Actually, it’s not just the good ‘ol USA that this is happening in, but the entire world.

Researchers don’t know why, exactly, so they trot this out – at least this is the summary from the reporter:

The reasons for the leveling off — like the sharp increase that preceded it — aren’t precisely clear, the papers say. Flegal and her colleagues cite the usual array of presumed factors: an expansion of the food supply, energy imbalance, the possible effect of environmental endocrine disruptors. But they say more research is needed into the factors causing the sharp rise, as well as the plateau now.

Coincidentally, 2003 coincides with the beginning of the Atkins low carb craze.

Just sayin…

This article from Bloomberg is a must-read, I assure you. It discusses research that shows the addictive properties – real, serious, addictive responses to junk food as serious as the chemical dependency of drugs – occur.

I think that while the entire article is worthy of a careful read, one aspect jumped out at me – the total unscientific response the researchers got when they initially tried to get funding for the research:

Scientists studying food addiction have had to overcome skepticism, even from their peers. In the late 1990s, NIDA’s Volkow, then a drug addiction researcher at Brookhaven National Laboratory on Long Island, applied for a National Institutes of Health grant to scan obese people to see whether their brain reward centers were affected. Her grant proposal was turned down.

“I couldn’t get it funded,” she said in an interview. “The response was, there is no evidence that food produces addictive-like behaviors in the brain.”

Wait…isn’t the point of research to find evidence?

I guess if you don’t look for something, it doesn’t exist…right?

Oh. Notice the unconscious bias in the headline. It should be ‘fattening foods’, not ‘fatty foods’…

I had come across this article in the New York Daily News about veggie burgers. Veggie burgers are looked upon by many as superior replacement for the much-maligned hamburger made from ground up cows. Leaving out the fact that cows are considered a stupid, but somewhat charming and endearing animal that no one wants to watch being ground up, veggie burgers are considered much healthier than the flesh of our barnyard friend and resident of children’s books. It is also supposed to be better for the environment: you picture fields of crops gently swaying in the breeze rather than the chaos of the feedlot and the horror of the slaughterhouse.

Most people don’t picture vats of hexane, a petrochemical byproduct found in gasoline, being used to extract the oil from the pesticide-laden GMO soy that makes up the main ingredient of your oh-so-low-fat veggie burger.

Yep – to make that veggie burger – or a lot of them, at least, you take the soybeans, crush them up, and soak them in this gasoline byproduct, which acts as a solvent and helps the manufacturer extract the oils from the beans and allow the consumer to feel proud of how little fat they are eating compared to those nasty, nasty burgers made from animals.

Here’s what Wikipedia has to say about the toxicity of hexane – slightly redacted so you don’t nod off:

The long-term toxicity of n-hexane in humans is well known.[6] Extensive peripheral nervous system failure is known to occur in humans chronically exposed to levels of n-hexane ranging from 400 to 600 ppm, with occasional exposures up to 2,500 ppm. The initial symptoms are tingling and cramps in the arms and legs, followed by general muscular weakness. In severe cases, atrophy of the skeletal muscles is observed, along with a loss of coordination and problems of vision. Similar symptoms are observed in animal models. They are associated with a degeneration of the peripheral nervous system (and eventually the central nervous system), starting with the distal portions of the longer and wider nerve axons.

In 1994, n-hexane was included in the list of chemicals on the US Toxic Release Inventory (TRI).[8] In 2001, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency issued regulations on the control of emissions of hexane gas due to its potential carcinogenic properties and environmental concerns.[9]

Yum!

Anyway, it can’t be all that bad, right? Manufacturers must get all that stuff out. When the extraction is done, it must be completely removed, or evaporate…or something…right?

Again, from Wikipedia:

According to a report by the Cornucopia Institute, hexane is used to extract oil from grains as well as protein from soy, to such an extent that in 2007, grain processors were responsible for more than two-thirds of hexane emissions in the United States.[10] The report also pointed out that the hexane can persist in the final food product created; in a sample of processed soy, the oil contained 10 ppm, the meal 21 ppm and the grits 14 ppm hexane.[10] The adverse health effects seem specific to n-hexane; they are much reduced or absent for other isomers. Therefore, the food oil extraction industry, which relied heavily on hexane, has been considering switching to other solvents, including isohexane.[11][12][13]

If you would like to read the full report from the Cornucopia Institute on soy, it’s here. It’s well worth the read if you are curious about the health benefits of soy.

The issue is larger than just veggie burgers, though. It turns out that most cooking oils are also extracted from their seeds in a similar process, so unless you buy expensive cold expeller-pressed oils where the oil is squeezed out rather than extracted through solvents, your oil – soybean, canola, olive, corn, etc. – has had a little hexane bath.

And don’t think if you don’t use those oils, you aren’t exposed. After the oil is extracted, what remains (at least for corn and soybean) ends up in a myriad of ‘low fat’ products.

This leads me to a larger – much larger conclusion that I already knew, but didn’t really act upon – until now.

I do not trust government to protect me from unsafe food. Nor do I believe their guidelines for healthy eating.

But I am not a scientist. And I take everything I read with a grain of salt. People have agendas. People distort findings. The truth is impossibly hard to find in all the conflicting messages.

So I am proceeding on my own personal set of assumptions. I don’t know if they are right. I don’t know if I am wasting my time. I don’t really know if my low carb diet is going to kill me tomorrow – but it is my decision. If I am wrong, I only have myself to blame. Here they are:

• Become a hell of a lot fussier about what I eat. Even more so than I am already.  Yes, it makes me even more of a pain in the ass, which might be hard for some to imagine. So be it.
• Eat animal fat and protein from animals raised properly – from a real farm, not a corporate farm.
• Get all my carbs from veggies. No grains.
• Eat minimally-processed foods.
• Eat everything possible organic.
• Read every damn label. If any ingredient sounds like something from chemistry class – don’t buy it.
• If it comes in a box, has a glorious 4-color picture of what it’s supposed to look like when served – don’t buy it.
• If it comes in a box and is endorsed by the American Heart Association – don’t buy it.
• If it has the word ‘healthy’ anywhere on the box – don’t buy it.
• If it is considered a ‘convenience food’ – don’t buy it.

The writer of the story appears to be stunned, and writes the following:

This counter-intuitive finding shakes the conventional wisdom that substituting lower calorie, lower fat foods for the full-fat versions will help reduce overall caloric intake and encourage weight loss.

In other news, water runs down hill. Researchers amazed.

How many times must researchers be ‘stunned’ before they realize that just calorie counting doesn’t work?

Here’s another learned response from a puzzled professional:

“It goes against what you might think — you remove calories from food and you’ll lose weight, but at the end of the day the chemical manipulation of food leads to increased weight. We don’t understand exactly why yet, but research continues to show this is true,” ABC News Medical contributor Dr. Marie Savard said.

Actually,  Dr. Savard, it is not only the chemical manipulation that does it, but many other factors in food – both natural, unnatural, and processed that will do it. An understanding of nutrition beyond the ‘calories in, calories out’ myth could help you puzzle this out.

Stop by any Low Carb hangout on the Internet – you’ll find plenty of friendly and helpful people would would be happy to explain it to you.

Let me start by mentioning that I don’t know if this is for real. I hope not.

The video above links to a story on a Japanese researcher who is perfecting a process of making artificial meat from human feces.

(Long pause here to let that sink in…OK…ready to go on?)

While there’s a lot one can say about this, my point might be a bit different that most of the commenters out there.

As someone who tries to avoid processed food as much as is possible, this adds to my reasoning why.

You never really know what you’re eating.

There is a long and rich history of food adulteration going back centuries. I have a wonderfully disgusting book on the subject named ‘Swindled!’ that I should review here (but haven”t because I’m lazy).

The one big takeaway from the book is this: the longer the chain that the food needs to travel to get to your table, the more likely it has been adulterated along the way.

The point being – even if you know that you would never order a burger made from the above process – how do you know some didn’t slip in?

Let’s score another one for eating natural foods, being a locavore, and knowing the farmer that feeds you.

You learn something new every day.

These days, however, it seems what you learn is a bummer.

Next up on the bummer hit parade for me is ‘Meat Glue’.

Meat glue?

Let’s say you decide to follow a paleo diet, or primal, or low carb with an emphasis on minimally processed food. You go to the grocery store and pick up a nice boneless steak – or go to a fancy restaurant and order one. You say to yourself: “I’ll order it rare – why ruin a nice piece of meat by burning it to a crisp?”

Here’s a reason for well-done.

This video shows the clever trick that meat producers – at least the sleazy ones – do to take cuts of meat too small to sell and turn them into steaks you pay a lot more for.

In short, they use an  enzyme called transglutaminase to take small cuts of beef, pork, chicken or fish and glue them together. Sprinkle some on, and those itty-bitty bits of meat, after setting in the fridge, become a handsome steak.

Hey – wait a second – better living through chemistry – right? What’s the big deal?

The big deal is that you don’t know this. And because you don’t know this, you aren’t aware that all these little cuts of meat once had a lot more surface area where bacteria could land. Now this bacteria gets glued together on the inside surfaces of your glued meat, unlike a real steak, where the bacteria would only be on the outside.

So now you get your, ahem, ‘steak’ rare – and get yourself a mighty fine case of food poisoning.

Sigh…

What can you do?

Not much, unless you buy your meat from a local farm, which isn’t an option for a lot of us. Even if you ask, can you be sure the people selling you the meat are telling the truth – or even know  the truth?

This leaves only one recourse for meat-loving low-carb, paleo, and primal folks.

Memorize these three words.

Repeat after me: “Well-done, please.”

Maybe it’s me.

Maybe I’m the dope.

I’m not a researcher, but I simply don’t know how to grasp the following report out of Australia:

Losing weight is often touted as a way to improve health, but many weight-loss programs may not help stave off disease since people tend to gain the weight back, Australian researchers say.

What’s better is the methodology our researchers used:

To test the potential impact of different diets, the researchers ran two computer simulations: One included a low-fat diet, the other a diet rich in whole grains and vegetables plus 180 minutes of exercise per week.

According to the models, people lost an average of 8 to 12 pounds on the diets and kept the weight off for an average of 6 months. But the pounds slowly crept back on, and after less than 6 years, the dieters were back where they started — negating any improvement in health from the weight loss.

In addition, the researchers estimate that only about 3 percent of Australia’s population would participate in weight-loss programs.

That’s right. They sat in front of a computer the whole time and based their data on 2 diets – low fat and low calorie – that we know quite well don’t work in the long run.

I work with data all the time, and know how easy it is to feed in a bunch of numbers, run an analysis against it, and have it spit out beautiful, detailed results – which are completely and entirely wrong. It just takes one bad number or one erroneous assumption and it all falls to pieces.

And besides all that – what is the point? To come to a conclusion that people can’t improve their health losing weight if they can’t keep it off is so obvious that I can’t conceive why it would take more than 5 minutes sitting in an armchair to figure this one out.

And yet it gets printed in a respected journal on obesity.

Is it any wonder that modern science is essentially useless in helping us fat folks get thinner?

I love nutrition studies. You can draw whatever conclusions you like, it seems. Probably because the problem is so complex that current science can only go so far into answering these type of questions.

From MSNBC.com:

a new study suggests that the only thing a big breakfast does is lard on more pounds. No matter how many calories are consumed in the morning, people eat the same size lunch and dinner — and that adds up to more total calories when the breakfast is big, according to the study, which was published in the Nutrition Journal.

Don’t worry – another study will come out to contradict this one – it’s inevitable.

This isn’t exactly new news – I had heard this years ago – but it did make the news cycle, so I thought it worth a post.

From AOL News:

If you’re working hard to achieve your New Year’s resolution of losing weight, you may want to proceed with caution.

Researchers have discovered that chemicals and pollutants may be stored in our body fat, and when significant amounts of body fat are broken down, as they are during weight loss, these harmful substances could be released into the bloodstream and may cause disease.

Yep. A number of environmental toxins are fat-soluable and get bound up in that stubborn fat of yours. When you burn the fat, all that toxic gunk has to go somewhere. Surely a lot is excreted, but on the way to the exit, some may find a new home and the rest might cause some mischief on the way out.

The article recommends avoiding chemicals, eating organic, etc. But what if you’re already fat and you didn’t avoid chemicals?

Ugh. You’re damned if you do, damned if you don’t.

Get over it.

Here’s the trick: lose the weight slowly. Don’t be in a God-awful rush. You are poisoned every day anyway by 1001 substances that you come in contact with – miracles of technology that have effects that we don’t even know about yet.

If you lose weight slowly, it will only add to your daily poisoning level to a smaller percentage. It is also useful advice to begin avoiding chemicals as much as possible.

Eating organic does help, if you can afford it. So does buying a water filter for your sink, and avoiding plastic food containers – especially microwaving food in plastic containers. And drinking water – at least filtered water that didn’t come in plastic bottles that sat in the sun and leached plastics into them – might help. You’d imagine that the excess water might flush it out. Can’t hurt – as long as the water itself isn’t a source of toxins.

it’s a good idea – and it worked for him well enough.

Here they are – stolen straight from Wikipedia – I think some form of this might also help me reach my goals. Think of it as a guest post.

Thirteen Virtues

Franklin sought to cultivate his character by a plan of thirteen virtues, which he developed at age 20 (in 1726) and continued to practice in some form for the rest of his life. His autobiography lists his thirteen virtues as:

1. “Temperance. Eat not to dullness; drink not to elevation.”
2. “Silence. Speak not but what may benefit others or yourself; avoid trifling conversation.”
3. “Order. Let all your things have their places; let each part of your business have its time.”
4. “Resolution. Resolve to perform what you ought; perform without fail what you resolve.”
5. “Frugality. Make no expense but to do good to others or yourself; i.e., waste nothing.”
6. “Industry. Lose no time; be always employ’d in something useful; cut off all unnecessary actions.”
7. “Sincerity. Use no hurtful deceit; think innocently and justly, and, if you speak, speak accordingly.”
8. “Justice. Wrong none by doing injuries, or omitting the benefits that are your duty.”
9. “Moderation. Avoid extremes; forbear resenting injuries so much as you think they deserve.”
10. “Cleanliness. Tolerate no uncleanliness in body, cloaths, or habitation.”
11. “Tranquility. Be not disturbed at trifles, or at accidents common or unavoidable.”
12. “Chastity. Rarely use venery but for health or offspring, never to dullness, weakness, or the injury of your own or another’s peace or reputation.”
13. “Humility. Imitate Jesus and Socrates.”

Franklin did not try to work on them all at once. Instead, he would work on one and only one each week “leaving all others to their ordinary chance”. While Franklin did not live completely by his virtues and by his own admission, he fell short of them many times, he believed the attempt made him a better man contributing greatly to his success and happiness, which is why in his autobiography, he devoted more pages to this plan than to any other single point; in his autobiography Franklin wrote, “I hope, therefore, that some of my descendants may follow the example and reap the benefit.”