When Goliath Blinks

After tobacco, the world’s biggest health problem is excess sugar intake.  This isn’t news—but there is a growing chorus of alarm from concerned people like you and me. 

Because the primary source of added sugar is soft drinks, our first Healthy Change said, “If you consume sodas (or other sugary drinks), limit yourself to one (12 oz.) serving per week.”  It’s a change you can live with.

Well the Goliath of the soda world is Coca-Cola and for over a century they’ve ignored their critics, not deigning to acknowledge the issues . . . until now.  The other day Goliath blinked.  Coca-Cola, the most valuable brand in the world, announced a new strategy:  They’d like to join the dialogue on unhealthy sugar intake. 

It’s not usually a good thing when Goliath wants to play with you.  To revise an old warning, “’Everyman for himself’, cried Goliath as he danced among the chickens.”  So I didn’t expect anything noble of Coca-Cola.

Goliath’s Big Lies

Coca-Cola hasn’t quite been brought to its knees, but it is feeling the pain of “negative public sentiment” regarding their obesity-causing sugary products.  They’re fully aware that US (per capita) soda consumption has been declining since 1998 due to public concern, per the Beverage Digest.  So now they want to make nice.

A new advertising campaign will attempt to make two points in Coca-Cola’s defense.  Both, in the view of WOWL, are a form of lying.

First, Coca-Cola will claim that all sources of calories cause weight gain.  This is based on a common error often repeated by people who should know better:  “A calories is a calorie.”  What they mean is that a calorie from an apple will have the same effect as a calorie from a sugary Coke.  This is patently false and ignores human biology and a mountain of research.  There is no evidence that anyone has become obese eating apples, or benefited from fewer apples.

The second lie is that Coca-Cola has a history of providing drinks with fewer calories.  If they are referring to Diet Coke or Coke Zero this is less than an outright lie but not quite the truth either.  There is no evidence that diet drinks prevent or reduce our epidemic of obesity—they’re part of the problem. 

Diet drinks are believed to reinforce the infantile desire for the sugary foods marketed by Food Inc.  So while they appear to provide fewer calories, sweet cravings are reinforced and those addicted simply consume calories from other sugary products.  

There’s also no evidence that the new vitamin-added drinks improve health—time will reveal what new ills they present.  Frankly, water is the best drink, and vitamins are best consumed in their natural habitat—real food.

Exercise Can’t Solve Obesity

One more lie:  A Coca-Cola ad slated to run before the Super Bowl shows people exercising, as though you could walk or run and simply erase the toxic effects of sugary drinks.  You can’t.  Exercise is good for lots of reasons but it’s best to exercise and limit soft drinks, we suggest, to one (12-oz) serving a week, or if you prefer, none at all. 

The beauty of the once-a-week Healthy Change is that you’ll find yourself skipping the drink some weeks and that’s real progress against our most unhealthy addiction: excess sugar.  Once one pushes sugar off the center of our diet, we can rediscover traditional flavors.  Now that’s progress worth talking about . . . but what does Coca-Cola have to offer?

Skip's Peanut Butter

The quick answer:  Pity the peanut butter makers as they try to please the health-conscious public.  First they drop HFCS, then trans fats, lower the salt, and now they search for a “natural” product.  They should try Skip’s recommendation (below).

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How a Peanut Butter Was Named And I Became “Skip”

If a boy has the same given name as his father, he’s likely to get a nickname.  For example, I was nicknamed Skippy by my grandmother and it stuck, shortened to Skip as I got older.  Grandma never told me how she chose my name, but I think I know.  At the time, there was a popular comic strip called “Skippy.” 

The Skippy of the comic strip was a mischievous but lovable, all-American boy, wise beyond his years, given to philosophical observations.  Frankly, that’s how I would describe myself today, though it makes the beautiful wife laugh. 

In its time, Skippy was as popular as later characters like Peanuts or Calvin and Hobbes.  There’s more to the story because a food product got its name from that comic strip—Skippy Peanut Butter—or at least used the name, which had been copyrighted.  Which leads us to the topic of peanut butter, and trans fats.

Peanut Butter and Trans Fat

The problem with peanut butter, in the beginning, was oil separation.  In the ‘20s, a California food chemist named Rosefield stopped separation by mixing in hydrogenated vegetable oil.  Rosefield licensed his invention, to Peter Pan Peanut Butter, and then launched his own brand, Skippy Peanut Butter.  

This resulted in the peanut butter you knew growing up—it didn’t separate, had a long shelf life, but was darned unhealthy.  It took about 75 years for the public to become aware of the toxicity of hydrogenated trans fats in peanut butter.

Growing up, schoolmates often called me Skippy Peanut Butter.  I’ve heard that a thousand times or more.  Which clearly qualifies me to talk about today’s subject: healthy peanut butter.

Healthy Peanut Butter

What makes a healthy peanut butter?  It’s pretty simple: 

1. Start with fresh peanuts (depending on storage conditions, older peanuts may contain aflatoxin, a carcinogen and mutagen from fungus growth).
2. Follow the fiber>sugar rule (food products should contain more fiber than sugar).
3. Use healthy—natural, minimally processed—oils (if oils are added).

While hanging around the PB aisle in the grocery store, a young mom picked up a jar of almond butter.  Of course I asked her why and she explained she has a child in preschool and that all preschools forbid peanut butter sandwiches.  It’s an interesting thought—the next generation is getting their start on almond butter.

In-store Peanut Butter

Some health food stores have grinders that let you make fresh peanut butter.  Sounds like a good idea but there’s a problem:  the freshness of the peanuts.

I like the way you can buy whole grains and legumes from bins in such stores but have you ever taken a close look at the nuts?  Typically they’re rancid (by the action of oxygen in the air) and oxidized oils are toxic.  Shelled nuts need to be refrigerated, or at least kept in airtight containers. 

It may look funny, but I’ve opened the bin lids and sniffed the nuts in my local health food store.  Anything with omega-3 fats, especially walnuts, typically smells rancid.  The roasted peanuts (yes, they’re legumes, not nuts) are especially bad, in fact it’s hard to buy fresh peanuts.  Check the ones at the ballpark—if they don’t pass the sniff test, give them to the loud, obnoxious guy behind you.

So fresh-ground, in-store peanut butter is a bad idea because the peanuts aren’t fresh.  Every few years Consumer Reports tests peanut products for aflatoxin and the worst are always the in-store made peanut butters.  There’s a government limit, 20 parts per billion (ppb), and the top selling prepared brands, like Skippy and Jif, have the lowest levels, around 1 ppb. 

Healthy Peanut Butter

The challenge now is to prevent oil separation without adding trans fats.  Stirring peanut butter to remix the oil is a pain and I usually spill some, which makes the BW frown. Now that people have wised up to trans fats, new ways are being used to prevent separation.  One option is to do nothing and if you walk through the peanut butter aisle at your supermarket you can find brands with the oil sitting on top of the peanut butter.  Here are options to stop separation:

Method #1:  Mix in fully hydrogenated vegetable oils.  Basically, when you hydrogenate unsaturated oil you make it more saturated, but you create partially saturated trans fats.  If you continue to hydrogenate the oil it becomes fully saturated and few trans fats remain.  This fully saturated oil is added to some brands of peanut butter, Skippy Creamy, Jif Creamy, and Peter Pan Peanut Butter (the latter containing both fully and partially hydrogenated oils) are examples.

I reject peanut butter with hydrogenated oils.  Such oils are highly processed, beginning with petroleum solvent extraction of the oil from the seed, deodorization with blasts of superheated steam, and finally hydrogenation.  Hydrogenation is done at temperatures between 500-1000 degrees F, by exposing the oil to a metallic catalyst (usually nickel) and bubbling hydrogen through it.  It’s definitely a highly processed product.

Method #2:  Mix in palm oil.  Palm oil, rich in vitamins A and E, has been used for millennia around the world.  Like olive oil, it comes from the flesh rather than the seed (unlike palm kernel oil) so is minimally processed, without use of solvent extraction.  It’s a thick oil, so does a pretty good job of preventing oil separation in peanut butter, though not completely.  I think palm oil is a good enough solution to separation.

Peanut butters titled “Natural” usually include some palm oil to prevent separation.  The FDA requires that peanut butter be 90% peanuts so if more palm oil is used it must be called a spread.  Whichever the name, I consider them healthy products, as long as added sugar isn’t greater than fiber.  Warning:  The FDA doesn’t regulate what “natural” means so you have to trust Food Inc not to fib.

Recommended (by Cook’s Illustrated taste test) brands:

• Jif Natural Creamy PB; ingredients—Roasted peanuts, sugar, 2% or less of palm oil, salt, molasses.  The Cook’s Illustrated taste test ranked this the best non-hydrogenated PB (#2 rank overall).
• Skippy Natural Creamy PB; ingredients—Roasted peanuts, sugar, palm oil, and salt.  Also recommended by Cook’s Illustrated, though in 5^th place.

Method #3:  Micro mill the peanuts to minimize separation.

This sounds a little like how milk is homogenized to keep cream from separating, so until they share more about their process, I’m uneasy that the fats aren’t damaged.  In the homogenization of milk, the fats are so damaged they must be quickly pasteurized (cooked) to prevent spoilage.  Both Trader Joe’s and Costco (Kirkland Signature brand) are in this category. 

• Trader Joe’s Creamy Salted Peanut Butter uses unblanched peanuts.  This means the fibrous husk on the shelled peanut isn’t removed so it’s the only brand with more fiber (3 gm) than sugar (1gm),  The ingredient list is simple:  Dry roasted peanuts, salt. 
• Kirkland uses the sweeter Valencia peanut so there’s no added sugar.  The ingredient list simply says: Roasted Valencia peanuts, sea salt. 

Skip’s Ideal Peanut Butter

“Natural” is the future of peanut butter—nothing hydrogenated, perhaps a little palm or coconut oil to control separation.  Right now I’m sticking with Skippy Natural Creamy PB. 

But if I were to introduce a new brand, lets say Skip’s Homemade Peanut Butter, I’d make it with Valencia peanuts for natural sweetness, keep the husk on the peanut for more fiber, add a little healthy palm oil to minimize separation, and finish it off with a bit of molasses and sea salt.  One more thing:  a glass jar—I’m uneasy about chemical extraction from plastic containers.  Funny that no one, to my knowledge, has offered this yet.

Please comment:  What’s your favorite peanut butter.

Death by Trans Fats

The quick answer:  After slashing your sugar intake, the next biggest favor you can do for your health is to eliminate trans fats.  Avoid hydrogenated foods especially those from the deep fat fryer.

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The Deadly Toll

Like David taking on Goliath, we start the New Year with a head-on attack against the modern American diet’s (MAD) two biggest killers: 

1. Excess sugar, the subject of Healthy Change #1, and
2. Trans fats (this week’s target, in Healthy Change #2). 

People die from hydrogenated trans fat.  A team led by Harvard’s Dr. Walter Willett calculated in 1994 that hydrogenated trans fats caused at least 30,000 cardiac deaths each year.  Later the upper range of deaths was put at 100,000 per year.  Though the mechanism of harm is unclear, trans fat is inflammatory, and increases bad LDL cholesterol while robbing good HDL cholesterol. 

Deaths from related causes (Alzheimer’s Disease, obesity and diabetes, etc.) likely increase the trans fat death toll.  Trans fat is also a risk factor for depression, and infertility in women. 

According to the French EPIC study, higher intake of trans fat is linked to 75% greater risk of breast cancer.  There are seriously good reasons to avoid products with trans fat.

You’re probably wondering how a food product of such proven harm could still be allowed on the market.  Here’s one answer:  Congress rarely interferes with profitable products.  Think about the reluctance of Congress to ban cigarettes, an even greater killer.  It’s business as usual—remember that prophetic warning about “conspiring men”?

Trans Fat History

Briefly, the first big trans product was Crisco shortening, introduced by P&G in 1911.  Crisco was brilliantly advertised as being modern, cheaper, and more convenient than lard.  Women quickly rejected lard, a traditional food of known safety, for a modern invention of unknown healthfulness.  This is a repeating mistake with 20^th century factory food.

Other major trans fat products followed:  margarine, partially hydrogenated vegetable oils, and a plethora of processed foods make from refined flour, sugar, salt, and hydrogenated oils.  One thing you can say about trans fats is they have a long shelf life.  Can any cook remember throwing out Crisco because it became rancid? 

Trans fats consumption took off with the fast food trend.  It’s tragic, but French fries are our #1 consumed vegetable and trans fat offers the stability needed for the hot oil in the deep fat fryers.  Ditto for onion rings, corn dogs, donuts, most fried chicken—anything cooked in a deep fat fryer.  One exception, though healthfulness is still a concern: In ‘n Out makes their French fries without trans fats.

Two Heroes

In a prior post I discussed two heroes:  Dr. Mary Enig and Dr. Fred Kummerow, both of the U. of Maryland.  For years, as the toll from heart disease rose in step with the modern American diet, Dr. Enig argued that trans fat played a role due to it’s inflammatory effect.  Atherosclerosis is basically a disease of inflammation.  Critics defending the food industry derided her but she continued her campaign with remarkable courage and time has shown her to be right.  For more information, read her book Know Your Fats.

Dr. Fred Kummerow's most recent act in our behalf was a 2009 petition to the FDA that trans fat be “banned from the American diet.”  In a statement he said, “Everybody should read my petition because it will scare the hell out of them.”  At the time Dr. Kummerow was 94 years young.

Encouraging Progress

Last October a N. Y. Times article noted a healthy thing:  Per the 2010 NHANES study, the average level of cholesterol in the US dropped below 200.  What was even better, the drop was in the bad LDL cholesterol; the good HDl cholesterol made a slight increase.  Triglycerides also showed improvement, down 10% from 2002.  So what caused the blood lipid improvement?

The article theorized a reason for the improvement in cholesterol:  A drop in our intake of trans fat!  In a separate study, the CDC found a 60% reduction in serum trans fat levels from 2000 to 2010.  This is real progress and there's a blood lipid benefit but we still have a ways to go. 

There was another fascinating fact in the article:  Cholesterol level dropped not only in those taking statin drugs (which lower cholesterol but at a cost)—levels also improved in people who don’t take statins.  Due to the cost and side effects of statin drugs, this is a topic that deserves more attention.

Avoiding Trans Fats

How much trans fat can you safely eat?  The answer, according to the respected National Academy of Sciences, is zero.  Although Food Inc continues to sell them, the best goal is to avoid trans fats completely. 

Hardly anyone buys margarine anymore, though I fear for the poorest among us because as a dying product it’s now the cheapest thing in the butter aisle.  Likewise, if you travel down the chip aisle—pretty much owned by Frito Lay—there are few products that still include hydrogenated vegetable oils. 

Unfortunately there are still lots of products with trans fat, especially fast foods (noted above).  Store-bought cookies, pies, pastries—in short most baked goods, whether fresh or frozen—are typically full of trans fats. 

The FDA made the mistake of allowing Food Inc to put the label claim “No trans fat” on any product with less than ½ gram of trans fat.  This is tragic because, depending on serving size, trans fat can still comprise 7% of calories.  The best thing is to avoid anything deep fat fried and check packaged goods for the word hydrogenated on the ingredient list.  There’s still a lot hydrogenated stuff lurking in the MAD.

Please comment:  What questions do you have about healthy fats or oils?  In our next post we'll share a recipe for oven roasted fries—a replacement for French fries.  Have you had an interesting experience with trans fats, or trans fat avoidance?  Please share, your comments make this blog work.

Laguna Beach Walk

There's nothing quite like a Saturday morning drive to the Farmers' Market.  In Laguna there's a tradition of eccentric characters who assume responsibility for greeting people.  The most famous of the Laguna greeters was Eiler Larsen who died in the '70s after years of standing on the corner of Forest Avenue cheerfully greeting perfect strangers.  Eiler, a Danish immigrant, could have been the model for Forest Gump for he once walked across the US on the way to Laguna and having found a town as funky as he was, made it his home.

When I saw this cheerful soul standing on Eiler's corner, hard by Main Beach, I jumped out of my car to take this picture.  With the mission of greeting the world, this was one happy guy.

Main Beach is rich in character.  On the opposite corner I found a young couple passing out invitations to come to Jesus.  Impressed with their sincerity I stopped to talk.  "Do you think you'll get to Heaven?" they asked.  "I'm doing my best," I replied.  I couldn't help but mention that when I was their age, I spent 2-1/2 years as a missionary tromping around Central America.  That got me some respect but I had respect for them also.

Forest Avenue is named for the Eucalyptus trees that once graced the neighborhood.  They were planted in the 1880s as a way to homestead government land.  Only a few have survived but the street was given new life by the charm of the shops and botiques. 

There's a saying, often expressed by people taken aback by the funkiness of Laguna Beach:  "Only in Laguna!"  It's not always a compliment but I love this town and most of the characters in it.  I just started going to the Farmers' Market a few years ago.  It's a great place to walk around on a sunny Saturday morning and you can count on meeting someone you know, or wish you knew.  It's a great little market.

The beautiful wife once sent me to buy a chuck roast.  I came back with one that cost $12/lb.  It seemed a lot to pay but the guy below (with his sweetheart getting him ready for a picture) was a good salesman.  The beef, from an Oregon ranch, is pasture-raised, finished on alfalfa, and then dry aged for 21 days.  We invited the kids over and had it for Sunday dinner.  Best, and healthiest, chuck roast we had ever eaten; worth every penny.  There's a URL for his website in the picture.

Katie, picture below, is a hard working girl and an advocate for "good, healthy food."  She makes an incredible chili.  I once bought a quart (it's not cheap), added a can of beans to it and took it to the church chili contest.  Won the first place ribbon, thanks to Katie.  Katie was pleased when I told her about it. 

On this day I tried to buy some of her beef stock.  She buys bones from a butcher and cooks up big batches.  Unfortunately she was out, but it's on my list to catch her when she has some in stock. You can visit her blog, "How to heal a cowboy."

 

Oh, I almost forgot.  I have a book report on Fat Chance, by Dr. Robert Lustig.  You may know Lustig for his YouTube video on the dangers of fructose, "Sugar, The Bitter Truth".  If you want to understand what the fructose in refined sugar or HFCS does to your body, check the video.  The video ends with a poignant endorsement of the natural fructose in fruit:  "When God makes a poison, He wraps it in the antidote."  So enjoy your fruit.

Lustig makes the point in Fat Chance that the primary factor behind today’s disastrous obesity epidemic is excessive dietary sugar (in all forms) and refined grains.  As noted before, sugar and refined carbs drive insulin levels up and insulin causes fat to be stored in your body, and keeps it there.  So to reduce body fat, you have to keep insulin in a healthy range. Here are highlights from Lustig's thoughts:

#1.  A high insulin level drives the storage and retention of fat.  The three primary causes of high insulin are:  a) any sugary high G.I. meal; b) a history of high G.I. foods (which make you insulin resistant so the pancreas has to pump out even more insulin), and c) persistent excessive stress which increases insulin through the action of cortisol, the stress hormone. 

#2.  So, per #1 above, reducing the sugar in your diet is just one of three possible remedies.  Insulin resistance and protracted stress may also be factors.  How do you know if you have insulin resistance?  It’s not easy to determine but because of the link to visceral fat, your waist circumference is a simple test.  If a guy has a waist over 40”, or a girl over 35“, you’re likely insulin resistance.  Lots of people have it. 

Another check is the waist-to-hip ratio.  If the ratio is greater than 1.0 for men (meaning your waist is bigger than your hips) or .85 for girls you may be packing the dangerous visceral fat around your organs that is linked to insulin resistance.  This is a good reason to consult your doctor. (Percutaneous fat, the stuff around your waist you can grab, is less a worry.)

#3.  I have a little experience with stress, the 3^rd cause of high insulin.  In this difficult economic time there’s plenty of stress to go around.  Stress can be a deep-rooted problem and we’ve talked about it here and here.  The only thing I might add is to get plenty of exercise (besides relieving stress it also turns up your metabolism), stay close to your loved ones, and trust in the good Lord.

#4.  A diet rich in fiber is another way to keep blood glucose levels in a healthy range.  Fiber slows the absorption of sugar so you get a longer benefit of a meal and keep hunger in check.   Fiber has lots of other benefits—more reasons to eat a plant-based diet.

Talking so much about refined sugar and other refined carbs has put a dark cloud over me this week, so I thought a stroll through Laguna would help.  And that’s my report on Saturday morning in Laguna, and Lustig’s book, Fat Chance.

The Skip Anti-Diet

The quick answer for shedding stubborn fat:  Rather than starving yourself with the diet de jour, learn to eat real food per the W of W.  If stubborn fat persists, adapt Skip’s W of W based Anti-Diet (see below) to your unique needs.

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When the Smoke Cleared

Diets come and go but do you remember the Scarsdale Diet? 

Like many diets, the Scarsdale Diet had its 15 minutes of fame.  The diet was no worse than most, I suppose, but the cardiologist inventor missed most of the glory.  The reason for the missed glory was his sudden death at the hands of his jilted girlfriend, Jean Harris, headmistress of an exclusive girls school. 

The doctor had left her, the newspapers revealed, for someone “younger and blonder.”  Ms. Harris hadn’t meant to kill her cheating lover, she claimed at her trial.  She had come to his home to kill herself and he died of accidental gunshot—in his own bedroom—when he tried to stop her.  The jury, in view of the three neatly placed bullet holes in his chest, didn’t buy her story.

Ms. Harris, after 12 years in prison, retired to a New Hampshire cabin where she gardened and lived quietly until her recent death at the age of 89.  Harris’ death caught my attention because I’ve been thinking of inventing my own diet.  On the remote chance I might have my 15 minutes of fame, I’m doing my best to keep the beautiful wife happy. 

Why We Get Fat

In the recent post titled Please, Whatever You Do, Don’t Resolve To Lose Weight in 2013, the quoted experts said we gain fat not because of the fat we eat, but because of our excessive intake of sugar and refined carbs common to factory foods.  The sugar we consume goes to our blood, raises our insulin level, and the elevated insulin packs the sugar into our cells in the form of triglycerides and then keeps it there. 

So, if you want to carry around less fat—eat less sugar and refined carbs.  This is not just about vanity—eating less sugar reduces our risk of diabetes, heart disease, cancer and other maladies. 

Two Hard Facts About Fat

The above was a simple explanation of a complex process but it omitted two hard facts:

1. Some people, through no fault of their own, are simply more prone to gain fat.  They can gain fat on the same diet that makes others thin as fashion models.
2. Fat, once gained, isn’t easy to shed and the longer you carry it around, the more it wants to stay with you.  Worse, for the very obese, there may be a point of no return.

So it’s understandable that people are driven to try the diet de jour, even though they know about the Word of Wisdom.  As you know, I’m not qualified to offer diet guidance, being neither MD nor PhD,  At WOWL we don’t believe in starvation by diet, instead we advocate eating real foods that are high in nutrients and low in calories.  But if I had eaten the WOWL way and was still struggling to shed persistent fat, I would try what I humbly call—The Skip Anti-Diet.

Skip’s Anti-Diet Diet

There are three stages to Skip’s Anti-Diet: 

Stage 1:  Use one’s best judgment to follow the W of W, guided by the 52 Healthy Changes.  This isn’t easy—the BW and I struggle to live all the changes—but it’s important to keep trying.  Get plenty of exercise also, it will turn up your metabolic furnace.

Stage 2:  If I wanted to lose more fat, I would step up the process this way: 

• Pay particular attention to sugar reduction (only 1 soda per week, buy candy a piece at a time as a treat not a regular snack). 
• Eat only whole grains.  Avoid white (polished) rice, pasta that’s not whole grain (eat your pasta al dente—less cooking reduces the glycemic index (G.I.) and avoid sugary sauces).  Eat only cereal, bread, cookies, or crackers that have more grams of fiber than sugar.  The fiber>sugar rule is important.
• Eat a salad with dinner.  The G.I. of leafy greens and salad ingredients like avocado is zero.  Zero!
• Eat homemade soups.  Soups are economical, filling, and low in insulin-raising calories.  Legumes generally have a low G.I.
• Eat more meat; if you eat two servings of beef and poultry a week, add a serving.  Increase your servings of fish also; I love shrimp or crab salads. 
• Get enough sleep, at least 8 hours, maybe 9—we crave sugary snacks when tired from lack of sleep plus fat is consumed during the last hours of sleep when sugar is low.  Sleep is a fat burner—in the last hours of sleep, when blood sugar is low, a process called ketosis burns fat to give energy to the brain. 

Stage 3:  Ask you doctor if this even lower G.I. diet would work for you and try it for 90 days:

• Drink water exclusively.  No sugary sodas and only a few pure juices. 
• Eat lots of vegetables but no potatoes or other starchy roots (yams are OK, especially with butter or cheese—which have a G.I. of zero). 
• Besides eating salad at dinner, enjoy a salad with soup for lunch.  An EVOO with vinegar dressing is healthy and further reduces G.I.
• Restrict bread and make it whole-wheat sourdough.  Sourdough whole grain breads, especially rye bread, have a low G.I.  I’d eat the little bread I got with butter or cheese or make a tuna or meat sandwich.
• Limit snacks to nuts (nuts have healthy fats and very low G.I.), vegetables like celery (zero G.I.), cheese, and a little fresh fruit.
• Double your meat intake and enjoy eggs and bacon for breakfast a couple of times per week.  (The high-meat Atkins Diet really does work but keep your menu healthy per the W of W.)  Eat grapefruit with breakfast several days a week—foods with acid also reduce G.I.
• Eat a full dinner, early in the evening if possible, but no snacks after dinner.  Go to bed a little hungry. 
• No packaged cereals, candy, cakes, or cookies, with this exception:  Treat yourself to a single dessert each week as a reward for compliance with Stage 3 rules.

Please Comment:  The idea here is to maintain a healthy W of W diet but tip it towards a lower G.I. by steadily reducing factory foods in favor of farm foods while adding eggs, milk with cream, cheese and meat to provide low-G.I. replacement calories. The W of W calls for "sparing" use of meat products—allowing flexibility for each person's needs.  The promise of the W of W is one gains "hidden knowledge" which can include how to eat and remain fit. 

I found The Complete Idiot’s Guide to GLycemic Index Weight Loss to be a good resource, if you want to know more.  The BW wife has started an experiment with the Skip Anti-Diet—she looks great, really, but thinks her Levi's are a little tight.  We’re monitoring blood sugar trends and eating the right stuff. We’ll let you know how it works.  Please share what works, or doesn't worki, for you.

Toxic Sugar

The quick answer:  Sugary drinks, whether real or imitation, are a leading cause of chronic disease and premature death.  Pure water is the healthiest drink.

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Two Biggest Diet Problems

The two worst problems with the modern American diet are sugar (in excess) and trans fats (in any quantity).  We’ll address trans fats next week; this post is about the 100 lbs of sugar consumed annually by Americans, much of which goes to our waist.  No one puts that much sugar in their food, they don’t have to—sugar is the #1 additive in processed foods. 

The most toxic source of sugar—whether sucrose (table sugar), corn syrup, or high fructose corn syrup—is soda drinks.  So we start the year with Healthy Change #1:  If you consume sodas or other sugary drinks, limit yourself to one (12 oz.) serving per week. 

I’m not trying to destroy the Coca-Cola or PepsiCo companies—but if they don't offer healthy products they'll destroy themselves.  One other thing:  Healthy Change #1 includes the chemical substitutes used in diet drinks, which simply reinforce our sugar cravings. 

Sugar History

Sugar in the early 1800s was a special occasion treat.  Traditional sweeteners were natural, local, and seasonal: honey in the summer, maple sugar in the winter.  The nation couldn’t overdose on honey—first, there wasn’t enough, and second, honey doesn’t have that effect.

When the Word of Wisdom was revealed in 1833, American consumption of sweeteners stood at 10 lbs per year—about 3 tsp a day.  Now, depending on the data source, we eat 21-30 teaspoons daily.  The AHA recommends no more than 6 tsp (24 grams) daily for women, 9 for men (based on their greater weight).  The AHA guidance seems a wise goal.

In his 1925 book, Food, Health, Vitamins, the pioneer English biochemist, R. H. A. Plimmer made a foreboding but prophetic comment about sugar in America: “The Americans, with their love of candy, are the largest sugar eaters in the world.  Incidentally, cancer and diabetes, two scourges of civilization, have increased proportionately to the sugar consumption.”

Few heeded Plimmer’s warning—our sugar intake continued to increase, as did the incidence of diabetes and cancer.  Add to that list the illness that has since grown to be the #1 cause of death: heart disease.  

Toxic Sugar

In the ‘70s Dr. John Yudkin of England warned of sugar’s toxicity in his book Pure, White and Deadly,” (published in the US as Sweet and Dangerous, now a collectors item).  Yudkin made the link between our sugar intake and heart disease when so-called experts were wrongly blaming saturated fats. 

The science establishment, committed to the Lipid Theory of heart disease, turned on Yudkin with a vengeance and it became politically incorrect to mention Yudkin or his work. Time has shown Yudkin to be right, lipids weren’t the big problem, but a generation was wasted. 

Food Inc’s reduced-fat response to the Lipid Theory had worse consequences:  Traditional saturated fats were replaced with hydrogenated vegetable oils containing transfats, and low-fat foods had extra sugar added to improve the taste.  In this false move, we added both trans fats and sugar do our diet.  We not only didn’t reduce heart disease, we increased the problem of overweight and diabetes. 

Scary Sugar

The author today who has done the most to warn of our sugar addiction and correct the Lipid Theory error is Gary Taubes, author of Good Calories, Bad Calories.  Here are quotes, beginning with Taubes’ closing paragraph from Good Calories, Bad Calories:

“Sugar scares me . . . I’d like to eat it in moderation . . . but I don’t actually know what that means, and I’ve been reporting on this subject and studying it for more than a decade. If sugar just makes us fatter, that’s one thing.  We start gaining weight, we eat less of it.  But we are also talking about things we can’t see — fatty liver, insulin resistance and all that follows.  Officially I’m not supposed to worry because the evidence isn’t conclusive, but I do.”

Dr. Craig Thompson (head of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in N.Y.):  I have eliminated refined sugar from my diet and eat as little as I possibly can.

Dr. Lewis Cantley (director of Harvard Medical Schools cancer center):  Sugar scares me.

Please Comment:  Share your best ways of protecting your family from the effects of our sugar addiction.

Looking Ahead

Where Now?

In the beginning, my plan was to write a book on the LDS Word of Wisdom.  Books have been written before.  John and Leah Widtsoe, unusually well qualified, wrote an excellent book The Word of Wisdom, A Modern Interpretation, but that was 75 years ago and much has changed. 

A daughter suggested I begin by writing a blog.  A blog, she explained, could be a conversation, a way to share information and learn what people want to know.  So the first post, back on November 19, 2010, was titled, A New Conversation.  The response was good; thanks to a plug on the popular design blog Black Eiffel—over 1000 people visited the blog and 31 made comments to that first post.

We’re starting our 3^rd year now.  The blog has become our mission—a nonprofit service project free of advertisement or gimmicks.  It seems to be working; the number of readers has steadily grown. 

Thanks to your support, this blog is the world’s leading exponent for fully living the Word of Wisdom.  When I say that the BW laughs, but that’s my claim. 

Three Things

There have been two consistent reader requests:  The first is a list of the 52 Healthy Changes.   This month we’ll add this list to the sidebar, with links to each Healthy Change.

A second common request is for recipes.  We started posting recipes last year and we will add a recipe list to the sidebar for easier access.  Because it’s so much work to develop a recipe, we’ll also post recipes suggested by readers but only after we’ve tried the recipe in our home.  So please share your favorite healthy recipe, either in a comment, or by email to skip (at) word of wisdom living (dot) com.

Finally, our growth mainly comes from readers sharing the WOWL URL with their friends.  So to start 2013, would you please spread the word to five more of your friends?  Or even to all of your friends and contacts?  Thanks.

Your Suggestions

So what should we do in 2013?  Please share your thoughts on what is needed to advance the agenda for WOWL. 

Please, Whatever You Do, Don't Resolve to Lose Weight in 2013

The quick answer:  Forget about dieting or fussing over calories.  Just eat a healthy diet of minimally processed (low G.I.) foods and you’ll find your natural weight.

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Resolutions

Each Holiday season we travel to my fancy sister’s home in San Francisco for dinner.  I grew up in the middle of five sisters, though two are technically cousins.  Their life’s journey has taken them to different paths, but I think they’re remarkable women. 

Anyway, my oldest sister, the one I described as “fancy,” always hosts the dinner.  How fancy is she?  Check out her Christmas tree, shown below, with the 2000 or so ornaments she has collected.  I should have had the BW stand beside it, to illustrate the size.    

My sister’s a good cook and dinner always begins with crab salad.  After the crab salad, as other courses arrive, we each report on our resolutions for the past year, and make some for the next year.  We’re in our fourth decade of these dinners and despite what the critics say about resolutions, we always make a few.

Last year several resolved to lose weight.  In reporting on those weight-loss promises, one pointed out that she had succeeded in losing 30 pounds by July but had gained it all back by December.  We groaned in sympathy as she took a ‘zero’ for that resolution.  When she made the same resolution for next year I wanted to shout, “Stop!”  But I kept my peace—so let me explain to you, faithful reader. 

 

Why We Get Fat

For Christmas I was given Gary Taubes’ book, Why We Get Fat.  Like his previous book, Good Calories, Bad Calories, it’s carefully researched and makes sense with what we’ve been saying in Word of Wisdom Living. 

We get fat, Taubes concludes, not because we eat fat, or eat too much in general, or move too little, but because the Glycemic Index (G.I.) of the modern American diet is too high.  Basically, sugar and refined grains, including the cookies, crackers, chips, and candies made from them, have a high G.I.  Real foods, minimally processed, have a lower G.I.

Here’s a basic picture of the vicious cycle that results from a high G.I. diet:

1. The sugar in high G.I. foods is quickly metabolized and rushes into our blood.
2. Because excessive blood sugar is toxic, our body secretes insulin to store that sugar in tissue cells in the form of fat (triglycerides).
3. Insulin also insures that this fat stays in the cells—it’s not available for energy use as long as insulin is elevated.
4. Then, when our blood sugar falls and insulin (which falls slower) keeps this energy locked away, we get crazy hungry for more of these high G.I. foods, especially liquid forms like soda drinks. 
5. Insulin is a potent hormone and after years of excessive insulin our cells try to protect themselves by becoming insulin resistant.  This means the pancreas must secrete even more insulin to drive blood sugar levels down.  Persistently high insulin makes it hard to shed that ugly excess fat.

More Wisdom; Less Guilt

This is the basic story behind the current obesity epidemic:  High G.I. diet leads to high insulin levels in our blood, and to lots of fat stored in our cells.  Because we’re all different, the tendency to add fat varies among us.  One person can starve on the diet that makes another obese.  The thin person may seem lucky, but we all have our challenges and one is to find the diet that works best for us.

Bottom line:  There is no perfect diet—no one diet fits all.  Rather, each person must gain the wisdom to know what foods are best for him or her.  This actually is the promise of the Word of Wisdom, that by living it you will gain knowledge, including wisdom about how to eat and live. I recommend the book, Why We Get Fat to anyone who is unhappy with his, or her, weight and wants more information than this brief summary. 

As you've likely heard, about 2/3 of Americans are overweighbt, and half of the overweight are termed obese.  It's a hard thing to be overweight in a society that worships thinness.  For the overweight, here's an important point:  Get over the guilt.  The modern American diet isn’t your fault.  You did nothing wrong.  If you eat too much and move too little, it’s not gluttony or sloth on your part, it’s a problem with our food culture.  To improve your diet, a good starting point is to lower the G.I. by following the Word of Wisdom.

How to lower the G.I. of your diet

In a single sentence, “Eat food as close as practical to the form in which it was first created.”  We’ve addressed this in our Healthy Changes, including these four:

Healthy Change #1:  If you consume sodas or other sugared drinks, limit yourself to one (12 oz.) serving per week.

Healthy Change #4:  Cereal products must be made of whole grains, and have more grams of natural fiber than grams of sugar.

Healthy Change #10:  Your daily bread must be whole grain, with more natural fiber than added sugar.

Healthy Change #27:  Buy candy a piece at a time; never bring a box or bag of candy into the home.

A Wise New Year’s Resolution

If you wish to lose weight and improve your health, don’t go on a starvation diet.  This rarely yields long-term results.  Fasting has benefits but protracted starvation isn’t a good or even doable plan.  In the end, hunger always ends.

Don't even make a resolution to lose weight, please.  But do resolve to reduce the G.I. of what you and your family eat, according to your desire to lose weight. 

Please comment:  Share your weight loss trials.  What works for you?  

About Gluten

Christmas 2012

It was a good Christmas.  We convinced the beautiful wife the iphone 5 she wanted wasn’t happening quite yet.  All her friends had upgraded phones, but not the BW.  Then we hid her new phone in a hollowed out book, wrapped the book extra special, and slipped it under the tree. 

When the BW opened the gift, so obviously a book, and realized it was a book she had already read, it took all of her discipline to give a gracious smile of thanks.  She hides disappointment well; experience is a good teacher.  Just then her ‘book’ began to vibrate and ring.  It’s good when the screams of delight don’t just come from the children.

I’ve been working on a wheat cracker recipe (see below) but the thread of my thoughts keeps returning to the issues around wheat.  Grains are endorsed in the Word of Wisdom as the “staff of life,” especially wheat.  But some people are allergic to wheat, especially the gluten in wheat.  Gluten intolerance—which is hard to diagnose—can lead to celiac disease, a serious condition that attacks the lining of the small intestine.

The problem of gluten intolerance is growing, as noted in a N. Y. Times article.  Blood samples collected 50 years ago but recently tested, showed 0.2% in a group of 9133 had gluten intolerance.  Recent comparison tests found 0.9% intolerant—over a four-fold increase in half a century.  Investigation also revealed reduced longevity for those of the 9133 group that were gluten intolerant.

Gluten 101

So there is a conflict:  The W of W endorses wheat but for some, the gluten in wheat presents a deadly threat.  Every food group has an allergy risk—peanuts, for example, present a serious risk to some.  And while allergies in general have been rising, gluten has been more in the news.

Here are a few facts:

1. Though gluten intolerance is estimated at 1% of the population, most with symptoms (diarrhea, abdominal pain, and weight loss) go undiagnosed.
2. Gluten is mainly found in wheat, but also in grains like rye, barley, and triticale (a cross of wheat and rye).  
3. Gluten has a function—it gives bread the doughy texture and creates the matrix that allows CO2 bubbles to form so bread can rise.
4. Gluten is not just one protein but a family of proteins.  As new grain varieties are developed, new forms of the gluten are discovered—gluten forms that we’ve not had generations for the G.I. tract to adapt.

Why is gluten intolerance increasing?

Like many questions in nutrition, we’re not sure.  But here are possible causes:

1. New hybrids of wheat, some created by GMO or irradiation, have new gluten proteins not seen before.  The human body has not had generation to adapt to these proteins.
2. It’s not just that wheat has changed, but modern roller mill refining produces flour that lacks traditional nutrients found in the germ and bran.  In addition, since the early ‘40s, synthetic forms of some vitamins have been added.
3. The large collection of bacteria in our G.I. tract is essential to digestion and the nature of this biotic colony changes with our diet, or with antibiotics we consume.  The modern American diet causes a different colony than a traditional diet, for example.  I suspect a health diet produces a healthy biotic colony.
4. In the late 19^th century fast-rising yeasts were developed.  In times past natural yeasts were used, as in sourdough breads, which took much longer to ferment.  Today’s fast-rising yeast gives less time for bacteria to break down the gluten during fermentation.

So when I searched for a wheat cracker recipe, in view of reason #4, I looked for a sourdough recipe.  I found one in Sally Fallon’s book, Nourishing Traditions.  Fallon, with Mary Enig, is a big proponent of sprouting, soaking, and fermenting of grains and legumes.  These traditional processes make nutrients more available for digestion, and also help break down glutens.

 

Sourdough Wheat Cracker Recipe

Here is my adaptation of Fallon’s recipe:

Ingredients:

•  2-½ C fresh whole wheat flour
• 1 C plain yogurt
• 1-½ tsp salt
• 1 tsp baking soda
• ¼ C toasted sesame seeds
• 8 T butter, melted
• White flour (to help handle sticky dough)

Directions:

1. Mix freshly ground flour with yogurt and let sit 24 hours in a warm place to ferment.
2. To fermented dough, add salt, baking soda, and 4 T butter.  Mix in food processor until blended.   Add sesame seeds and pulse just enough to blend.
3. Roll out dough on a floured surface until less than 1/8” thick.  Cut into shapes and place on baking pan. (I used my new Silpat matt but the thin cracker was hard to handle.  The BW suggested we need a pasta maker, for thin crackers.)
4. Brush remaining butter over crackers and bake in a warm oven (275 F.) until browned and crispy.  (About an hour for my recipe.)

Please Comment

I got a good gluten education out of my cracker research.  I enjoyed the crackers with cheese but I have to admit that others—even the grandchildren—were less impressed.   It doesn’t appear the BW is converted to homemade crackers, just yet.  Please share your experience with gluten, soaking/sprouting/fermenting, or homemade crackers.  There’s more to learn here.

Crackers

The quick answer:  Supermarkets are full of new products, most of them unhealthy.  But the cracker aisle is little changed since your parents' time.  A few even pass our healthy test.

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Lost in Time

The grocery store spice aisle has a timeless feel.  Spices easily pass the century test (don’t eat processed foods that haven’t been around for a century).  Actually, they could pass a millennium test.  Pause for a moment and I swear you can hear the sounds of camel caravans treading the ancient Silk Roads.  I love the spice aisle.

 

Crackers

This post is about crackers.  After spices, is there another grocery aisle so unchanged by time?  The cracker aisle is full of century-old products like:

• Saltines (or soda cracker, first commercialized in 1800),
• Graham crackers (1829, though the current products are a pale version),
• Ry Krisps (1899),
• Triscuits (1900),
• Cheez-Its (1921, not quite a century), and
• Ritz Crackers (1934, a relative newcomer).  

The cracker aisle is a veritable museum—it’s like exploring the abandoned shed behind your grandmother’s house.  Even the Goldfish cracker (a sort of K ration for toddlers) is 50 years old.  Ditto for the cleverly named Wheat Thin.

Crackers aren’t cheap (you pay 5-10 $/Lb for baked grains) but they’re convenient and they’ve stood the test of time.  So here’s today’s question:  Are any of those crackers healthy?

The Last Aisle Visit

To answer that question, we took our last aisle visit of the year and looked for crackers that featured:

1. Whole grains,
2. Healthy fats (no refined vegetable oils), with
3. More fiber than sugar.

We also looked for short ingredient lists.  The loser in this category was a store brand: Ralph’s Baked Cheddar Cheese Bits, a knock-off of the Cheese-It.  The ingredient list was convoluted and hard to read but I counted 86 ingredients, including bad actors like hydrogenated soybean oil, refined grains, MSG, artificial colors and flavors, and the preservative TBHQ.  Isn’t it strange how the store brands, though cheap, are often the least nutritious?  Just another sign of how the supermarkets—the principle source of food—don’t get nutrition.

What cracker had the shortest ingredient list?  The honor went to Triscuits with just three ingredients:  whole wheat, soybean/palm oil, and salt.  Though I’m not a fan of the new high-oleic soybean oils, or any solvent refined oil, this seemed a fairly healthy cracker.

Best Crackers

Triscuits with just three ingredients (noted above) starting with whole wheat.  Kind of like a crushed shredded wheat biscuit.

Ry-Krisps wheat-free, with whole rye and corn bran, oil (sunflower or safflower), salt, and caraway.  Try them with cheese.

Wasa crackers, from Sweden, the best of the imported crackers, come in rye, wheat, or multi-grain.  The first grain listed is whole and though refined flour is included they do pass the fiber>sugar test.

The beautiful wife likes Wheat Thins.  I do too.  But the grains aren’t all whole and sugar is added so they fail the fiber>sugar test. Did you notce that the “best crackers” list doesn’t include Kashi, famous for their 7-grain mix?  They were once a health pioneer but are now owned by Kellogg’s and have a long ingredient list of refined stuff.

Cracker Recipes

If you want really healthy crackers at a good value, make your own.  Martha Rose Shulman offers some recipes here. 

I tried the Whole Grain Cracker recipe from Nourishing Traditions and will share it in the next post.

Healthy Change

So here’s Healthy Change #49: Crackers must be whole grain with healthy oil and more fiber than sugar.

Comments

Don’t crackers go best with cheese?  Hummus is a healthy choice.  Do you have a recipe for homemade crackers?  Please share your favorites.