Posted on 11/12/2003 4:38:02 PM PST by SJackson
And now, the 2003 Nutritional Villain of the Year is - may I have a drum roll, please! - bread.
That's right, folks, the staff of life turns out to be a stake through your heart, if you read the latest reports. Bread makes you fat, they say.
Bread-phobia appears to be almost entirely due to the Atkins diet and all its low or no-carb permutations that have recently swept the country. The basic idea is that if you eat only meat, dairy products and vegetables you'll feel full and lose weight.
Bread sales across the country are falling like punched-down dough as chubby consumers shy away from carbohydrates. I heard all about this for the second or third time on a radio program on the way to work the other day. They were interviewing bakers who were wondering what to do to revive sales. Maybe they need a bread check-off.
Studies and anecdotal experience show that the Atkins diet works, at least in the short term. Close to home, both my parents lost weight in the first year. In recent months they haven't.
One veterinarian I chatted with about the diet wondered what happens to people's livers when they're on the Atkins diet for long periods of time. He knows what happens to cows that eat too much protein and not enough roughage.
Wasn't it just a few years ago that bread was the culinary darling du jour? But as with so many other foods, fame has proven to be treacherous. Look what happened to eggs, butter, chocolate and red meat. Two or three decades ago the once-beloved egg was suddenly renamed as the great villain, a nasty little thing that raised your cholesterol and gave you heart attacks.
Then real butter came under attack, and we were all supposed to eat margarine. Dairy products in general, once a cornerstone of the nutriiton pyramid, were suddenly discovered to be fattening and bad for you. So much for my childhood instructions to "drink lots of milk for strong bones."
The next victim was red meat. I don't remember exactly what the reasoning was behind that vilification, but we were to substitute with chicken and fish. Chocolate got a nutritional hatchet job for being fattening, probably because we love it so much. But that was then.
Now eggs are OK to eat again, since they're wonderfully complete nutritional packages. Cholesterol evidently has more to do with your genetic inheritance than your diet, though diet is still important for those who need to bring their levels under control.
Butter has been found to be better for your blood vessels than margarine, and red meat is great for adding vitamins and minerals to your diet, especially iron. Chocolate is a mood elevator and teeth protector. I knew all along it made me feel better; now many experts agree.
In the past two years many nutritionists have restored dairy products to a place of honor as the best source of calcium for a calcium defiecient nation. Several recent large studies have also shown that dairy is an aid to weight loss. The calcium and perhaps other components in dairy products have the effect of speeding up the metabolism, so you burn calories faster.
In the 1973 movie "Sleeper," actor Woody Allen played a vegetarian California health-food store owner who is cryogenically frozen and then thawed out 200 years later.
After he's properly re-warmed, his hosts offer him - to his horror - a healthy meal of steak and brownies to restore him to good health.
The scene was hilarious then; now it's spooky because it's coming true.
Of course, not all nutritional experts agree that eggs, meat, milk and butter are good guys again, but the tide has certainly turned.
I have great hopes that in a few years this smear campaign against bread will blow over and carbohydrates will be restored to their proper place in the national diet.
Before nutrition became a polticial issue, grade school students, myself included, were taught a pretty simple, user-friendly program for staying healthy and slim. The gist of it was that everyone should eat three moderate - moederate is a key concept, here - well-balanced meals each day.
Well-balanced meant a combination of meat and dairy, fruits and vegetables, and breads and starches. It did not mean a continuous intake of nutritionally worthless, high-calorie pop, chips and candy.
We were a slimmer nation back then.
Maybe it's not so much what you eat, but how much, and how much you exercise. Not a revolutionary thought, exactly, but one that might be usefully revived from the dustbin of nutritional history.
Ann Hansen covers news in west-central Wisconsin and is the small acreage section editor for The Country Today. She may be reached at shansen@bloomer.net.
It is so weird to be eating to my heart's content, yet eating less than I had before, and losing weight while doing it. I had fun calculating how many carbs I was taking in before... an example for lunch: 2 servings of Kraft Mac-n-cheese (47 each), 2 black cherry sodas (45 each), and a hot dog with ketchup on a bun (25). 209 grams in ONE meal!
I didn't total 209 during my entire 2-week induction period.
Throw in 3 slices of pizza for dinner (with another soda or two), a bowl of cereal for breakfast, and an apple and a candy bar for snacks, and I had to be over 350 daily. I have a hard time figuring out how to get up to 70 per day, now. LOL
Boy, I'm agreeing with this more and more each day. Every day I don't eat processed food, the better I feel. Even those chocolate peanut butter Atkins bars that taste good affected me. I'm done experimenting: I now know what works and what doesn't, and one of the things that also doesn't work for me is the processed low-carb foods. I even found the organic Stonyfield Farm yogurt at our Walmart here which just tickles me. No chemicals or additives.
And I wondered why I was so sickly for so long. Garbage in, garbage out. When I reduce the amount of carbs and processed foods I take in, my nerves hurt less, my eye sight clears up, my joints and muscles get stronger, no sugar spikes or crashes, better circulation (improvement with lymphedema) and warmer feet, better sleep, stronger bladder (avoiding surgery), and on and on. I'm positive that I'm dodging that Diabetes bullet.
Wow. Your a ****ing genius. Of course if you go back to eating the stuff that got you fat in the first place, you are going to start gaining weight. Congratulations, you passed Logic 101.
Since when is Ketosis a medical problem?
Mmmm Mmmmm! My wife and I LOVE it. Especially the fat that layers on top of the full fat version. Yummy!
Since these low fat hucksters can't find anything else to carp about. Ketosis is natural and humans went through it every year during the winter until just recently (the agricultural revolution). As to the rest of the ailments he is posting about they come from mainly discredited studies that basically say that since we found this in a few low carb dieters it is a result of the diet ignoring the fact that people who diet usually are not in the best shape to begin with.
Stones, heart problems, kidney ailments, ketosis, and more seem to pop up with a great enough regularity that I feel where there's smoke, there could be fire.
First there has NEVER been a documented case of a person with HEALTHY kidneys failing because of a low carb diet - NONE. The diet is documented to improve lipid profies and heart function. Atkins and the South Beach doctor were cardiologists who had the gall to oppose the AHA's recomendations who puts their heart healthy stamp on Count Chocula cereal. That is somebody I want giving me health advice! The rate of stones is also the same as the population as a whole. As far as energy goes - I don't want to eat and sleep at 10 and 2 anymore.
The attack on this diet by people who have staked their careers on low fat has just begun. (Like Redwood) The bread industry has openly declared war in England - do a google news search. Con Agra and all the grain dealers are not happy either.
Do some reading on Vitamin D and the symptoms you describe. But be sure to get your Vitamin D from Cod Liver Oil mainly. Go to Mercola.com and do a search. Also Google.com keywords vitamin D and one of your symptoms
BTW, when I added yogurt to my daily breakfast, my problems with constipation were gone within a week and never returned.
Actually he cut down quite a bit on complex carbohydrates - potatoes, pasta, beans, rice, etc. Nutritionally these foods are basically zeros though brown rice and beans do have some nutrients. Some of these are worse than eating an equivalent weight of sugar (potato for instance when baked has a glycemic rating of 150 something as I remember). Now if you ate only the potato skin it would be an excellent choice;-)
What I haven't found is what kind of problems would toxic levels of D cause? Because if I read it correctly, the problems aren't as reversable. (Think I'll contact a nutritionist locally who has helped me in the past...)
It is standard practice to get blood levels taken for vitamin D. The test you ask for is the 25(OH)D, also called 25-hydroxyvitamin D, Do not ask for the 1,25(OH)D. The reference levels are done by comparing the population as a whole and as you have read the population as a whole is low. That being said you can theoretically get too much D and A. You have to try hard taking natural supplements however. Here are two links:
http://www.mercola.com/2003/dec/24/vitamin_d_deficiency.htm
http://www.cholecalciferol-council.com/index.htm
Get the correct test and test until you get an optimum level. It is very hard to OD on supplements and would take many months of heavy use but it can be done. I take ~ 1 tbsp/day winter COD LIVER oil and 2 tbsp FISH oil/day summer. My levels are normal according to my doctor but getting records is next to impossible sometimes. (I haven't got my test from a month ago yet!).
Good luck reading up on this. A lot of the thinking is changing rapidly on D. Also if you are taking Cod Liver Oil make sure you are not loading up on A from other sources though Vitamin A is far less toxic in oil.
Oh also use cholechalciferol supplements not ergocalciferl. The Cholo is the natural type.
Food |
International Units
|
%DV *
|
Cod Liver Oil, 1 Tbs. |
1,360 IU |
340 |
Salmon, cooked, 3 1/2 oz |
360 IU |
90 |
Mackerel, cooked, 3 1/2 oz |
345 IU |
90 |
Sardines, canned in oil, drained,3 1/2 oz |
270 IU |
70 |
Eel, cooked, 3 1/2 oz |
200 IU |
50
|
Milk, nonfat, reduced fat, and whole, vitamin D fortified, 1 c |
98 IU |
25 |
Margarine, fortified, 1 Tbs. |
60 IU |
15 |
Cereal grain bars, fortified w/ 10% of the DV, 1 each |
50 IU |
10 |
Pudding, 1/2 c prepared from mix and made with vitamin D fortified milk |
50 IU |
10 |
Dry cereal, Vit D fortified w/10%* of DV, 3/4 c |
40-50 IU |
10 |
Liver, beef, cooked, 3 1/2 oz |
30 IU |
8 |
Egg, 1 whole (vitamin D is present in the yolk) |
25 IU |
6 |
* DV = Daily Value. DVs are reference numbers based on the Recommended Dietary Allowance (RDA). They were developed to help consumers determine if a food contains very much of a specific nutrient. The DV for vitamin D is 400 IU. The percent DV (%DV) listed on the nutrition facts panel of food labels tells adults what percentage of the DV is provided by one serving. Percent DVs are based on a 2,000-calorie diet. Your Daily Values may be higher or lower depending on your calorie needs. Foods that provide lower percentages of the DV will contribute to a healthful diet. |
Again, go figure - I feel better when I include more salmon and sardines in my diet. I could eat salmon 7 days a week if it were cheaper. Sardines was an acquired taste - no problem now once I let most of the oil drain off. Time to start eating more of each on a regular basis and see what happens.
Still considering the testing, however. If a deficiency in D is part of my problems, especially the lymphedema, your information will have been a huge blessing.
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