Posted on 09/03/2019 6:33:47 AM PDT by rightwingintelligentsia
A teen in the UK who has eaten nothing but french fries, potato chips and white bread since elementary school is now blind because of vitamin deficiencies and malnutrition damage.
The boy was taken to his doctor at 14 because he felt tired. He was diagnosed with macrocytic anemia and a vitamin B12 deficiency and prescribed supplements, according to a study published Tuesday in the Annals of Internal Medicine. He neither stuck with the vitamins nor changed his diet, however, and his condition worsened.Three years later, he was taken to the Bristol Eye Hospital with reported vision loss.According to the BBC, Dr. Denize Atan, who treated him at the hospital, said: "His diet was essentially a portion of chips from the local fish and chip shop every day. He also used to snack on crisps — Pringles — and sometimes slices of white bread and occasional slices of ham, and not really any fruit and vegetables.
"He explained this as an aversion to certain textures of food that he really could not tolerate, and so chips and crisps were really the only types of food that he wanted and felt that he could eat."For those not familiar with the British vernacular, chips are french fries and crisps are potato chips.
(Excerpt) Read more at ajc.com ...
Lot more vitamins.
I have heard similar arguments from vegetarians for most of my life. 20 grams is barely more than half an ounce, if you restrict your diet in this way, you are likely to be missing nutrients that your body should be getting.
But much more importantly but completely missing in most of the arguments from people who want to cut entire categories of foods from their diet is the effect that it has on your gut biome. Healthy people have a wide variety of healthy bacteria in their intestines that not only aid in digestion but are important for healthy living in ways that even now are not fully understood. When you basically cut out an entire food group from your diet entire categories of bacteria that are healthy for you just die out with consequences that are not currently predictable.
You can believe that you know everything about nutrition, and you can find a bunch books with authors who have the same philosophy to confirm your opinion. But we do not understand everything about nutrition and it is risky to alter your diet in ways that are based on someone or some groups’ crackpot theory.
I admit that it is also risky for people to live on nothing but processed foods and all the crap that is pushed on us by the food industry that is designed more for maximum profit than healthy eating. So in as much as you are getting back to the basics you probably are not doing any more damage to yourself than most people are with their choices of almost completely prepackaged foods.
it’s called child abuse.
Glad to hear about your blood test, but sorry about your vision.
I’m far from qualified to give medical advice, but it does seem that, given the (as yet uncompromised) capabilities of modern medicine, at least in the eyesight area, they should be able to at least tell you what’s wrong.
I will say that, based on Nina’s work, being low carb should not affect anything health-related, as long as you’re getting sufficient fat (i.e., using butter, not using lean cuts, or at least not cutting away fat, and, ideally having cheese and nuts).
Hopefully you are able to get to the bottom of it.
“Most of the people I know who have caused serious damage to their health and in many cases actually died were those who went overboard on Atkins style diets.”
Thanks for the warning, at least you do sound credible here. A few months back, on a similar thread, there was a food industry lobbyist trying to convince us that trans-fats and sugar were actually good for us. LOL. We all got a kick out it.
I do think the problem with Atkins, at least early on, was that the dangers to our kidneys of protein-loading was not well understood, and since Atkins was considered a nutcase, no one bothered to try to better understand it. If you do go back the 20+ years to Atkins, you’ll find a mindset where eggs, butter, and fatty red meat was still considered poison - so people, even on Atkins would try to minimize those, and end up on lean meat, poultry, and fish - all very high in their protein to fat ratio. So, yes, they were putting their kidneys in danger. As we’ve been saying on these threads, if you do go low-carb, you still don’t get a free pass regarding what you do eat, you still have to keep the protein levels down - which means keeping the fat levels up.
So, as to the risks, now that much more is understood, we’re keeping an open mind and waiting for some real evidence that people who properly adhere to the Low-Carb Keto lifestyle are actually putting themselves at risk. So far, no one on ping list has said anything about having that issue...so we’ll see, nor have we found anything beyond hand-waving regarding the risks. They may be out there, but we’re waiting, for now.
One other thing to keep in mind is that life is full of trade-offs. I know of one person on my list who was near suicide because of what the doctor-prescribed drugs were doing to him. He went on Keto, got off the drugs, and is doing much, much, better. Others trade off looking at a certain life of diabetic complications, versus the still un-quantified risk of kidney issues. It’s really up to the medical community to take these people seriously and come up with useful data, because these people are NOT going away otherwise - particularly if they’re looking at a future of nothing but suffering due to diabetes.
“It would be nice if they showed “The Magic Pill” in classrooms, but it will never happen. Big Food and Big Pharma will see to that.”
Actually, I’d prefer to have health plans REQUIRE that everyone (Type 2, of course) who is about to go on Insulin first be forced to sit down and watch the report. That would likely help them far better than the alternative.
But I agree, not likely. But, maybe, when Big Food/Drug/Medicine/Nutrition/Vegan/AnimalRights is discredited so badly in this area that people no longer listen to them.
There have been a large number of people who have replaced processed junk carb food with processed junk protein food in the past twenty years. But I am going to take a wild guess that you might not consider those people to be true adherents to the “Low-Carb Keto lifestyle”. And I must admit that I love to eat a high protein Costco or Atkins food/candy bar as much as the next person. I just do not believe that they are much more healthy for you than a better tasting jumbo sized Reese's peanut butter cup, or an ice cream cone.
There are quite a few documented risks to the “Keto diet”, I do not know whether or not you feel those risks apply to you or the others here. My wife is a nurse who taught nutrition for quite a few years and I responded to medical calls for about 25 years mostly to people who had made poor lifestyle choices. But the people who I observed the most closely were my friends and coworkers. And my conclusion from living and working them were that the Atkins/Keto diet, whatever you want to call it did not work out well in the long term. And the ones who seemed to believe in it the most and went with it the longest were the ones who generally suffered the worst consequences to their health.
Usually they did lose some weight in the short term, but in the long term they typically gained it all back and more. I am talking about people that I knew for decades... I do not know anyone who it really worked out for over a year or two. And as I said before I know a few who kept it up even after their doctors told them they were going to die if they didn't straighten out their diets. They chose to believe the diet guru books instead of their doctors and nutritionists and they sometimes paid the price.
Unfortunately, the amount of true understanding of what constitutes good and bad diet choices has not increased as greatly in the past 20 years as you seem to believe. And the number of people making very bad choices seems to be increasing in this age of increased information. This is because people believe what they want to believe and the more access that they have to information... they typically just use that access to reinforce whatever it is that they want to believe.
So just because they went back to their old ways of eating, after being on Keto, doesn’t make Keto the problem.
And Keto is not high protein, it’s high fat. I don’t believe a high-protein is healthy, and truly is not maintainable in the long run.
But based on what I’ve experience so far on Keto, there is no reason for me to believe that I could not keep this lifestyle for the rest of my life.
Thanks, and like I say life is full of decisions and trade offs. The people on my list will get to hear the good, the bad, and the ugly and they can decide what works best for them, based on being informed as much as possible - especially as they consider what the alternatives are. When there are articles showing bad results with low-carb diets, I’ll ping the list too. In fact, I pinged the list here to show the need to be careful...nothing positive about Keto, or any other ‘alternative’ diet, here, just risks.
“And I must admit that I love to eat a high protein Costco or Atkins food/candy bar as much as the next person. I just do not believe that they are much more healthy for you than a better tasting jumbo sized Reese’s peanut butter cup, or an ice cream cone.”
This one made me laugh. I was in Costco over the weekend and walking by one of the sample stands, and it was some kind of colored drink that looked like, maybe, an energy drink. The lady calls out “Keto friendly”, so I’m thinking - “Oh, she’s one of us”...but then I’m suspicious because just about anything that has the word Keto on it is usually something that people on Keto should stay away from - we’re actually pretty close on that. Before trying the sample, I look at the bottle - carbs, really low, good, then Protein 15 GRAMS. I’m like, “what the hell is in this” so I simply walk away without trying it - if people on Keto need drinks like that, I agree, they won’t do well. I still remember the people dropping dead from protein powder decades ago...not good.
Yep, my husband and I are “semi-Keto” if that makes sense. He has high BP, high cholesterol and is borderline diabetic. He is not grossly overweight and has generally healthy lifestyle/eating habits. Our Dr. is perplexed because he shouldn’t have these numbers. Cutting out bread, grains, and watching the sugar has been amazing for him, he’s lost some weight and his numbers are all much better, BUT he is taking 6 or 7 pills everyday and he hates that. We are hoping keeping to this diet will allow him to get to numbers where the pills can be eliminated.
As you say tho; the labels can be misleading and “Keto Friendly” seems to be the newest fad, same as “Low Fat” where they amp up the added sugar to make it palatable. I’m learning to read labels and we get 3 Keto meals delivered twice a month, which is helping me to put together better meals for us the other days. Having a nice little garden helps too.
As for picky eaters, 2 of our grandkids live with us and their diets are so bad; Pop Tarts (yes they are delicious). processed cereals/cereal bars and frozen waffles comprise the majority of their diet along with “chicken” nuggets and that horrible fake Mac & Cheese. They do love berries, melons and apples and cheese & will drink milk but most proteins are a no-go.
Honestly, it’s because it’s “easier” for their parents to just give them what they like. But we do make them try a little bit of new foods, and it’s interesting to see what they like now. My grandson LOVES smoked salmon & granddaughter will eat raw red peppers, even without a dip! We’re trying :)
“Yep, my husband and I are “semi-Keto” if that makes sense.”
Makes perfect sense to me. Carbs are clearly the worst foods to eat if you’re diabetic or heading that way, due to the carbs spiking blood glucose levels (which is why it’s interesting that the recommended foods for diabetics are laced with carbs*). So, if one needs to cut carbs say 90% to get to Keto, it would seem reasonable, at least to me, that cutting carbs 80% (as you’re doing), for example, is far better than simply following the high carb guidelines and doing nothing nothing other than drugging yourself to counteract the effects of the foods. In fact I just learned that a friend of mine, who had a doctor who was willing to question the ‘official view’, told him 30 years ago that he was pre-diabetic. He told him to do the 80% or so carb reduction...and so he has done so since, and he never got diabetes, at least so far. He may not even be on meds.
*the UK guidelines pretty much show just how bad the ‘official advice’ is. In the US, the advice is the same, but they weasel-word it better (eat whole grains, boatloads of vegetables, and crap like that - knowing that they’ll have to eat carbs, and lots of them to get their daily calories) and don’t show it blatantly as the UK. Note how bread just stands out, and there isn’t a piece of red meat to be found - the closest they get is a small piece of chicken. It starts making sense that people have to wait 2 years for a knee, when they’re spending all their time getting people fat and sick, and then ‘treating’ them.
*here’s a link to the UK guidelines, and note that the doctor quoted is saying this is great for diabetes. It’s almost like a person’s lungs are seared by smoking 2 packs of Marlboro’s every day, so the official advice is to change to a ‘healthier’ brand and so smoke 3 packs of Winston’s every day instead.
https://diabetestimes.co.uk/eatwell-guide-updated/
As far as your Keto meals, if it’s that infrequent, I certainly wouldn’t worry about them. It’s more when they become the primary foods, rather than eating unprocessed foods, that would get me worried.
Good to see that we agree on something, and I admit then that I do not have much or any real understanding of the differences between Keto and Atkins type diets. The emphasis that I have heard from my pals has usually been on high protein and they just have not cared much about whether they were eating lean protein or protein with a lot of fat.
My concern however has been that they are obsessed with cutting out nearly all carbohydrates which I believe contributes to a lack of healthy variety in their diet. Everything we grow in our garden is a carbohydrate and I know that I feel better and have more energy when I have been eating fresh produce. I grew up with horses, cows, pigs, chickens, geese, goats, bunnies and just about every other farm animals you can think of. We usually knew the name of the animal we were eating.
I am not sure how that affects the mental health of a child, but it certainly is good when you know the exact ingredients of what you are eating. So many foods these days have a list of ingredients that are difficult to pronounce, let alone understand what they do inside of your body. I am not afraid of chemicals and know that many can be beneficial, but I am more comfortable reading ingredients like, apple, plum, carrot, chicken, beef, pork, radish, lettuce, corn, and wheat, or even, salt, sugar, and yeast, than Metatartaric acid, Magnesium diglutamate, and Ammonium ferric citrate.
You might appreciate this comedian who reminds me a great deal of one of my best friends in my bicycle racing days. He also has a really funny video on what it would be like if meat eaters treated vegetarians the way that they treated meat eaters.
Atkins is more protein than Keto. Although the “induction” phase in Atkins is pretty much Keto.
Keto is more about “good quality” fats and high-nutrient/low-carb vegetables. And some “fruits” like Avocados, olives or berries.
It is crucial to make sure you get enough Omega-3 fats, from fish or Chia seeds, I even take Omega 3 supplements.
In fact, Dr. Berg basically says don’t even count carbs from vegetables towards your 30 grams of carbs limit.
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