In Defense of Food Lesson #2: The Dangers of Nutritionism and the American Tendency Toward Overeating
Introductory Lexicon:
1. lipid hypothesis: The idea that foods rich in cholesterol spike cholesterol in the blood resulting in plaque build-up in the arteries, which in turn "clog the heart" and result in heart attacks. This idea is NOT scientific. As Donald G. McNeil writes in the New York Times, his plus 300 cholesterol only scored an 11 (400 is the danger mark) in a plague test done on a coronary angiogram. Further, some lipid fats are necessary for absorbing protein and for ultimate brain activity. Your brain craves lipid or saturated fats for a good reason.
2. dogma: The "teachings" of the scientific authority, which goes unquestioned by the underlings, the younger scientists, those who know that if they question the dogma, no matter how wrong it is, their careers will be squashed like bugs.
3. groupthink: you compromise your critical, individual thinking skills to conform to the group's prevailing views and opinions so that you fit in with the group rather than seek the truth.
4. save-your-butt and make-money science: Never assume R&D (research and development) searches for truth and the improvement of society. Decisions are based on two things, self-promotion and funding. Take an example of bacterial research. No money in antibiotics because you only take the drug for a week or so. In contrast, cholesterol drugs are taken until you die. Which drug gets funded more? Which drug is more urgently needed? So don't be naive and say you're going into medical R&D to help the world. In reality, you're a slave to forces you can't control.
5. trans fats: processed vegetable fats that your body can NEVER get rid of. Equally as bad, trans fats took the place of animal fats, which are needed for brain function and protein assimilation.
6. nutritional reductionism: good definition from American Journal of Clinical Nutrition:
The approach of looking at individual nutrients rather than the food as a whole, and the entire lifestyle. Reductionism stimulates the 500 billion-dollar supplement industry.
7. Placebo Effect and the need for control studies in the face of nutitritionism claims: If you tell people they will enjoy improved health from taking supplement or food X, they will feel better because of the placebo effect.
8. Consumer gullibility based on failure to discern causation from correlation. You take a supplement and "feel better" after catching a cold, but you would have felt better anyway. That's correlation, not causation.
9. The Western Diet: an abundance of addicting refined carbohydrates and sugars that convert into triglycerides, which convert into fat and clog the arteries.
10. The rise of corn syrup. As Americans ate less lipids, they ate cheaper forms of sugar, corn syrup, which can not be broken down in the liver without harming the body.
Part One. The Dangers of Nutritionism
1. What has happened to Americans’ health as nutritionism has grown and grown? See page 40.
2. What is the driving force behind nutritionism? See page 40. The lipid hypothesis. We ate less animal fats and more vegetable-based trans fats, which are even worse. New data shows that the argument for a low-fat diet has been wrong. Eating less fat, people eat more carbs, which makes them even more fat. Fat fills us up. Carbs don’t. Carbs make you more hungry. The appetites become inflamed on a low-fat, high-carb, high-sugar diet. See page 59: Refined carbs interfere with insulin metabolism in ways that stimulate hunger, promote overeating, and fat storage in the body. This results in obesity and diabetes.
3. Gary Taubes is quoted from Good Calories, Bad Calories in which he shows there is no science behind the lipid hypothesis, which is nothing more than an ideology, the "beliefs" of a few powerful scientists.
4. Without scientific evidence and with consensus upholding bogus nutrition recommendations, we can blame groupthink, the phenomenon in which the group compromises critical thinking and in fact is frightened to voice opposition because conformity to the group is the first priority. Nutritionism rests upon groupthink. Consensus based on conformity, not scientific rigor. People “saving their butts” by conforming to the system rather than voicing intelligence and critical thinking. Not just nutritionism, but educational standards in the public school system are created the same way. Business people, lobbyists, and administrators, not educators, lay down the “standards” that are not based on sound research or experience but based on groupthink.
5. As Americans followed the bogus low-fat recommendations after World War II, heart attacks went up. Animal fat intake went down from 84 pounds to 71 pounds per capita and this resulted in increased heart attacks. More trans fats were consumed. All of this was recommended by nutritionism.
6. Nutritionism made a huge error in making a simple link between fat intake and increased cholesterol. Causation is not so simple. Against nutritionism, real science shows that fat is needed to absorb essential vitamins.
7. In Chapter 6, Pollan chronicles how as Americans obeyed the rules of Nutritionism they got fatter and fatter. While eating less fat, they ate more sugar, corn syrup and low-fat Snackwell’s cookies. In 1977, fat was 42% of total calories. In 1995 fat was down to 34% of total calories. But the TOTAL CONSUMPTION OF FAT DID NOT DECREASE. WE JUST ATE MORE OF EVERYTHING. By following the dogma of “eat more low-fat” foods,” Americans just ate more of everything else and got fatter.
8. One of the evils of Nutritionism, we read at the end of Chapter 5, is that disgusting processed foods can be injected with nutrients (polyunsaturated fats, “whole-grain”) and be marketed as healthy food. Rubbish.
9. One of the key characteristics of Nutritionism, we read in Chapter 9 (Bad Science) is that it embraces scientific reductionism, breaking down food into nutrient components rather than looking at the food as a whole and how that whole interacts with the human body. This reductionism is partly a result of groupthink. For example, reductionism says ingest lots of the anti-oxidant beta-carotene, but the body doesn’t assimilate beta-carotene when it’s isolated in a pill or injected into some processed food. We need to eat it from the original plant to assimilate it. See page 64.
10. Too much of Nutritionism is based on the Placebo Effect. One third of Americans are “responders.” They respond to any new program because they think they’ll improve. But this change isn’t based on science. See page 69.
11. One of the Great Lies of Nutritionism, we read on page 71, is that lifestyle choices determine our health. Wrong. Social class does. The poor get fatter and die younger for many reasons.
Part Two. The Causes Behind Americans’ Tendency Toward Overeating
1. The sheer abundance of food makes Americans eat in a perfunctory, mindless way. Eating slop. Not really eating but feeding. The difference between being human and animal.
2. Our religious, puritanical history makes us suspicious of eating pleasure. We are more comfortable equating eating with nutrition. We escape our repression and become gluttons.
3. Low-fat, high-carb, high-sugar foods marketed as healthy allowed us to eat like pigs and feel okay about it.
4. We have a history of being gullible to food faddism all the way back to quacks John Harvey Kellogg, Horace Fletcher the Masticator and other charlatans. See page 56.
Part Three. Review of Nutritionism from Diet Blog.
Nutritionism: What Is It and Why Is It Ruining Our Diet?
Part Four. Qualities of an Eater and a Feeder
The eater is engaging in
1. social interaction
2. bonding
3. the making of culture
4. slow appreciation of fresh ingredients
5. savoring food means actually thoroughly chewing your food
A feeder
1. eats in a rush, perhaps in the car.
2. does not chew, but inhales food, resulting in dyspepsia.
3. eats in darkness or even a closet in a state of shame.
4. consumes food mindlessly like an animal.
5. consumes food alone to be anti-social like a partitioned restaurant with TVs in every booth.Introduction: Why is it difficult to transition from being a mindless eater (Americanus Gluttonous) to a healthy eater? 1. Because crazy eating has over time become "normal." Of course crazy eating is not normal. We've become acclimated to it. Crazy eating includes dumping buckets of sugar and salt on all food; eating super-sized portions of food more appropriate for a hog or an elephant than human consumption; not chewing, rather inhaling food in the car, while watching TV, while surfing the Internet, etc. 2. Rejecting the "crazy eating" described above will result in ostracism. 3. Lack of time and fatigue compel you to rely on "fast food" to sate your appetites. 4. It's cheaper to eat a lot of processed food made with corn syrup and fructose. Most processed foods are made with corn in some form or other. 5. Restaurants cater more to Americanus Gluttonous than they do to healthy eaters with few exceptions in Santa Monica, Santa Barbara, Seattle, San Francisco, and other tres chic locales. 6. You have negative associations with "health eating," which you associate with eating twigs, bark, rice cakes, pabulum, and other bland food matter so depressing that to contemplate "healthy foods" saps the life out of you. 7. You can't cook and are therefore at the mercy of restaurants or someone who cooks calorie-dense (as opposed to nutrient-dense) foods. 8. You don't know the difference between calorie-dense andnutrient-dense foods. When you don't the difference, you invariably eat the former, not the latter. 9. You don't know how to cook or where to begin to learn about nutrition, not because you cannot, but because you are mired in the abyss and paralysis of learned helplessness. 10. You have no intellectual curiosity in trying new things so you cling desperately to the ways of Americanus Gluttonous. Having no curiosity is a sign of low intelligence, a danger factor for both obesity and divorce. Part One. Not All Calories Are Alike 1. Jean Mayer said, “Attributing obesity to ‘overeating’ is as meaningful as to account for alcoholism by ascribing it to ‘overdrinking.’” In other words, to examine the causes of obesity, we have to look at more than sheer volume; we have to look at WHAT KIND OF FOODS we eat since some foods are trigger foods, inflaming our appetites, and some foods spike our pancreas and blood sugar levels more than other foods, causing a harmful chain reaction. 2. A starchy (carbohydrates, especially refined ones) diet increases hunger; it puts sugars in the liver and weight-gain. Calories from starches are metabolized differently than calories from fatty animal protein, which create satiety, a sense of fullness. 3. According to Taubes, the 5 foods to avoid are bread or anything else made with flour, cereals, potatoes, foods containing sugar, and all sweets. 4. According to Taubes, the 5 foods you can eat are meats, fish, and birds; all green vegetables; eggs, cheese, and fruit with the exception of bananas and grapes. Of course, Taubes’ findings contradict Nutritionism, which says limit animal fats. Taubes’ finding contradict the Food Guide Pyramid, which puts fats and oils in the “be eaten sparingly” category. Taubes struggled with his own weight until he followed these outlined dietary principles. 5. Some people metabolize carbs better than others. Most of us become hungrier and fatter from a diet that has carbs, especially refined carbs, in it. These carbs are often called “trigger foods.” Pasta, bagels, muffins, garlic bread, etc., can make us hungrier and hungrier, putting us in a feeding frenzy. 6. About six scientists in the 1950s fell in love with the Lipid (Fat) Hypothesis and selectively used their research to support their hypothesis. Other scientists with dubious motivations, followed the hypothesis and a critical mass developed. Michael Pollan makes the same point. 7. The nutritional and medical community hated Dr. Atkins, who rejected the Fat Hypothesis and recommended a low-carb diet. They were threatened by his study, which contradicted their food pyramid. 8. Carbs create an enzyme reaction that spikes insulin and insulin is what puts fat in your tissue. Carbohydrates, not fat, put fat in your tissue. 9. Insulin, which is a hormone, is the primary regulator of fat in the human body and carbs trigger insulin. 10. Nutritionism focused only on cholesterol as a danger and in essence simplified science for mass consumption of information. But lipids, including free fatty acids and triglycerides, are also dangerous and contribute to heart disease. Both cholesterol and triglycerides circulate in particles called lipoproteins. Excessive fat in the blood caused by carbohydrates. Part Two. Carb Glut in the Western Diet (from Part II of In Defense of Food) 1. Metabolic syndrome from the Western diet is evident in people from the bush who move to the city. They move back to the bush and their health problems go away. Metabolic syndrome includes elevated levels of triglycerides, slowed-down metabolism, diabetes 2, and other risk factors for heart disease. 2. The men ate fish, other meats, yams, figs, and honey and their Metabolic syndrome went away. I'm curious about the yams, figs, and honey since these are "no-no's" according to Taubes. 3. Since two thirds of Americans are overweight or obese, Pollan contends, we might want to look at ways we can identity and reject the Western diet. 4. Study after study shows that populations that don’t eat the Western diet are free of disease, including cancer and heart disease. 5. Weston A. Price found that populations free of the Western diet suffered no tooth decay, among other diseases. There was no single ideal diet. Simply put all the diets WERE NOT Western. They ate no processed foods. 6. One big difference in native populations: Meat eaters healthier than agriculturists, those who ate grain. See page 98. This has a huge anti-vegetarian implications. 7. Grass-fed cows are far more nutritious than corn-fed. Even the butter of grass-fed cow is more nutritious. 8. Pollan makes the point that health is our relationship with nature, not our ingestion of specific nutrients prescribed by nutritionists or the minions of nutritionism. See page 102-103. 9. One of the biggest shifts from the Paleo to the Western diet: Processed foods, especially carbs made from corn and flour: See page 106. 10. Refined carbs lost their original nutrients, but in the 1930s scientists learned how to fortify worthless carbs with vitamins. These fortified vitamins are worthless because they don't get assimilated into the body. See page 109. 11. Another huge shift: The percentage of calories that come from sugars. Pollan links this increased sugar consumption with type 2 diabetes. 12. Agriculture creates monoculture (one strain of broccoli, for example), which reduces diversity of nutrients. See page 116. 13. 75% of the vegetable oils in our diet come from soy. 14. Few foods constitute the calories we eat: 554 calories come from corn; 257 from soy; 768 from wheat; 91 from rice. Not a lot of room in our gut for other foods. These 4 crops account for two thirds of the calories we eat. Our ancestors in contrast ate over 3,000 edible species. See page 117. This lack of food diversity seriously compromises the nutrition of any omnivore and that includes humans. Part Three. Some Rules to Save Ourselves from the Western Diet Excerpt from Michael Pollan's Book Food Rules in Huffington Post Part Four. Journal Entry In light of the research we’ve covered, what is your attitude toward the Western Diet? How dependent on the Western Diet are you? Emotionally, financially, socially, and culturally, how difficult would it be, or not, to reject the Western diet and eat more like our caveman ancestors. Part Four. Research Links What If It's All Been a Big Fat Lie? In Defense of Food Lesson #3: Good Calories, Bad Calories and How the Western Diet Destroys Us
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