Last week I shared with you a big blog post full of the latest and greatest headlines in the world of diet, health and the low-carb lifestyle. Try, try as I may, it’s a never ending job keeping up with it all in real time here at my blog. I could literally make a daily post just linking to all the hot health headlines every single day a la The Drudge Report (we could call it “The Moore Report”–er, more or less! HA!).
That’s one of the best parts about the social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter. You get all the best stuff that’s happening in the world of livin’ la vida low-carb as it comes across my desk without having to wait on a blog post about it. There’s a great community of low-carbers on these sites where you can interact, add your two cents worth, and just soak it all in. That’s one of the beauties of this information age we live in and I’m grateful to be a part of it.
I do understand that not everyone is web savvy nor do they want to be on Facebook or Twitter for whatever their reasons. But I think they’re nice tools to stay up-to-date on all that’s happening with low-carb diets and how they are penetrating our culture more and more on a daily basis. It’s so much fun being on the front lines of this resurgent low-carb revolution and it’s only gonna keep getting better and better from here. Let’s take a look at even MORE low-carb news and health headlines happening in July 2011:
- It’s here! The Kindle version of The Art and Science of Low Carbohydrate Living: An Expert Guide to Making the Life-Saving Benefits of Carbohydrate Restriction Sustainable and Enjoyable by two of the most world-renowned low-carb researchers–Dr. Jeff Volek and Dr. Stephen Phinney–is NOW AVAILABLE! Dr. Phinney also informs me that the paperback and Kindle versions of this book can also be purchased in Europe now through Amazon UK and Amazon Germany. Let’s make this a worldwide bestseller! Click here to read my review in case you missed it. And the official web site for the book is now up and running with more information about this exciting new book! Get your hands on a copy TODAY!
- At the top of my wish list for a podcast interview right now has got to be Hollywood starlet Megan Fox to discuss her “Caveman Diet” routine. Of course, the fact that a Hollywood actress like Fox would use a Paleo/low-carb nutritional approach to get into shape for a leading role in a feature film is not news. Television actress and Atkins celebrity spokesperson Courtney Thorne-Smith told me as much in my interview with her in September 2009 that everyone in Hollywood eats low-carb…they just don’t say anything about it. It would be great to have somebody like Megan Fox use her celebrity status to champion this cause, wouldn’t it? I’ll be pursuing that interview (although I know it’s a long shot).
- One of the most popular guests all-time on my “Livin’ La Vida Low-Carb Show” podcast has been a low-carb neurosurgeon named Dr. Larry McCleary. He was a guest on my podcast most recently in April 2011 discussing the brand new re-release of the revised version of his book Feed Your Brain Lose Your Belly. Now it seems he’s gotten the podcasting bug himself and has created a phenomenal new podcast of his own on iTunes called “Brain-Body Breakthroughs.” It looks like he started making his one-hour episodes at the beginning of May 2011 and releases them once a week on Sundays. The crux of the show is to cut through all the muckity-muck of health information that’s out there to deliver solid scientifically-accurate wisdom for his listeners using both his medical expertise and experience as a backdrop. Take a listen and you’ll GET HOOKED! You can check out all of my other “Favorite Health Podcasts” along the right-hand side of my blog.
- Did you know if you REALLY cared about the environment and the state of your own health that you’d be eating a lot less meat and cheese? That’s the conclusion drawn in a new Meat Eater’s Guide To Climate Change + Health from some dubious organization calling themselves the Environmental Working Group with headquarters located in Washington, DC. Why do I get the sneaky suspicion that this campaign has the sticky fingerprints of the anti-meat, vegetarian groups all over it? We’ve seen Physicians Committee For Responsible Medicine (PCRM), a front group for the ultra-radical (pulling stuff like this) People For The Ethical Treatment Of Animals (PETA), blame meat eaters for global warming so it’s not much of a stretch of the imagination.
- The low-carb haters are out there in full force lest we forget how much work is left to be done. Take the column “How to move on from the low carb craze and finally get your weight under control” from NY Diet and Exercise Examiner Rosie Dias. She’s a dyed-in-the-wool apologist for the conventional wisdom spouted by health groups like the American Medical Association and the American Diabetes Association–namely a high-carb, low-fat vegetarian diet. There’s so much hyperbole about low-carb living in this column that it reads more like an April Fool’s joke on Tom Naughton’s blog than anything.
- Dias isn’t the only one trash talking healthy low-carb living. Our old professor pal from Louisville, KY named Bryant Stamford is back at it again (I’ve blogged about his anti-Atkins drivel several years ago here and here) in an unassuming column he wrote for The Courier-Journal called “Sugary soft drinks are hard on our diets.” Stamford asks the question in his column, “Why are we so fat?” While he does acknowledge there’s been an increase in the amount of sugar consumed mostly from soft drinks due to promotion of the low-fat diet (WOW!), he also blames the Atkins diet’s inclusion of red meat and dairy because of the saturated fat he describes as “health-destroying.” Will these so-called experts EVER learn? I suppose he’s getting closer by identifying sugar as an obesity/health culprit (maybe Gary Taubes’ New York Times magazine column on this subject earlier this year spawned this?), but he still has a long way to go.
- Did you hear about the new Consumer Food and Product Insight Survey released this week? It shows the latest trends in how people are spending their dollars when it comes to food. There were several intriguing findings, including 75% looking for cheaper food options, 76% seeking “healthier options” (which is a mixed bag gobbledeygoop of all kinds of definitions of “healthy), and over half reading nutritional labels. But the one that stuck out like a sore thumb to me was this: SIX IN 10 CONSUMERS WANT TO SEE MORE LOW-CARB FOODS AVAILABLE IN STORES! Whoa! This is HUGE news considering “the demise of Atkins” as the column about this survey explained it. Hmmmm, maybe it’s not as dead as once thought.
- Want more evidence of the hypocrisy of the public administrators at U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA)? They now classify walnuts sold by Diamond Foods a “drug” for making certain health claims about this nutritious omega-3 rich real food while Cheerios from General Mills claims you will “lower your cholesterol 4% in 6 weeks” because of the “healthy” whole grains they contain. What is wrong with this picture?
- Did you know that eating meat could give you diabetes because of industrial chemicals known as “persistent organic pollutants” aka POPs? According to this column, this slow-releasing chemical accumulates in the fatty tissue of cows, pigs, and even fish that we consume primarily from industrialized factory animal farming which includes feeding them animal fat along with the grains typically fed to cattle. Keep in mind this is limited to the consumption of factory farm meat, not the highly superior quality meats you can purchase from a local farmer’s market or farmer where the meat is most likely grass-fed. This is yet another reason to move away from consuming industrialized farm, grain-fed meats in favor of healthier meats from a local source. Click here to find a local farm source for grass-fed beef in your area.
- When you see the title of a column “Enjoy Saturated Fats, They’re Good for You!” hit your inbox, it can’t help but bring a big smile to your face. It’s from a gentleman who is a cardiac surgeon I interviewed on my podcast in October 2010 named Dr. Donald Miller and this is a MUST READ from start to finish. It is chock full of so much good stuff that you’re neck will be sore from all the nodding in agreement as you make your way through it. ENJOY!
- Meghan Cook from Indiana was named the first Atkins Diet Superstar this week by the Atkins Nutritionals company for her stunning 82-pound weight loss success. This 30-year old nurse once weighed in at 220 pounds and now she’s inspiring others by running in 5K marathons and teaching her fellow nurses about what healthy low-carb living is all about. Read more of Meghan’s story and see her awesome before and after photos by clicking here. CONGRATULATIONS MEGHAN!
- You won’t believe this next one: fishermen in the UK have been banned from using white bread as bait because it’s making the fish become fat. WOW! This is the first such action to ever be taken against the common practice of using white bread to attract fish to the surface. It seems the unintended consequences of using this technique is a sicker, fatter fish. Of course, the fishermen aren’t happy about this because white bread is cheaper than the alternatives. This quote from the story is priceless: “It’s just like people, the fish tend to get lethargic and bloated if they consume too much white bread.” If it’s so well-known that white bread does this to fish and humans alike, then why does it continue to outsell other kinds of breads?
- You’ve seen me blog about the amazing changes happening in the eating habits of the people of Sweden with the LCHF (low-carb, high-fat) movement there. Well, it appears to have spread to the nearby nation of Finland where the low-carb lifestyle is having a direct impact on bread and meat sales there. The latest survey shows that bread consumption dropped 4% last year than in 2009 and a total of 9% less since 2008. The bread companies there are perplexed about how to respond to this trend. At the same time, meat consumption rose 3% last year which was considered “particularly brisk” compared with the long-term trend and it’s “expected to pick up even more.” When nations like Finland and Sweden take their high-fat, moderate protein, low-carb lifestyle seriously, the impact on food companies is swift and noticeable. Will we see this kind of trend coming to the United States in the coming years?
- Check out this insider’s financial report from a multi-million dollar meat manufacturer named Diamond Ranch Foods because it’s quite illuminating about what they think about the current state of low-carb in America from a business standpoint. If you scroll down to their “Trends” section, you’ll see something very interesting: “Meat consumption has dramatically increased overall due to dieting habits; most famously known is The Atkins Diet, as well as other diets, that emphasize high-protein, low-carbohydrate intake. These diets suggest meats, including red, instead of high carbohydrate foods, and specifically recommend avoiding refined carbohydrates. High protein consumption has become a part of American culture, more than a societal tendency, in that in order to meet increasing requests for low-carb type items.” COOL! And they see this as “an upward trend” that’s not going away anytime soon. You better believe it! Livin’ la vida low-carb is here to stay!
- And finally, the tide isn’t just turning in the food industry but also among the next generation of medical professionals. Take a newly-graduated nurse practitioner from Duke University named Sam Damren who wrote a column entitled “Fat and the Heart: Reconsidering Conventional Wisdom” after spending time “shadowing” a low-carb researcher and practitioner at Duke in Durham, North Carolina named Dr. Eric Westman, co-author of The New Atkins For A New You. Although she was skeptical, Sam now realizes that “fat may be maligned” as a culprit in heart disease. She still has concerns over the relationship of consuming dietary fats to colon cancer and is in the midst of slowly working her way through a paradigm shift of thinking that goes against everything she just learned. If only more nurses, doctors and dietitians at least took the time like Sam did to examine the evidence with their own eyes, we might see a more sweeping paradigm shift happen in very short order. It could happen…and maybe it will. Stay tuned!
Have you seen a low-carb or health headline that makes you think, “Man, I bet Jimmy Moore would love to see this!” If so, then I’d love to hear from you with a link or scanned copy of the column sent to livinlowcarbman@charter.net. If it’s a BIG story that’s all over the news, then I’ve probably heard about it. But so many of my readers find these wonderful diamonds in the rough for me to share and I appreciate all of my LLVLC field reporters helping me find them. THANKS for reading and never stop believing in this remarkable way of eating that has changed all of our lives for the better.
