musings on basics and effacies

To a friend who sent an email saying more raw as a percent of diet was working wonders for him, I responded:

I am 100% in agreement with you on raw. It's been my experience as well. And I've now been in "intervention" situations, as well as retreats etc, where 100% raw was what's for dinner (and lunch etc).

This give me an idea for a blog, something along the lines of "major components of the whole foods plant based diet". Here's basically how I see it.

starting from omnivore or vegetarian, same applies to either...the basic "major components" that will improve ANY diet as a proportion of totals consumed:

1. whole foods

2. plant foods

3. raw foods

thems the basics. then it becomes a question of total % of each, and if there's a diminishing return point where is it?

is the diminishing return point different on an intervention (disease reversal) diet as opposed to a "maintenance" (already healthy) diet? Probably.

is the diminishing returns point gradually shifting depending on where an individual is, week to week, month to month, on that spectrum of recovery? Probably.

for the already recovered already healthy individual is there a diminishing returns point as one approaches 100% in each of the three basic categories? probably, and that's where things begin to get interesting, and a bit murky. for example:

1. is it better to have some concentrated food products in the diet? if so, which ones and how much?

2. is it better to have some animal food products in the diet? if so, which ones and how much?

3. is it better to have some cooked food products in the diet? if so, which ones and how much?

Experts who will completely agree with the basic premise that the more of all the basic three the better, will begin to disagree as higher percentages of each are approached, with credible opinions given. And the science? Nutritional biology is one of the most complex and least conclusive branches of science to begin with (you'd never know that listening to the folks using it as "best marketing medium of the 21st century" however). It's pretty safe to say the "science" is murky, and will be a long time coming before "weight of evidence" is reached on anything other than the idea "more of each of basics" is the "north star" for general health, vitality, and longevity.

in the "experts" mix there's a range, including

1. paleos (high fat, keto diet, animal product)

2. "old fashioned" raw vegan (Hippocrates Institute), which you might say is a raw vegan paleo (high fat) approach

3. the large and growing body of cooked / raw vegan "disease reversal" MDs, who are largely in agreement for the most part, and also 80/10/10 for the most part

4. "leading edge" raw vegan (Doug Graham and a few others, who are not only 100% vegan and 100% raw, but also 80/10/10)

these 4 basic "expert" approaches are in the order of least to most effective for disease reversal IMHO.

it can be a little bit confusing for the newbie, but the overarching "truth" (if you will) is the more of each of the basic three categories the better, to some point where diminishing returns MAY set in.

But I can tell you this: that diminishing returns point for Doug Graham is WAY different that it is for the "disease reversal MDs". In my experience Graham's approach is the most aggressive and effective for disease reversal, but it can be tricky as a maintenance diet, you have to know what you're doing. And I'm sure Doug Graham himself will disagree with the idea it's "tricky" as a maintenance diet, as the approach itself is actually pared down to quite simple. (See his book "The 80/10/10 Diet", which is, IMO, brilliant.)

Also in my opinion the "disease reversal MDs" approach is way easier for the average person to wrap their head around and actually integrate into their own lifestyle because it's closer to what they're already doing, which is the primary reason I emphasize that approach in my blog. And the approach works! It works great in fact, there is absolutely nothing wrong with it.

Diminishing returns is out there as a factor, but it's also personal, experiential, intuitive, and changing.

When you hear people say "there is no one correct diet, we humans are all unique, and adaptable" I agree to a point, and disagree to a point. Basic biology is the same for all humans, we are all the same species, and there is IMO a species specific diet for humans. Human diets have historically varied according to where on the planet we lived. What was available in the equatorial tropics was very different and more nutrient dense than what was available near the high elevation tree line. The species specific diet may therefore be, probably is, the one that is the most nutritious for any member of the species, the one that grows where life is the most prolific. So I disagree with the folks who say "there is no species specific diet for humans", and think that view lacks perspective.

But I agree to a point that optimal can vary depending on where one is in their own journey to better health and vitality. We have emotions, we have habit patterns, and all of that may be "in the head" so to speak, but it's real. The intelligent individual will continuously take this into account, and balance going easy on themselves for "only" taking one step at a time, with pushing themselves toward better and better results. And how much that person pushes toward the "faster reversal" approach will also depend on how sick they are! Do you have "3 months to live" (according to your conventional MDs)?

Better get on the gas then buddy:)

cakes croissants and crumpets - the cause of insulin resistance is fat not carbs

This has actually been known for some time, but there seems to be resistance to it's penetration of general consciousness. A parallel to insulin resistance itself perhaps :)
But study constructions seem to be more willing to look at it from this perspective, for example:

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/5517003_Reinventing_Type_2_Diabetes_Pathogenesis_Treatment_and_Prevention

The simple explanation is that intramyocellular lipids inhibit delivery of glucose and oxygen into muscle cells where they are needed as fuel. Consequently glucose remains trapped in the blood where it creates problems, often leading to type 2 diabetes, and further complication; or other problems entirely, of other types.

High intramyocellular lipid levels is caused by high blood lipid levels which is caused by high fat in the diet.

Understanding this mechanism helps to understand why a plant based diet composed of approximately 80% of total calories coming from carbohydrates reverses type 2 diabetes so quickly and efficiently.

It will also help to understand how people on a diet where 80% of total calories come from carbs are also the leanest population on the planet (a population that is also perfectly healthy, ie not anorexic or malnourished in some way).

Carbs do not make us fat! It's a myth promulgated by a culture that has become dependent on distribution of calories in concentrated form (fats) for reasons of economic efficiency. Nothing wrong with economic efficiency as long as it does not become counter productive to the health of populations. Health is wealth not only for individuals, but also for populations.

The cheapest, densest, most easily distributed calories ever are vegetable oils (which are pure 100% fat). They are also empty calories, and their value as nutrition is exactly proportionate to their very low cost.

Let me add a final point to define "carbs" lest one think I'm referring to cakes croissants or crumpets, which are "foods" (using the term loosely) that derive more energy from fat than carbs, and is how we as a culture became so confused and misinformed as to what a "carb" is. These toxic substances, yep the ones we are addicted to, those ones, have carbs in them, but also have fats in them. And the fats, being such a concentrated source of calories, actually predominate the caloric composition of these food-like toxic substances.

So cakes croissants and crumpets are more accurately called "fats" than "carbs".

When I use the word "carbs" in the context of a diet composed of approximately 80% of total calories coming from whole plant carbohydrates, I am simply referring to the many tens of thousands of plants that are edible by humans in their whole natural form.

Supplements and the Micronutrient Problem

Animals in nature, including pre-industrial humans, get (or got) vitamins and minerals (and other micronutrients) on a seasonal basis. Our bodies stored them in our tissues to draw on in winter, droughts, and migratory periods, etc.

So the "minimum daily requirement" for micronutrients is a bit of a myth promulgated by two overlapping conditions: 1) the vast majority of us do not get sufficient nutrition from modern diets, and 2) there are companies that would sell us "solutions" to this problem in the form of pills, powders and potions...in other words, concentrated nutrients.

The problem with concentrated nutrients is that they may not work very well. More and more research is showing that isolated nutrients are not nearly as effective as "nested" nutrients, which is the nutrition that is contained in the whole foods that got us here to begin with...to the dawn of the industrial era, which in evolutionary terms was about 1 second ago.

This of course would not be very good news for the industries that have sprung up to provide us with concentrated nutrition.

Whole foods contain a vast and complex "set" of nutrients that apparently interact and support each other in ways we are only recently becoming aware of (on a research basis). Compounding this problem is the fact nutrition science has thus far proceeded on the supposition that testing the efficacy of isolated individual micronutrients will tell us all we need to know about them.

If this turns out not to be the case however we are left with the realization we don't know as much about nutrition as we thought, and further, we do not have an effective scientific (reductionist) method for testing the efficacy of a very complex set of "nested" nutrients in whole foods. All we really know to this point is the vitamin C in an apple seems to work much more efficiently in the human body than the same amount of isolated vitamin C. And so on, into the entire vast range of micro nutrition.

For a more complete discussion of this problem read "Whole: Rethinking the Science of Nutrition" by T. Colin Campbell, one of today's leading research scientists in the field of nutrition, and founder of the T. Colin Campbell Center for Nutrition Studies at Cornell University.

http://nutritionstudies.org/

https://www.amazon.com/Whole-Rethinking-Nutrition-Colin-Campbell/dp/1939529840

Don't Eat - Grains, Legumes, Starches or Fruit!

We've heard forever not to eat starches because they make us fat. A more recent meme is to eat fruit in moderation, if at all, because it has sugar and will make us fat and give us diabetes. Grains are out because of gluten, and legumes are out because of lectin, and both are out in terms of Paleo philosophy.

Most people can't be expected to know this, but these food groups are considered by established experts on whole food plant based diets (WFPB) to be the cornerstone food groups that create day to day success on the diet, and support long term health. But...they are the foods we are not supposed to eat? Is the implication a plant based diet can't possibly work? If so, how can it be that a well constructed plant based diet reverses so many modern day diseases?

There is another cornerstone food group of the WFPB diet everyone agrees is good to eat...non-starchy vegetables. Well at least proponents of the WFPB diet get agreement with conventional dietary advice on one point. And it's an important one, these vegetables are high in nutrition, especially minerals.

But would there be a problem eating only non-starchy vegetables on a WFPB diet? Well, yes, they happen to be low in calories. And the aforementioned foods we are told not to eat happen to be high in calories. (They also happen to be high in micronutrients.) So what the heck is going on here?

Any diet that creates and supports health needs to provide two things essentially: 1) energy, also referred to as calories, or macronutrients; and 2) nutrition, also referred to as micronutrients, which are the tiny (micro) amounts of the various vitamins, minerals, fatty acids, and amino acids necessary for health and longevity. And of course there's a third all-important thing a healthy diet must provide: a lack of toxins.

In the most basic terms, calories "fuel" the body, and nutrients repair and maintain it. Of the two we need calories on a more immediate basis, for basic energy, and to get through each day with vitality.

So a person attempting to consume primarily non-starchy vegetables will not get enough calories to maintain day to day energy levels or long term health. In the parlance, they will "bonk" on the diet, and rather quickly at that.

And here we are left with a bit of an odd conundrum: of the food groups that recognized experts on WFPB nutrition say are the cornerstones of health - fruits, vegetables, whole grains, starches, and legumes, current popular advice says only vegetables are OK to eat.

This is not only an odd conundrum, but also, perhaps, it is telling in light of the fact that WFPB diets have produced the greatest levels of health and longevity in humans, as measured by countless epidemiological studies, and catalogued in books such as "Healthy at 100: The Scientifically Proven Secrets of the World's Healthiest and Longest-Lived People" and "The Blue Zones: Lessons for Living Longer From the People Who've Lived the Longest".

Is it possible we have been given carefully crafted misinformation by those who stand to profit from conventional animal based diets? Or is all this some kind of misunderstanding? The many thousands of people undertaking WFPB diets for disease reversal and better health quickly come to see conventional recommendations as myth, misunderstanding, or disinformation promulgated by big industries protecting profits.

To wrap up, another real world example of the healing power of a whole foods plant based diet seems appropriate. Here's the story of Katherine Lawrence, an aerospace engineer who recovered from stage four endometriosis, as told by Dr. Neal Barnard, founder of The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, in Washington DC

And here is Katherine's website

https://www.foodsavedme.com/about-us

A Huge Contribution to Humanity - Chile Slays Tony the Tiger - NYTimes

Wow, this has been a long time coming. A single government, Chile, leads the way for a potentially pivotal change in world health in "a hard fought guerrilla war" waged against the giant industries selling toxic addiction. Industries that have, to this point, had governments "by the balls" in what is IMHO most accurately characterized as "the GDP problem". This will not be met lying down by these industries (and others) that have profited so massively by the global "bad diet" health crisis.

A most interesting development! Bravo Chile.

Published Feb 7 in the New York Times:
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/07/health/obesity-chile-sugar-regulations.html

Energy is the Root of all Happy Successness

Just think for a moment when we are least energetic...it's when we are depressed. We all experience depression at some point, so we all have first hand experience of the energy - mood relationship.

Energy starts with fuel. Gas = forward motion. Bad gas = no motion.

Our native foods are whole foods only. In terms of total bulk for the average pre-industrial human the diet was plants, animals, insects, in that order.

We call cake a carb when it has more energy from fat. We call ice cream a fat when it has more energy from sugar.

Ice cream and cake, the celebration food for our children on their birthdays. Bad gas, no pun intended. And collectively, sociatially, we have yet to make the connection between junk foods for children and the rapidly increasing incidence in children of obesity, diabetes and the number of children's cancer hospitals.

At some point in the future, if we humans are lucky enough to continue evolving, we will consider feeding junk to children child abuse.

Processed junk has become so interwoven with consciousness we are totally confused what food is.

Michael Pollan said it most elegantly...eat food (he means whole foods), mostly plants, not too much.

And I will add: a high-carb low-fat 80/10/10 diet means there is no such thing as "too much". A pleasantly full stomach is "just the right amount" for calories and nutrition. And it also "just happens" to be the disease reversal diet. Are these two things coincidence? I think not. I think they are correlated.

And it shows that nature does make sense, after all. Who knew? Not modern nutrition science! (Using the term "science" very loosely.)

Athletic Performance pt 2

There are many examples now of whole food plant based athletes who are kicking some glute in their respective sports, I'll just show you one for now, in a vid I personally find entertaining.

Meet Michael Arnstein, who went from good to world-class when he changed his diet to whole food plant based, after completing and winning a grueling ultra-endurance event on his 40th birthday.

Measuring the Efficacy of Diet - Athletic Performance

Measuring the efficacy of diet is an interesting topic, and there are several ways to do that, each giving a different perspective on overall quality of diet. Logic tells us diets that perform well in several measures are better than diets that perform in one.

So what are these various ways of measuring quality of diet? I've been talking about disease reversal a lot in this blog because it's job one. It's pretty clear by now that whole food plant based diets are the only way to this point to reverse heart disease, the most common cause of death in the post industrial world. Drugs can't do it, surgery can't do it, and no other diet can do it, but the WFPB diet does it with speed and efficiency.

So disease reversal is one way. Some others are cognitive performance, emotional health and stability, athletic performance, speed of recovery, resistance to any/all diseases, and longevity.

Diets vary significantly in efficacy, studies measuring all these categories would put nutrition science to very good use in my opinion, but funding may be a problem!

The basic formula for dietary efficiency (related to efficacy) is pretty simple: foods which provide sufficient energy and nutrition, with least energy requirement in conversion and utilization. Commonly cited efficiency parameters are digestive time of transit, and digestive "transparency" (we remain unaware of digestive processes).

Eating patterns that cause us to become aware of digestion are inefficient. Antacids remain the biggest selling over-the-counter medications, which speaks directly to dietary inefficiencies, and is directly correlated to epidemic levels of so-called metabolic syndrome diseases.

Getting (finally!) to the topic of this blog post, athletic performance is an interesting category because it's potentially quite definitive. At this point I'm unaware of any studies, so I hope you'll forgive me for having some fun pointing out anecdotals.

But first let's look briefly at different forms of athleticism, and what's required, because the same diet may not work equally for all of them. There are sports where absolute power is all important, and others where functional strength, or strength to weight ratio, is more important.

We even see examples of both in one sport, in pro football for example the lineman wants to to run over the guy in front of him like a truck, and a little extra weight is a very good thing. But the wide receiver wants to be lean, nimble, and fleet of foot. The lineman might outweigh the receiver two to one, but the receiver's strength to weight ratio is likely to be considerably higher.

Functional strength and endurance are two areas where whole food plant based diets begin to come to the fore in athletic performance.

Here's a short video where the visual contrast between absolute strength and functional strength is pronounced. It features Frank Medrano, whose diet is whole food plant based, and CT Fletcher, who has consumed the typical omnivorous diet of bodybuilders.