best eating both animals and plants. Period.
Bottom Line: Humans are well equipped to make full use of the nutrients found in meat. Our digestive system reflects a genetic adaptation to an omnivorous diet, with animal foods as a major source of calories.
6. Meat is Bad For Your Bones Many people seem to believe that protein is bad for the bones and can lead to osteoporosis. The theory goes like this… we eat protein, which increases the acid load of the body, then the body moves calcium from the bones and into the bloodstream to neutralize the acid. There are in fact some short-term studies to support this. Increasing protein does lead to increased calcium loss from the body (32). However, this short term effect does not appear to persist because the long-term studies show that protein actually has beneficial effects on bone health (33). There is overwhelming evidence that a high protein diet is linked to improved bone density and a lower risk of osteoporosis and fractures in old age (34, 35, 36). This is a great example of where blindly following the conventional wisdom in nutrition will lead to the exact opposite result.
Bottom Line: Despite protein causing increased calcium loss in the short term, the long-term studies show that a high protein intake is linked to improved bone density and a lower risk of osteoporosis and fractures.
7. Meat is Unnecessary It is often claimed that meat is unnecessary for health. This is actually kind of true… most of the nutrients in it can be found in other animal foods. But just because we can survive without it, it doesn’t mean that we should… quality meat has many nutrients that are good for us. This includes quality protein, vitamin B12, creatine, carnosine and various important fat-soluble vitamins, which vegans and vegetarians are often lacking in. Whole foods like meat contain way more than just the standard vitamins and minerals that we’re all familiar with it. There are literally thousands of trace nutrients in there… some of which science has yet to identify. The fact is, humans evolved eating meat and evolution designed our bodies with these nutrients in mind. They are an essential part of the immensely complex biological puzzle. Can we live without meat? Sure… but we won’t reach optimal health, making use of all the beneficial nutrients that nature has provided us with. Although we can survive without meat, the same could be said of most other food groups… including vegetables, fruits, legumes, fish, eggs, etc. We just eat more of something else instead. Quality meat is pretty close to being the perfect food for humans. It contains most of the nutrients we need. There is even a study in the literature where two guys ate nothing but meat and organs for a year and remained in excellent health (37). Of course, not all meat is the same. The best meat comes from animals raised on pasture, fed the types of foods they would eat in nature. Unprocessed meat from properly raised, properly fed animals (like grass-fed beef) has a much better nutrient profile (38, 39).
Bottom Line: Some claim that meat is unnecessary. Although it is true that we can survive without it, there are still many nutrients in there that are important for optimal health.
8. Meat Makes You Fat Meat is often believed to be fattening. This seems to make sense on the surface because most meat is pretty high in fat and calories. However, meat also happens to be one of the best sources of highly bioavailable protein. Protein is the most weight loss friendly macronutrient, by far. Studies show that a high protein diet can boost metabolism by up to 80 to 100 calories per day (40, 41). There are also studies showing that if you increase your protein intake, you automatically start eating less of other foods instead (42). Several studies have found that by increasing the amount of protein in the diet, people automatically cut calorie intake by several hundred calories per day, putting weight loss on “autopilot” (43). Eating more protein also tends to favour increased muscle mass. Muscle is metabolically active and burns a small amount of calories around the clock (44). Also, let’s not forget that low-carb and paleo diets, which tend to be high in meat, lead to significantly more weight loss than diets that are lower in meat (45, 46). If anything, the more you eat of high quality meat (and less of other foods instead), the easier it should be for you to lose weight.
8 Ridiculous Myths About Meat Consumption and Health There is a lot of nonsense in nutrition.
One of the worst examples is the constant propaganda against meat consumption.
Here are 8 ridiculous myths about meat consumption and health.
1. Meat Rots in Your Colon Some people claim that meat doesn’t get digested properly and “rots” in your colon.
This is absolute nonsense, probably invented by dishonest vegans in order to scare people away from eating meat. What happens when we eat meat, is that it gets broken down by stomach acid and digestive enzymes. In the small intestine, the proteins are broken down into amino acids and the fats are broken down into fatty acids. After that, they get absorbed over the digestive wall and into the bloodstream. There’s nothing left to “rot” in your colon. If you want to know what really “rots” in your colon, it’s indigestible plant matter (fiber)… from vegetables, fruits, grains and legumes. The human digestive system doesn’t have the enzymes necessary to break down fiber, which is why it travels all the way to the colon. There, it gets fermented (rots) by the friendly bacteria in the intestine, which turn it into nutrients and beneficial compounds like the short-chain fatty acid butyrate (1). This is what keeps the friendly bacteria alive and many studies are showing that feeding these bacteria properly is incredibly important for optimal health (2, 3). So, meat doesn’t rot in the colon. Plants do… and this is actually a good thing.
Bottom Line: The nutrients in meat are broken down and absorbed way before they reach the colon. However, fiber from plants does ferment (“rot”) in the colon, which is actually a good thing as it feeds the friendly bacteria.
2. Meat Is High in Harmful Saturated Fat and Cholesterol One of the main arguments against meat, is that it tends to be high in both saturated fat and cholesterol. But this really isn’t a cause for concern, because new science has shown both of them to be harmless. Despite being seen as something to be feared, cholesterol is actually a vital molecule in the body. It is found in every cell membrane and used to make hormones. The liver produces large amounts of it to make sure we always have enough. When we get a lot of cholesterol from the diet, the liver just produces less of it instead, so the total amount doesn’t change much (4, 5). In fact, in about 70% of people, cholesterol in the diet has negligible effects on cholesterol in the blood (6). In the other 30% (termed hyper-responders), there is a mild elevation in LDL cholesterol, but HDL (which is protective) also goes up (7, 8). The same is true with saturated fat, it also raises HDL (the “good”) cholesterol (9, 10). But even when saturated fat and/or cholesterol cause mild increases in LDL, this is not a problem because they change the LDL particles from small, dense LDL (very bad) to Large LDL, which is protective (11, 12). Studies show that people who have mostly large LDL particles have a much lower risk of heart disease (13, 14). Therefore, it is not surprising to see that in population studies that include hundreds of thousands of people, saturated fat and cholesterol are not associated with an increased risk of heart disease (15, 16). In fact, some studies show that saturated fat is linked to a reduced risk of stroke, another very common cause of death and disability (17). When they put this to the test in actual human experiments, making people cut saturated fat and replacing it with “heart healthy” vegetable oils (which happen to lower cholesterol), it actually increases the risk of death (18).
Bottom Line: It is true that meat tends to be high in saturated fat and cholesterol, but this is not a cause for concern because they do not have adverse effects on blood cholesterol or increase the risk of heart disease.
3. Meat Causes Heart Disease and Type 2 Diabetes Strangely enough, meat is often blamed for Western diseases like heart disease and type 2 Diabetes. Heart disease didn’t become a problem until the early 20th century and type 2 diabetes only a few decades ago. These diseases are new… but meat is an old food. Humans and pre-humans have been eating meat for millions of years (19). Blaming an old food for new health problems makes absolutely no sense. Fortunately, we do have two very large, very thorough studies that can put our minds at ease. In a massive study published in the year 2010, researchers pooled data from 20 studies that included a total of 1,218,380 individuals. They found no link between consumption of unprocessed red meat and heart disease or diabetes (20). Another major study from Europe that included 448,568 individuals found no link between unprocessed red meat and these diseases (21). However, both of these studies found a strong increase in risk for people who ate processed meat. For this reason, it is very important to make a distinction between the different types of meat. Many studies apparently showing that “red meat” is harmful didn’t adequately make the distinction between processed and unprocessed meat. Processed foods in general are pretty awful… this isn’t just true of meat.
Bottom Line: Many massive studies have examined the relationship between meat consumption, heart disease and diabetes. They found a strong link for processed meat, but no effect for unprocessed red meat.
4. Red Meat Causes Cancer One common belief is that meat, especially red meat, causes cancer. This is where things get a bit more complicated. It is true that processed meat is associated with an increased risk of cancer, especially colon cancer (22). But when it comes to unprocessed red meat, things aren’t as clear.
Although several studies suggest that even unprocessed red meat can raise the risk of cancer, review studies that pool the data from many studies at a time show a different picture. Two review studies, one that looked at data from 35 studies and the other from 25 studies, found that the effect for unprocessed red meat was very weak for men and nonexistent for women (23, 24). However… it does appear that the way meat is cooked can have a major effect on its health effects. Several studies show that when meat is overcooked, it can form compounds like Heterocyclic Amines and Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons, which have been shown to cause cancer in test animals (25). There are several ways to prevent this from happening… such as choosing gentler cooking methods and always cutting away burned or charred pieces. So the answer is not to avoid red meat, but to make sure not to burn it. Keep in mind that overheating can cause harmful compounds to form in many other foods. This is NOT exclusive to meat (26).
Bottom Line: The link between unprocessed red meat and cancer is very weak in men and nonexistent in women. This may depend on the way meat is cooked, because overheating can form carcinogens.
5. Humans Are Naturally Herbivores and Not “Designed” For Meat Consumption Some vegans claim that humans aren’t “designed” to eat meat. They say that humans are naturally herbivores like our primate ancestors. However… this is completely false. Humans and pre-humans have been eating meat for a very long time and our bodies are well adapted to meat consumption (27, 28). Our digestive systems really don’t resemble those of herbivores at all. We have short colons, long small intestines and lots of hydrochloric acid in the stomach to help break down animal protein (29). The length of different parts of our digestive system is somewhere in between the lengths typical for both carnivores and herbivores, indicating that humans are “designed” to be omnivores (30). It is also believed that our consumption of animal foods helped drive the evolution of our large brains, which set us apart from any other animal on earth (31). Humans function best eating both animals and plants. Period.
Bottom Line: Humans are well equipped to make full use of the nutrients found in meat. Our digestive system reflects a genetic adaptation to an omnivorous diet, with animal foods as a major source of calories.
6. Meat is Bad For Your Bones Many people seem to believe that protein is bad for the bones and can lead to osteoporosis. The theory goes like this… we eat protein, which increases the acid load of the body, then the body moves calcium from the bones and into the bloodstream to neutralize the acid. There are in fact some short-term studies to support this. Increasing protein does lead to increased calcium loss from the body (32). However, this short term effect does not appear to persist because the long-term studies show that protein actually has beneficial effects on bone health (33). There is overwhelming evidence that a high protein diet is linked to improved bone density and a lower risk of osteoporosis and fractures in old age (34, 35, 36). This is a great example of where blindly following the conventional wisdom in nutrition will lead to the exact opposite result.
Bottom Line: Despite protein causing increased calcium loss in the short term, the long-term studies show that a high protein intake is linked to improved bone density and a lower risk of osteoporosis and fractures.
7. Meat is Unnecessary It is often claimed that meat is unnecessary for health. This is actually kind of true… most of the nutrients in it can be found in other animal foods. But just because we can survive without it, it doesn’t mean that we should… quality meat has many nutrients that are good for us. This includes quality protein, vitamin B12, creatine, carnosine and various important fat-soluble vitamins, which vegans and vegetarians are often lacking in. Whole foods like meat contain way more than just the standard vitamins and minerals that we’re all familiar with it. There are literally thousands of trace nutrients in there… some of which science has yet to identify. The fact is, humans evolved eating meat and evolution designed our bodies with these nutrients in mind. They are an essential part of the immensely complex biological puzzle. Can we live without meat? Sure… but we won’t reach optimal health, making use of all the beneficial nutrients that nature has provided us with. Although we can survive without meat, the same could be said of most other food groups… including vegetables, fruits, legumes, fish, eggs, etc. We just eat more of something else instead. Quality meat is pretty close to being the perfect food for humans. It contains most of the nutrients we need. There is even a study in the literature where two guys ate nothing but meat and organs for a year and remained in excellent health (37). Of course, not all meat is the same. The best meat comes from animals raised on pasture, fed the types of foods they would eat in nature. Unprocessed meat from properly raised, properly fed animals (like grass-fed beef) has a much better nutrient profile (38, 39).
Bottom Line: Some claim that meat is unnecessary. Although it is true that we can survive without it, there are still many nutrients in there that are important for optimal health.
8. Meat Makes You Fat Meat is often believed to be fattening. This seems to make sense on the surface because most meat is pretty high in fat and calories. However, meat also happens to be one of the best sources of highly bioavailable protein. Protein is the most weight loss friendly macronutrient, by far. Studies show that a high protein diet can boost metabolism by up to 80 to 100 calories per day (40, 41). There are also studies showing that if you increase your protein intake, you automatically start eating less of other foods instead (42). Several studies have found that by increasing the amount of protein in the diet, people automatically cut calorie intake by several hundred calories per day, putting weight loss on “autopilot” (43). Eating more protein also tends to favour increased muscle mass. Muscle is metabolically active and burns a small amount of calories around the clock (44). Also, let’s not forget that low-carb and paleo diets, which tend to be high in meat, lead to significantly more weight loss than diets that are lower in meat (45, 46). If anything, the more you eat of high quality meat (and less of other foods instead), the easier it should be for you to lose weight.
