THE OBSOLETE FOOD PYRAMID

How many of us go by the USDA (US Department of Agriculture) food pyramid when planning our diets? The figure above shows the food pyramid and I think people pay too much attention to the top and bottom of the pyramid without much consideration to the middle. Too much importance is placed on carbohydrates (up to 11 servings) without regard to the type of carbohydrate consumed. On the other hand fats have been lumped with sugars and banned, without regard to the type of fat. Due to this the food pyramid is to blame for most of today's obesity problems. Just as all carbohydrates are not created equal, so is the case with fat. There are good carbohydrates and bad carbohydrates and by the same token there are good and bad fats. This low fat/high carbohydrate  dictum  has spawned a whole industry of low-fat foods. So we now consume low fat cookies, low fat ice-cream etc without regard to the calorie content, thinking that its healthy to do so. In one of my previous articles, I talked about how fat slows the absorption of sugars in your blood stream. Also good fats (MUFA) and omega 3 fats are healthy for your heart and mind. Fats are also necessary to transport important fat soluble vitamins (A, D, E and K).

A comparative study lasting 31 years (starting 1960) and spanning 7 countries (Italy, Greece, former Yugoslavia, the Netherlands, Finland, United States, and Japan) looked at dietary habits of these populations and the incidence of deaths from heart disease and various cancers. 13,000 people between the ages of 40-59 years participated in this study. At the conclusion of this study 50% of the participants from Crete (island of Greece) were still alive while there were no survivors from the participants of the other 6 countries. In the Cretan diet, olive oil accounted for 33% of caloric needs apart from the fat from fish, eggs and some cheese. Their diet consisted of as much as 40% of total calorie intake from fat (29 percent monounsaturated fat, 8 percent saturated fat, and 3 percent polyunsaturated fat). The rest came from vegetables, fruits, whole grains and moderate amounts of cheese, fish and occasional red meat. Based on these findings researchers suggest rebuilding the food pyramid from the ground up with fat, vegetables and fruits occupying the bottom of the pyramid, with whole grains, fish, milk and cheese in the middle and sugars and simple carbohydrates on top. 

It is now argued that the USDA was the wrong organization to be building the food pyramid in the first place. The USDA is affiliated to the department of agriculture that is responsible for the productivity of grains for the most part and so has a vested interest in promoting grain consumption. On top of that the USDA is not a research organization with any ability to perform dietary research so it should have no role in the formulation of the food pyramid. I am just thankful that the American Sugar Alliance didn't have a role in formulating the food pyramid, otherwise we all would be looking like the Thanksgiving turkey!

CHOLESTEROL: VITAL FOR LIFE

Here is a good video! 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=awA2fsa94MI

HDL, LDL, ratios, all marketing buzzwords meant to scare you and put you on the mega billion $$$ generating statin drug machines. Like I mentioned in my earlier articles, its inflammation and too much high GI carb intake that causes heart disease, not cholesterol! Type II diabetes causes heart disease and not cholesterol!   Without cholesterol men wouldn’t be men and women wouldn’t be women. We wouldn’t even make new cells in the body. And guess what, the number one consumer of cholesterol in your body is your brain and the central nervous system because nerve and brain cells don’t regenerate like the rest of your body’s cells. So cholesterol provides them longevity and without which we would be literally ‘losing our minds’. So eat a diet rich in anti-oxidants, get plenty of exercise and reduce the stress in your lives and stop worrying about cholesterol.

WEIGHTLOSS IS NOT ROCKET SCIENCE

Just to prove this simple point, Mark Haub, a professor of human nutrition at Kansas State University, put himself on a 2 month junk food diet consisting of twinkies, candy bars and other vending machine goodies and guess what? He lost 27 pounds! He set out to prove a simple point that loosing weight is simply a matter of consuming fewer calories than you burn. It proves that you don't have to go on a fancy diet of exotic berries or drink tomato juice for the next month, but just ensure that you reduce your caloric intake to a point where you burn more than you consume. This experiment brings forth an important point that health and weight-loss aren't necessarily synonymous and puts a big question mark on the conventional markers of heart disease risk, HDL and LDL cholesterol, because he lowered LDL and increased HDL eating this junk food diet. To read more about this experiment go to the CNN.com article here:

http://www.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/11/08/twinkie.diet.professor/index.html

While I wouldn't call this diet healthy or balanced it does prove that you don't need to avoid any particular food group in order to lose weight as long as you spread out your meals into small portions through out the day. So while I advocate healthy eating habits it wont destroy your weight-loss goals if you indulge in some comfort food once in a while. I am reaching out for some brownies after this....

EAT FAT TO LOSE FAT

Researchers from Washington University in St. Louis did a study with genetically engineered mice where they engineered the mice such that their liver lacked a fat producing enzyme. As we all know fat is processed and converted in the liver to form triglecyrides which is then used up as energy in the body. So a healthy liver is a major fat burning organ converting fats into fatty acids in the blood stream for use as energy. But when the liver is malfunctioning it can work in the reverse direction and become a fat storing organ. This is referred to as a fatty liver disease. A healthy liver is red in color but when the liver starts to accumulate fat it starts turning yellow and enlarging in size. A sign of fatty liver disease is a bulging midsection, an increased cholesterol level, stubborn weightloss and constant lethargy. Also remember the liver is capable of producing its own fat from carbohydrates so a zero fat diet can still lead to fatty liver disease. So why this lecture about fatty liver disease? Because the mice in this study were not capable of making any fat in their liver and the only fat they would get is from diet or from the body's own fat reserves. So guess what was the finding of this study? The researchers found that mice that were fed a zero fat diet developed fatty liver disease! So essentially the fat from the body moved into their liver but the liver didn't process that fat, but instead stored it! Mice that ate the normal fare didn't develop a fatty liver. So the researchers concluded that the liver needs new fat in order to metabolize old fat. In other words you have to supply new fat to the liver in order to regulate fat burning in the liver. Or as I say "Eat fat to lose fat!"

So we can see how we can mess up the liver's fat burning ability by eating a low or zero fat diet. So eat healthy fats found in nuts, sea food, flax, avocados and make sure you get 33% of your daily caloric intake in healthy fat. Folks, you need fat in your diet if you want to stay healthy and keep that stubborn fat off!

METABOLIC EFFECTS OF LIFTING HEAVY

I see many women in the gym ‘toning’ their bodies with little pink weights for hundreds of reps accumulated over an hour long workout. I just wonder why don’t they just jump on the tread mill and spend the hour there. I mean why delude yourself that you are weight training when you really are doing aerobic style workouts. Just to make it clear weight training is a weight bearing exercise that requires anaerobic pathways of energy breakdown which happens when you lift heavy for a few reps. Weight training shouldn’t make you go out of breath and panting for air. This is not the mode that builds muscle. For building muscle you need to lift heavy enough to perform the full range of motion for 10-15 reps and no more. If you are able to do a 16^th rep, then you need to increase the weight.  

A concern I hear from women (and many men) is that they don’t want to ‘bulk-up’ by lifting heavy. To address this I would say that women don’t have near as much testosterone as men do, to really bulk up. Testosterone is the hormone that burns fat and builds muscle and is responsible for sex drive in men (and women). This is why men are leaner than women and this is why teenagers (both boys and girls) lose baby fat as they enter puberty. And weight training has shown to boost the production of both, testosterone and human growth hormone (HGH). So even for women a little extra testosterone is a good thing as it burns fat and builds muscle (which burns even more fat). And HGH has been shown to be essential to prevent many age related degenerative diseases. Recently it has also been shown that intense weight training also increases insulin sensitivity that can prevent the onset of type II diabetes. So you see there are benefits beyond the obvious when you weight train. So if you really want to tone your body, weight train with the right amount of weight for 10-15 reps and if possible do compound movements that involve multiple joints (squats, lunges, dead lifts, bench press, lat pull-downs etc). Having one extra pound of muscle will burn 35 extra calories a day which may not sound like much but will add up to 12775 calories in a year or 3.5 lbs of fat burned. So imagine this! If you have 10 extra lbs of muscle, its equivalent to running for half hour (or 3 miles) every day, 365 days a year even when you are just watching TV. So what would you take, and extra 10 lbs of muscle (traded for fat) or running 3 miles everyday all year around? Its a no-brainer, eh! So even though aerobics has certain cardio vascular conditioning advantage it comes nowhere near weight training for permanently boosting your metabolism and building that firm toned body that you always dreamed of.  So dunk those pretty little pink weights and lift real weights instead. And don’t worry you will never look like those anabolic steroid freaks you see on the cover of magazines like muscle and fitness. No woman (or man) can achieve that kind of muscularity and definition without relying on synthetic testosterone derivatives. Also remember muscle is denser than fat so a 110lb woman with 15% body fat will be trimmer and better toned than a 110lb woman with 25% body fat!

GOOD LINK ABOUT FATS

Here is a good link about fats on MSN health:

http://health.msn.com/nutrition/articlepage.aspx?cp-documentid=100256551

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The take home points are:

1) Use vegetable oils sparingly.

2) Don't be afraid of butter. It has anti-oxidants that protect against cancer and hasn't been shown to increase cholesterol. Use it in omelets and baking.

3) Coconut oil is healthy in spite of its high saturated fat content. Use it in Thai cooking.

4) Eat olive oil and fish as they have the best fats that are good for your heart.

The bottom line is that your body need fat and it is an important component of a healthy diet so don't shy away from fat but only make sure its the right kind of fat.

FREE RADICAL GENERATION IN THE BODY

So now that we gathered how important antioxidants are to your body, let see what promotes the production of free radicals in our bodies. While many of the normal cellular processes produce metabolites that are free radicals there are certain foods that increase the production of these toxic metabolites. Eating food deep fried in vegetable oils (ghee is best for deep frying) produces a lot of free radicals as vegetable oils are unstable and breakdown at high temperatures. Hydrogenation of vegetable oils to produce shortening releases many free radicals, that's why any food with trans-fat or hydrogenated fat has a lot of free radicals in it. Eating a lot of processed foods with artificial preservatives and chemicals releases free radicals in the body. So one must avoid deep fried, processed and foods with trans-fat. Also exposure of skin to UV rays from the sun produces free radicals that attack the skin cells and destroy collagen, the essential protein that gives our skin the 'elasticity' needed to stay supple and young.This is what causes the formation of wrinkles in the skin. In the next article I'll discuss how to combat free-radical attack on the skin to prevent the formation of wrinkles. Stay tuned until the next time...