Let's All Have Dessert For Breakfast!!

Does the world need 369 kinds of yogurt? Let me narrow that question a bit. Do the grocery shoppers in my neighborhood need 369 kinds of yogurt? The dairy case at my supermarket suggests that we do. Yes, I counted. 369 distinct varieties. Capitalism run amuck?

I love yogurt. But I hate yogurt. What do I love? I love creamy, full-fat Greek yogurt, unsweetened, or perhaps sweetened with a little stevia. This is yogurt as nature intended – a balanced healthy meal that has been around for centuries. What do I hate? I hate sugary, low-fat yogurt that is passed off as a ‘health food’ when it really resembles dessert more than breakfast.

Let me elaborate. When you buy anything but plain yogurt, you are buying a lot of sugar (or chemical sweetners, which I would caution against). Allowing the food industry to decide how much sugar to put in anything, even yogurt, is a bad idea. (If you have not yet seen That Sugar Film, it is smart, funny, and worth renting. The film illustrates that much of the sugar we eat is found in food that is perceived as healthy, like yogurt.) A 6oz container of yogurt often contains about 20 grams of added sugar. That’s five teaspoons. Would you let your kid put five teaspoons of sugar on his cereal? I hope not. Yogurt has a natural tang to it, and this takes some getting used to – but if you pour a bunch of sugar in it, the tang is masked by the super-sweet flavor. This is what we have become accustomed to – heavily sweetened yogurt. Yogurt begins to look, nutritionally, pretty much like dessert.

Here’s low-fat strawberry yogurt, contrasted with low-fat ice cream and cookies. Note that although the yogurt offers a few extra grams of protein, it comes along with more grams of sugar, too:

Stonyfield Low-fat Organic Strawberry Yogurt    

1 cup (200 calories)

Fat – 2g • Carbs – 36g (sugars 35g) • Protein – 9g

Breyers All Natural Light Vanilla/Chocolate/Strawberry Ice Cream

1 cup (218 calories)

Fat – 6g • Carbs – 35g (sugars 30g) • Protein – 6g

Mother’s Chocolate Chip Cookies

6 Cookies (220 calories)

Fat – 10g • Carbs – 30g (sugars 15g) • Protein – 5g

The question, ‘Is this dessert?” is sometimes even provoked by the names of the flavors offered: Chobani’s Chocolate Haze Craze; Dannon Oikos’ Vanilla Sundae or Chocolate Covered Stawberry; Dannon Danimals’ Cotton Candy Thrill; and Yoplait’s Boston Cream Pie.

To make matters worse, America’s misguided fear of saturated fat has led to mostly reduced fat offerings. In my supermarket, the low-fat and fat-free varieties dominate, with 94% of the shelf space. (Only 23 full-fat offerings – yes, I counted.) This is a problem for two reasons. First of all, low-fat engineering takes a balanced, natural food and removes a key nutrient, leaving behind mostly carbohydrates. Secondly, it makes the yogurt more sour and less palatable, so more sugar is required to make it taste good. Stripping fat out of yogurt makes breakfast (or your snack) a carbohydrate heavy meal that lacks staying power. Let’s look at the macros of the two extremes for a moment:

Full-fat Greek Yogurt – Plain                       

1 cup (220 calories)                                     

Fat – 11g • Carbs – 9g (sugars are 16% of calories) • Protein – 20g                                                    

Fat Free Fruit Yogurt

1 cup (230 calories)

 Fat – 0g • Carbs – 46g (sugars are 80% of calories) • Protein – 11g

Which one looks more like a meal and less like dessert?

Yogurt-- Maximized

How can you get the most from your yogurt? Here are three things you can do to skip the hype and go straight to the good stuff:

1. Go Greek (usually roughly double the protein);
2. Buy plain (unsweetened, so you control how much sugar or stevia goes in);
3. Buy full-fat (better taste, and more satisfying, balanced nutrition).

In my grocery store, with 369 choices, these three criteria rule out all but one option. At specialty markets, you'll find a few more.

Protein -- Are You Eating Enough?

Most American women don’t eat enough protein.  Surprising, in an affluent nation such as ours, isn’t it? But, the facts don’t lie. Here, before you, are the facts, from the Scientific Report of the 2015 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee:

All those black bars on the left of the graph…  those bars show the shortfalls, which are markedly greater for women than men. Now, some of this shortfall is caused by economic realities; protein-rich foods can be pricey. But, some of this shortfall is due to our nation’s move toward a plant-based diet. If you have, perhaps, convinced yourself that broccoli has as much protein as steak, you might want to check out this post by the brilliant and no-nonsense-yet-amusing registered dietician (and MPH) Adele Hite, who will set you straight.

Adele and I had a chance to sit down, over pork chops, and discuss 'adequate protein,' and how fundamental it is to a healthy diet. In fact, adequate protein (not high protein -- just enough) should be a key priority in the dietary guidelines. Just how much protein is enough? That is very hard to say. The Recommended Dietary Allowance (RDA) is 46g for women and 56g for men. It is based on about 0.36g of daily dietary protein per pound of body weight. So, if you weigh 130 pounds, the math (130lb x 0.36g/lb) suggests a minimum of 46g of protein each day. This is low – most affluent populations eat more protein – perhaps 70-100g per day.  However, according to the Institute of Medicine, the keeper of the RDA’s, 46g of protein is enough to prevent malnutrition. A little more would be better, especially since protein tends to be filling and can help with keeping weight gain at bay.

Looking at the chart, above, we learn that 70% of high school girls and 70% of elderly women do not even manage to consume 46g of protein each day.  Between age 19 and 70, about 50% of women are not getting enough protein. Obviously, there is plenty of room for improvement here.

Are you eating enough protein? What does 46g of protein look like, you might ask?  (And remember, 46g would be a minimum daily intake for a 130 pound adult.)

Examples of food that contains roughly 46g of protein:

•  7 or 8 large eggs
• 5-6 oz of skinless chicken or turkey breast
• 5 cups of 2% milk
•  2 ¼ hamburger patties (each made from ¼ pound 85% lean ground beef)
•  1 ½ cups almonds (about 180 nuts)*
•  2.5 cans of pinto beans*
• 3.5 cups (7 servings) Grape Nuts cereal*

* With the vegetarian sources, care must be taken to make sure the protein is complete. (For more on that, see the latter half of Adele’s post.)

Why is protein important? We use protein to build and repair our tissues. (This means active women need more than sedentary women.) We use protein to build babies and manufacture breast milk. (So if you are in that stage of life, eat plenty of protein!) We use protein to make hormones and enzymes. So, if you want to keep your body in good shape (in repair and running smoothly), you need high quality protein.

For more on protein, check out this piece from Authority Nutrition.

When It Comes to Carbs, Don't Be Dense

As the obesity and diabetes epidemics progress, the search for causes and explanations becomes ever more urgent.  Why, now, are so many people struggling with these diseases? There are many theories…  I recently came across one interesting idea that appeals to my sense of possibilities, and it came from a 2012 paper entitled, "Comparison with ancestral diets suggests dense acellular carbohydrates promote an inflammatory microbiota, and may be the primary dietary cause of leptin resistance and obesity." Quite a mouthful. But author Ian Spreadbury makes a pretty simple and interesting point in this paper. The notion is that ancestral foods, (foods that humans have been eating for thousands of years), are not particularly dense with digestible carbohydrates, but many modern foods are.

Maybe our body’s mechanism for managing carbohydrate calories is gradually overwhelmed by our modern low-fat diet, rich with foods that are very dense with carbohydrate calories. Could these modern foods be driving the twin obesity and diabetes epidemics? The low-fat diet, introduced and encouraged by our government in the late 70’s and early 80’s, pushed us away from some traditional foods (they asked us to decrease consumption of  meat, animal fats, full-fat dairy, and eggs) and toward modern foods (they asked us to increase consumption of grains like bread, cereal, and pasta). And, since that is when these epidemics picked up speed, it seems like a point in time that deserves some scrutiny.

Calculating the carbohydrate density of a food is simple. In a 100 gram serving, take a look at the grams of total carbohydrate and simply subtract the grams of fiber.  Like so:

Although the author provides his own nifty graph in Figure 1 of his paper (scroll down a bit), let me offer a more colorful version of the carbohydrate density of various modern and ancestral foods. Note that the scale (0-100g) is the same in these two graphs...  You will see that there is very little overlap. With the exception of cassava, taro, and plantains, ancestral foods are all less dense (from a carbohydrate perspective) than the modern creations listed.

Are there modern creations that I left out that are lower in carbohydrate density? Yes. I cheated a little to make the graphs look better. For example, the mysterious creation, Kraft Free Singles (fake, fat-free cheese), has a carbohydrate density of only 11.5. Although low, this is more than triple the carbohydrate density of real cheddar cheese (3.1), so the pattern of higher carbohydrate density in modern foods is intact. Likewise, low-fat fruit yogurt scores 19.1 -- again, lower than most modern creations, but quadruple the carbohydrate density of plain full-fat yogurt (4.7).

Of course, one of the reasons most of these modern foods score so high on this scale is that they are not a real, whole food full of fiber and/or water. So, might it help to drink a lot of water when chowing down on that granola bar? Maybe... it certainly could not hurt. Note, also, that it definitely does NOT help to wash the granola bar down with soda or Gatorade or Snapple or Red Bull or apple juice.  Nor does it help to add a big glass of fresh-squeezed orange juice to your breakfast of Post Honeycomb cereal. VERY BAD IDEA. That would add to your body's carbohydrate load, now wouldn't it?

Fruit Vs. Veggies

Fruits and vegetables… almost universally lauded as part of the path to healthier eating. But are all fruits and vegetables created equal?  No.

Eating fresh fruits and vegetables means eating plants. There are other plant products, like seeds, grains, legumes, and nuts – all seeds, really. But usually, when a dietician tells you to eat plenty of fruits and vegetables, she is referring to other parts of the plants – the root (carrot), the stock (celery), the flower (broccoli), the leaves (lettuce), the pod (green beans), and the fruit (apple). Obviously, pods and fruit contain seeds, so this gets a little blurry… bear with me.

Speaking of blurry, distinguishing between fruit and veggies can be tricky. Are olives vegetables? No. They grow on trees and have pits like cherries! So are olives fruit? Yes, but don’t put them in your fruit salad.  What about tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, and squash? They grow from flowers and have seeds inside like melons.  So they are also fruit, although they go better with vegetables, don’t you think? Confusing, I know -- let’s just keep calling them veggies... Then, there are avocados. Vegetables? Nope. They grow on trees with a pit, like a mango or maybe even a peach, so they are fruit! Again, confusing.

In the overlapping world of fruits and vegetables, perhaps the main thing to ask yourself is, "Why am I eating this?" Are you looking for mostly vitamins and fiber – a healthy accompaniment to a meal? Are you looking for something green on which you can pour melted butter or olive oil to add variety and healthy fat to your meal? Or, maybe you are looking for energy (calories)? Or, perhaps you are looking for dessert or a treat? It is cheating if you are pounding bananas and skipping the lettuce all the time. I know – you love bananas – they taste sweet – of course you like them. But they do have a lot more sugar and starch than, say, a cucumber.  If you are clear about what you are looking for, the choices should be easier. 

Regardless of your choices, with all fruit and veggies, you will be getting micronutrients, fiber, and a much lower dose of sugar/starch than you would get from modern inventions like cookies or crackers.  So eat your fruit and veggies – they’re vintage! 

BUT, But, but…  if you are insulin resistant, pre-diabetic, diabetic (more than half our adult population, people!)… and/or, if you are trying to lose weight (a whole lot of people, too) you may want to ease off on or even skip the last two categories (below the line). 

Micronutrients and Fiber But NOT Many Calories

• Tart fruit – berries, limes, lemons, grapefruit
• Veggies that grow above the ground – greens, celery, cabbage, green beans, broccoli, cauliflower, Brussels sprout, asparagus, etc.
• Fruit passing as veggies – tomatoes, zucchini, peppers, cucumbers

Balanced Energy

• Fatty fruit -- olives, avocados, coconut (well, coconuts are nuts – the world’s largest seed, actually -- but let’s count it as a fruit!) 
• Maybe we can sneak in cacao, too… yum!

---

Starchy Energy

• Root Vegetables – carrots, beets, onions, potatoes, sweet potatoes, tubers
• Fruit passing as veggies – winter squash, pumpkins, plantains
• Grain passing as a veggie – yellow corn
• Legumes passing as veggies - peas, lima beans (vintage...  does anyone still eat these?)

Dessert/Sweet Treat

• Sweet fruit – pineapples, apples, bananas, oranges, grapes, pears, melons, mangos, peaches, plums, cherries, figs, dates, etc.

A Vintage Grocery List

If you want practical advice about what to buy for healthier, real-food-more-fat eating, this blog post is for you. Filling your fridge and cupboards with these yummy whole foods will make it easy to stay on track with your vintage diet. No recipes required, really...  just cook up these basics and enjoy. This is not intended as an exhaustive list, but it should get you and your family started eating vintage.

VEGGIES

To eat raw: Greens, peppers, avocados, carrots, cucumbers, celery, jicama, and tomatoes.

To sauté or bake: Green beans, asparagus, squash, onions, broccoli, cauliflower, spinach, cabbage, Brussels sprouts, mushrooms, and root vegetables (as permitted in your plan).

FRUIT

For (almost) everyone: Blueberries, raspberries, grapefruit, and lemons...  Limes for Margaritas...  

Other fruit is fine for those who are not diabetic, insulin resistant, or trying to lose a lot of weight. Do not buy fruit juice, and remember to buy fruit in moderation; think of fruit as dessert, not a main course.

MEAT/FISH

To cook: Ground beef (for burgers, tacos, shepherd's pie, meat sauce), beef, chicken, lamb, pork (including sausage and bacon), veal, fatty fish (like salmon), white fish (like cod), and seafood (any).

Deli: Nitrate-free ham, roast beef, pastrami, salami/pepperoni, turkey, chicken, and chicken salad.

DAIRY

(Skip if you are Paleo.) Full fat cheeses, whole fat Greek yogurt (plain -- add vanilla and stevia as desired), sour cream, cream cheese, and heavy cream. If you are following WAPF or have growing children, you may want whole, unsweetened milk. 

Don't forget the eggs for breakfast, salads, or even dinner. (Encouraged for Paleo!)

FATS

Butter, olive oil, coconut oil, avocado oil, and nut oils. Lard and tallow if you can find them. 

GRAINS/LEGUMES

Possibly none. If you are following WAPF, whole grains and legumes (to soak or sprout) are permitted. Products such as sprouted breads may also be permitted. If you are following the Perfect Health Diet, white rice is encouraged.

OTHER

Coffee. Tea. Olives. Stevia. Tree nuts and nut butters. Maybe peanuts and peanut butter, but not if you are strict Paleo/Primal. Beef Jerky. Coconut butter (also called coconut manna) and coconut milk (full fat) or coconut cream for desserts and Asian dishes. Dark chocolate (>70%).

For a pictorial guide to delicious food, click through to the Vintage Food page on this site.

For a condensed .pdf of this list to take to the store, click here.

Better Than a Fitbit

Fitness trackers that count our steps can be fun and motivating. But, if you want to avoid pre-diabetes, metabolic syndrome, and heart disease, spend your money on a blood glucose meter.  For less than half the cost of a Fitbit, you can have a meter (and some test strips and lancets) that tells you whether your body is able to manage sugar levels in your blood.  This measure can alert you to hidden problems and help you craft a diet that is better suited to your body’s needs.

Diabetes is a big deal. It is costly to manage, destructive enough to take years off your life, and basically to-be-avoided. It is a huge risk factor for heart disease, too. The sooner you can catch your body veering from healthy toward pre-diabetes, the better. A Fitbit can’t help you catch the gradual creep upwards in fasting blood sugar that tells you that your metabolic balance is off. But a blood sugar meter can. And, since there are often no signs or symptoms associated with pre-diabetes, regular testing is the best way to make sure you are still healthy.  There are more than 86 million pre-diabetics in America, and most (~90%) of them do not know they are sick. Early detection enables people to reduce refined carbohydrates in their diet and often reverse their disease. Early detection also minimizes the damage that elevated blood sugar levels inflict.

Just like a Fitbit, it is pretty easy to use a blood sugar meter – yours should come with basic instructions. The most important test is to measure your blood sugar when you wake up in the morning, after going at least 8 hours without eating.  This gives you your fasting blood sugar level…  healthy levels fall between 70-90 mg/dL. Levels from 100-125mg/dL signify pre-diabetes, and levels above 125 mg/dL signify diabetes. Once you have your meter, you can also test how long it takes your body to get blood sugar back in check after a meal. Blood sugars should be below 140 two hours after eating.

Just as a Fitbit can motivate you to get off the couch and walk a few extra steps, a blood sugar meter can motivate you to eat more balanced meals that work for your body.  Simply monitoring your blood sugar every 15 minutes after a typical breakfast can show you what sort of a ride your blood sugar level took before returning to normal. Seeing what is actually happening in your body empowers you to tailor your meals to suit your particular needs. Through trial and error, you can find a mix of whole foods that satisfies yet does not put you on the 'wild ride' of the refined carbohydrate-induced blood sugar roller coaster.  Above on the right, you can see a graph of how two breakfasts, similar in total calories, affected my blood sugar. Both breakfasts were built around yogurt. The first was full-fat Greek yogurt, plain with a little stevia for sweetness, plus a couple of tablespoons cream, 1/4 cup blueberries, and two tablespoons slivered almonds. The second breakfast was similar, yet low in fat -- organic fat-free blueberry yogurt, an apple, and a granola bar. Without a blood sugar meter, we are unaware of this ride that so many of us jump on at breakfast and stay on until bedtime. With a blood sugar meter, you can see the peaks and valleys, and plan a way off that ride (eat less sugar and flour!)

Are you one of the 78 million American adults with undiagnosed pre-diabetes? Stop by any drug store, invest in a blood sugar meter, and you will know tomorrow morning. It’s that simple. And, it is much more important than knowing (exactly) how many steps you took yesterday, don’t you think?

Triage In Your Local Grocery Store

Balancing vintage sensibilities in a modern supermarket is challenging. Avoiding all the refined carbohydrates and refined oils in the grocery store really cuts down on options.  Let’s face it:  sugar (in all of its many forms), flour, crazy corn derivatives, and vegetable oil have made it into almost all processed food.

Part of the trick to shopping vintage is TRIAGE – knowing what is important and what can be ignored (at least for now). Some modern foods need to be avoided, but others can remain.  With practice, you will get good at avoiding most of the ‘bad’ stuff, while still enjoying some of the most delicious modern inventions, especially family favorites.

For many families, vintage eating is more of a direction than a strict regimen. Many people who eat this way follow the 80/20 rule…  80% vintage, 20% modern. For some, vintage eating just means more real food and less processed food.  So which processed foods stay, and which ones go? The answer is influenced by your health and goals, as well as your personal preferences in the realms of convenience, cost, and taste. It also depends upon available substitutes.

Ask yourself these questions about any processed product before putting it into your grocery cart:

1. Does my family love this?
2. Do we need this? (If it is a dessert or sugar-sweetened beverage, the answer is 'no.')
3. Will we consume only small amounts of this?
4. Is it hard to find an acceptable real food substitute?

If all of your answers are 'yes,' it probably should make the cut. If there are no’s in there, you will have to weigh whether it is delicious, important, convenient and irreplaceable enough to ‘cheat.’ Deprivation vs. guilt, right?

Here is an example.  In my house, one of the processed foods I still buy is Hellmann’s Mayonnaise. (Hellmann’s, like all commercial mayonnaise, is full of refined vegetable oil, so it doesn’t qualify as vintage.) Why do I still buy it?

1. Does my family love this?   Yes. Especially my husband, and I want to stay married ;-)
2. Do we need this? Yes. No reason to live without mayonnaise. It is naturally low-carb and sugar free!
3. Will we eat only small amounts of this? Yes. We are not huge mayonnaise eaters.
4. Is it hard to find an acceptable real food substitute? Yes. I tried substituting with homemade olive oil mayonnaise… The taste was heavy and unacceptable, and it wasn’t quick and easy to make. (It involved getting out the food processor, which means extra cleanup.) Plus, this unpopular substitute only keeps for about a week, so it would be a regular hassle and lead to extra spoilage/waste.

In contrast, although I used to use store bought salad dressing, I now make my own. (Most prepared dressings don’t qualify as vintage – they are full of vegetable oils like soy, corn, canola, and/or cottonseed oil. Many are full of sugar, too, which is unnecessary and not where I would choose to splurge on sugar. Remember: triage!) Why did I cut out this convenience?

1. Does my family love this? Yes. Especially Hidden Valley Ranch ;-(
2. Do we need this? Yes. We eat salad almost every day and dressing adds fat to our meal and makes them more satisfying and delicious.
3. Will we eat only small amounts of this? No. We go through a lot of salad dressing.
4. Is it hard to find an acceptable real food substitute? No. I make dressing in a few minutes with olive oil, vinegar, salt, herbs, and mustard. It lasts for weeks and saves a few dollars. The taste is stronger than the lighter, refined oils, but it is still delicious. I also occasionally make creamy dressings with real sour cream.

In this case, the quantity we go through and the easy and delicious substitute swayed me to eliminate commercial salad dressing from our fridge most of the time.

Another example would be pizza versus pasta. We love pizza, there is nothing quite like it, and it is cheap and convenient. So we still eat it – just less often – perhaps once or twice a month. But pasta… we don’t really love or need it, and I can still make Bolognese sauce which we either eat like chili or put on just a few noodles. So for us, pizza (in moderation) makes the cut, whereas pasta doesn’t.

Knowing when to splurge on modern favorites can help keep the peace and make vintage eating more doable for your family!

Juiced On Juice

Every month or so, I buy a 16oz container of freshly squeezed orange juice. And, I noticed that the always-helpful cashiers at my grocery store usually ask me, “Would you like to keep that out?” By this, they mean would I like to keep the OJ separate from the bagged groceries because I might want easy access to this beverage? Presumably, so I could chug it in the car on my way home???

My reply is always, “No thanks.” But, actually, what I want to say is…. “This is orange juice for my family of five. We will all get three to four ounces of juice in a small (juice) glass on Sunday morning. It’s a treat – we do this once a month. So, NO, I will not be downing this on my drive home.”

Orange juice, although delicious, is full of sugar. Two cups (16oz) of orange juice has more sugar than a 12oz Coke.  And, juice is fruit stripped of its fiber, so we tend to over-consume it. 16 oz of orange juice is the juice of roughly six medium oranges. That is a lot of oranges... The juice contains a trace amount of fat and a couple of grams of protein. Most of the calories are from sugar. Basically, orange juice is a carb-fest.

But the cashiers had me thinking… Lots of customers must say, “Yes. Please leave it out.” (Or they wouldn't ask, right?) And at least some of these shoppers must proceed to drink all or most of that 16oz container on the long ride home. So I thought, hmmm… what would happen if I chugged the orange juice?

This graph gives you a picture of what happened to my blood sugar during this little adventure. Not pretty. And, I was definitely a little buzzed... I felt a rush. I felt a little bloated (that's a lot of juice!) and a little dazed. I could NOT CONCENTRATE (perhaps explaining the warning on the label, 'NOT from CONCENTRATE')? And then, two and a half hours later, I was starving. So I would say, being 'on the juice' is a bad idea. Even if you mean fresh, organic orange juice.

Stuck in a Failed Paradigm

Metabolic syndrome, a collection of symptoms that is the 'on-ramp' to diabetes, heart disease, or both, is present in over a third of American adults. By age 50, almost half of us have metabolic syndrome. HALF. 10% of normal weight and underweight individuals have metabolic syndrome, so this is not just an affliction visited on those struggling with their weight.  

Are these the odds you want for your children? It is time to find a way of eating that works as well at 48 as it does at 14.

“Insanity [or did he mean stupidity?]: Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”

— Albert Einstein

Recognizing mistakes and then trying something new is a big part of progress. We cannot progress if we take a failed idea and try harder at it. Tweaking a failed paradigm still leaves us in a failed paradigm. To review, half of us are very sick -- in fact, metabolically deranged --  by age 50. HALF. Sounds like a failed paradigm, doesn't it? Why are we eating this way? Because our government and public health officials encouraged low-fat eating, and are not objective enough to acknowledge that, after 40 years of trying, it is not working for most eaters. Yet, it is obvious - the current approach is NOT working. Let's not tweak it. Let's find a new approach -- a new paradigm. Vintage eating, with real food and more fat.

For a visual of the scale of the metabolic illness that ravages our collective health, check out this infographic:

What Was On Those Boats?

When British colonial doctors traveled to the Colonies to care for the British settlers in distant lands, they were consistently amazed by the absence of chronic diseases in native populations. In fact, originally, heart disease, obesity, diabetes, and cancer were referred to as the 'Diseases of Civilization' rather than 'chronic diseases.' Why? Because 'uncivilized' natives did not have these diseases. But, as indigenous  populations began to consume more and more of the food imported for the settlers, the colonial doctors noticed that chronic disease began to afflict the natives. It often took decades, but as traditional food ways diminished and 'Western' diets were adopted by traditional societies, Western diseases arrived, too. So that begs the question, "What was on those boats?"  

“On my arrival in Gabon, I was astonished to encounter no cases of cancer... I can not, of course, say positively that there was no cancer at all, but, like other frontier doctors, I can only say that if any cases existed they must have been quite rare.”

— Dr. Albert Schweitzer (reflecting back to 1913)

Dr. Albert Schweitzer, a doctor who received the Nobel Peace Prize for his missionary work, spent over four decades in a missionary hospital in Gabon (that's Africa, folks), treating thousands of natives each year. And initially, he found almost no cases of chronic disease. The natives seemed somehow immune. Over time, chronic disease developed, according to Schweitzer,as "the natives were living more and more after the manner of the whites." 

As you might imagine, a long, unrefrigerated sea journey was not possible for many types of food. Were the Colonists importing butter, eggs, and meat? No way. The foods shipped to the Colonies had to be far less perishable. What was the cargo? It was largely white sugar, white flour, and white rice. Could these foods be the cause of 'Diseases of Civilization?'

Thirst Quenching 101

Soda. Juice. Snapple. Gatorade. Energy Drinks. Lemonade. Diet versions of all of these...  what is a mother to serve?

Here is a basic way to think about hydration. Every mammal on earth drinks water. Carnivores, like wolves, drink water. Herbivores, like deer, drink water. Primates, like gorillas drink water. Humans are primates and mammals. So, if you or someone in your family is thirsty, water is your go-to drink. If family members are drinking something to accompany a meal, think of this as hydration, and go with water.

What if my child is playing soccer? Should he drink a sports drink like Gatorade or Propel? Probably not. Water is the best drink to replenish fluids during and after athletics. Water does not contain extra and unnecessary sugar and salt. Are there exceptions? Yes. Is your child playing soccer for more than three hours straight? Or, is your child playing soccer in extreme heat? Unless your child is engaging in endurance athletics or you are concerned about hot weather to which your child is not accustomed, water is best.

What about milk? I like to think of milk as food - something to drink when you are hungry, not thirsty. So, if you are looking for a snack, whole, unsweetened milk might be a good choice, assuming you or your family member does well with dairy. But for thirst, go with water. (If you have an underweight child into whom you are always trying to sneak calories, maybe milk is a good choice anytime.)

What about alcohol? If you are thirsty, drink water. If you want to get a buzz on, drink alcohol. If you want to get a buzz on while maintaining your weight, avoid adding sugary beverages to your cocktails, and try to keep an eye on how many drinks you consume each week.

What about soda, lemonade, Snapple, Sweet Tea, fruit juice, and other sugary beverages? Again, if you are thirsty, drink water. If you are choosing a beverage to accompany a meal, drink water. If you are celebrating a special occasion, perhaps you might choose to splurge and have a soft drink. And, when you drink it, think of it as special treat, not a daily privilege. (Note to self: keep these celebrations to once or twice a month.) For day-to-day hydration, drink only water. 

May I flavor my water with citrus, berries, tea, herbs, or other unsweetened additions?  Sure. Although unnecessary, it adds variety.  Go for it.

It seems we are so sophisticated and so affluent that the obvious choice of what to have to drink - water - has been eclipsed by the multi-billion dollar beverage industry's menu of enticing, expensive, and health degrading choices. Many people think water is boring. But it is also a critical step on our collective path back to health. We are lucky enough to live in a country where clean, drinkable water flows at almost no cost from our taps. Let's start turning the faucets and filling our glasses.

Just a Spoonful of Sugar...

How much sugar (well, glucose, if you want to be more precise) is floating around in your blood right now? A normal, healthy, average sized adult has about a teaspoon of glucose dissolved in his or her blood. ONE TEASPOON-- a little more, perhaps even double, after a carbohydrate-rich meal. Blood sugar levels are closely monitored by your body. You need some, or you fall into a coma...  but too much blood sugar damages tissues. This is why diabetics, whose bodies are struggling to keep blood sugar levels in check, have serious troubles with circulation, vision, and kidney function.

If you have not yet heard the news, we are in the midst of a startling epidemic -- about 45% of adults are either pre-diabetic or diabetic... So, since blood glucose levels are at the center of this disease, perhaps we should consider how much glucose we are shoveling into our stomachs. Table sugar is half glucose, so that is an important source. But starch, such as grains and potatoes, tend to be an even bigger source of glucose. And starch is broken down into glucose in a flash in your stomach... just minutes after a starchy meal or snack, your blood glucose levels will be on the rise.

For example, consider your breakfast of 1/2 cup Grape Nuts, 1/2 cup skim milk, and a banana. How many teaspoons of glucose might be in your breakfast? A lot. After those digestive enzymes do their thing, roughly 54 grams of glucose gets absorbed into your blood.  That's ELEVEN TEASPOONS. Wow. Your body scrambles to get that glucose out of your bloodstream and into storage, (either in your liver, your muscles, or your fat cells), because all that glucose in your blood would be toxic. This 'fire drill' -- this scramble to get glucose out of your bloodstream, becomes a struggle for pre-diabetics. 

ELEVEN TEASPOONS. For context, a 12oz Coke has 39 grams of sugar, but only roughly half ~ 20 grams is glucose.  That is about 4 teaspoons. 

Hmmmm... For breakfast, if we reduced the starch and added more fat, we could cut way back on the glucose we ask our body to process. Here are some diets that will help you find a better way eating - Vintage Eating.  Real food. More fat.

Whole Grains - Do We Need Them?

No.

(Hmmm... Stop there or elaborate a little?)

People have been eating grains for thousands of years. But, before that, people thrived for hundreds of thousands of years without grains. And, there are (and were) many traditional societies whose diets are (and were) completely grain free. So, it would seem that, no, a healthy diet does not NEED to contain grains.

But what about nutrients? Aren't grains a wonderful source of vitamins and minerals? Not really. On a per-calorie basis, when you compare grains to an equal serving of non-starchy veggies, the vegetables are a much better source of nutrients. Check out this chart from Jonathan Bailor's blog. Even vitamin enriched whole wheat flour pales in comparison to veggies.

But what about fiber? Although whole grain products have twice as much fiber as, say, a doughnut or Wonder Bread, they don't measure up to non-starchy veggies. A serving of veggies with equivalent calories has seven times the fiber of whole grains. So if you want fiber, load up on veggies (with butter, of course)!

And, if you like skeptical musings, you might enjoy this post, entitled 'Fun with Fiber: The Real Scoop' from Mark Sisson's blog, questioning the very notion that fiber is important in a healthy diet.

Whole grains. Traditionally, that meant the whole grain. As in, the whole kernel. Think: pearled barley, wheat berries, steel cut oats, farro.  Grains were soaked, boiled, fermented (like beer), and sprouted. These are the whole grains that have been consumed for thousands of years. Modern eaters tend to turn to whole grain flour. Let's look at the difference, from the perspective of the glycemic index (GI) -- a measure of how quickly those grains turn into glucose in our blood:

• White Bread 73 GI

• Whole Wheat Bread 71 GI

• Coco Pops 77 GI

• Grape Nuts 75 GI

• Special K 69 GI

VERSUS

• Wheat Berries 30 GI

• Pearled Barley 28 GI

As you can see, when whole grains are pulverized into flour for breads or cereals, they lose all of that 'whole grain goodness', at least from a blood sugar perspective, and perform very much like white flour. But who wants to eat wheat berries for breakfast? (Maybe porridge? That's vintage.) The reality is that our love affair with grains is almost entirely a love affair with highly processed food - the breads, cereals, crackers, chips, pastas, and pizza crusts made with flour.

So why do we keep hearing so much about “heart-healthy whole grains”? Observational studies. That’s right. Almost all of the science that looks at the benefits of whole grains is based on weak associations (and imprecise food frequency questionnaires). With any epidemiological study, the “healthy user bias” creeps in… after all, who eats whole grains other than health-minded people who have many healthy habits that improve their outcomes? So if you read a headline about whole grains, check to see if the reported result is an actual experimental result or just an unreliable observational association.

Bottom line -- whole grains are a great source of CALORIES. And whole grain flour is a great source of the kind of calories that spike your blood sugar. So, if you need more of that, go for it!

Fat is Not Fattening - Weird, But True

The most common reaction to the big news - that saturated fat does not cause heart disease - is one of confusion and doubt. Sort of an, "Are you sure?" But the next thought tends to be along the lines of, "Well, maybe not. But so what? I am not going to eat it anyway because eating fat will make me fat." This is a powerful fear that we need to address if we are ever going to eat our way back to health.

We think we know that fat is fattening. Most of us have lost weight, usually temporarily, on a low-fat diet. And, fat has double the calories per gram of carbohydrates, so it must make us fat, right? And, the word itself: f-a-t... surely there is truth in the name? 

“The first problem for all of us, men and women, is not to learn but to unlearn.”

— Gloria Steinem

Here are a few reasons to 'unlearn' the idea that eating fat makes you fat. Hunger is a powerful force, especially over the course of a few years, not just a couple of weeks. You want hunger on your side. And, it turns out that fat can tame hunger in ways that carbohydrates can't. After you eat, fat receptors in the stomach and intestine dial down hunger, so fat is going to do a great job of keeping you feeling full between meals. It is uniquely satiating... probably why we think of fatty food as 'comfort food.' Secondly, insulin is your fat storing hormone, and is required for managing carbohydrates, and to a lesser degree, protein. But not fat. So if you eat more fat and fewer carbohydrates, your body will produce less insulin and spend less time in fat storing mode. (More on this here.) Moreover, insulin tends to mess with another hormone, leptin. Leptin makes us feel full and satisfied. But in an insulin-rich environment, leptin signals don't always get through. So, again, keeping insulin levels in check will make your natural appetite suppressor, leptin, kick in. It is always easier to have nature working for you, not against you.

Perhaps this is why, when you look to the science, high-fat diets out-perform low-fat diets for weight loss over and over and over again. Yes, even in this 2014 NIH funded clinical trial. 

Bottom line -- yes, when you dig into the details, it is extremely complicated. Way beyond our pay-grade. But simple calories-in-calories-out ignores the intricate, hormone-intensive balancing act that goes on in your body. A low-fat, calorie restricted diet can send a signal of 'lean times' throughout your body, turning down your metabolism so you burn fewer calories each day. And it makes you really hungry, which just sucks, doesn't it? So eat ample fat, without counting calories and starving yourself, and help keep your metabolism in a higher gear. And reduce refined carbs. Yes, even the whole grains. Why not check out these real-food-more-fat vintage diets...

Results. Do They Matter?

Um... Like, hello? Not to sound like a teenager, but is anyone paying attention? It is surprising how the medical communities have reacted to our declining health. To be clear, in terms of managing the deluge of chronic diseases that have descended upon us over the last 30-40 year, they have been very responsive - the care for diabetics and heart disease patients keeps getting better. But in terms of noodling on the questions, "How did this happen to us?" and, better yet, "How do we stop this from happening to us?", the medical community's response feels like the equivalent of a collective shrug. A "Gee... I don't know... nothing is working. How strange that, en masse, people suddenly started eating too much and exercising too little." 

But how do we, the eaters in a results-oriented culture, completely ignore the dismal results of the low-fat diet? It would seem that the ill health that has ensued after the food pyramid's introduction can be explained either one of two ways: 1) The low-fat diet works for a few but not for most. For most, it causes one or more of the collection of chronic diseases that plague us: obesity, diabetes, heart disease, stroke, fatty liver, cancer, and dementia; or 2) The low-fat diet is a great diet, but it is incredibly hard to follow, so most people, although trying, end up failing and get fatter and sicker. Either way, the result is unacceptable and it is obviously time to move on. Yet we don't.

The medical community remains stuck in a failed paradigm, in part, because it sees no other way. Margaret Heffernan calls this 'willful blindness' in her excellent TED talk entitled 'Dare to Disagree.' Hence the bottom line, the results -- to which we normally pay so much attention -- get largely ignored. The data is out there, but few doctors want to know.

As mothers, we can no longer pretend that the low-fat diet is working. Results do matter. We don't want to be chronically ill. And, there is another way - obviously. Let's just return to a vintage diet. Real food. More fat. It worked before. It will work again. Together, we can lead our families back to health.

Fed Up With Processed Food?

What role do food giants like Kraft or Nabisco play in our current health crisis? They make a lot of the food that is bad for us, sure, but ultimately, we are the ones putting the products in our cart. Why, oh why, do we buy?

Well, food manufacturers are good at marketing, and we are often governed by our 'reptile brain'  - the part of our brain that likes the hot model in the commercial and that wants quick and easy food...  more, more, more. Our food corporations engineer attractively packaged, convenient, and even tasty or addictive food that lasts in our pantries. And they put it in front of us -- both in the grocery aisles and in the media -- with remarkable creativity. Yes indeed, they intentionally tempt us, and they are skilled temptresses.

Movies like Fed Up do a nice job of pointing this out. But what they fail to point out is that expecting much more from the food giants is a little naive. Given that their corporate charge is to maximize shareholder value, not improve our collective health, can we really expect change? After all, poisoning people really, really slowly with an addictive product is actually a reasonable business model. 

If Big Food is doing its free-market thing and isn't going to change anytime soon, is there any hope of improvement?  Why, yes. We can change the advice we give eaters and, in turn, eaters can change their behavior. Nothing will change the food industry faster than educated consumers walking away from aisles and aisles of processed crap. 

So why, oh why, do we buy? We buy the current, crappy offerings, in part, because of both the advice we have been given and the advice we have not received. "Avoid fat" comes to mind as an example of bad advice.  "Avoid refined carbohydrates" comes to mind as an example of advice that we have not received with enough consistency. So again, why do we buy that yogurt with 24 grams of sugar? Perhaps because we have been assured that yogurt is 'healthy.' And, perhaps because it is labeled 'low-fat', which, in the mixed-up construct that is the USDA's dietary advice, would make it even healthier, right? So, although we wouldn't dream of feeding our kids 'dessert' for breakfast, we hand them the brightly packaged nutritional equivalent without giving it much thought. The double whammy of the misinformation we have received about dietary fat and the missing 'avoid refined carbohydrates - yes, even in yogurt' advice leave us adrift in the sea of bad breakfast options, unable to find the shores of real food that await us a few aisles over.

Imagine a world where, in 1980, the USDA had just told everyone to eat more real food and less processed food, particularly sugar and starch.  Would you guess that the yogurt offerings would look different?  Absolutely.  Because the food corporations actually do at least try to please both the USDA and consumers by meeting the demand for 'healthy' products, whatever the current definition of 'healthy' dictates.

Let's redefine healthy.  Let's vote with our grocery carts. Remember, "If you are dumb enough to buy it, they will be smart enough to sell it." The best way to get the crap off the shelves is to, collectively, stop buying it.

Jamming with JAMA

Vintage Blog RSS

The ever prestigious Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) has just published an article entitled, "The 2015 US Dietary Guidelines - Lifting the Ban on Total Dietary Fat." In this article, authors Mozaffarian and Ludwig, from Tufts and Boston Children's Hospital, respectively, call on the USDA to remove the upper limit on dietary fat consumption when crafting the new, 2015 version of our nation's Dietary Guidelines. All this in response to the recommendations of the recent Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee report, an evidenced based review of what the science actually says. OMG. We have certainly come a long way from the how-low-can-fat-go recommendations of yesteryear.

But what is a mother to do? How do we, as mothers, process this sort of scientific paper into our daily meal plans for our families? After growing up on skim milk and fat-free yogurt, how do we move towards making friends with fat again? And, can we trust the USDA's guidelines, when we know they have already taken our collective waistlines in the wrong direction?

Let's help each other go back to vintage eating. Real food. More fat. After all, do we really need a government agency involved in our grocery shopping? Eat what your great-great grandmother would have eaten in times of abundance. It can be fun to completely ignore the processed food industry -- all of their products, their packaging, their marketing, their nonsense. It will make you feel powerful!

For those who want more, here is the concluding paragraph from Mozaffarian and Ludwig:

"The limit on total fat presents an obstacle to sensible change, promoting harmful low-fat foods, undermining attempts to limit intakes of refined starch and added sugar, and discouraging the restaurant and food industry from providing products higher in healthful fats. It is time for the US Department of Agriculture and Department of Health and Human Services to develop the proper signage, public health messages, and other educational efforts to help people understand that limiting total fat does not produce any meaningful health benefits and that increasing healthful fats, including more than 35% of calories, has documented health benefits. Based on the strengths of accumulated new scientific evidence and consistent with the new DGAC report, a restructuring of national nutritional policy is warranted to move away from total fat reduction and toward healthy food choices, including those higher in healthful fats."

Dilute Your Carbs

When you reach for a snack for yourself or your child, make it a balanced one. So many snacks today, even 'healthier' options, are carb-heavy (almost exclusively carbohydrates). Crackers. Cheerios. Goldfish. An apple or banana. A glass of juice. And that piece of banana bread.

With meals, it is usually easier to balance it out - to get some fat and protein into your body. But with snacks, it is harder. Let's face it: carbs are convenient, crunchy, and shelf stable.  

At Eat the Butter, we love the idea of diluting carbs with fat and protein, even at snack time. It is not a new idea - bread and butter - crackers and cheese - peaches and cream. And it still works. So, when your daughter reaches for those apple slices, offer her a slice or two of cheddar to go with them. When you are munching on whole grain crackers, grab a hard boiled egg to accompany them. Or, let nature do the balancing:  skip the carb-heavy snack altogether and grab a handful of nuts. It may seem like more calories, but your snack will keep you full longer, reducing future grazing or perhaps reducing what you eat at your next meal. This will also help keep you off the blood sugar roller coaster, as the protein and fat in your snack will slow the rise in blood sugar that follows any snack or meal with carbohydrates

A Diet That Works As We Age

Most mothers teach their kids to eat a diet that is relatively high in carbohydrates... We emphasize whole grains when we can.  Is this the right message?

One of the cruel tricks nature plays on most of us is that our systems tolerate a high-carb diet quite well for a while... Most (though sadly, not all) 18-year-olds can get away with eating lots of sugar and starch. But, just as we cannot expect our eyesight to get better and better as we age, our ability to tolerate the USDA's recommended diet does not get better and better. In fact, it declines. By the time our kids turn 30 or 40, most will be struggling to remain lean and healthy with the very diet that seemed to work when they were in our homes eating corn flakes at our breakfast tables. This is a rude awakening... just as our children take on the responsibilities and pressures of careers and families of their own, the diet we taught them was 'healthy' begins to cause their health to deteriorate.

Why teach your kids to eat 'wrong' -- to eat in a way that will not stand the test of time? The USDA's diet clearly does not work for most adults. If you do not believe this statement, drive to any mall and look around at your fellow shoppers.  So why bet on the diet that has been in place for over three decades and has proved to be an epic failure? Why bank on the notion that your kids will be among the lucky few who can eat a carb-rich diet into middle age without health issues? The odds are stacked against your kids.

Skip the USDA's recommendations, and instead serve vintage food that has stood the test of time. Build habits now that will actually work for your kids when they are your age. Eat vintage. Real food. More fat.

A Universal Law

Most of us would rather buy a used car from the little old lady down the street than the 24-year-old drag racing dude from around the corner. Why? Because we know that the drag racer has been slamming his foot on the accelerator every chance he gets... and the little old lady? She has been using her car with great care. So her car will last longer.

When you wake each morning and consume a carb-heavy breakfast, low in protein and fat, YOU are that dude slamming your foot on the accelerator. Your blood is quickly flooded with the glucose from the sugar and starch in your fruit, breakfast cereal, and skim milk (or your oversized bagel, low-fat cream cheese, and orange juice), so your pancreas scrambles to pump out insulin to keep you from slipping into a hyperglycemic haze. Your blood sugar spikes, your insulin levels spike, and you begin a roller coaster of a day, slamming on the accelerator and the brake from a blood sugar perspective. This is not easy on your body - your pancreas, your tissues, your teeth - high blood sugar and high insulin levels are just not good for any part of you.

Look here for a graph of blood sugar levels after two very different breakfasts...  eggs vs. cereal.

Take it easy on your body. It is your home. Use it gently.  Eat real food.  Eat more fat.