Category Archives: Diet And Food

Butter, double cream, avocado - some of the richest, most delicious foods in the worlds are also the highest in fat.

But does that also mean theyre the most fattening? According to current wisdom, no.

30 min workout for your lunchbreak

This is a stark contrast from the consensus of even just 10 years ago, when we were all told to shun fat and supermarkets responded with shelves upon shelves of fat-free products.

In fact, the NHS still warns against having too much saturated fat in your diet because it raises cholesterol levels which can cause heart disease - the UK guidelines are no more than 30g saturated fat per day for men, and 20g for women.

But this seems to be behind recent research and current trends - sugar has replaced fat as public enemy number one, and weve realised that all the fat-free and low-fat products wed been consuming were laden with the sweet stuff to make up for the lack of fat.

And so fat is back in vogue. However theres also the risk that people will interpret this as meaning they can add an avocado to every meal and expect the pounds to drop off - that wont happen.

More and more health experts are advocates of high fat diets, and one of those is Zana Morris, author of The High Fat Diet.

Morris also runs three boutique gyms in London - The Library, The Clock and The Little Library - and she told me she could transform my body in just ten days if I followed her high-fat diet and worked out in the right way.

So I decided to try it out.

The plan is basically super low-carb, supposedly medium protein (although it seemed quite high to me) and high fat. It was not going to be easy.

On my plan, I couldnt eat any sugar or sweeteners, milk or yoghurt, fruit, bread or pastries of any kind, potatoes, pasta, rice, vegetables of any colour except green or white, sauces (except pesto and guacamole) or nuts (apart from walnuts and pine nuts).

Alcohol and all soft drinks apart from water were, of course, off the table too.

So what could I eat? Avocados, cream cheese, double cream, butter, coconut cream, all meats and fish (that don't have anything added), all green vegetables, nut oils, pesto, eggs and some cheeses (not the carbier ones like cheddar).

A food must contain 70 per cent of its calories from fat and have low carb levels to be considered fat on the plan, so feta, for example, counts as protein not fat.

I was meant to have up to 40g protein and at least 70g fat at breakfast; lunch would be 120g protein max, 70g veg max and 85g fat minimum; and for dinner, up to a sizeable 240g protein, 75g veg, and a minimum of 85g fat.

Its not a starvation diet, Zana told me, but if Im not hungry I shouldnt eat. In fact, she said many people drop down to two meals a day because what theyre eating is so rich and filling. Id be eating more calories than before, but supposedly losing weight. It sounded too good to be true.

Zana also warned me, however, that with this diet, cheating just a tiny bit could ruin everything. Gulp. So not even a sneaky mouthful of bread then? Or a splash of milk in my tea? Nope.

The reason for this is that even the tiniest morsel of sugar can offset everything and stop your body burning fat for a few days. I had been warned.

Its not a fat free-for-all either, sadly. Off the menu are man-made trans fats (eg. margarine), oxidised fats (eg. a packet of butter thats been opened and sitting in the fridge for weeks), vegetable oils and non-organic fat sources.

Zana says that by eating fat and practically no carbs, my body would burn fat - she likened it to adding logs to a fire to make it burn more. Eating fat doesnt trigger a rise in insulin in the body (like sugar does), so your body stops burning insulin as fuel.

This is where your body switched to a state of ketosis - yes, there are similarities with the currently very trendy keto diet - with the body turning to fat stores for energy.

Fat is also incredibly satiating. When most people embark on a low-fat diet in an attempt to lose weight, they end up hungry and dissatisfied with what theyre eating, thus end up craving sugary snacks. But this isnt the case with a high fat diet, which keeps your blood sugar stable too.

When most people lose weight, they sadly lose a lot of muscle as well as fat. So to combat this, Zana says you need to workout in a way that youre preventing muscle loss.

Retaining as much lean muscle mass as possible also helps you keeps the weight off afterwards - as you go about your daily life, muscle burns off roughly three times as many calories as fat does.

So strength training is key, as I was to learn in The Library and The Clock gyms. Its not just any weight training though, but high intensity resistance training.

On the plan, I trained five to six days a week, but crucially, each session was just 15-20 minutes long.

You work with big weights and have no rest time between exercises. If day one was legs, day two would be chest and back, and day three would be shoulders and arms. Each workout finished with abs too.

The diet kicked off with a cup of tea with double cream in. Yes, it was a bit weird. But not horrendous.

If I was at home, breakfast would be poached eggs, halloumi and avocado for breakfast, which was genuinely delicious.

Eating breakfast at work was a little tricker, but I got into the habit of making Zanas chocolate mousse: essentially, double cream whipped up with chocolate casein protein powder. This was actually a lifeline as it was the only sweet thing I could have - my sugar cravings did fade though.

Theres a lot of food-prep on the plan and you really cant take shortcuts - it turns out its really hard to find pre-cooked chicken that doesnt have added sugar.

Lunches consisted of salads mainly: lettuce, cauliflower rice, feta, chicken, avocado, pine nuts and broccoli, for example, or pesto courgetti with avocado, goats cheese, walnuts and green beans.

When it came to dinner, I found you could actually make pretty indulgent meals, and I thoroughly enjoyed them. A bun-less burger with avocado covered in melted boursin, perhaps, or you could have steak too.

Eating out, however, was an absolute nightmare. I found zero restaurants with items on their menu that would actually cater for the high-fat diet, and I hated having to be so fussy.

The best I could do was insist my friends and I go to burger restaurants where I would have bun-less burgers and salad with added avocado and no dressing.

Socialising was generally a bit of a nightmare - I hated not being able to have cocktails and puddings with my friends, but I suppose one plus-side is that my bill was cheaper.

A typical high fat breakfast

Similarly, not being able to tuck into Colin the Caterpillar with my colleagues at work wasnt much fun, but I suppose thats the way with any diet.

It also took me a few days to learn my portion sizes were too big and I also wasnt meant to be snacking in between meals - I certainly wasnt going to be going down to two meals a day as Zana suggested. I was starving!

It did become clear to me that fat does fill you up for a certain amount of time, but it doesnt leave youbloated like carbs do.

Two days in and Id lost three pounds, which was extremely motivating. I was craving fruit like mad though.

By the weekend - days six and seven - all I wanted was a glass of prosecco and a pizza with my pals. I wrote in my notes: Feels good to be healthy but is definitely less fun. This diet is boring. Weekends are rubbish when you cant eat or drink. Its ruining my social life. (I have been known to have a melodramatic side.)

However, my face looked slimmer and less puffy, which couldve been down to not drinking as much as anything else. My skin looked great, which I do think was thanks to the fat, but I didnt suddenly feel super fit.

By day nine, my trousers felt looser and my colleagues said I looked slimmer.

The workouts were extremely tough. As in, I-cant-do-it-makeup-melting-dripping-with-sweat-collapsing-on-the-floor tough. I regularly left the gym feeling slightly like I wanted to throw up, cry or faint. But on other occasions I came out feeling strong.

Any fitness expert will tell you not to measure your progress with the number on the scale, but we as a society are a bit obsessed with doing so.

Needless to say, I was chuffed to have lost seven pounds in ten days. Perhaps more importantly though, my body fat percentage had dropped four per cent.

Incredibly, I started to see the slighted bit of ab definition too and lost at least an inch all over my body.

The results of the diet are pretty astounding, but as with any quick weight loss programme, the question is: did I keep it off?

Well, largely, yes. Ive put on a few pounds in the weeks after, but my weight tends to fluctuate around a couple of pounds anyway. Zana actually recommended I switch to a low-fat diet afterwards if I wanted to continue losing weight, which was puzzling.

Theres a lot you can learn from the diet, but following it strictly just isnt practical, especially if you want to have a social life.

Its also an expensive diet to follow - lean meats, avocados and pine nuts sure do add up.

But would I do it again if I wanted to quickly trim down for a holiday or social event? If I was really desperate, probably yes.

You really can lose fat by eating fat, as long as you do it right.

Read more:
Is a high-fat diet the secret to burning fat? - The Independent

If theres one message that most people get about their diet, its to cut back on fat. Too much fat, especially the saturated fat and cholesterol found in animal meat, dairy products and cheese, can clog up arteries and lead to heart disease, stroke and obesity.

But fat may not be only culprit in those unhealthy conditions. In recent years, studies have revealed that cutting back on fat doesnt always contribute to a lower risk of heart disease or reduced chance of dying early. In fact, some studies show the opposite, that people who eat extremely low amounts of fat tend to die earlier.

MORE: Does a Low-Carb Diet Really Beat Low-Fat?

That may be because of something else theyre eating instead. In one of the most comprehensive studies to date looking at how diet affects health and mortality, researchers led by a team at McMaster University report that rather than lowering fat, more people might benefit from lowering the amount of carbohydrates they eat. In a study published in the Lancet, they found that people eating high quantities of carbohydrates, which are found in breads and rice, had a nearly 30% higher risk of dying during the study than people eating a low-carb diet. And people eating high-fat diets had a 23% lower chance of dying during the studys seven years of follow-up compared to people who ate less fat.

The results, say the authors, point to the fact that rather than focusing on fat, health experts should be advising people to lower the amount of carbohydrates they eat. In the study, which involved 135,000 people from 18 different countries, the average diet was made up of 61% carbohydrates, 23% fat and 15% protein. In some countries, like China, south Asia and Africa, however, the amount of carbohydrates in the diet was much higher, at 63% to 67%. More than half of the people in the study consumed high-carbohydrate diets.

MORE: Know Right Now: Why Low-Fat Diets Might Not Solve Your Health Problems

The findings add more data to the continuing debate over the best advice for healthy eating. When the focus on cholesterol emerged in the 1970s, connecting fatty foods and heart disease, doctors urged people to reduce the fat in their diet by cutting back on red meat, dairy products, eggs and fried foods. Food makers took up the mantra, and pumped out products low in fat. But they replaced the fat with carbohydrates, which scientists now understand may be just as unhealthy, if not more so, than fat.

Thats because carbohydrates are easily stored as glucose in the body, and they can raise blood sugar levels, contributing to obesity and diabetes both of which are also risk factors for heart disease.

MORE: The Case for Whole Milk

So why has there been so much focus on fat? The researchers say that the first studies to link fat to heart disease were conducted primarily in North America and Europe, which has the highest consumption of fat worldwide. Its possible that different diet advice may be needed for different populations. In western cultures, where there is an excess of fat, reducing fat may play a role in lowering heart disease, as long as people arent replacing the fat with carbohydrates.

MORE: Ending the War on Fat

In other parts of the world, where carbohydrates make up a large part of the diet, cutting back on carbs may make more sense than focusing on fat. Individuals with high carbohydrate intake might benefit from a reduction in carbohydrate intake and an increase in the consumption of fats, the study authors write.

More study will also be needed to figure out exactly how much fat and how much carbohydrates should be recommended for optimal health. The study did not compare, for example, people who ate low-fat diets to those who ate low-carb diets to see how their diets affected their mortality.

Read this article:
The Low-Fat vs. Low-Carb Diet Debate Has a New Answer - TIME

As the CEO of SoulCycle, Melanie Whelan obviously spends a lot of time on a bike, which she balances with apple pie, burrata, and olive-oil cake. I love the experience and purpose of gathering everyone in the kitchen, or around the barbecue outside, she says. My kids like to help, and its nice to have something to do where were all equally skilled. (Her sons 8 and her daughters 5, so shes maybe selling herself short here.) This week, Whelan dined at her favorite restaurant, Nobu, before decamping to the Hamptons for a picnic on the beach, grilled corn with Old Bay, and frozen yogurt thats too good to be true. Read all about it in this weeks Grub Street Diet.

Thursday, August 24I start most days with a workout. Today, however, I didnt have enough time to take my usual class before an early meeting, so I made my favorite Gradys Cold Brew at home with a splash of almond milk and brought it along. I also start most days with a Lemon Popper, which is a Whelan-family classic. When we first got our SodaStream, my kids were obsessed with creating new recipes using all of the flavors. They created our signature family drink, which is 90 percent seltzer water and 10 percent limeade, and dubbed it the Lemon Popper. I feel like it should be trademarked because weve really spread the word about the Lemon Popper and have turned so many of our friends onto it. So, I had a Lemon Popper and threw a banana in my bag for later.

I was meeting with a candidate for our marketing team at 1 p.m. at our offices, so I offered to bring in smoothies for lunch. I like that you only need one hand to drink them, so I can multitask and work on something else at the same time. We have two Juice Press locations within one block of our office, so Im a frequent customer. I chose the F&%*ing Genius and our candidate got the Nurse Ginger Greene.

Each month, we celebrate our employees birthdays that fall during that month and we always have a different party theme. Today, we had the August birthday party, which was themed camp, so we had classic favorites like smores, chips, and candies in fun buckets, lake water (really an Arnold Palmer), and trail mixes. I didnt get to enjoy the treats because I was heading into a 5:30 p.m. 40th-birthday ride for a colleague, but took a sneak peek and grabbed some red Swedish fish for later.

After the ride, I met my husband at our favorite spot, Nobu. It used to be three blocks away from our apartment, but we recently moved to the Financial District, so we sadly dont go as often as we used to. It was our last night in the city before heading to the Hamptons for the last week of summer, and I was craving my usual order. My husband makes fun of me because I get the same thing every time. Dont need a menu. Its always the yellowtail sashimi with jalapeo, black-cod butter-lettuce wraps (no crunchy on top), and a spicy tuna hand roll without rice.I also got a tequila on the rocks with a splash of lime because, you know, its Thursday.

Friday, August 25My morning started with an early coffee that was scheduled at Tarallucci E Vino in Union Square. Im a creature of habit and go there all the time for meetings because its across the street from SoulCycle Union Square, has great booths for quiet meetings in the back, and its in such a central spot. But, when I pulled up, I was surprised to see that it was closed for last-minute renovations, so I went over to the W Union Square.They have a great fruit bowl and juices from Liquiteria, so I got the All Greens and a cold brew with almond milk.

After that, I went into the office for a day of internal meetings and grabbed a LaCroix pamplemousse (my favorite flavor) before heading up to our sixth floor to meet with the retail, development, and finance teams. We have summer Fridays, but I usually work a bit later, so I grabbed an RXBAR for the train and decided to save my calories for dinner that night with my family.

When I got in, my family and I went over to Cove Hollow Tavern, which is an adorable little spot in East Hampton. We always try to keep Friday nights for just us and make a commitment to spend the time together as a family, regardless of everyones schedules, so we can recap the week. My son loves their buttered pasta, and my daughter always goes for their burger with fries. I started with the ahi tuna, sneaked a bite of my kids fries, and then got the grilled halibut. It was delicious, and they presented it on a cedar plank, so it looked beautiful, too. To me, presentation is everything. And again, I sneaked a bite of Davids hanger steak. I also had a glass of cold Chardonnay, while my kids enjoyed Charlotte Temples our version of a kids cocktail named after my daughter seltzer water with cherries.

Saturday, August 26I went to an early SoulCycle class in our East Hampton studio. David and I have this thing called the parent handoff where one of us rides in one class, the other one brings the kids to the studio, and in the 15 minutes between classes, we swap, and the other parent rides in the second class. Its foolproof and works every time. So while he was in class, I took my kids to Carissas Breads, which opened next door to us earlier this summer.We grabbed some pastries and iced coffees and then stopped by the Balsam Farm Stand in Amagansett to pick up a bunch of stuff for the weekend. Lots of fresh fruit, veggies, and of course, the Blue Duck apple pie. Its incredible, and we never walk out of Balsam without one (or two). I recently discovered the gluten-free apple tart one of my best friends has celiac so we picked one up for her.

When we got home, we started on lunch. Ive been really into spaghetti squash lately, so I roasted some of the vegetables from the farm stand, mixed that with the spaghetti squash, and threw together a quick kale salad. For my kids, it was PB&J all day.

In the afternoon, I took a few bites of Halo Top mint-chip ice cream. I had heard so much about it and needed to try it.Its definitely not ice cream, but itll do the trick.

That night, we went to the beach for fireworks. Its an annual tradition, and a lot of our friends go with their kids, so its always a really fun night. I packed a massive cooler with grilled chicken, turkey sandwiches, Boom Chicka Pop kettle corn (my favorite), chips, pretzels, guacamole, hummus, you name it. I also stopped by the Red Horse Market to get a ton of prepared food.I grabbed a couple of pizza slices, some salads, and more chips because you can never have too many bags of chips. We set up a little picnic area on the beach, and I picked at our entire spread, but ended up mostly eating the grilled chicken and a million baby carrots and chips dipped in hummus.Literally, 1 million.

Sunday, August 27Sunday breakfast is a family tradition. Whether were in the city or the Hamptons, we always make pancakes together on Sunday. This week was chocolate chips, and my daughter, Charlotte, was very strategic about the location of each chocolate chip in each pancake (princess smiles). We also made happy trail mix, a family staple, which is Honey Nut Cheerios, Apple Cinnamon Chex, raisins, dried cranberries, coconut strips, and chocolate chips.Im not a huge cook, but I love cooking with my kids, and we end up spending so much time in the kitchen.

After a late-morning SoulCycle class, we had a friends birthday party in the afternoon in Sagaponack. As expected, knowing them, they had it catered for three times the amount of people who were there. I had grilled chicken and vegetables, and also some corn. I love corn on the cob.

That night, I went to the Girls Who Code event in Water Mill. Cocktail party canaps are not my jam, and I was trying to balance on heels in grass (#outfitfail) before hurrying home for a family dinner. We put salmon and turkey burgers on the grill, and also corn on the cob with Old Bay seasoning. Im originally from Maryland, so it really doesnt get any better than Old Bay and corn on the cob. We dropped David off at the Jitney, and then I took the kids to Scoop Du Jour where we met some friends. I always go for the vanilla-Heath-bar-crunch frozen yogurt. Its insane, I dont know how they do it, but I have my suspicions (not frozen yogurt).

Monday, August 28Days like today are my favorite. I get to wake up, cook a full breakfast for my kids before they head off to camp, and spend time together in the kitchen brainstorming all of our plans for when they get back from camp. I always try to get protein into their meals, so I made my moms world-famous cheesy scrambled eggs. Its all about the milk-to-yolk ratio. And as soon as you add the cheese, you pull the eggs out, and let them melt outside of the pan. That recipe requires real presence; its a ten-minute activity that youve got to be game-on the entire time. For me, I poached eggs in a separate pan with an egg poacher, which is the best $25 Ive ever spent. We all had a smoothie that I made using fruit from the weekend.My go-to recipe is kale, spinach, half a banana, almond milk, chia seeds, and a little PB2 powder, but for the kids, I have to keep it all fruit.

I had two meetings in the morning, one in East Hampton and one in Bridgehampton, and then I ran over to Sag Harbor for Pilates. I grabbed the Green Hornet smoothie at Jacks with a friend before I headed back to pick up my kids from camp.

For dinner, I met some friends at the Crows Nest. They have the most amazing view of the sunset, and their grilled octopus is incredible. We shared burrata as well (because who can pass up ordering burrata if its on a menu?), and the meze platter. Since I drove out to Montauk, I made the excuse that with no cocktails, I could compensate by splurging on dessert with a few bites of the olive-oil cake.

Tuesday, August 29Similar morning to the day before: I made my kids scrambled eggs and went to Jacks in Amagansett for a meeting. I had a cold brew with almond milk and the sunrise muffin, which Im obsessed with. Its packed with all these veggies like zucchini and carrots, and also grains and nuts. After that, I went to Stuarts, the best seafood shop on the East End, and picked up a ton of food for a dinner were having with some of the SoulCycle team.

For lunch, I made a big salad with fresh veggies and a turkey burger on top. Im also really into kombucha, so I grabbed a Health-Ade Pink Lady kombucha. Then, I got started on cooking dinner the menu included caprese salad, seaweed salad (fine, this was store-bought), Davids famous lobster with sriracha and chili paste, grilled swordfish, and grilled steak. Also, Lemon Poppers for everyone. As much as I love the summer diet, Im really looking forward to getting back to the city and ordering some Thai takeout.

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SoulCycle CEO Melanie Whelan Makes Pancakes on Sunday No Matter What - Grub Street

Fad diets come and go, but The Atkins Diet -- a high-protein, low-carbohydrate weight-loss plan --seems never to go away, no matter how many medical professionals denounce it.

"Low-carb diets have been linked to increased frequency of colon cancer, formation of kidney stones, kidney disease, and even osteoporosis," says Neal Barnard, MD, president of the Physicians Commission for Responsible Medicine, a nonprofit research group based in Washington. "The weight loss you see in low-carb diets isn't all that much better than what you see in studies of low-fat, vegetarian diets."

Putting it more bluntly is Kiku Collins-Trentylon, a sports trainer in New York City, who says it's "a pretty evil diet. We all want to sit on our couches, eat nonstop, and have perfect, sculpted bodies. Unfortunately, it doesn't work that way."

Meat is the culprit in low-carb diet danger, says Barnard.

"The reason for the health worries is in large part due to red meat," he says. "People who eat meat every day have three times greater risk of developing colon cancer. And then there is the problem of the kidneys. They aren't designed to work on an oil slick of fat."

In the summer of 2002, however, both Time magazine and The Sunday New York Times Magazine have published much-talked-about stories that say Atkins may not be as bad for heart health as previously believed. These stories were sparked in part by a recent study from researchers at Duke University showing most people who ate a high-protein, low-carb diet for six months lost 20 pounds.

That much was expected. What wasn't expected was that the researchers didn't see strong evidence of the diet causing any health problems. In fact, both LDL "bad" cholesterol and HDL "good" cholesterol improved.

The Duke study shows part of why the diet is so popular -- it can produce significant weight loss. What's more, it produces it without a lot of annoying calorie counting and the irritability associated with diets.

"You're not as hungry as with other diets, and that is a really good thing," says Jenny Anderson, an Internet consultant from Mamaroneck, N.Y., who is on the diet. "That makes it easier to stay on it. So does seeing results fairly quickly. One bad thing is that it forbids caffeine, and I had a lot of bad headaches from coffee withdrawal."

Another drawback to the low-carb diet is its severely limited menu options.

"At first, eggs and bacon in butter for breakfast every day is fun, but day after day of only meat and fat at every meal can get tiresome," says Anderson.

So therein lies the controversy. On one hand you have lots of stories of significant weight loss on a relatively user-friendly diet. On the other, you have dietitians and nutritionists who maintain that the weight loss produced is short-term and can threaten a person's overall health, despite the fact that the weight loss itself may have the beneficial effect of lowering cholesterol.

Who is right? Maybe both sides. It provides weight loss at a very high cost to overall health, or at least that has been the prevailing medical opinion.

"There have been reports in the medical literature that say that this low-carb diet may not be as bad as we thought," says Susan Barr, registered dietitian in New York City. "That makes people interested again in this diet, but until there is more research on what stresses the diet places on the body, there is no way to know what it might be doing besides providing short-term weight loss."

According to the American Dietetic Association, low-carbohydrate diets trigger short-term weight loss through a process called ketosis. This process kicks in when your body is in short supply of carbohydrates, a prime source of energy for the entire body, but especially for the brain, which operates exclusively on carbohydrates.

During ketosis, your carbohydrate-depleted body grabs other sources, including ketones from stored fat or protein from muscle, to satisfy daily energy needs. This can lead to ketoacidosis, a state similar to that of diabetes. This type of diet can trigger weight loss, but it can have the kinds of negative long-term effects on health that Barnard mentions.

The other big question is whether low-carb weight loss lasts.

James Hill, PhD, is director of the Center for Human Nutrition at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center in Denver. He runs the National Weight Control Registry that includes information on the diets of more than 2,600 people who maintained at least a 30-pound weight loss for a year or more.

What the registry shows, according to Hill, is that less than 1% had followed a diet similar to the Atkins program. Most followed high-carbohydrate, low-fat diets.

But a new, long-term study may resolve the risk-benefit question for low-carb diets.

The Atkins diet has never been evaluated in a large, randomized controlled trial -- the only type of study that convinces doctors that something works, or doesn't -- until now. The National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine is funding such a study. Gary Foster, PhD, a psychologist with the University of Pennsylvania's Eating Disorders Clinic is heading this new study to assess the short-term and long-term effects of the Atkins diet in 360 obese men and women.

According to Foster, study participants will be randomly assigned to the Atkins diet (low-carbohydrate, unlimited fat and protein) or a conventional high-carb, low-fat diet. When the study is complete, Foster and his colleagues will have gone a long way toward answering the nagging questions about Atkins and other low-carbohydrate diets.

WebMD Feature

See the article here:
How Safe Is the Atkins Diet? - WebMD

Widely promoted guidelines to reduce fat intake could be unhealthy for people in low- and middle-income countries whose diets are already too starchy, researchers said Tuesday.

Health authorities in Europe and North America recommend eating more fruits and vegetables while curtailing consumption of fatty foods, advice also adopted by the United Nations and globally.

But people in poor nations cutting back on fat may wind up piling on more carbohydrates -- such as potatoes, rice or bread -- because fruits and vegetable are more expensive, the authors point out.

"The current focus on promoting low-fat diets ignores the fact that most people's diets in low- and middle-income countries are very high in carbohydrates, which seem to be linked to worse health outcomes," said Mahshid Dehghan, a researcher at McMaster University in Ontario, Canada and lead author of a study in The Lancet.

Meanwhile, a companion study, also published in The Lancet, concludes that the rich-world guidelines -- backed by the World Health Organization (WHO) -- on fruit and vegetable consumption could be safely cut back from five to a more affordable three portions per day.

Dehghan and colleagues sifted through the health data of 135,000 volunteers from 18 countries across six continents, aged 35-70, who were monitored for a seven-and-a-half years.

People who met three-quarters or more of their daily energy needs with carbs were 28 percent more likely to die over that period that those who ate fewer starchy foods (46 percent or less of energy needs).

Surprisingly, the findings also challenged assumptions on fat intake: diets high in fat (35 percent of energy) were linked with a 23 percent lower risk of death compared to low-fat diets (11 percent of energy).

"Contrary to popular belief, increased consumption of dietary fats is associated with a lower risk of death," Dehghan told AFP.

REGIONAL IMBALANCES

That covered a mix of saturated fats (from meats and milk products), along with monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats (from vegetable oils, olive oil, nuts and fish), she added.

The study did not look at so-called "trans fats" from processed foods because "the evidence is clear that these are unhealthy," Dehghan said.

The best diets include a balance of 50-55 percent carbohydrates and around 35 percent total fat, according to the authors, who presented their findings at the European Society of Cardiology Congress in Barcelona.

Current global guidelines -- based mostly on studies done in Europe and the United States -- recommend that 50-65 percent of one's calories come from carbs, and less than 10 percent from saturated fats.

Overall, the study found that average diet consists of just over 61 percent carbohydrates, 23.5 percent "good" fat, and 15 percent protein.

But these averages hid important regional imbalances: In China, South Asia and Africa, intake of starchy foods was 67, 65 and 63 percent, respectively.

A quarter of the 135,000 subjects -- mostly in poorer nations -- derived more than 70 percent of their daily calories from carbohydrates, while half had less than 7 percent saturated fats in their diet.

The findings "challenge conventional diet-disease tenets" largely based on the lifestyles of Europeans and Americans, Christopher Ramsden and Anthony Domenichiello commented, also in The Lancet.

Dehghan and colleagues set out to look for links between diet and cardiovascular disease, which kills some 17 million people around the world each year -- 80 percent of them in low- and middle-income countries.

Many factors contribute to these diseases but diet is one of the few that can be modified to lessen risk.

But while high-carb and low-fat diets were clearly associated with greater mortality, no statistical link was found with the kind of life-threatening events -- strokes, heart attacks, and other forms of heart failure -- that stem from cardiovascular disease.

"Most of the current debate about diet and health has focused on cardiovascular mortality," noted Susan Jebb, a professor at the University of Oxford who did not take part in the study.

The reported link between high-carb diets and excess mortality "was from non-cardiovascular deaths and is unexplained," she said.

Go here to read the rest:
Diet guidelines biased against poor nations: study - ABS-CBN News

Nutritional science, as well as consumer and feline preferences, drive trends and variety in the cat food aisle.

By LaRue Palmer

Published: 2017.09.01 10:30 AM

The finicky nature of cats is legendary, which can make it challenging for a pet owner to maintain a healthful diet for them. Pet food manufacturers are burning the midnight oil trying to create the right formula of food that will satisfy not only the nutritional needs for every life stage given cats picky nature, but also the humanistic values and tastes of the doting pet owner.

The category is expanding with new options as manufacturers seek to meet customers varied demands.

The cat food category is clearly following in the footsteps of dog food, with an increased number of natural offerings and unique protein sources, said Ann Hudson, vice president at Whitebridge Pet Brands in St. Louis. The pursuit of the perfect feline diet has led manufacturers to new sources of meat and fish, and new ways of processing to be able to incorporate more fresh proteins into dry foods. Everyone knows cats are carnivores, but figuring out how to get the perfect carnivore diet into a can or bag is still a challenge for most manufacturers.

Dry cat food continues to dominate sales in the category. According to a report published by Statistaan online statistics company based in Hamburg, with regional headquarters in London and New Yorkin 2016, U.S. premium dry cat food sales topped $534 million in sales, compared to just $219 million for the wet varieties.

Dry food is certainly still favored for its convenience and palatability, said Tracey Hatch-Rizzi, vice president and co-founder of Radagast Pet Food Inc. in Portland, Ore. But balancing that dry food with wet food is more widely recommended now. Consumers are also showing more interest in formulas that address their cats specific lifestyles or life stages.

Hudson agreed that dry foods are more popular with customers.

The wet category is clearly under-penetrated in pet specialty. Its an enormous opportunity for pet specialty retailers, and a high-quality range of nutritious wet foods gives [pet specialty retailers] a way to effectively compete, she said, adding that Whitebridge recently released its Tiki Cat After Dark wet food line, with unique proteins and real organ meat in a safely prepared and ready-to-serve package.

Raw foods are also gaining traction for cats with consumers. In fact, Leasa Greer, manager of nutrition and regulatory affairs for Solid Gold Pet based in Chesterfield, Mo., said raw feeding is not merely a trend, but a movement among cat owners.

More and more people are catching on to the fact that its a cats evolutionary diet, Greer said. Cats were the ones that would be put into the granary not to eat the grain, but to eat the vermin that would eat the grain. In the end, at least feeding your cat a little bit of raw is better than none at all.

Still, Hatch-Rizzi said there is a great of deal misinformation circulating in the cat-owning community about raw food diets.

It is really because the veterinary community is much divided about raw food diets, but when you walk into your local independent pet store, you see raw diets all over the place, she said. So youre left wondering why there is division on one side, but the healthful pet stores are all carrying all kinds of raw, raw freeze dried and even kibble with raw incorporated into it.

Stephanie Catalfio, store manager for Lous Pet Shop in Grosse Pointe Woods, Mich., for 48 years, sees a trend toward high-end premium cat food choices that carry a reputable, trustworthy name.

Personally, I feed my cat raw food and freeze dried, Catalfio said. We usually recommend the higher-quality brands of canned for our customers who we know would appreciate it. If theyre going to go dry, we have brands like Fromm Family Pet Food or Champion Petfoods, for example.

Despite the increasing popularity of raw foods, kibble is still a mainstay in the cat food category, and many consumers appreciate the convenient format.

It is correct to say that carbohydrates are not an essential nutrient for cats, said Rick Rockhill, executive vice president of Lucy Pet Products in Thousand Oaks, Calif. They need protein, fat and fiber. Yet carbohydrates fulfill a function in that they provide texture and they are literally what gives the kibble its form by pulling all the other nutrients together.

Rockhill said he believes that sometimes people forget that cats have been domesticated for thousands of years and no longer live in the wild, which is why manufacturers continually strive to create nutrient-dense formulas that are healthful and pleasing to the cat, and easy to deliver for the pet owner.

Dr. George Fahey Jr., the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign professor emeritus who helped developed formulas for Lucy Pet, pointed out that, occasionally, diets are tailored to address particular issues, such as hairballs.

We know how to control that with a specialized diet that prevents it from happening, he said.

Brendan Sykes, a sales representative for Specialty Pet Supplies in Plymouth, Mich., recommended specific diets for certain ailments.

We go to a specific hairball control formulation, which, usually, will be higher in fiber, making it easier for a cat to pass a hairball rather than them having to throw it up.

Fahey added, Others may be predisposed to renal issues, but prescription as well as over-the-counter diets can address these problems or prevent them from developing. Making these informed choices is up to the pet parent, so educating them is critical.

Manufacturers are often more than willing to help educate pet owners.

When consumers reach out to Solid Gold with pet nutrition questions, they talk to our consumer engagement specialist, Greer said. The consumer engagement specialists job is to keep our customers and sales reps properly educated and trained in the nutritional needs and functions of cats.

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Antabuse rights - Side effects of antabuse when drinking - Forward Florida

To experience devastation like that brought by Hurricane Harvey feels very different from what you've probably seen on television. I was lucky enough to make it out of my house in Katy with my kids, my dogs, our cars and at least some of our belongings and memories. My neighbors' harrowing evacuations make me feel even luckier to have made it out safely, but I can't help but be concerned about what comes next for us.

Because of our position next to the Barker Reservoir, our home could be under water for as long as three months. Since we were not in a flood plain, we and the majority of our neighbors do not have flood insurance. Our most valuable assets are now under water and we can only wonder what Harvey has done to our property values.

The homes will have to be taken down to the studs, but will everyone decide to rebuild or will it be a dilapidated ghost town? Most importantly, how long before a storm like this happens again?

This tremendous loss of almost everything we own is now hitting me in waves. I'm spending my days signing up for FEMA help with immediate necessities and housing, canceling services we no longer need like cable and Internet, and trying to figure out how to create a new normal for my children. That's all we really want right now.

How did we get here? It seems so long ago now but this ordeal started only a week ago-- Friday, August 25, my birthday. I began the day thanking God for letting me see another year. My children got up and got ready for school. I made sure the dogs were taken care of and started my work day (I work from home running my own business).

My paranoia about being trapped by the storm stems from my need to protect all of my living souls in my home, but it's especially important for my 12-year-old son, Ryan. He's a type 1 diabetic with Celiac disease. I always have to make sure he has access to proper medical care, which requires power to refrigerate his insulin and provide a special diet.

Although we were told not to venture out in the middle of the night, my gut told me we needed to get to a safer location. I did a test run outside my neighborhood around 2 in the morning to see if the streets were starting to flood. It seemed safe enough, so I told the boys to pack their bags and I packed food into a cooler.

I thought it was important to get into a hotel before everyone else evacuated, so I used the Hotels.com app to quickly find a place in the area that would take pets and called to confirm they had availability.

Room in the car was limited, so I had to make the difficult decision to leave our large dog behind with food and water with hopes that we would return later in the day to retrieve him. We loaded our bags and our smaller dog into an SUV I had bought a week before to help us better handle flood situations and slowly navigated the wet streets as the rain poured down.

Hours later, I went back to rescue our other dog, but the back streets we used just a few hours before were now flooded, so I had to find a different route. Thankfully, the freeways are elevated, so they allowed me to get close to my neighborhood, but we had to navigate through gas stations and parking lots, go the wrong way up streets and use an alternate exit to get to the house, since the main entrance to the neighborhood was already flooded.

We quickly grabbed the dog and high-tailed it out of the neighborhood before additional flooding blocked us. I also tried (and failed) to convince my neighbor to leave, knowing the streets outside the neighborhood wouldn't be passable soon.

Once we made it back to the hotel, I could finally breathe because my four souls were safe and dry, but I realized we should have brought the dog's shot records and a few irreplaceable memories. We went back a final time on Sunday morning, but both entrances to the neighborhood were under water, dashing our hopes of retrieving more of our personal belongings and trapping our neighbors in.

I continued to stay in touch with those stranded neighbors through a group Facebook page. Many decided to stay because they felt safer in their homes, but could no longer leave, even if they wanted to. Hotels were filling up as quickly and eventually, they finally evacuated from chest-deep water -- infested with snakes, alligators and fire ants -- with the help of the National Guard, boats and helicopters.

I'm forever indebted to all of our angels who have been helping us during this difficult time. The example they are setting is making the biggest impression on my children. They truly know that through the generosity of others, we're going to be OK.

In the meantime, I have to keep paying my mortgage on an inhabitable home that I'm not even sure we'll rebuild. I do know we will rebuild our lives, though. I do know this will not break us, and I can only hope it will make us stronger.

I do have one request on behalf of everyone affected by this storm. Please do not forget about us. We will need your support and understanding for longer than any of us want to admit.

I pray for my family and all of the people in my region affected by this horrible storm and the disastrous flooding that has followed. In my life, the ups have outweighed the downs, and I know this situation will be no different.

It will take time, but we will be OK ... one day at a time.

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Harvey survivor: The loss is hitting me in waves - CNN

Imagine a new study, published, one presumes in Road & Track, or Car and Driver, purporting to show that square wheels outperform round wheels.Imagine the attendant headlines: Everything Thought Known About Wheels Proves Wrong! and Wheel Guidelines Need Radical Change!

Would such headlines, in fact, cause you to abandon everything you knew about wheels based on a lifetime of evidence and experience?Or, would you say: that cant possibly be true, and just go about your business?Or, might you say, well, wait just a darn minute and look further into the study, to see how such a preposterous claim could be justified in the first place?

I am guessing one of the latter options in the case of wheels.I only wish we would roll the same way when it comes to news about diet.Well come back to that momentarily.

First, I want to establish that my imaginary study, and its entourage of imaginary headlines, could, indeed, be feasible if there were money to be made confusing people perennially about the proper shape of tires (as there certainly is with regard to diet).How?

Well, as the headlines told you, square tires were compared to round, and square won.What the headlines didnt tell you was that the square tires were made from state-of-the-art tire materials, such as vulcanized rubber.And, perhaps though square, the corners were gently rounded.The round tires were indeed round- but made out of porcelain, presumably because the study result was chosen in advance to favor the square tire industry.The porcelain tires all shattered to smithereens at the first rotation, leaving those cars stranded with no tires at all.The cars on square tires lumbered along clumsily, but they did at least move- and so, they won!The difference was statistically significant.

The above study is just the nonsense it seems.If, however, there were industries that could profit from confusion about the best shape for tires, I would not be shocked to see it.We get just such diverting nonsense about diet week after week.

The latest is the media coverage of a study called PURE (Prospective Urban and Rural Epidemiology), which ranges from mildly hyperbolic to patently absurd.

The study itself is impressive in scope, and I commend the many investigators involved for their good intentions, and massive efforts.In brief, PURE was designed to look at health outcomes associated with variations in lifestyle, and in the current batch of papers diet specifically, in countries not well represented in prior work of this type, and across the range from high to very low socioeconomic status.

A total of 18 countries with a particular focus on the Middle East, South America, Africa, and South Asia- and about 135,000 people participated.Participants were enrolled as long ago as 2003, or as recently as 2013, and were followed for about seven and a half years on average.Dietary intake was assessed with a single food-frequency questionnaire at baseline.Another dietary intake tool, 24-hour recall, was used in a sub-sample, and the correlation between the two was marginal, suggesting considerable inaccuracy in diet reporting.

Three PURE study papers were just published in the same issue of The Lancet, one reporting health outcomes (cardiovascular disease, non-cardiovascular disease, and mortality) associated with intake of vegetables, fruits, and legumes (beans, chickpeas, lentils, etc.); the second reporting on the same health outcomes with variation in the three macronutrients- carbohydrate, protein, and fat- as a percent of total calorie intake; and a third looking at variation in blood lipids and blood pressure in relation to nutrient intake.

There were two main findings that have spawned most of the mainstream media coverage, and social media buzz.The first was that, while health outcomes improved and mortality declined with higher intake of vegetables, fruits, and legumes- in multivariable analysis adjusting for other factors, that benefit peaked at about 3 servings per day.This has been widely interpreted to suggest that, at odds with conventional wisdom on the topic, more is not better with regard to vegetables, fruits, and beans.

The second finding garnering media attention was that across countries, the higher the intake of carbohydrate as a percent of calories, the higher the rates of disease and death; whereas the higher the percentage of calories from fat, the lower these rates.

Lets take these in turn.

Regarding vegetable, fruit, and legume (VFL) intake:

The researchers found that those with the lowest intake (about 9000 people) of vegetables, fruits, and legumes also had the lowest intake of total calories, starch, and meat- indicating that in the many poor populations included in this study, people were simply food-deprived, and hungry.

Those with the highest intake (about 11,000 people) of VFL had nearly twice the total calorie intake intake of the lowest group; smoked about half as often; and were 6 times more likely to have gone to college- and were more likely to exercise (even though the poor likely did manual labor at work).

In other words, the lowest levels of VFL intake represented a fairly desperate socioeconomic status; the highest intake, more than 8 servings daily, meant privilege, and choice.

What have the crazy, hyperbolic headlines NOT been telling you?Roughly 8% of those in the lowest VFL intake group died during the study period; whereas only 3% of those in the highest VFL intake group died- despite the fact that the highest VFL intake group had a slightly higher mean age at baseline.Overall, and rather flagrantly, mortality was LOWEST in the group with the HIGHEST intake of VFL. The lowest levels of heart disease, stroke, and mortality were seen in those with the HIGHEST intake of VFL.

What, then, accounts for the strange reporting, implying that everything weve been told about vegetables, fruits, and beans is wrong?These benefits were adjusted away in multivariable models.When this method of statistical analysis was applied, the health benefit expressly attributable to VFL seemed to peak at about 3 servings per day.That, however, is fundamentally misleading- and the headlines, quite simply, were written by people who dont have a clue what it really means.

Those people in PURE with the highest VFL intake were ALSO benefiting from less smoking, more exercise, higher education, better jobs, and quite simply- a vastly better socioeconomic existence.A multivariable model enters all of these factors to determine if a given outcome (e.g., lower death rate) can be attributed to ONE OF THEM with the exclusion of the others.The exclusive, apparent benefit of VFL intake was, predictably, reduced when the linked benefits of better education, better job, and better life were included in the assessment.

This no more means that VFL was failing to provide benefit in those with more education, than that more education was failing to provide benefit in those eating more VFL.It only means that since those things happen together most of the time- its no longer possible to attribute a benefit to just one of them.Really, thats what it means (and with all due respect to the miscellaneous headline writers untrained in the matter, I am qualified to say so).

The country-specific presentation of data showed the same gradient, with the lowest intake of VFL in the poorest regions and countries, including Bangladesh, Malaysia, Pakistan, and Zimbabwe.

Based on their multivariable models, the authors suggest that there is no clear benefit from eating more than 3 servings of VFL per day, and they propose a public health advantage in that conclusion: 3 servings a day, rather than 5, 7, or 9, represents an approach that is likely to be much more affordable for poor people in poor countries. Unfortunately, those same models could be used to make the same case about education: there is no clear, exclusive benefit (among those eating the most vegetables, fruits, and legumes daily) from more education- so lets forget about college!That, too, should make things easier for the poor.I appreciate the good intentions- but the message is, simply, wrong.

What about the study of macronutrients- carbohydrate, protein, and fat?

Lets start with dietary fat.Baseline fat intake by country ranged from a low of about 18% of calories, to a high of about 30%.All of these values are considerably lower than current, average intake in the U.S. and much of Europe.

Those countries with the lowest intake of dietary fat also had the lowest intake of protein, suggesting these were people with food insecurity, having trouble obtaining adequate food intake, or dietary variety.

Saturated fat intake ranged across the countries studied from about 6% of calories to a high of about 11% of calories, again all lower than average levels in the U.S. and much of Europe, and actually very close to recommended levels.Headlines encouraging populations that already eat more saturated fat than this to add even more are not merely unjustified by anything in the study, they are egregiously irresponsible.

Unlike dietary fat, which the investigators examined in all of its various categories, carbohydrate was all lumped together as a single class.This produced an apparent paradox in the data: disease and death went down with more intake of vegetables, fruits, and legumes- but up with carbohydrate.Whats the paradox?Vegetables, fruits, and legumes all are comprised overwhelmingly of carbohydrate.

What explains away the apparent paradox is that vegetable, fruit, and legume intake were apparently highest in the most affluent, most highly educated study participants- while total carbohydrate as a percent of calories was highest in the poorest, least educated, most disadvantaged.In those cases, carbohydrate was not a variety of highly nutritious plant foods; it was almost certainly something like white rice, and little else.

The highest intake of carbohydrate as a percent of total calories was associated with lower intake of both fat and protein, and was associated with higher mortality.However, much of the increase in mortality was from non-cardiovascular diseases.

So, unless you are prepared to believe that eating only white rice is the reason you are likely to be gored by a bull and bleed to death- this study doesnt mean what the headlines say it means!

The findings actually suggest that intake of carbohydrate as a percent of total calories was highest (e.g., a diet of white rice and little else) where there was the most poverty, the least access to medical care, and the greatest risk of dying of trauma, infectious diseases, and so on.

Non-cardiovascular mortality went down as total protein intake went up across the study populations, too.Do you think this means that eating more protein prevents you from bleeding when gored by a bull- or that people in places with access to more dietary protein are less likely to be gored by a bull in the first place, and far more likely to have life-saving surgery if ever that should happen?

An alleged surprise in the PURE data is that higher intake of saturated fat was associated with lower mortality overall.Here, too, however, higher saturated fat intake- which occurred together with higher protein intake- was associated with much reduced risk of non-cardiovascular death.So, does eating more saturated fat protect you from dying when run over by an ox- or does being in a place with access to more saturated fat (i.e., animal food) in the diet mean you eat the ox before he can run you over?And, that, if ever he does run into you- theres a hospital somewhere reachable?

To be quite clear about it, there was no adjustment for, or even mention of, access to a hospital or medical care in the PURE papers.

The researchers examined the replacement of carbohydrate as percentage of calories, with fat as a percentage of calories, but did not report variation in total calories, or the degree to which very high intake of carbohydrate as a percent of that total correlated with very low calorie intake overall, and malnutrition.Looking across the several papers, it is apparent that correlation is strong.There was also no examination of what replacing one kind of fat with another did to health outcomes, a kind of dietary variation that might have more to do with choice, and less to do with socioeconomics.This is an odd omission.

On the basis of all of the details in these published papers, the conclusion, and attendant headlines, might have been: very poor people with barely anything to eat get sick and die more often than affluent people with access to both ample diets, and hospitals.One certainly understands why the media did NOT choose that!It is, however, true- and entirely consistent with the data.

Also, by way of reminder: the HIGHEST levels of both total fat, and saturated fat intake observed in the PURE data were still LOWER then prevailing levels in the U.S. and much of Europe, providing no basis whatsoever for headlines encouraging people already exceeding these levels to add yet more meat, butter, and cheese to their diets. Absolutely none.

As noted, the work represented by PURE, and the apparent intentions of the investigators, appear to be quite commendable.There is, however, something very odd about the timing of this observational study- independent of its rather obvious failure to address the massive impact of poverty on health outcomes.

What is odd in this case is the publication of an observational study to refute the findings of many intervention trials, including randomized controlled trials.As a rule, observational studies are used to generate hypotheses, and intervention trials- especially RCTs- are used to test those hypotheses.Observational studies come first, and only suggest associations; intervention studies come after to confirm or refute.

Personally, I have long been a proponent of observational epidemiology.I argue routinely that what we know reliably about diet, and many other things such as putting out fires, can come from sources other than randomized trials.Generally, the most complete and purest of understanding comes when insights born of diverse sources, from intervention trials to the common experiences of a culture, are combined, and aligned.Still, it is very odd to go back to observational data once the intervention trial data have already been filed.

A number of the researchers directly involved in PURE have spent their careers, long and illustrious for some of them, nearer the beginning for others, criticizing just such observational methods.Certain investigators involved in PURE have been among the more vocal and high-profile critics, for instance, of Ancel Keys and the Seven Countries Study (SCS), impugning both on the basis of overtly false accusations about lapses and improprieties, but also on the basis of an undeniable truth: the SCS was observational epidemiology, not a randomized controlled trial.

There is a truly enormous difference, though, along with many lesser ones, between the SCS and PURE: a gap of more than half a century!

Planning for the SCS goes back some 60 years.At that time, not only did we not have RCTs to tell us much about diet and health outcomes; we did not yet even know that diet and lifestyle had any appreciable effect on the most common of such outcomes, namely heart disease.The primary question Keys and colleagues set out to address had nothing to do with any particular nutrient; it was far more fundamental.Keys was among the first to suspect that variation in diet and lifestyle produced variation in heart disease risk, that coronary disease was not simply an inevitable consequence of aging.

Perhaps it seems incredible to you now that there was ever a time we doubted a role for diet and lifestyle in coronary disease, but that simply indicates how far we have come in the last half century, how big a gap that truly is given the pace of progress.So, again, an observational study now, especially by researchers prone to propound the advantages of randomized trials, is rather odd- because we have accumulated many such randomized trials in the decades since the SCS.

We have randomized trials to show that a shift from a typical American diet to a diet richer in vegetables, fruits, whole grains, beans, lentils, nuts, and seeds- and consequently reduced in refined carbohydrate, added sugar, and saturated fat- slashes rates of type 2 diabetes in high-risk adults, far more so even than the best of medications.We have randomized trials to show that shifting from a standard, northern European diet rich in meat and dairy, to a Mediterranean diet with less of those and more vegetables, fruits, olive oil, legumes, and seafood- causes the rate of heart attack to plummet in high-risk adults. We have intervention trials to show that diets in which whole, wholesome plant foods predominate can cause coronary plaque to regress, and heart attack rates to plummet.

We also have, along with simple observations of both longevity and vitality in populations around the word that eat diets of wholesome foods, mostly plants, in various sensible and balanced combinations- an intervention study at the population level shifting diets away from meat and dairy, toward more produce, whole grains, and beans, and resulting in more than an 80% reduction in heart disease rates, and a 10 year addition to life expectancy.

We have also seen what has happened in India and China with transitions to higher intake of processed foods, meat and dairy- and away from diets of simple plants in their native state: massively more obesity, diabetes, and chronic disease in general.We have a massive study in the entire U.S. population showing that more meat, especially processed meat, and more intake of processed foods, salt, and sugar, and less consumption of produce means more risk of premature death.

In other words, past the hype and headlines, the apparent paradoxes and puzzles, what PURE means is that: poor people with poor diets and barely enough to eat, and living in places with limited if any modern medical care- are more likely to get sick and die than people living in better circumstances.With all due respect to the researchers, and none to the promulgators of massively misleading media coverage- we knew that already.

Who eats mostly plants?Two kinds of people: those who have choices, and choose plants for the many benefits; and those who have no choices at all.The former enjoy excellent health.The latter eat what they can get their hands on, struggle against the forces of poverty, and routinely die young.There is a correlation between meat intake and coronary disease; but there is also a correlation between the affluence that allows for meat intake in the first place, and access to a cardiac catheterization lab.In general, those people living in places with more cardiac cath labs have more chronic disease, but avoid early death due to the advent of advanced medial care.

Before concluding this admittedly long column, one final note about the alarmingly bad timing of the PURE publications.These papers were released concurrently with the devastation in Houston, and the Gulf Coast, of Hurricane Harvey- the greatest rain event in the recorded history of the continental United States.The unprecedented rainfall is related to climate change, which in turn is monumentally influenced by global dietary choices.How appalling that the PURE findings were not merely misrepresented to the public in irresponsible reporting pertaining to human health effects, but in reporting that ignored entirely the implications of that bad dietary advice for the fate of the climate, and planet.

This week, as last, round tires are reliably better than square, assuming both are made of the same materials.This week as last, whole vegetables and fruits are reliably good for you, and for the most part, the more the better.The benefits of that produce, however, do not preclude the benefits of an education, a job, and medical care- nor vice versa.

This week as last, summary judgment about carbohydrate is entirely meaningless, because that term encompasses everything from green beans to jelly beans, arugula to added sugar, and subsistence diets of white rice and little else.The vegetables and fruits, as well as the whole grains, beans, lentils, nuts and seeds in the mix are this week as last- good for you.

This week as last, some fats are good for you, some are bad, and some are relatively neutral; but in all cases, it depends on what you eat instead of what.This week as last, the best sources of the most beneficial dietary fats are nuts, seeds, olives, avocado, and if from animal foods- then fish and seafood.

This week as last, observational epidemiology has merit in elucidating new hypotheses worth testing in intervention trials, but plays no legitimate role at all in displacing answers already predicated on just such trials.

This week as last offering up each new study out of context is like trying to make sense of an entire puzzle by examining each piece in isolation.Why we treat diet this way is the puzzle to me.As long as we do so, we can expect to make about as much progress as cars on porcelain tires.

Senior Medical Advisor, Verywell.com

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Diet And Health: Puzzling Past Paradox To PURE Understanding - HuffPost

When I wrote about my own success in lowering cholesterol through (mostly) plant-based eating, I cautioned against reading too much into it. The internet is full of people touting their own experience as "proof" of broader trends, so it's best to look at credible peer reviewed studies to get a sense of how any particular lifestyle change might work for you.

That said, the scientific evidence keeps mounting that plant-based dietsor at least a shift in focus to more plant-based eatingcan have significant improvements for our health, with lower cholesterol being one of the more dramatic areas of improvement.

Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine recently reported on yet another study backing this up. This one, authored by Yoko Yokoyama, Susan M. Levin, and Neal D. Barnard and published in Nutrition Reviews, consisted of a meta-analysis 30 observational studies and 19 clinical trials. The results were eye opening, and are worth noting for anyone who struggles with high cholesterol:

Consumption of vegetarian diets was associated with lower mean concentrations of total cholesterol (29.2 and 12.5mg/dL, P

Interestingly, the study did not show any significant improvements regarding triglycerideswhich would also fit with my own experiences. (My triglycerides continued to be significantly above recommended levels, even as other results showed dramatic improvements.)

Given that I'm not the only one reporting dramatic improvements in cholesterol levels from drastically cutting back on meat and dairy, and given that scientific evidence keeps mounting that this is an effective way to cut your cholesterol, I would highly recommend anyone facing this health issue to consider exploring a plant-based, or more plant-centric diet.

Heck, like me, you may even discover you like it.

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Another study suggests plant-based diet lowers cholesterol - Treehugger