Saturday, 29 November 2014
Wednesday, 26 November 2014
What's the Calorie Count of Love?
You have had a really good week – you
worked out a few times – you ate properly – you kept your portions under
control – and you’re feeling pretty good.
Then the unthinkable happens …
… Your mom bakes your absolutely favourite
cake and brings it over to have with coffee
… Your husband comes home with a treat from
your favourite ice cream shop because HE had a craving
… Your friend (who can eat whatever he/she
wants and never gain an ounce) offers to treat you to lunch at the newest food
truck – the one with no salads on their menu
Sound familiar?
We’ve all been there!
While it may seem that your loved one is
deliberately tempting you by bringing home that ice cream treat or you
favourite donut, but experts say that their intentions are not as evil as you
may think. People who don’t have
issues with food often do not realize the level of temptation that those of us
on diets experience.
The most important thing to do is let them
know how difficult it is when they lovingly offer temptation. They need to understand that no one has an
unending supply of willpower – and no matter how strong you are you cannot
stare at fattening foods every day without your willpower breaking down. Tell them not to bring you food as gifts –
and nicely ask that they eat any calorie-laden food they may enjoy when you are
not around to see, hear or smell it.
Even if your partner tries his/her best not
to tempt you, there are many other reasons that you might gain weight when you
are in a marriage/partnership. Weight
gain happens to men too, but since our TOPS group is all ladies at the moment
and, with regards to weight gain in relationships the truth of the matter is –
the female typically gains it. I am going to focus on why women gain the
weight.
It’s more than just the
“nesting-bulge”. In a relationship
where men and women are sharing the same space one does as the other does. When women start sharing meals with their
husbands, eating habits change. Some
men might actually begin eating healthier; better balance meals, fruits, and
veggies, while women might start eating LESS healthy – they begin to allow more
junk food into the house and they start consuming larger portions, similar to
those their partner’s are enjoying.
Portion judgement seems to go out the window. With smaller muscle mass and body size, women don’t need as many
calories to keep the body functioning. When
there is excess – weight gain is inevitable!
The phenomenon is very real and is called
“Spousal Concordance”. It happens more
frequently in the
beginnings of relationships but can carry through the years,
or begin at any point. Are you an empty
nester with only two mouths to cook for instead of more? Did you or hubby recently retire and now you
spend more time in each other’s company?
Spousal concordance is sneaky and you may not even be aware it’s
happening … have you submitted to his Sunday TV binge-watching routine? Joined his late-night taco runs? When women spend more time at home with their
mates, they tend to shift towards eating more and exercising less. Beware of those upcoming fall and winter
nights when the TV and ice cream seem very appealing.
In the March 2010 issue of Women’s Health www.WomensHealthMag.com they offer
some reason why the weight gain happens and how to get it back under control.
You match him bite for bite – it’s tough
to stick to tiny portions when your partner downs 500 to
1500 more calories
than a day than you do. Women tend to develop “portion distortion”. You don’t recognize a normal-size serving
anymore because you are always eating with a guy who consumes huge platefuls of
food. He might be able to get away with
it because men have more muscle mass, so they require more calories, but
shovelling in all those extra forkfuls WILL eventually catch up to you.
How can you fix this? It’s pretty basic! Serve yourself less. Eat about three quarters of what he’s
eating. Sorry, but women burn 26
percent fewer calories than men do, so at that rate you’ll break just about
even. It’s not fair but it is what
it is … men lose weight faster then women too … can’t hate them for the cards
Mother Nature dealt.
How do you fix this? Know your options. You have two diet-friendly choices. Serve yourself a small amount of his snack
and put it on a plate. Dipping your
hand into the bag over and over again leads to nothing but diet disaster. Or, have a portion controlled, lower-calorie
alternative on hand to munch while he takes down that bag of chips or pint of
ice cream. Pop Chips(120 calories per
serving), with just three servings in a big bag can satisfy your salt craving,
while hockey puck size Skinny Cow ice cream sandwiches (140 calories each) fill
in nicely for fattening frozen desserts.
Who knows – you may even convert him!
If you eat out all the time – sometimes life gets busy and cooking a meal seems like one more
thing you
have to do. The easiest
solution is to order in, grab something on the way home or go out to a
restaurant. That’s bad news for your
waistline. A study of 24 national
chains revealed that the average entrée at a sit down restaurant contains 867
calories. And that does not include
Apps, sides, drinks and dessert.
How can you fix it? Cook meals together. Not only can it be some time that you can
share together (food is a bonding experience) but also you can control the fat
and calories by using healthy recipes and ingredients that are low fat.
You are always at home – with the kids, on the couch, in the kitchen – anywhere but at the
gym. A study by the Obesity Journal
found that couples who live together for two or more years are less likely to
be physically active, and the women are the ones more likely to become obese. As positive as relationships can be, they
also change your routine.
So – I guess love does come with
calories. But stop blaming you
partner/spouse for your weight gain.
They are not forcing you to consume the food – you own that decision. But, by the same token don’t be afraid to
ask for help. Love may have calories
but it should also have understanding.
Adding a few extra pounds isn’t the really bad part. Starting unhealthy habits is!
If you both need to get back on healthier
track, set small goals you can achieve together. Commit to taking that 15-minute walk together, or forgo take-out (whether
fast food or green juice) twice a week in favour of a home cooked meal.
If you partner does not want to or does not
need to participate, nicely ask for his support
of your efforts … and CARRY ON!
Thursday, 20 November 2014
Sweeteners? Sugar? Or Are You Sweet Enough?
In 1879, Ira Remsen, a researcher from Johns Hopkins
University noticed that a derivative of coal tar he accidentally spilled on his
hand tasted sweet. (My question
being … why would he ever assume to taste it?) While he did not morph into
a slim, but obnoxious Buddy Love like Jerry Lewis did in The Nutty Professor,
his spill did set the stage for the development of saccharin – an artificial
sweetener known today to many seasoned dieters as Sweet-n-Low. This is the most recognized name brand of
the saccharin based sugar substitutes.
It’s now more than 125 years since that fateful lick of coal
tar derivative and saccharin has been joined by a growing list of artificial
sweeteners. Reportedly there is a long
list of more on the way.
These products substitute for sugar. They can replace corn syrup, used in many
soda and sweetened drinks, and table sugars.
The substitute allows the sweet taste to remain in anything and
everything from chocolate and ketchup to gum, ice cream, and soft drinks.
At every restaurant or coffee shop table, between the
salt shaker and the A1 Steak Sauce there sits a box jammed with pastel
packets. If you are trying to reduce
the sugar and calories in your diet, you may be turning to artificial
sweeteners or other sugar substitutes.
You are not alone. Hoping to
dodge a few calories people use them in their coffee or tea. According to a 2006 survey, 61 percent of
U.S. women use artificial sweeteners daily, and 50 percent drink diet soda.
But …
What exactly is in those packets?
Are they safe?
Can they help people shed extra weight?
What part should they play in a healthy eating program?
Let’s start with the real deal – Sucrose aka Sugar. We know sugar contributes to tooth decay and
obesity, yet we still spoon it onto cereal and into coffee (and the food
industry puts heaps – known as added sugar – into other products). North Americans eat 165 pounds of added
sugar each year. Sugar contains 16
calories per teaspoon. It is found
naturally in fruit, added to baked goods, jams and everything else from
marinades to salad dressings.
Sugar offers energy but no nutritional benefits. In 2003 it was recommended that sugar make
up no more that 10% of your diet, or about 12 teaspoons (50 grams) for a 2,000
calories diet. In 2009 the Heart
Association slashed that even further suggesting women consume no more than 6
teaspoons (25 grams) of added sugar and men no more than 9 (37.5 grams)
Check your food labels folks … those numbers are not
difficult to surpass in one sitting!
Another natural sweetener is – Honey. Honey contains 21 calories per teaspoon and
is found in cereals, baked goods and commonly used in tea. Honey contains trace amounts of vitamins and
minerals and studies suggest it may not raise blood sugar as fast as other
sweet products. It is generally better
for the body to have a slow and steady rise in blood sugar after eating, rather
than a drastic spike.
Honey does, however, contain calories and should be used as
sparingly as any other full-calories sweetener.
Something that has been around for a long time is – High-Fructose
Corn Syrup. It contains 17 calories
per teaspoon and is most often found in sodas, desserts and cereals. It contains the sugars fructose and glucose
from processed corn syrup has become a hot topic of debate lately. Because it is less expensive that sucrose
and gives products a longer shelf life, more packaged foods – especially soda,
cereal, and yogurt – contain HFCS as added sugar instead of sucrose. I always question how good anything can be for your body if it gives products "a longer shelf life"?
Some studies say beverages sweetened with HFCS contribute to
obesity more than sucrose, but others show it’s no worse for health. Like any sugar or sweetener, it’s best to
limit your consumption.
The new kid on the block is – Agave Nectar. This contains 20 calories per teaspoon and
is found in cereals, yogurt and added to tea.
The nectar is a product of the agave cactus, and its taste and texture
are similar to honey. It does not
contain as many antioxidants as honey, but it contains approximately the same
amount of calories. Agave, however, is
sweeter than sugar, so proponents argue that you can use less to get similar
sweetness.
Agave nectar contains more fructose than table sugar, which,
according to a recent study, means it is less likely to cause a spike in blood
sugar but could be more likely to reduce your metabolism and insulin
sensitivity.
WHAT IS IN THOSE PRETTY LITTLE PASTEL PACKETS?
Sugar substitutes are loosely considered any sweetener that
you use instead of regular table sugar.
Artificial sweeteners are the most common type of sugar substitute.
So let’s look at the grand-daddy of artificial sweeteners – Saccharine. I remember the days when saccharine was a
little white tablet my mom and aunt put in their coffee. It would fizz up when it was added. And you can forget the bitter-sweet after-taste
of the original Fresca or Tab diet drinks (sweetened with saccharine). These days saccharine is known as
Sweet-n-Low. It has 0 calories and is
commonly found in drinks, canned goods and candy.
Saccharin got a bad rep because rat studies in the early
1970’s found a link between consuming saccharin and bladder cancer. This prompted the U.S. Congress to mandate
in 1981 that all foods containing it bear a warning label. Later studies showed that these results occurred
in MALE rats (not humans) and further research has shown that male rats have a
particular predisposition to bladder cancers.
The Centre for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) states “the cancer
risks are not something that an individual person should worry about”.
Nutrasweet and Equal are examples of products containing – Aspartame. Aspartame has 0 calories and is most
commonly found in drinks, gum, yogurt and cough drops. One of the most studied artificial
sweeteners is aspartame. It has been
accused of causing everything from weight gain to cancer. Howver, since being approved in 1981,
studies have found no convincing evidence and the World Health Organization as
well as the American Diabetic Association say aspartame poses no threats. The CSPI says “the only caveat is aspartame
in people with a rare disorder known as phenylketonuria (PKU), who are unable
to metabolize phenylalanine. This is an
inherited, genetic disorder and PKU is detected at birth through a mandatory
screening process. Some people,
particularly those prone to migraines may develop headaches after consuming
foods sweetened with aspartame.
Another fairly recent addition to the artificial sweetener
shelf is Truvia that contains – Rebiana. It also contains 0 calories and is found in diet drinks, yogurts,
and sold in individual packets. Derived
from the stevia plant, rebiana is deemed the natural alternative to artificial
sweeteners. Although crude stevia
extracts are not approved by the FDA, refined stevia products such as Truvia
are generally regarded as safe.
However – a group of UCLA toxicologists wrote
a letter to the FDA stating several (but not all) of their lab tests showed the
sweetener to cause mutations and DNA damage and urged further testing. Until further testing, be mindful of the
amount you’re consuming.
And we move on to – Stevia. A shrub native to Paraguay and a member of the sunflower family,
Stevia is a herb that is 300 times sweeter than sugar. In North America, the safety, efficacy and
acceptability of Stevia as an ingredient in natural health products or as a
sweetener food additive are currently the subject of much debate. Evidence suggests that Stevia and its
isolates may be present a risk to pregnant women, children and those who have
low blood pressure. As a result, the
labels of Stevia-containing natural health products are required to carry
warnings.
Rapidly becoming the most popular sweetener on the market is
Splenda that contains – Sucralose.
It contains 0 calories. As it
says on the label, sucralose – which has been around since 1998 and is used in
ice cream, sauces, and jellies – is made from sugar and tastes closest to the
real thing. To create it, food chemists
substitute chlorine atoms for three hydrogen-oxygen groups on the sucrose
molecule. The switch makes Splenda a
tongue-tingling 600 times sweeter than sugar.
Splenda is not affected by heat and retains its sweetness in hot
beverages, baked goods, and processed foods.
This has some advantages.
As the obesity epidemic continues, chemists continue to
search the perfect sugar substitue.
Next up for FDA approval is a product called Alitame, which is
similar to aspartame but 10 times sweeter, with no aftertaste.
Can you overdose of sweeteners?
According to WebMD as far as nonsugar sweeteners there is
not a tremendous potential for overdose.
Even if a person binges on low-calorie Fudgesicles or Creamsicles, as
long as the rest of their diet is healthy, there is no downside because they would
otherwise probably be bingeing on something a lot worse.
CAN THEY HELP PEOPLE SHED EXTRA WEIGHT?
“Artificial sweeteners can serve a definite purpose in
weight loss and diabetes control. It
enables people that are either carb, sugar, or calorie conscious to take in a
wider range of foods that they would either not be allowed to eat or could only
eat in such teeny amounts that they were not satisfying. Artifical sweeteners allow people to stick
to a good diet for a longer period of time.
In a diet, artificial sweeteners are considered “free foods”. The sugar substitutes do not count as a
carbohydrate, a fat, or any other exchange.
These products can be useful when used appropriately
for people like diabetics who need to control their sugar intake and in
overweight people who need to control their calorie intake.
Artificial sweeteners do not affect blood sugar levels,
but some foods containing them can still affect blood sugar because of the
other carbohydrates or proteins in those foods. In other words, while foods that contain artificial sweeteners
may be sugar-free, they may not be carbohydrate free.
Just because a food contains artificial sweeteners
instead of sugar is not carte blanche for grazing!
The real key to weight loss is calories. If you substitute a diet soda for a sugar soda,
you save 100 calories, but if you eat 15 sugar free cookies (which have
calories) instead of two regular cookies, you may not be helping yourself at
all.” (Ruth Kava, Phd, RD, director
of nutrition for the American Council on Science and Health in New York City)
ARE THEY SAFE?
Okay … so faux sugars won’t do you any serious harm. And they look even better when you consider
the problems that sugar can cause. But
remember … if you get more than 15 percent of your calories from foods and
drinks with added sugar vs. naturally sweet foods like fruit, you increase your
chances of mood swings, cavities, even grogginess. And of course excess sugar can result in excess pounds.
WHAT PART SHOULD THEY PLAY IN A HEALTHY EATING PROGRAM?
You’d think that artificial sweeteners, which don’t cause
blood sugar spikes would lead to slimmer middles. Alas, not necessarily so.
One Harvard Medical School study did show that aspartame helped women
maintain weight loss over time by helping them cut calories. But another study in the International
Journal of Obesity suggests that when we offer our bodies sweet tasting foods
and beverages but give them no calories, they crave real sugar even more. Substitutes may not signal the same satiety
hormones as sugar, making it easier to overeat.
There are some guidelines for “maximum intakes for sugar
substitutes”. The FDA has
established the amount you can ingest every 24 hours with no adverse
effects. The rule? A 150-pound adult can have 8 and a half
packets of Sweet-n-Low, 87 packets of Equal or NutraSweet, or 25 packets of
Splenda daily.
If you need more than those quantities, again, you need to
be re-evaluating your overall diet!
Still confused? Me
too!
The bottom line (according to “Health” magazine): Most nutritionists agree that you’ll end up
healthier and more satisfied eating a few squares of chocolate after lunch than
feasting on artificially sweetened foods all day. And when you face your morning coffee, remember that sugar
delivers just 15 calories per teaspoon – which you can burn by sleeping for 13
minutes.
The bottom line for me:
I cannot stop at “a few squares” of chocolate … so that’s a bad
suggestions for me! I don’t “feast” on
artificially sweetened foods all day … if I snack in the afternoon I try to
make it fruit. I like using sweetener
in my coffee, but use sugar or honey in my tea. Why? For me – it’s based
on taste. I like having diet Pepsi with
my dinner, but very rarely even finish a 355 ml can. I do not overindulge in other “diet products”. I know I don’t indulge in 25 packets per
day! So, I’m going to stick with
Splenda in my coffee.
Personally, I am glad I looked into this topic (suggested by
one of my TOPS group members) because it does lay to rest some of the health
concerns. But, as with everything else,
I guess everyone has to decide what is the best for themselves.
Monday, 10 November 2014
Fad Diets Debunked
This is an excellent article that I came across on Facebook. Lots of good information so I thought I would share it here as well.
The author is Esther Ingliss-Arkell and the original article can be found on Kinja.
10 FAD DIETS, DEBUNKED
What should you cut out of your diet to be more healthy? Everything. According to the most popular diet books on the market, there's barely a food on Earth that's safe to eat. But what is the actual benefit of these diets? Here's what science has to say.
10. Cut Out Wheat to Slim Down
The Books: The Wheat Belly Fat Diet, Wheat Belly
The Claims: Wheat is making you fat! And not just fat, but fat around the tummy, which is the worst kind of fat! Belly fat itself puts you at a higher risk of cancer and other diseases. And we can cut our weight and cancer risk way down by cutting wheat out of our diet. This is especially hard because, since the 1970s, Americans have been pushed to eat more "whole grains" in order to be healthy. But since the 1970s, Americans have gotten steadily fatter on this supposedly healthy diet. Is there any doubt that wheat is ruining our health?
The Facts: Most "wheat belly fat" books contain persuasive book jacket blurbs that stress how obesity has gone up in the decades since people began eating a carb-based diet. But correlation doesn't necessarily mean causation. One possible explanation for the national weight gain is the fact that the median age of the United States population has also gone up, and no matter what, we gain fat as we age. In fact, age is a major factor in why we gain belly fat. Eat no wheat whatsoever, and you'll still pack on a bit more belly fat as you get older, even if the fat is internal. (Sorry.)
It's possible that belly fat may be more unhealthy than regular fat. Abdominal fat cells tend to boost the production of certain hormones which aren't healthy. But belly fat isn't the only problem. It turns out that "gluteal fat" (AKA the fat on your butt) promotes inflammation and insulin resistance. In other words, all extra fat can be bad. Belly fat isn't necessarily worse than any other kind of fat.
Even if belly fat is especially unhealthy, wheat might not be the main culprit. If you want to lose belly fat, you might want to look at saturated fats. In one study, men who ate muffins made with saturated fats gained more abdominal fat than men who ate muffins made with unsaturated fat. There is even one carefully-done study that suggests carbohydrates might lower a person's amount of belly fat. Men with a daily diet that contained 10 grams of soluble fiber lost more visceral fat over 5 years than men who didn't eat the soluble fiber. Oats, barley, and beans all have soluble fiber. A warning * this reduction in fat was a 3.7 percent reduction. There are no miracle diets that will simply take away your belly. Nor, really, do there need to be.
9. Get Thin and Healthy by Controlling Your Body's pH Balance
The Books: The Alkaline Cure, Eating the Alkaline Way, The Amazing Acid Alkaline Cookbook
The Claims: There are a lot of "alkaline diet" books that caution people to stay away from acidic foods, claiming that our acidic diet makes us sluggish, destroys our bones, and makes us prone to disease. Most of these books make uncontroversial health recommendations, asking people to drink water with lemon instead of coffee, cut out the alcohol, eat more vegetables, and eat goat cheese instead of cow's cheese. Adhering to alkaline-diet-approved foods will make the body alkaline. Cancer cells do not thrive in an alkaline environment. Cutting out the acid is also supposed to prevent bone loss.
The Facts: Although a steady diet of alkaline foods is meant to make the body more alkaline, blood pH is regulated by the kidneys. Diet doesn't change the pH for an appreciable length of time. A review of material studying the health effects of alkaline diets states, "There is no substantial evidence that this improves bone health or protects from osteoporosis." The review states that there may be some benefit to the diet, but the benefits are probably just from adopting a healthy diet. More tests are needed before the health effects of a specifically "alkaline" diet are conclusive. Meanwhile, cancer research sites stress that an acidic diet does not cause cancer. The alkaline diet is not a cure. It is, at best, just healthy.
8. Probiotics Will Keep Our Insides Ecologically Balanced
The Books: Probiotic Rescue, The Probiotic Revolution, Fermented Foods for Health
The Claims: Fermented foods have become very trendy. Why drink tea when you can drink kombucha? Why drink milk when you can eat yogurt? Probiotic foods help keep us full of "good" bacteria. These bacteria help us with digestion, treat irritable bowel syndrome, calm inflammation, and thin us down by stopping our carb cravings.
The Facts: Foods might not need to actually be fermented to be helpful. A study of irritable bowel syndrome sufferers had them drink either milk or yogurt. The subjects stated that they found relief not just with yogurt, but with plain nonfermented milk. And probiotic or not, the relief was described as merely "adequate." Fermentation is not a wonder cure.
Even if probiotics were wonder cures, they wouldn't be present in any pot of yogurt - even if it is labelled as "probiotic." Laboratory studies on the effects of bacteria maintain strict quality control, so scientists are sure that people are getting an effective amount of a certain kind of bacteria. Companies, and home fermenters, do not have the same quality control systems. A survey of probiotic products found that most companies don't really make any effort to measure how much of this "good" bacteria goes into the product. They also don't make any real effort to keep it alive when it's in there. Probiotic foods are often just foods full of a small amount of dead bacteria.
7. Raw Foods Will Cleanse You
The Books: The Raw Food Detox Diet, The Raw Cure, Raw Food Cleanse
The Claims: Cooked food allows toxins to build up in your body! These toxins cause you to be sluggish and increase your risk of cancer. Raw foods can cleanse you of these toxins. Cooking also destroys key nutrients and denatures important enzymes that make your body healthier. Finally, certain foods are not meant to be combined with other foods. For example, fruits are not to be mixed with vegetables if you want to get all the nutrition to be harvested from them.
The Facts: First of all, there are organs that "detox" a body already. They are called the liver and the kidneys. If they aren't working, a raw carrot isn't going to help. Only an organ transplant will help. While some studies did find that raw vegetable consumption decreased cancer rate more than cooked vegetable consumption, others contradicted them. A study of bladder cancer found that cooked vegetables can decrease the rate of cancer while raw vegetables do not.
Cooking does destroy nutrients. Nutrients like the lycopene in tomatoes can be more completely absorbed into the body if they are cooked, especially if they are cooked with some kind of fat. As for enzymes, their existence is dependent on a lot of factors. Heat is one, and pH is another. Considering that is no way to digest anything without giving it an acid bath in your stomach, few enzymes get "absorbed" into the body whether they've been heated or not. Finally, there is no evidence to support that certain combinations of common fruits and vegetables * or any other food * need to be avoided.
6. Sugar Consumption is a Drug Habit You Have to Kick
The Books: Suicide by Sugar, Sugar Blues, Sugar Nation, Overcoming Sugar Addiction
The Claims: Sugar is not just a bad food; it's an addictive drug. Studies done on lab mice show that brain response to sugar addiction is similar to brain response to cocaine and heroin.
The Facts: No one digs into a piece of chocolate cake thinking it's good for them, but it's not heroin. It's fair, in some cases, to use rat behavior as an analog for human behavior. It's still important to make sure, having obtained the results of a rat study, to make sure humans react the same way. Lab rats love sugar. Multiple studies show that lab rats go through an addiction cycle of eating, withdrawal, and craving sugar * sometimes even more than they do cocaine. Sugar also lights up reward pathways in their brains.
However, studies done on humans give us a different picture. If sugar were addictive in humans you'd expect these effects: fasting should increase craving of sweet foods in particular; obese people should crave sweet foods more than other foods; and a person's initial diet, not social or economic forces, should be the highest predictor of sugar addiction. None of these scenarios are typical. What's more, if sugar addicts are given opioid antagonists, which block brain receptors that respond to "addiction" chemicals in the brain like opioids and endorphins, we should see sugar withdrawal symptoms. In humans they don't. People eat too much sugar, and some may crave it, but sugar is not a physically addictive substance for human beings.
5. Superfoods Will Save You From Everything
The Books: Superfoods Rx, Super Immunity Foods
The Claims: Not only should you eliminate many foods from your diet, you should shift your staple diet to "superfoods." These foods have special antioxidants that will prevent cancer. They'll boost your immune system. They'll speed up your metabolism to help you lose weight, too! Anything is possible if you live on green tea, blueberries, and kale.
The Facts: It's true that antioxidants do, in some studies, protect cells in laboratories from cancer. The antioxidants pair with free radicals - molecules with unpaired electrons. These molecules might otherwise pair with our DNA. Free radicals damage the body. Free radicals damage other things as well, including microorganisms like viruses and bacteria which have invaded our bodies. The problem is that these microorganisms are part of the immune system, so it's not a good idea to wipe them out, even in theory. And while some studies show that antioxidants prevent cancer, others show that they keep cancer cells alive and decrease the effectiveness of chemotherapy. Cells alone on a plate in a lab respond consistently well to antioxidants, but cells in the body are more complicated.
Food is more complicated as well. To begin with, "a blueberry" isn't a precise dosage. In laboratory tests, scientists give cells (or animals) extracts from these superfoods. It isn't always possible to match, via actual food, the amount of extract given to animals in lab. To get the maximum amount of antioxidant health benefits from green tea, you need to drink several cups (not mugs) per day. A study that looked at green tea extract's effect on mice predicted that, to use it to increase human metabolism and lose weight, you would need about seven cups a day. If that still sounds like a good idea, beware. The tannins in the tea decrease your ability to absorb folic acid * a form of vitamin B that you need.
Superfoods are good for you, but they can't be used as cancer-preventing drugs. Drugs are purified versions of certain effective ingredients, isolated and given out in precise doses. Food is a big sloppy pile of different molecules that will interact with your body in many different ways.
4. Juices Will Cleanse You and Shrink Your Waistline Like Magic
The Books: Skinny Juices, Fat Sick and Nearly Dead
The Claims: Juices help you cleanse yourself and detox! They're healthier than whole fruits, and give you more nutrients!
The Facts: The body has kidneys and a liver to detox and cleanse itself. There is no cup of anything that will work the way these organs do. Nor is there any evidence that making something into juice allows you to get more nutrients out of it.
There are some real problems with consuming only juice. Fresh-squeezed juice is a haven for bacteria, so making a big batch of juice and saving some for later can be problematic. Fruits are full of sugar, and so people on juice cleanses can consume too much sugar without noticing. Too much kale can exacerbate hypothyroidism, too much lemon can erode the enamel on your teeth. The sugar in fruit can do a number on your teeth, as well. Juicing isn't terrible, but it's an extreme change in diet - more extreme than any other diet on this list - and needs to be done very carefully.
3. Paleo Diets Make Us as Healthy as Cave People
The Books: The Paleo Answer, The Paleo Solution, Primal Body Primal Mind
The Claims: Human beings evolved to eat the diet they ate during the stone age - no milk, or wheat, or processed foods. No cultivated foods at all. If we want to be like lean, ruthless, healthy hunter-gatherers, we need to eat seeds and nuts, roots and berries, fish and meat. The food of today is making us fat while depriving us of nutrition. We need to eat only the food we evolved to eat if we're going to be healthy.
The Facts: We're still evolving. A surprising amount of evolution happens in a few thousand years. Many humans evolved lactose tolerance, which allows us access to the calcium and calories in milk that our ancestors would have loved to be able to eat. By settling down we also managed to start eating fibrous legumes, packed with nutrients and protein and low in fat. Many paleo diets forbid these for the sole reason that they're pre-historically incorrect. But historical accuracy isn't the same as nutrition.
What's more, we weren't the only ones evolving. Even eating lean meat and tubers * even digging and raising and hunting all of those things in your own back yard * won't let you eat the way paleolithic hunters did. Almost all the food we eat or raise these days has been modified from its wild form. Some of that modification was done thousands of years ago, by the very ancestors this diet is supposed to imitate, and much of it has made the food better. Corn, for example, has gone from a weed that was barely worth picking to a staple that provides us with good nutrition. For that matter, paleolithic hunters weren't the lean, healthy people we imagine. Excavations of hunter-gatherers have revealed that they had all kinds of health problems, including the fatty build-up in the arteries that still plagues their descendants.
2. Go Vegan and Go Ultra-Low-Fat
The Books: Forks Over Knives, The China Study
The Claims: Forks Over Knives is not so much a book as a constellation of media, including a book, a cookbook, and a documentary about the diet formulated by Dr Caldwell Esselstyn. The centerpiece of all three books is The China Study. This famous study showed that rural villagers in China, who ate a mostly-vegan diet had extremely low rates of cancer and cardiovascular disease. As the prosperity and westernization of their area increased, and the population ate more meat and more fat, the disease rate increased.
In the documentary, one woman on the Esselstyn diet seems to fight off breast cancer with the diet. Other dieters halt or reverse coronary artery disease with the diet. Their success is presented as the result of giving up all meat, meat products, and added fat. Not only are all animal products off the table, but vegetable oils, nuts, and avocados are as well. Dieters "fry" their food in broth or water.
The Facts: The documentary never actually claims that a low-fat vegan diet stops cancer, which is good, because it does not. There is some evidence that people on vegetarian diets have a better survival rate once they already have colon cancer, but most of the studies done on a vegetarian diet note that vegetarians already tend to be more health-conscious than the rest of the population. Another study comparing vegetarians and meat-eaters noted that vegetarians have lower rate of heart disease, but tend not to have a lower mortality rate for other diseases. As for the reversal of symptoms of coronary artery disease, a group of people on a carbohydrate-rich diet created by Dean Ornish also reversed their symptoms. Though also low-fat, the Ornish diet allows for egg whites and cheeses.
Although experts agree that The China Study shows very strong correlation between an increase of fat and meat in diet and an increase in cancer and heart disease, the study has some problems. Critics point out that many factors, including the intake of plant protein, increased the rate of cancer. They believe that the data has been selectively picked over, and deliberately interpreted in a way that overemphasizes the negative effects of animal proteins.
Even Dr. Colin Campbell, the author of the survey, openly admits that there is no data showing that going 100 percent animal-free is better than going 95 percent animal-free. The China Study is also not the only study that looks at diet and population health. Studies of the Inuit and Masai people show they consume a lot of animal protein while maintaining good overall and cardiovascular health. The French, meanwhile, eat a lot of saturated fat and have a low rate of cardiovascular disease. Although an incredibly low-fat vegan diet is (generally) good for you, it's not a miracle cure, and you can get similar effects without going vegan.
1. Grains are Killing You Brain
The Books: Grain Brain
The Claims: Grains cause inflammation. Inflammation causes neurodegenerative diseases. Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, ADHD * they can all be avoided if we just stopped overloading on carbohydrates (even whole grains) and ate more fat. A high fat diet might even help us grow more brain cells.
The Facts: Forks Over Knives and Grain Brain end this list because they seem to be directly opposed to each other. In fact, the Forks Over Knives website has a page full of links rebutting the arguments made in Grain Brain.
Other scientists have pointed out that the evidence that seems to advocate a low-carb, high-fat lifestyle,is inconclusive. One study linking diet and Alzheimer's makes it clear that, although obesity and diseases like Alzheimer's are related, obesity hasn't been proven to cause Alzheimer's. Another study, meant to show the correlation between gluten and cognitive decline, involves only 13 patients with celiac disease. The book seems to take preliminary studies as definitive proof.
The book does, however, make good points about how hard Americans were pushed to make grains a staple of our diet. And it shows that grain may not be the wholesome, healthy food we believe it to be. Taking some grains out of a diet, and replacing them with vegetables, would be pretty healthy. Still, although it certainly benefits people with celiac disease to get off grains and gluten, there's no definitive evidence it will save anyone's brain.
In Conclusion
The point of this list is not to poke fun at scientists for disagreeing with each other. Nor is it to claim that most of these diets aren't beneficial. With the possible exception of juicing, choosing a random diet on this list and adopting it would probably improve the health of anyone reading this. These books are right to point out that most people aren't aware of how much fat, sugar, processed food, and refined carbohydrates they eat or how bad those things are for their health. To get really healthy, most of us need to radically change our diet, not just add a couple of salads a week. That said, there is no diet that can make you younger, cure or prevent cancer, magically give you limitless energy, or fix your brain. There are also no foods that are equivalent to meth or toxic waste. And, finally, there was no golden age when everyone was "natural" and "healthy." Humans have always had diet problems; what's changed is that now we have scientific investigations that can help us understand them.
[Sources via: Lifestyle Factors And 5-Year Abdominal Fat Accumulation, Abdominal Fat and What To Do About It, Median Age, Overfeeding Polyunsaturated and Saturated Fat, JCEM, The Alkaline Diet, 10 Persistent Cancer Myths Debunked, Effects of Probiotic Fermented Milk on Symptoms and Intestinal Flora, Probiotic Bacteria: Survival in Dairy Foods, Evidence for Sugar Addiction, The Plausibility of Sugar Addiction, Best Way to Eat Fruit, Is Juicing Healthier, Trouble Ahead, Superfoods and Cancer, University of Maryland Medical Center, Green Tea Extract Protects Obese Mice, Cancer Research UK, How to Really Eat Like a Hunter-Gatherer, The French Paradox, Intensive Lifestyle Changes for Reversal of Coronary Heart Disease, Symposium on Plant Food and Public Health, UCSF, Cognitive Impairment and Celiac Disease, This is Your Brain on Gluten, Raw Versus Cooked Vegetables and Cancer Risk.]
The author is Esther Ingliss-Arkell and the original article can be found on Kinja.
10 FAD DIETS, DEBUNKED
What should you cut out of your diet to be more healthy? Everything. According to the most popular diet books on the market, there's barely a food on Earth that's safe to eat. But what is the actual benefit of these diets? Here's what science has to say.
The Books: The Wheat Belly Fat Diet, Wheat Belly
The Claims: Wheat is making you fat! And not just fat, but fat around the tummy, which is the worst kind of fat! Belly fat itself puts you at a higher risk of cancer and other diseases. And we can cut our weight and cancer risk way down by cutting wheat out of our diet. This is especially hard because, since the 1970s, Americans have been pushed to eat more "whole grains" in order to be healthy. But since the 1970s, Americans have gotten steadily fatter on this supposedly healthy diet. Is there any doubt that wheat is ruining our health?
The Facts: Most "wheat belly fat" books contain persuasive book jacket blurbs that stress how obesity has gone up in the decades since people began eating a carb-based diet. But correlation doesn't necessarily mean causation. One possible explanation for the national weight gain is the fact that the median age of the United States population has also gone up, and no matter what, we gain fat as we age. In fact, age is a major factor in why we gain belly fat. Eat no wheat whatsoever, and you'll still pack on a bit more belly fat as you get older, even if the fat is internal. (Sorry.)
It's possible that belly fat may be more unhealthy than regular fat. Abdominal fat cells tend to boost the production of certain hormones which aren't healthy. But belly fat isn't the only problem. It turns out that "gluteal fat" (AKA the fat on your butt) promotes inflammation and insulin resistance. In other words, all extra fat can be bad. Belly fat isn't necessarily worse than any other kind of fat.
Even if belly fat is especially unhealthy, wheat might not be the main culprit. If you want to lose belly fat, you might want to look at saturated fats. In one study, men who ate muffins made with saturated fats gained more abdominal fat than men who ate muffins made with unsaturated fat. There is even one carefully-done study that suggests carbohydrates might lower a person's amount of belly fat. Men with a daily diet that contained 10 grams of soluble fiber lost more visceral fat over 5 years than men who didn't eat the soluble fiber. Oats, barley, and beans all have soluble fiber. A warning * this reduction in fat was a 3.7 percent reduction. There are no miracle diets that will simply take away your belly. Nor, really, do there need to be.
The Books: The Alkaline Cure, Eating the Alkaline Way, The Amazing Acid Alkaline Cookbook
The Claims: There are a lot of "alkaline diet" books that caution people to stay away from acidic foods, claiming that our acidic diet makes us sluggish, destroys our bones, and makes us prone to disease. Most of these books make uncontroversial health recommendations, asking people to drink water with lemon instead of coffee, cut out the alcohol, eat more vegetables, and eat goat cheese instead of cow's cheese. Adhering to alkaline-diet-approved foods will make the body alkaline. Cancer cells do not thrive in an alkaline environment. Cutting out the acid is also supposed to prevent bone loss.
The Facts: Although a steady diet of alkaline foods is meant to make the body more alkaline, blood pH is regulated by the kidneys. Diet doesn't change the pH for an appreciable length of time. A review of material studying the health effects of alkaline diets states, "There is no substantial evidence that this improves bone health or protects from osteoporosis." The review states that there may be some benefit to the diet, but the benefits are probably just from adopting a healthy diet. More tests are needed before the health effects of a specifically "alkaline" diet are conclusive. Meanwhile, cancer research sites stress that an acidic diet does not cause cancer. The alkaline diet is not a cure. It is, at best, just healthy.
The Books: Probiotic Rescue, The Probiotic Revolution, Fermented Foods for Health
The Claims: Fermented foods have become very trendy. Why drink tea when you can drink kombucha? Why drink milk when you can eat yogurt? Probiotic foods help keep us full of "good" bacteria. These bacteria help us with digestion, treat irritable bowel syndrome, calm inflammation, and thin us down by stopping our carb cravings.
The Facts: Foods might not need to actually be fermented to be helpful. A study of irritable bowel syndrome sufferers had them drink either milk or yogurt. The subjects stated that they found relief not just with yogurt, but with plain nonfermented milk. And probiotic or not, the relief was described as merely "adequate." Fermentation is not a wonder cure.
Even if probiotics were wonder cures, they wouldn't be present in any pot of yogurt - even if it is labelled as "probiotic." Laboratory studies on the effects of bacteria maintain strict quality control, so scientists are sure that people are getting an effective amount of a certain kind of bacteria. Companies, and home fermenters, do not have the same quality control systems. A survey of probiotic products found that most companies don't really make any effort to measure how much of this "good" bacteria goes into the product. They also don't make any real effort to keep it alive when it's in there. Probiotic foods are often just foods full of a small amount of dead bacteria.
The Books: The Raw Food Detox Diet, The Raw Cure, Raw Food Cleanse
The Claims: Cooked food allows toxins to build up in your body! These toxins cause you to be sluggish and increase your risk of cancer. Raw foods can cleanse you of these toxins. Cooking also destroys key nutrients and denatures important enzymes that make your body healthier. Finally, certain foods are not meant to be combined with other foods. For example, fruits are not to be mixed with vegetables if you want to get all the nutrition to be harvested from them.
The Facts: First of all, there are organs that "detox" a body already. They are called the liver and the kidneys. If they aren't working, a raw carrot isn't going to help. Only an organ transplant will help. While some studies did find that raw vegetable consumption decreased cancer rate more than cooked vegetable consumption, others contradicted them. A study of bladder cancer found that cooked vegetables can decrease the rate of cancer while raw vegetables do not.
Cooking does destroy nutrients. Nutrients like the lycopene in tomatoes can be more completely absorbed into the body if they are cooked, especially if they are cooked with some kind of fat. As for enzymes, their existence is dependent on a lot of factors. Heat is one, and pH is another. Considering that is no way to digest anything without giving it an acid bath in your stomach, few enzymes get "absorbed" into the body whether they've been heated or not. Finally, there is no evidence to support that certain combinations of common fruits and vegetables * or any other food * need to be avoided.
The Books: Suicide by Sugar, Sugar Blues, Sugar Nation, Overcoming Sugar Addiction
The Claims: Sugar is not just a bad food; it's an addictive drug. Studies done on lab mice show that brain response to sugar addiction is similar to brain response to cocaine and heroin.
The Facts: No one digs into a piece of chocolate cake thinking it's good for them, but it's not heroin. It's fair, in some cases, to use rat behavior as an analog for human behavior. It's still important to make sure, having obtained the results of a rat study, to make sure humans react the same way. Lab rats love sugar. Multiple studies show that lab rats go through an addiction cycle of eating, withdrawal, and craving sugar * sometimes even more than they do cocaine. Sugar also lights up reward pathways in their brains.
However, studies done on humans give us a different picture. If sugar were addictive in humans you'd expect these effects: fasting should increase craving of sweet foods in particular; obese people should crave sweet foods more than other foods; and a person's initial diet, not social or economic forces, should be the highest predictor of sugar addiction. None of these scenarios are typical. What's more, if sugar addicts are given opioid antagonists, which block brain receptors that respond to "addiction" chemicals in the brain like opioids and endorphins, we should see sugar withdrawal symptoms. In humans they don't. People eat too much sugar, and some may crave it, but sugar is not a physically addictive substance for human beings.
The Books: Superfoods Rx, Super Immunity Foods
The Claims: Not only should you eliminate many foods from your diet, you should shift your staple diet to "superfoods." These foods have special antioxidants that will prevent cancer. They'll boost your immune system. They'll speed up your metabolism to help you lose weight, too! Anything is possible if you live on green tea, blueberries, and kale.
The Facts: It's true that antioxidants do, in some studies, protect cells in laboratories from cancer. The antioxidants pair with free radicals - molecules with unpaired electrons. These molecules might otherwise pair with our DNA. Free radicals damage the body. Free radicals damage other things as well, including microorganisms like viruses and bacteria which have invaded our bodies. The problem is that these microorganisms are part of the immune system, so it's not a good idea to wipe them out, even in theory. And while some studies show that antioxidants prevent cancer, others show that they keep cancer cells alive and decrease the effectiveness of chemotherapy. Cells alone on a plate in a lab respond consistently well to antioxidants, but cells in the body are more complicated.
Food is more complicated as well. To begin with, "a blueberry" isn't a precise dosage. In laboratory tests, scientists give cells (or animals) extracts from these superfoods. It isn't always possible to match, via actual food, the amount of extract given to animals in lab. To get the maximum amount of antioxidant health benefits from green tea, you need to drink several cups (not mugs) per day. A study that looked at green tea extract's effect on mice predicted that, to use it to increase human metabolism and lose weight, you would need about seven cups a day. If that still sounds like a good idea, beware. The tannins in the tea decrease your ability to absorb folic acid * a form of vitamin B that you need.
Superfoods are good for you, but they can't be used as cancer-preventing drugs. Drugs are purified versions of certain effective ingredients, isolated and given out in precise doses. Food is a big sloppy pile of different molecules that will interact with your body in many different ways.
The Books: Skinny Juices, Fat Sick and Nearly Dead
The Claims: Juices help you cleanse yourself and detox! They're healthier than whole fruits, and give you more nutrients!
The Facts: The body has kidneys and a liver to detox and cleanse itself. There is no cup of anything that will work the way these organs do. Nor is there any evidence that making something into juice allows you to get more nutrients out of it.
There are some real problems with consuming only juice. Fresh-squeezed juice is a haven for bacteria, so making a big batch of juice and saving some for later can be problematic. Fruits are full of sugar, and so people on juice cleanses can consume too much sugar without noticing. Too much kale can exacerbate hypothyroidism, too much lemon can erode the enamel on your teeth. The sugar in fruit can do a number on your teeth, as well. Juicing isn't terrible, but it's an extreme change in diet - more extreme than any other diet on this list - and needs to be done very carefully.
The Books: The Paleo Answer, The Paleo Solution, Primal Body Primal Mind
The Claims: Human beings evolved to eat the diet they ate during the stone age - no milk, or wheat, or processed foods. No cultivated foods at all. If we want to be like lean, ruthless, healthy hunter-gatherers, we need to eat seeds and nuts, roots and berries, fish and meat. The food of today is making us fat while depriving us of nutrition. We need to eat only the food we evolved to eat if we're going to be healthy.
The Facts: We're still evolving. A surprising amount of evolution happens in a few thousand years. Many humans evolved lactose tolerance, which allows us access to the calcium and calories in milk that our ancestors would have loved to be able to eat. By settling down we also managed to start eating fibrous legumes, packed with nutrients and protein and low in fat. Many paleo diets forbid these for the sole reason that they're pre-historically incorrect. But historical accuracy isn't the same as nutrition.
What's more, we weren't the only ones evolving. Even eating lean meat and tubers * even digging and raising and hunting all of those things in your own back yard * won't let you eat the way paleolithic hunters did. Almost all the food we eat or raise these days has been modified from its wild form. Some of that modification was done thousands of years ago, by the very ancestors this diet is supposed to imitate, and much of it has made the food better. Corn, for example, has gone from a weed that was barely worth picking to a staple that provides us with good nutrition. For that matter, paleolithic hunters weren't the lean, healthy people we imagine. Excavations of hunter-gatherers have revealed that they had all kinds of health problems, including the fatty build-up in the arteries that still plagues their descendants.
The Books: Forks Over Knives, The China Study
The Claims: Forks Over Knives is not so much a book as a constellation of media, including a book, a cookbook, and a documentary about the diet formulated by Dr Caldwell Esselstyn. The centerpiece of all three books is The China Study. This famous study showed that rural villagers in China, who ate a mostly-vegan diet had extremely low rates of cancer and cardiovascular disease. As the prosperity and westernization of their area increased, and the population ate more meat and more fat, the disease rate increased.
In the documentary, one woman on the Esselstyn diet seems to fight off breast cancer with the diet. Other dieters halt or reverse coronary artery disease with the diet. Their success is presented as the result of giving up all meat, meat products, and added fat. Not only are all animal products off the table, but vegetable oils, nuts, and avocados are as well. Dieters "fry" their food in broth or water.
The Facts: The documentary never actually claims that a low-fat vegan diet stops cancer, which is good, because it does not. There is some evidence that people on vegetarian diets have a better survival rate once they already have colon cancer, but most of the studies done on a vegetarian diet note that vegetarians already tend to be more health-conscious than the rest of the population. Another study comparing vegetarians and meat-eaters noted that vegetarians have lower rate of heart disease, but tend not to have a lower mortality rate for other diseases. As for the reversal of symptoms of coronary artery disease, a group of people on a carbohydrate-rich diet created by Dean Ornish also reversed their symptoms. Though also low-fat, the Ornish diet allows for egg whites and cheeses.
Although experts agree that The China Study shows very strong correlation between an increase of fat and meat in diet and an increase in cancer and heart disease, the study has some problems. Critics point out that many factors, including the intake of plant protein, increased the rate of cancer. They believe that the data has been selectively picked over, and deliberately interpreted in a way that overemphasizes the negative effects of animal proteins.
Even Dr. Colin Campbell, the author of the survey, openly admits that there is no data showing that going 100 percent animal-free is better than going 95 percent animal-free. The China Study is also not the only study that looks at diet and population health. Studies of the Inuit and Masai people show they consume a lot of animal protein while maintaining good overall and cardiovascular health. The French, meanwhile, eat a lot of saturated fat and have a low rate of cardiovascular disease. Although an incredibly low-fat vegan diet is (generally) good for you, it's not a miracle cure, and you can get similar effects without going vegan.
The Books: Grain Brain
The Claims: Grains cause inflammation. Inflammation causes neurodegenerative diseases. Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, ADHD * they can all be avoided if we just stopped overloading on carbohydrates (even whole grains) and ate more fat. A high fat diet might even help us grow more brain cells.
The Facts: Forks Over Knives and Grain Brain end this list because they seem to be directly opposed to each other. In fact, the Forks Over Knives website has a page full of links rebutting the arguments made in Grain Brain.
Other scientists have pointed out that the evidence that seems to advocate a low-carb, high-fat lifestyle,is inconclusive. One study linking diet and Alzheimer's makes it clear that, although obesity and diseases like Alzheimer's are related, obesity hasn't been proven to cause Alzheimer's. Another study, meant to show the correlation between gluten and cognitive decline, involves only 13 patients with celiac disease. The book seems to take preliminary studies as definitive proof.
The book does, however, make good points about how hard Americans were pushed to make grains a staple of our diet. And it shows that grain may not be the wholesome, healthy food we believe it to be. Taking some grains out of a diet, and replacing them with vegetables, would be pretty healthy. Still, although it certainly benefits people with celiac disease to get off grains and gluten, there's no definitive evidence it will save anyone's brain.
In Conclusion
The point of this list is not to poke fun at scientists for disagreeing with each other. Nor is it to claim that most of these diets aren't beneficial. With the possible exception of juicing, choosing a random diet on this list and adopting it would probably improve the health of anyone reading this. These books are right to point out that most people aren't aware of how much fat, sugar, processed food, and refined carbohydrates they eat or how bad those things are for their health. To get really healthy, most of us need to radically change our diet, not just add a couple of salads a week. That said, there is no diet that can make you younger, cure or prevent cancer, magically give you limitless energy, or fix your brain. There are also no foods that are equivalent to meth or toxic waste. And, finally, there was no golden age when everyone was "natural" and "healthy." Humans have always had diet problems; what's changed is that now we have scientific investigations that can help us understand them.
[Sources via: Lifestyle Factors And 5-Year Abdominal Fat Accumulation, Abdominal Fat and What To Do About It, Median Age, Overfeeding Polyunsaturated and Saturated Fat, JCEM, The Alkaline Diet, 10 Persistent Cancer Myths Debunked, Effects of Probiotic Fermented Milk on Symptoms and Intestinal Flora, Probiotic Bacteria: Survival in Dairy Foods, Evidence for Sugar Addiction, The Plausibility of Sugar Addiction, Best Way to Eat Fruit, Is Juicing Healthier, Trouble Ahead, Superfoods and Cancer, University of Maryland Medical Center, Green Tea Extract Protects Obese Mice, Cancer Research UK, How to Really Eat Like a Hunter-Gatherer, The French Paradox, Intensive Lifestyle Changes for Reversal of Coronary Heart Disease, Symposium on Plant Food and Public Health, UCSF, Cognitive Impairment and Celiac Disease, This is Your Brain on Gluten, Raw Versus Cooked Vegetables and Cancer Risk.]
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