The biggest weekend for football is upon us with nearly everyone gearing up for Sunday night to watch the game or the commercials…or both! But before you start tearing into that avocado dip, munching down on those pepperoni slices and mozzarella cheese, or enjoy a nice big, juicy cheeseburger patty while watching the Super Bowl with friends and family, how about sinking your teeth into some of the most intriguing, mouth-watering health headlines that have captured my attention this week. ENJOY!
OBESITY VIRUS PROPAGANDA TALK RETURNS
Three years ago, I blogged about research that pointed to a virus called AD-37 that allegedly spreads obesity around like a contagious disease. No kidding, that’s what the lead researcher Dr. Richard L. Atkinson, American Obesity Association President, claimed was the reason why people are getting fat. As preposterous as that sounds, now we’ve got another obesity researcher named Nikhil Dhurandhar who claims the AD-36 virus leads to three months of non-stop weight gain while suffering from a scratchy throat. If these researchers weren’t so serious about this, it would be laughable. But as my low-carb weight loss blogging friend Muata Kamdibe points out on his “Mr. Low Body Fat” blog, there’s a reason why these so-called “experts” want people to believe obesity happens from a virus–MONEY! It looks like Dr. Atkinson started a business called Obetech, LLC that will tell you if you have the obesity virus or not. And for a cool $450, you can discover if this is why your gut protrudes and hips hang out. Nice huh? Can you say conflict of interest, anyone? Tell these shysters what you think about this scheme they are running by e-mailing them your reaction. And we wonder why people can’t figure out how to resolve their obesity?!
WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION’S “12 STEPS TO HEALTHY EATING”
We all want to believe that the message of livin’ la vida low-carb is getting out there and I believe it is as a grassroots movement among the people who are giving it a fair chance to help them shed some weight and improve their health. But the leading world health groups are still stuck on stupid as I like to say and there is evidence of this with Countrywide Integrated Noncommunicable Diseases Intervention (CINDI) from the World Health Organization (WHO). On the subject of “Nutrition and Food Security” we see a list of “12 steps to healthy eating” that will just make your blood boil if you are following a low-carbohydrate regimen. Things like eat a plant-based diet only, consume starchy carbohydrates, keep your fat intake low, drink lots of low-fat dairy, and limit your salt all fall right in line with the same old conventional wisdom we’ve always hear about a “healthy” way to eat. When are these people going to FINALLY realize that just doesn’t cut it anymore? Hopefully much sooner than later.
WHAT ARE THE REAL DANGERS OF ASPARTAME?
If you don’t think there’s anything wrong with eating and drinking large amounts of products sweetened with aspartame (or NASTY-tame as I call it!), then watch this video:
CLEVELAND LEADER GROSSLY MISREPRESENTS LOW-CARB LIVING
It’s not surprising when livin’ la vida low-carb is ridiculed and scorned in the media because we’ve seen it happening for years. But I believe it is the duty of every person whose life has been positively impacted by the healthy low-carb lifestyle to speak out for the truth about low-carb so nobody misunderstands what this way of eating is all about in the real world. People’s lives are changing, weight loss is happening, and health is improving–so we need to correct the misinformation when it happens. That’s exactly what I did with the following letter to the editor in response to the Cleveland Leader column “Get Fit in 2009: Start with a Healthier Lifestyle”:
While I can appreciate your attempt to educate people about how to live a healthier lifestyle, it is very disappointing to see you describing the healthy low-carb lifestyle as a “fad” diet that is “impossible to stay on” and even “dangerous.” Such hyperbole about a legitimate, science-based way of eating is doing your readers a great disservice.
While it is true diets like South Beach and even more so the Atkins diet call for consuming less carbohydrates in your diet, there’s a reason and purpose behind it. For many, sugars and carbs (which turn to sugar in the body) play a direct role in creating an excessive amount of the insulin hormone in the body. Insulin is what regulates blood sugar levels, but too much of it can lead to stored fat.
In January 2004, I weighed 410 pounds because my insulin was off the charts. My diet consisted of primarily sugar-based sodas and drinks as well as starchy carbs that were making me fatter and fatter each year. By simply implementing a carbohydrate-restricted nutritional approach into my regular routine, I was able to shed 180 pounds that year and it changed my life forever!
As great as the weight loss was, the improvements in my health have been that much better…dropped 20 inches off my waist, went from 5XL shirts to XL, came off of three prescription meds for breathing, cholesterol, and blood pressure, and my quality of life improved dramatically. When I say low-carb changed my life, it’s not just some whimsical comment without any meaning. It turned everything about what was happening to me into this amazing experience that I’ll never forget.
Here it is five years later and I’m STILL livin’ la vida low-carb with no signs of being in any kind of health danger from eating this way. It is an extremely healthy way to eat and more and more research is proving this each and every day. I highly encourage you to pick up a copy of a book entitled GOOD CALORIES, BAD CALORIES by Gary Taubes to learn more about the history behind carbohydrates and why they are the primary reason for obesity and disease today.
I regularly write about healthy low-carb living at my blog and would recommend you check it out if you want to see real people living and thriving on a low-carb diet. Check out this post I wrote earlier this month celebrating my 5-year anniversary of starting on the Atkins diet:
http://livinlavidalowcarb.com/blog/?p=3205
I would hope in the future you give better consideration to the topics you write about to make sure all the facts are in order first so you don’t embarrass yourself with ignorance. A little due diligence on the subject would have prevented this from ever happening in the first place. THANKS for allowing me to share comments.
Feel free to share your own response by scrolling to the bottom of the article and telling them what’s you think about their erroneous characterization of the low-carb lifestyle.
LLVLC READER PUT PCRM EDITORIAL WRITER IN HER PLACE
I’m not the only one who responds to anti-low-carb idiocy in the media when I see it. Quite a few of you do that as well, including a brilliant response from one of my readers to this Pittsburgh Post-Gazette story about what a “healthy” school lunch menu should look like under President Obama’s new USDA secretary. Of course, the op-ed was written by a nutritionist named Kathryn Strong who is a member of the PETA-based vegetarian group Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine who have been quite vocal in their opposition to people eating meat claiming it leads to global warming, have pushed for higher health premiums for meat eaters, and failed in their attempt to sue the Atkins company for giving a man heart disease. They are relentless in their crusade against meat, but my “Livin’ La Vida Low-Carb” blog reader had to put this PCRM minion in her place. This is classic:
I am writing in regard to your editorial from a “nutritionist” with regard to childhood obesity. Your readers should know that the organization, Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, is a radical vegetarian group, and therefore, presents their case from that point of view. They are the same people that started the untrue rumour that Dr. Robert C. Atkins died of a heart attack (The truth is he died of injuries sustained in a fall on ice in New York City).
I have seen my niece and nephew’s school lunch menu. Surplus meat is NOT the problem. I would challenge you to look at their menu and find any real meat (other than some processed lunch “meat” or some very tiny hamburgers). Theirs is a flour-based, nutrition poor, sugar laden cornucopia of “low fat” processed foods. Most of the children in their peer group would probably not recognize the simple foods our grandparents ate, because they haven’t been processed, ground, breaded and high fructose corn syruped!
While eveyone has jumped on the “low fat,” statin-prescribed lifestyle over the last twenty years, we continue to see the fat getting younger. I purposely say that as opposed to the young are getting fatter. There were plenty of fat people when I was growing up as a kid in the 70’s–thing is, they were middle-aged +. Now the TRULY heavy are the young twenty-somethings–they are jammed into sizes I could never imagine having to wear at 20 or 21? What is going on here?
If you would like to learn of an alternate point of view, one which the popular media, enamored as they are of vegetarianism/Ornish-type diets, will not espouse, please do yourself a favor in the new year and pick up a copy of the Gary Taubes book entitled GOOD CALORIES, BAD CALORIES. It will give you the historical and scientific context of how our media and government sold us down the river with the food pyramid and the push toward a “whole grain nation.” Be warned: it is not written at a Reader’s Digest level, but with in-depth reasearch on how what was one man’s unproven theory (Dr. Ancel Keyes) became a national health doctrine. Then decide for yourself what is a healthy diet.
In the original 1972 edition of his controversial diet book, Dr. Robert Atkins had a stern warning about the nation of diabetics we would become should we continue to eat a diet that causes excess insulin to be produced in our bodies. His biggest mistake was that he underestimated just how bad the problem would be.
Ms. Strong, while I welcome your right to the alternate point of view, government dictating what families should eat goes too far. When I finally decided to ignore government advice three years ago and try a “radical” high calorie, high fat, high protein, controlled carbohydrate way of eating, my lifelong battle with my weight ENDED at the age of 39. I challenge anyone in your group to tell me that my diet is unhealthy.
Thank you for allowing an alternate point of view.
Of course, they never printed her letter to the editor which is why it’s showing up here at my blog today. WAY TO GO and keep fighting the good fight out there!
MORE OBESE AMERICANS NOW THAN OVERWEIGHT
Did you hear the news recently that the number of obese American adults is now greater than the number of overweight Americans? According to government numbers, over one-third (34 percent) of people in the United States is considered “obese” while just under one-third (32.7 percent) are “overweight.” About six percent are what they consider “extremely obese” (whatever that is supposed to mean). Are we REALLY inching closer to the predicted 100 percent obesity in the next fifty years? Maybe. But why are we still stuck on measuring body mass index (BMI) for determining being obese versus being overweight when studies have shown it to be pure bunk. Yes, we do have a problem with people carrying around too much weight on their body, but perhaps it has been a little exaggerated as an attempt to scare people into doing something. If that’s the strategy, then it hasn’t worked very well so far.
DENVER FITNESS EXAMINER SCRUTINIZES LOW-CARB DIET
In September 2008, I joined a fantastic new community web site called Examiner.com as their official Low-Carb Lifestyle Examiner. Several of my fellow low-carb bloggers are Examiners as well, but not everyone there believes in the healthy low-carb lifestyle. That’s what makes the site such an incredible resource for people because you get every voice imaginable on a subject. Take the Denver Fitness Examiner Jeremy Green, for example. Here’s a guy who teaches exercise science and nutrition using the conventional wisdom he has learned from his educational background as well as through his experience as a competitive cyclist. But he’s not a big fan of livin’ la vida low-carb, describing it as “the darkside” filled with “flawed logic” that only leads to water weight loss. But he does concede that Loren Cordain’s lean meat-based Paleo Diet most closely represents what he believes is a healthy way to low-carb (I’ll be sharing an interview with Loren Cordain on my podcast show on April 23, 2009). I’m sure Jeremy means well in issuing these warnings against low-carb diets. But he’s neglecting the work of people like Gary Taubes, Dr. Robert C. Atkins, Dr. Eric Westman, Dr. Stephen Phinney, Dr. Jeff Volek, Dr. Mary C. Vernon, Mary Enig, Dr. Jay Wortman, Dr. Barry Groves, Dr. William Davis, and too many more for me to even name but so many of you are well aware of. Feel free to share your low-carb experiences with him in the comments section at his Examiner columns to educate him further on this subject.
GMA SCIENCE POLICY PAPER SERIES ONE BIG CROCK
The Grocery Manufacturers Association (GMA) has released several policy papers on a variety of health and wellness topics you may be interested in, including aspartame, high fructose corn syrup (HFCS), and salt. Unfortunately, this lobbyist group for the food manufacturers is less interested in sharing the health consequences of these things in our food supply and instead offering allegedly scientific justification for keeping them a normal part of the American diet. It’s sad really when they claim there is nothing harmful about aspartame, that sugar/HFCS consumption does not lead to diabetes, and that salt will give you high blood pressure and heart attacks. Come on, GMA! Congress and the White House deserve better information than this to make informed decisions about what to do about the health of our nation. You should be ashamed!
MY BLOG/PODCAST FEATURED ON WEIGHT LOSS SURGERY CHANNEL
I recently heard from a wonderful lady named Yvonne McCarthy who calls herself “The Bariatric Girl.” As the name implies, Yvonne has had bariatric weight loss surgery in 2001 and it helped her slim down into the beautiful woman she is today. She told me how much she loves my blog and wanted to feature it at her Weight Loss Surgery Channel video show if I didn’t mind. Although I did not have any kind of surgery to lose 180 pounds in 2004, I do try to provide quality information that bariatric patients can use in their own journey to better health. In fact, my own mom had gastric bypass surgery a few short weeks before I started on the Atkins diet. Yvonne shared with her viewers about my blog and podcast show during the January 16, 2009 episode of WLS News. THANK YOU Yvonne and I appreciate the opportunity to reach out to the weight loss surgery community.
ATKINS SUCCESS KENT ALTENA FEATURED ON US WEEKLY WEB SITE
Thanks to Atkins Nutritionals, one of our own is currently being featured on US Magazine’s web site for his phenomenal Atkins weight loss success story. Kent Altena, who recently launched his own LIVE online Atkins diet TV show on Thursday nights, is featured in the “Red Carpet Ready” portion of the USWeekly.com this week for his incredible 211-pound sustained low-carb success. Kent is just an average guy as you can hear in my podcast with him last year who did an extraordinary thing changing his life forever for the better because of the Atkins lifestyle. Although People magazine toyed with promoting Kent’s story in the past, US Weekly actually did it and I applaud them for that! With all the negative stories out there about livin’ la vida low-carb, it’s nice to know some publications honor success when they see it. WAY TO GO, KENT!!!
US NEWS & WORLD REPORT MISLEADING PEOPLE ON A1C LEVELS
Dang, I wish the lies about blood sugar and something as important as HgA1c (A1C) levels would stop because people are gonna get so confused about what to do about their health that they end up making a poor choice. That’s exactly what this US News & World Report column has done telling diabetics and people with severe insulin resistance what they should do to LOWER their A1C levels. Citing the American Diabetes Association (ADA), the story says people need to do two things: eat less fat and replace it with more sugar and exercise moderately for 20-30 minutes a few days each week. I AM NOT KIDDING YOU! That’s what the ADA thinks people need to do because they are stuck on the notion that fat is too high in calories, so sugary carbs must be better. Apparently they haven’t read the latest research from Duke that found a low-carb ketogenic diet is MUCH better at controlling A1C levels without medication in 95 percent of the study participants following that plan as opposed to the 62 percent of low-glycemic index dieters who were able to come off their diabetes prescriptions. We’re always being told that we need to provide evidence for what we believe–well HERE IT IS! Where’s the follow-through once such evidence is presented, ADA? And then we have ridiculous responses from people on the Mayo Clinic web site claiming high-fat, carb-controlled diets are a poor choice for diabetics. Come on, we deserve better than this!!!
IS KRAFT FOODS ELIMINATING THE SOUTH BEACH LIVING PRODUCTS?
Last January, I blogged about how South Beach Diet food products were changed to South Beach Living to focus on the whole “lifestyle change” aspect of low-carb living. It was a smart marketing move at the time and I thought it may help Kraft Foods mainstream their product line even more. However, I recently heard from a “Livin’ La Vida Low-Carb” blog reader who said this product line has been difficult to find in his area. Here’s what he wrote:
All of the supermarket chains here in Washington, DC (Harris Teeter, Giant, Safeway) seem to have discontinued the Kraft South Beach Living frozen meals. I noticed from your site that you liked them–and am wondering if by any chance you’ve heard about this. Even Target’s shelves are conspicuously lacking them. It’s so frustrating since these were my easiest way to eat after a long day at work.
I went to the South Beach Living section of Kraft’s web site and they show a whole lineup of pizzas, wraps, bars, cookies, etc. When I called Kraft about my readers’ concern, they assured me that the product line is not going anywhere and that outages in specific areas is probably due to lack of sales. They said to ask the manager of the store to restock an item if it is not on the shelf. Hope this helps other frustrated South Beach dieters looking for your favorite products.
IS OBESITY SOLUTION BECOMING MORE CONFUSING? I DON’T THINK SO!
I saw this op-ed on the Canada Free Press web site that claims figuring out the answer to the ever-growing obesity crisis is becoming harder and harder to do. The author cites that July 2008 study published in the New England Journal of Medicine that found low-carb diets were better than low-fat and Mediterranean for weight loss and health improvements. Because of this, the author believes this is making the message more confusing. Why? If they had shown low-fat was best among the diets, would ANYBODY be questioning whether this was confusing people? Heck no. They’d be trumpeting it from the mountaintops and ramming it down our throats. The evidence speaks for itself. Of course, the suggestion was that everyone should eat a “balanced diet” and all will be well with weight and health. If only it were that easy. These people should try living in the real world in the body someone who struggles with obesity, diabetes, and rapidly declining health to truly understand the plight so many face.
The new “in” ingredient in 2009 is none than than bacon! Well, it’s about time!
Got a low-carb news or health headline you think I might be interested in? As always, you can e-mail me anytime at livinlowcarbman@charter.net. THANKS for reading a have a super weekend!
Jimmy, here’s the scoop on those two shysters who are involved in the so-called fat gene or obesity virus research:
http://www.health24.com/dietnfood/Weight_Centre/15-51-2954-2955,42522.asp
It’s all about the money
It’s disgusting and unethical if you ask me, Sarah. They shouldn’t be allowed to do research on the very thing they are marketing as a business. Where’s the code of conduct for people like this?
–Jimmy
Jimmy, that Aspartame video was off the charts. First off, anything Monsanto is involved with, I want no part of. Have you heard of the independent film roundup ready nation? You should check it out and interview
Second, that FDA chief slamming the door was worth a thousand words. Wow.
Yep, that was really something which is why I wanted to share it. Glad you benefited from it, Matt. I am not aware of that roundup ready nation group. If you have a contact with them, then e-mail it to me. THANKS buddy!
–Jimmy
About the USN&WR on diabetes…
The claim “Having a spoonful of sugar, ironically, might hurt your blood sugar less than a spoonful of cream.” That’s not what my glucose meter tells me. These “experts” can print this misleading drivel based on their theories without checking them out.
The Mayo Clinic is obvously full of crap. They quote a study where 45% of calories come from carbs and have the audacity to call it low carb. And they quote the stupid egg study that I can refute just by looking at the details. Most of the dietary advice for diabetics only focuses on limiting fat. And the medical establishment rings its hands over the growing diabetes epidemic.