It is my considered opinion that those of us lucky enough to have found our way to an SOS free (sugar, oil, salt) Whole Food Plant Based diet are missing the best source of nutrition available by not incorporating Dr. Doug Graham's perspective into the mix. After all, you're already doing an 80/10/10 calonutrient ratio and therefore have no need to fear insulin resistance (the sole reason for the "consume fruit with moderation" meme).
You may recall Dr. Graham is a raw food vegan, and also SOS free. His basic approach is to have a large fruit meal for a midday "break fast", and a large raw vegetable meal for dinner, with a handful of nuts/seeds daily.
Drs. McDougall, Fuhrman, Barnard have no restriction on cooked vegetables, including potatoes and legumes. They also have no particular restrictions on fruit, but one gets the impression neither do they take full advantage of it's rich nutritional benefit, not to mention the much more pleasurable diet in the bargain.
And the blend of Graham and McDougall et al makes moving through rocky western societies considerably easier. One learns over time how to do "well enough" being "flexitarian".
If you are SOS free WFPB already do not fear the fruit!
And in honor of the ongoing Woodstock Fruit Festival going on this week you may find this entertaining:
https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/600-fruitarians-gather-to-eat-sex-organs-at-the-woodstock-fruit-festival-300306833.html
Friday, August 24, 2018
Friday, August 17, 2018
The Corruption of Science and The Negative Impact on Health
Science and technology is so seductive, and therefor imminently subject to corruption...quotes between the red lines from an article published in Kaiser Health News - "Financial Ties That Bind: Studies Often Fall Short On Conflict-Of-Interest Disclosures"
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...Nearly two-thirds of the 100 physicians who rake in the most money from 10 device manufacturers failed to disclose a conflict of interest in their academic writing in 2016, according to a study published Wednesday in JAMA Surgery.
...The omission can have real-life impact for patients when their doctors rely on such research to make medical decisions, potentially without knowing the authors’ potential conflicts of interest.
...The issue is anytime there’s a new technology, people get really excited about it.
...The researchers also pinpointed the 10 physicians who received the highest compensation from each company. They then searched for articles published by these physicians between Jan. 1 and Dec. 31, 2016, and reviewed the full text of each article for COI disclosure. According to their findings, those 10 companies paid more than $12 million in 2015 to the 100 doctors included in the study. The median payment to these physicians was $95,993.
...The financial ties between medical device manufacturers and providers go well beyond academic research and ivory towers. As many as 94 percent of doctors, according to research published in the New England Journal of Medicine, report getting some kind of benefit from the industry.
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The best marketing medium in the 21st century for the "big" food, pharma, and medical industries? "Big science" of course.
Many of these folks are well meaning - my favorite Upton Sinclair quote: “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
...Nearly two-thirds of the 100 physicians who rake in the most money from 10 device manufacturers failed to disclose a conflict of interest in their academic writing in 2016, according to a study published Wednesday in JAMA Surgery.
...The omission can have real-life impact for patients when their doctors rely on such research to make medical decisions, potentially without knowing the authors’ potential conflicts of interest.
...The issue is anytime there’s a new technology, people get really excited about it.
...The researchers also pinpointed the 10 physicians who received the highest compensation from each company. They then searched for articles published by these physicians between Jan. 1 and Dec. 31, 2016, and reviewed the full text of each article for COI disclosure. According to their findings, those 10 companies paid more than $12 million in 2015 to the 100 doctors included in the study. The median payment to these physicians was $95,993.
...The financial ties between medical device manufacturers and providers go well beyond academic research and ivory towers. As many as 94 percent of doctors, according to research published in the New England Journal of Medicine, report getting some kind of benefit from the industry.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
The best marketing medium in the 21st century for the "big" food, pharma, and medical industries? "Big science" of course.
Many of these folks are well meaning - my favorite Upton Sinclair quote: “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”
Monday, August 6, 2018
Need proof nutrition is a young science? Read up on Flavonoids.
A few quotes from a paper dated 2013 (link below):
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There has been increasing interest in the research on flavonoids from plant sources because of their versatile health benefits reported in various epidemiological studies. Since flavonoids are directly associated with human dietary ingredients and health, there is need to evaluate structure and function relationship.
Flavonoids ...are known to be synthesized by plants in response to microbial infection.
The number of studies has suggested protective effects of flavonoids against many infectious (bacterial and viral diseases) and degenerative diseases such as cardiovascular diseases, cancers, and other age-related diseases.
Flavonoids are the most common and widely distributed group of plant phenolic compounds, occurring virtually in all plant parts. Flavonoids are an integral part of human and animal diet. Being phytochemicals, flavonoids cannot be synthesized by humans and animals. Thus flavonoids found in animals are of plant origin rather than being biosynthesized in situ.
Flavonoids in food are generally responsible for colour, taste, prevention of fat oxidation, and protection of vitamins and enzymes.
Preparation and processing of food may decrease flavonoid levels depending on the methods used.
Accurate estimation of the average dietary intake of flavonoids is difficult, because of the wide varieties of available flavonoids and the extensive distribution in various plants and also the diverse consumption in humans.
Flavonoids have been consumed by humans since the advent of human life on earth, that is, for about 4 million years. They have extensive biological properties that promote human health and help reduce the risk of diseases.
Flavonoids are also known to influence the quality and stability of foods by acting as flavorants, colorants, and antioxidants.
Intake of antioxidant flavonoids has been inversely related to the risk of incidence of dementia.
Lipid peroxidation is a common consequence of oxidative stress. Flavonoid protect lipids against oxidative damage by various mechanisms.
Antibacterial flavonoids might be having multiple cellular targets, rather than one specific site of action.
The immune system can be modified by diet, pharmacologic agents, environmental pollutants, and naturally occurring food chemicals. Certain members of flavonoids significantly affect the function of the immune system and inflammatory cells.
Dietary factors play an important role in the prevention of cancers. Fruits and vegetables having flavonoids have been reported as cancer chemopreventive agents. The critical relationship of fruit and vegetable intake and cancer prevention has been thoroughly documented. It has been suggested that major public health benefits could be achieved by substantially increasing consumption of these foods.
Naturally occurring flavonoids with antiviral activity have been recognized since the 1940s and many reports on the antiviral activity of various flavonoids are available.
Prevention and cure of diseases using phytochemicals especially flavonoids are well known. Fruits and vegetables are natural sources of flavonoids. Variety of flavonoids found in the nature possesses their own physical, chemical, and physiological properties. Medicinal efficacy of many flavonoids as antibacterial, hepatoprotective, anti-inflammatory, anticancer, and antiviral agents is well established.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3891543/
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(Me again) How many flavonoids have been discovered to this point? Many thousands and the number is still growing. Now we can wait for the health benefits of fruits and vegetables to be stuffed into pills, but they still won't be in the balances and substrate formats nature intended us to consume. Why wait? Eat your fruits and vegetables now.
Simple prescription for health:
1) skip breakfast extending your natural daily fasting period.
2) break your daily fast with a large fruit meal. (yum!)
3) have a large vegetable meal for dinner.
4) if you need between meal snacks, eat fruit.
5) never cook your fruit, eat many of your vegetables in salads (not cooked).
5) have a handful of nuts and seeds everyday.
In the "Preparation and processing of food" quote section above, not specifically mentioned in this paper is the destructive effect of cooking on flavonoids - 80% reduction in potency is not uncommon!
The "don't eat fruit" meme is propagated by folks who wish to continue consuming an animal heavy diet because it is culturally familiar, and by those who profit from high fat animal food diets. To their credit, "Paleos" have figured out the least harmful way to consume animal products, but it is not optimal for a variety of reasons. One of them is high fat diets cause insulin resistance, which means very moderate consumption of carbs, effectively eliminating fruit as a significant part of the diet...but fruit is one of the two healthiest food groups on the planet.
High fat low carb diets are not optimal...high carb low fat diets comprised of whole plants in variety is optimal.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
There has been increasing interest in the research on flavonoids from plant sources because of their versatile health benefits reported in various epidemiological studies. Since flavonoids are directly associated with human dietary ingredients and health, there is need to evaluate structure and function relationship.
Flavonoids ...are known to be synthesized by plants in response to microbial infection.
The number of studies has suggested protective effects of flavonoids against many infectious (bacterial and viral diseases) and degenerative diseases such as cardiovascular diseases, cancers, and other age-related diseases.
Flavonoids are the most common and widely distributed group of plant phenolic compounds, occurring virtually in all plant parts. Flavonoids are an integral part of human and animal diet. Being phytochemicals, flavonoids cannot be synthesized by humans and animals. Thus flavonoids found in animals are of plant origin rather than being biosynthesized in situ.
Flavonoids in food are generally responsible for colour, taste, prevention of fat oxidation, and protection of vitamins and enzymes.
Preparation and processing of food may decrease flavonoid levels depending on the methods used.
Accurate estimation of the average dietary intake of flavonoids is difficult, because of the wide varieties of available flavonoids and the extensive distribution in various plants and also the diverse consumption in humans.
Flavonoids have been consumed by humans since the advent of human life on earth, that is, for about 4 million years. They have extensive biological properties that promote human health and help reduce the risk of diseases.
Flavonoids are also known to influence the quality and stability of foods by acting as flavorants, colorants, and antioxidants.
Intake of antioxidant flavonoids has been inversely related to the risk of incidence of dementia.
Lipid peroxidation is a common consequence of oxidative stress. Flavonoid protect lipids against oxidative damage by various mechanisms.
Antibacterial flavonoids might be having multiple cellular targets, rather than one specific site of action.
The immune system can be modified by diet, pharmacologic agents, environmental pollutants, and naturally occurring food chemicals. Certain members of flavonoids significantly affect the function of the immune system and inflammatory cells.
Dietary factors play an important role in the prevention of cancers. Fruits and vegetables having flavonoids have been reported as cancer chemopreventive agents. The critical relationship of fruit and vegetable intake and cancer prevention has been thoroughly documented. It has been suggested that major public health benefits could be achieved by substantially increasing consumption of these foods.
Naturally occurring flavonoids with antiviral activity have been recognized since the 1940s and many reports on the antiviral activity of various flavonoids are available.
Prevention and cure of diseases using phytochemicals especially flavonoids are well known. Fruits and vegetables are natural sources of flavonoids. Variety of flavonoids found in the nature possesses their own physical, chemical, and physiological properties. Medicinal efficacy of many flavonoids as antibacterial, hepatoprotective, anti-inflammatory, anticancer, and antiviral agents is well established.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3891543/
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
(Me again) How many flavonoids have been discovered to this point? Many thousands and the number is still growing. Now we can wait for the health benefits of fruits and vegetables to be stuffed into pills, but they still won't be in the balances and substrate formats nature intended us to consume. Why wait? Eat your fruits and vegetables now.
Simple prescription for health:
1) skip breakfast extending your natural daily fasting period.
2) break your daily fast with a large fruit meal. (yum!)
3) have a large vegetable meal for dinner.
4) if you need between meal snacks, eat fruit.
5) never cook your fruit, eat many of your vegetables in salads (not cooked).
5) have a handful of nuts and seeds everyday.
In the "Preparation and processing of food" quote section above, not specifically mentioned in this paper is the destructive effect of cooking on flavonoids - 80% reduction in potency is not uncommon!
The "don't eat fruit" meme is propagated by folks who wish to continue consuming an animal heavy diet because it is culturally familiar, and by those who profit from high fat animal food diets. To their credit, "Paleos" have figured out the least harmful way to consume animal products, but it is not optimal for a variety of reasons. One of them is high fat diets cause insulin resistance, which means very moderate consumption of carbs, effectively eliminating fruit as a significant part of the diet...but fruit is one of the two healthiest food groups on the planet.
High fat low carb diets are not optimal...high carb low fat diets comprised of whole plants in variety is optimal.
Wednesday, August 1, 2018
What do instincts have to do with nutrition?
We need two basic types of nutrition, macro nutrients, or calories for fuel, and micro nutrients, vitamins and minerals etc, for ongoing health. The micronutrients are among the thousands of chemicals that repair and maintain our bodies.
We are told that we should get the "recommended daily allowance" of all the known key micronutrients.
Definition of RDA:
https://www.merriam-webster.com/medical/recommended%20daily%20allowance
But the RDA is a bit of a science fiction. We do need calories on a daily basis to keep going, but we do not need micronutrients daily to keep going. Why is that?
The body stores micronutrients - animals in nature only restore supplies of many of them on a seasonal basis. They have adapted to this pattern over the millenia. We humans are no exception! We have not evolved physiologically to any significant degree for 100,000 years, but the industrial revolution began, what, about 200 years ago?
Meanwhile we have developed all kinds of technologically concentrated and refined substances that massively overstimulate our innate inborn instincts governing what food we eat, and how much of it. Which seems kind of stupid, why did we do that? Well, because the taste of these things is amazing, and because we can do it. Also because there's billions of dollars of profits in it.
Betcha can't eat one. Presenting: the lowly potato chip.
Standard diets have become full of these concentrated substances. Modern foods have become irresistible, addictive, and also unfortunately, deadly. Consuming "foods" (using the term loosely) laden with these substances completely wrecks our inborn instinctual ability to "know" what and how much to eat. The foods we are biologically adapted to, the foods that make us whole and well, are no longer even on the table, but if they were we would still not pick them because our instincts for nutrition have been wrecked by concentrated substances.
So what are these "native" foods for humans? If you believe as I do that we are adapted to consume mostly plants, then one common definition promoted by many of the MDs using diet to reverse the too common diseases of diet is SOS free WFPB, which translates to sugar oil and salt free plant based whole foods. This immediately eliminates the instinct wreckers in our diets, and provides us with the nutrient dense calories we need for wellness.
Sugar oil and salt are the three primary problems in modern diets. Let's go back to the potato chip - salt and oil, highly addictive, and toxic. What's for dessert? Sugar and fat, also toxic and highly addictive.
There are so many problems with cooking oils I won't even try to address them all here, but in this context they provide hidden and empty calories. And if that weren't bad enough, for many folks consuming standard diets most of the total calories they consume in an average day come from oils!
Can you imagine? Most of the "food" consumed in a day is oil? And when it's heated it's really not just oil, it's grease. No wonder I had acne as a child.
But to get back on point, the purpose of this particular blog is to tell you that all is not lost, we can return our inborn instincts to normal. Well normal is no longer the completely accurate word since so many of us have have unintentionally wrecked them beginning early childhood.
When we go back to eating whole foods only, as close to their natural state as possible - simple recipes of few ingredients with minimal or no cooking and no added sugar oil or salt - within a relatively short period of time our instincts begin to return. We begin to taste complex and wonderful flavors in simple vegetables we may not have noticed before. And fruit becomes a dance of utter deliciousness.
Instincts begin to return relatively quickly, but we become accustomed to them, and the messages they are giving us, a bit more gradually. For example (and to return to the beginning), what do instincts have to do with nutrition?
When we are running the clean body instincts returned to us by clean foods, and are low in some particular micronutrient, we will find the foods that contain that nutrient especially appealing "for no particular reason", as attraction to the foods that are supremely good for us becomes a "self-healing" problem.
The body does truly vector toward health at every available opportunity, in every possible way.
We are told that we should get the "recommended daily allowance" of all the known key micronutrients.
Definition of RDA:
https://www.merriam-webster.com/medical/recommended%20daily%20allowance
But the RDA is a bit of a science fiction. We do need calories on a daily basis to keep going, but we do not need micronutrients daily to keep going. Why is that?
The body stores micronutrients - animals in nature only restore supplies of many of them on a seasonal basis. They have adapted to this pattern over the millenia. We humans are no exception! We have not evolved physiologically to any significant degree for 100,000 years, but the industrial revolution began, what, about 200 years ago?
Meanwhile we have developed all kinds of technologically concentrated and refined substances that massively overstimulate our innate inborn instincts governing what food we eat, and how much of it. Which seems kind of stupid, why did we do that? Well, because the taste of these things is amazing, and because we can do it. Also because there's billions of dollars of profits in it.
Betcha can't eat one. Presenting: the lowly potato chip.
Standard diets have become full of these concentrated substances. Modern foods have become irresistible, addictive, and also unfortunately, deadly. Consuming "foods" (using the term loosely) laden with these substances completely wrecks our inborn instinctual ability to "know" what and how much to eat. The foods we are biologically adapted to, the foods that make us whole and well, are no longer even on the table, but if they were we would still not pick them because our instincts for nutrition have been wrecked by concentrated substances.
So what are these "native" foods for humans? If you believe as I do that we are adapted to consume mostly plants, then one common definition promoted by many of the MDs using diet to reverse the too common diseases of diet is SOS free WFPB, which translates to sugar oil and salt free plant based whole foods. This immediately eliminates the instinct wreckers in our diets, and provides us with the nutrient dense calories we need for wellness.
Sugar oil and salt are the three primary problems in modern diets. Let's go back to the potato chip - salt and oil, highly addictive, and toxic. What's for dessert? Sugar and fat, also toxic and highly addictive.
There are so many problems with cooking oils I won't even try to address them all here, but in this context they provide hidden and empty calories. And if that weren't bad enough, for many folks consuming standard diets most of the total calories they consume in an average day come from oils!
Can you imagine? Most of the "food" consumed in a day is oil? And when it's heated it's really not just oil, it's grease. No wonder I had acne as a child.
But to get back on point, the purpose of this particular blog is to tell you that all is not lost, we can return our inborn instincts to normal. Well normal is no longer the completely accurate word since so many of us have have unintentionally wrecked them beginning early childhood.
When we go back to eating whole foods only, as close to their natural state as possible - simple recipes of few ingredients with minimal or no cooking and no added sugar oil or salt - within a relatively short period of time our instincts begin to return. We begin to taste complex and wonderful flavors in simple vegetables we may not have noticed before. And fruit becomes a dance of utter deliciousness.
Instincts begin to return relatively quickly, but we become accustomed to them, and the messages they are giving us, a bit more gradually. For example (and to return to the beginning), what do instincts have to do with nutrition?
When we are running the clean body instincts returned to us by clean foods, and are low in some particular micronutrient, we will find the foods that contain that nutrient especially appealing "for no particular reason", as attraction to the foods that are supremely good for us becomes a "self-healing" problem.
The body does truly vector toward health at every available opportunity, in every possible way.
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