Looking for the latest info on diet and health? You’ve found it!
It’s been a busy summer for me, but the low-carb news and health headlines haven’t slowed down a bit. I’ve got a lot to share, so let’s just get right into it!
DIETITIAN RECOMMENDING FAST FOOD FOR HEALTH ON TODAY SHOW
Registered dietitian Elizabeth Ward appeared on the Today Show recently to talk to host Matt Lauer about how to eat “healthy” while traveling on the road. Watch the video to hear how she focuses so heavily on the calories while pushing foods with a load of carbohydrates. This shows we still have a very long way to go at least with those who are placed front and center as the “experts” on nutrition in America. Seeing things like this just makes me all the more vigilant.
STUDY: HIGH-FAT DIET MAKES YOU ‘STUPID AND LAZY’
You gotta love the gumption it takes to run a headline calling people who eat high-fat as “stupid and lazy,” but there it is. And they’re basing it on a so-called “study” conducted on rats! Riiiiiiigght! They’re the same as humans–do they think we’re all a bunch of idiots? Well, if we’re eating fat, they do! The study authors blame high-fat diets on short-term memory loss and making exercise difficult, that’s not been my experience eating a diet with about 70 percent fat for the past five years. I’m more alert, feel absolutely fabulous, and regularly play competitive volleyball with people have my age. As long as you are cutting your carbs and replacing them with fat in your diet, then you will see tremendous positive benefits to your weight and health. And no amount of hyperbolic headlines will ever change that for me!
THE PRIMAL BLUEPRINT HEALTH CHALLENGE RECIPE ENTRY
Friend and fellow low-carb health blogger Methuselah from the “Pay Now Live Later” blog submitted several creative entries into Mark Sisson’s The Primal Blueprint Health Challenge that I thought you’d enjoy seeing. I especially like the “Post-It” entry with the “Medicine Cabinet” as well as the YouTube video with a pretty nifty vegetable fritter recipe. ENJOY!
UPDATE ON THE ALZHEIMER’S TURNAROUND WITH COCONUT OIL
Remember that INCREDIBLE podcast interview I did with Dr. Mary Newport earlier this year about her husband’s remarkable turnaround with his Alzheimer’s disease thanks to the ketone bodies produced by feeding him high amounts of coconut oil? Well, the improvements just keep happening with Steve Newport as his wife has continued to feed him the high-saturated-fat coconut oil in virtually everything he consumes. Steve is even mowing the lawn again and he even has a part-time volunteer job–something Mary never thought she would see him do again. Watch this inspiring video to see how something that has been so vilified by health “experts” (coconut oil) has been the miracle for Steve Newport! My favorite line in the story was when she said “I got my Steve back!” And something tells me neither one of them is worried about clogged arteries. HA!
TIME MAGAZINE ARTICLE ‘WHY EXERCISE WON’T MAKE YOU THIN’
Somewhere right about now, Gary Taubes has got to be smiling. After he wrote in his 2007 blockbuster Good Calories, Bad Calories that traditional cardiovascular exercise is probably not effective for producing weight loss, Taubes was raked across the coals and vilified for making what many conventional fitness experts would say was an asinine statement is now finding support from an unexpected source–Time Magazine. In a report by John Cloud, he shares his own personal exercise journey and frustrations that what he is doing is not producing any changes in his body like he expected it to. He even cited Taubes and warned others that exercise very likely could lead to weight GAIN. Are we seeing a flicker of hope that the message is penetrating?
LOW-CARB MINT CHOCOLATE CHIP ICE CREAM RECIPE
A couple of months back I featured an enthusiastic guest on my podcast show named Josef Brandenburg who really likes to experiment in the kitchen to create some delicious low-carb alternatives to your favorite foods. His clients are always asking him to help them make foods they want that are acceptable on their fat-loss program and this one for mint chocolate chip ice cream seems to be out-of-this-world! Check it out and let me know what you think.
FDA ISSUES WARNING ON GLUCOSE MONITORING TEST STRIPS
Whether you are diabetic or just someone curious about measuring your blood sugar levels, listen up! The Food And Drug Administration has just issued a statement about the “possibility of falsely elevated blood glucose results” with certain glucose test strips called GDH-PQQ. This is critical because it could “mask significant hypoglycemia” where blood sugar levels drop or it could lead diabetics who take insulin to administer “excessive insulin” unnecessarily which is potentially fatal. A voluntary recall has already been requested by the FDA and anyone who believes they have test strips that are providing false reading should visit the FDA’s MedWatch Adverse Event Reporting program web site or dial them toll-free at 800-332-1088. Spread the word to anyone you know who uses a blood glucose monitor.
THE USDA-BASED SCHOOL LUNCH SCAM SET TO CONTINUE
If you have one of the more than 30 million children who attends public school, then you already know about the School Lunch Program. While the creators of this government-sponsored program attempt to follow “science-based” recommendations for deciding what is and isn’t on the menu for kids, the fact of the matter is food lobbyists dominate the way this program is crafted. This is really no surprise to you and me that politics infiltrates something like school lunches. But watching this video will be a gentle reminder of the powerful interest groups we battle in waging a war against childhood obesity and preventable disease.
IS WHOLE FOODS DISCRIMINATING AGAINST OBESE EMPLOYEES?
This is a very interesting Wall Street Journal story about Whole Foods CEO John Mackey admitting that his popular upscale “health” food store is selling “a bunch of junk” as he describes it. So now he’s turning the attention on the health of his employees with a potential new incentive program coming in October 2009 that will “reward employees who hit targets for weight loss, quitting smoking and improving cholesterol and blood pressure.” WHAT?! By what standards will these “targets” be measured? BMI? Traditional blood tests? We know these can be flawed, but the poor employees who don’t measure up will receive a lower employee discount than those who do. This is pure discrimination and will be a lawsuit waiting to happen if they do in fact implement it. Not smart Mr. Mackey!
26-YEAR OLD WOMAN ALLEGEDLY DIES FROM KETOSIS? COME ON!
These low-fatties will stop at nothing to try to make their high-carb, fat-shunning diet look good while trashing livin’ la vida low-carb. To claim that a woman named Helen Anderson died from ketosis is like saying her death was attributed to breathing. It’s 100% preposterous and this Dr. David Ashton ought to be ashamed of himself! Ketone bodies are a very natural process that develop in everyone, especially at night. Low-carb dieters use ketone bodies much of the time for fuel and they are the preferred fuel for the brain (this is why eating sugary/starchy foods give you a brain fog and livin’ la vida low-carb does not). The implication that ketosis somehow led to this young woman’s death is criminal because it is not based in reality. High-fat, low-carb diets do indeed produce ketone bodies which aid in weight loss. But it’s so much more about the health, something this doctor has no interest in obviously. This is the kind of ignorance that is preventing people from overcoming their weight and health struggles once and for all.
JOHANSSON SLIMS DOWN FOR ‘IRON MAN 2′ ROLE WITH LOW-CARB DIET
Hollywood beauty Scarlett Johansson knows EXACTLY what to do to get her body into tip-top shape for a role–she starts livin’ la vida low-carb, baby! We’ve seen this before in 2006 when she lost eight pounds eating a high-protein, low-carb diet and now she’s done it again for her upcoming role as the Black Widow character in the May 2010 movie release Iron Man 2. Her outfit for the superhero is pretty skin-tight, so she wanted to get into the best shape possible. How? “She was definitely on a low-carb diet and training very hard. It was amazing.” And Scarlett is not afraid this way of eating is going to harm her health at all. So what’s the hang-up with low-carb living in the media?
HEALTHCARE DEBATE TURNS TO TAXING ‘FAT PEOPLE’
I’m sure you’ve heard about this proposal to require an extra sales tax on foods that are considered “fattening.” Like tobacco, the logic is that the higher the tax on the thing that is encouraging poor behavior, the lower the consumption of that thing becomes. But there’s only one problem with this as it relates to food–by what definition to we define what foods are “fattening?” We already know the answer to that question and it is anything with fat and especially saturated fat. This will do nothing about rising obesity rates and health decline and actually will make it worse as it becomes even MORE expensive to eat low-carb (which by very definition is high in fat). The radical vegetarians and vegans are certainly behind this little scheme, but it’ll be a cold day in you know where before I’ll sit back idly and take this in my country!
PURDUE STUDY FINDS INSULIN BIGGER ROLE IN OBESITY THAN GENETICS
We’ve known this for a while, but now there is a new study published in PLoS ONE from lead researcher Ju-Xin Cheng at Purdue University’s Weldon School of Biomedical Engineering and Department of Chemistry who says the genetic tie to obesity is not nearly as critical as how insulin is processed on the cellular level. They found that the faster a cell processes insulin, the greater the fat storage. It’s something so many of us know all too well about which is why we eat in such a way as to limit insulin production and that would be through carbohydrate restriction. It’s refreshing to see science is backing up the fact that insulin is wreaking more havoc on weight and health than genetics ever will!
CARB SECRET TO SLIM? WHAT ARE THEY SMOKING?
I’m not surprised to see anti-low-carb drivel like this from registered dietitian Leslie Beck again, but you’d think with all the research that has come out supporting lowering carbohydrate intake for weight loss and health would change her tune. Nope! Instead, she erroneously describes the Atkins diet as a “high-protein, ow-carbohydrate plan” when it fact it is high in fat with adequate protein and few carbs. It’s this kind of blatant arrogance and stupidity that makes people like Beck look so absurd. Go ahead and eat your carbs, Ms. Beck, but I think I’ll be sticking with livin’ la vida low-carb thank you very much!
STUDY: LOW-CARB DIET MAKES YOU FAT? GET REAL!
You gotta give the low-carb haters credit–they are relentless and refuse to stop trying to convince people carbohydrates are not harmful. But this constant obsession with trying to discourage people from trying a low-carb lifestyle is doing much more harm than good. Why not let people decide what is best for THEM and then leave them alone and encourage their decision regardless of what it is? Creating so-called studies claiming low-carb leads to obesity is simply sour grapes that the REAL evidence is saying just the opposite. Get over it already American Dietetic Association!
THE BEST WAY TO EAT CARBS AND WHY
Another nutritionist Christine Avanti says people should flip the Atkins diet around and eat up on the carbs, especially pasta, pizza, and bread. But she adds the caveat that carbs should be combined with a protein, eaten more often, eat them at every meal, eat them late a night, but don’t eat too many at one time. Say WHAT?! This would be laughable if Avanti wasn’t dead serious about these recommendations. UGH! If you are diabetic or deal with metabolic syndrome, then these recommendations she makes are guaranteed to put you on a one-way ticket to getting fatter and sicker. How do people like this sleep at night pumping out such dietary delusions?
KARLY PITMAN HELPS YOU ‘KICK YOUR SUGAR HABIT’
One of the guest speakers on the 2010 Low-Carb Cruise To The Bahamas will be Karly Pitman. She has a very special sugar-kicking program for people who still struggle with sugar addiction. It’s already underway, but this 12-week class will arm you with strategies for beating it once and for all. And Karly is a true sweetheart woman who has a passion for what she does. Reap the benefits of what she has to offer YOU!
I’ve still got plenty more headlines to share with you, but I had better stop now. Perhaps I’ll share more next week, but this will hold you for a while. Send any low-carb diet and health news to me anytime at livinlowcarbman@charter.net. THANK YOU for reading!
