liftsiron
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posted by strongarm on wcbb
Food Myths - Looking at What the Science Says About Healthy and Unhealthy Food
We are bombarded everyday on television, billboards, and in magazines with the latest fad, functional foods and processed health foods. We all known that omega 3 and fibre are good for us, but does that omega 3 enriched bread or margarine really have any health benefits for us, or that breakfast cereal that is "full of fibre?" So to help you navigate through this minefield I'm going to discuss some common misconceptions concerning healthy eating - I'm going to talk about saturated fat, red meat consumption, margarine, fruit consumption and fruit juice.
Current dietary wisdom would have us believe that saturated fat, and red meat are bad for us and things like margarine, fruit and fruit juice are good for us. However, I will try to establish what the research really says about eating these foods, rather than what appears in the media or gets spouted by doctors and dieticians.
One of the biggest misconceptions in nutrition and medicine is that saturated fat increase heart disease. However, according to a new study published in the Journal of Clinical Nutritionthere was insufficient evidence from prospective epidemiologic studies to conclude that dietary saturated fat was associated with an increased risk of coronary heart disease, stroke, or cardiovascular disease. This meta analysis examined data from 21 studies across the world involving over 350,000 people, so the results are quite astounding.
Avoiding saturated fat is the conventional dietary advice to prevent cardiovascular disease through fears that it raises cholesterol, however I feel that cholesterol is a bit of a red herring in terms of CVD, important to know, but only alongside other health markers such as C reactive protein. I believe a major contributor to CVD is inflammation, cholesterol just seems to get oxidised and contributes to narrowing arteries via inflammation - rather like an innocent bystander getting caught up in a shoot out.
One piece of advice that gets pushed around is to avoid butter (as it raises cholesterol) and to eat margarine as a substitute as it's made from "healthy" oils like soybean, sunflower, and corn oil, lower in saturated fat and higher in polyunsaturated fats and that it helps to reduce heart disease. However, consider a study published in The New England Journal of Medicine that randomised 5000 men and women who had previously had a heart attack to include in their diet one of the following four foods:
Margarine
Margarine enriched with EPA and DHA (omega-3 fats found in fish)
Margarine enriched with ALA (omega-3 fats found in plants)
Margarine enriched with EPA, DHA and ALA
During the 40 months of follow up participants consumed an average of 19g of margarine per day. What did the results show? There was NO reduced risk of further heart attacks, strokes or other cardiovascular events from consuming margarine fortified with a small dose of EPA, DHA or ALA.
Now, the media are reporting that perhaps omega-3 fats are not as heart healthy as we once thought. However this is quite a perverse angle of spin on the results from this study. It was not omega 3 fats that were being tested here, but margarine. Also consider that there was only 376 mg of EPA/DHA added to the margarine - a dose that is clearly insufficient to make a huge difference to your heart health.
So what else could we conclude from these studies? That consuming margarine (that the media and commercials claim is heart healthy) does not reduce cardiovascular death in people who had suffered a previous heart attack and who were taking "state of the art" cardiovascular medicine.
I feel this is not surprising. Margarine is a chemically manufactured food from plant oils. These oils are often times hydrogenated or partially hydrogenated that makes them more solid at room temperature. This slurry of semi solid plant oils then has to be scented and dyed to look more like butter and is also fortified with things such as plant sterols or omega 3 fats. This processing of fats creates trans fats. Research has shown that trans fats significantly increase the risk of heart attacks.
So this begs the question should you use margarine instead of butter - I would say no, butter used in small amounts is absolutely fine.
Some interesting research conducted by Harvard School of Public Health about red and processed meat consumption now reveals that red meat may not be as bad for us as gets pushed by conventional medicine and the big grain industries. Unfortunately these two different types of meat get lumped together and tarred with the same brush - red meat is full of saturated fat, it contributes to bowel caner and heart disease etc etc....
But these researchers conducted what is known as a systematic review and meta-analysis (basically where they take a whole bunch of independent studies and compare all the results) on 20 research papers in this area looking for relationships between unprocessed red meat,processed meat, and total meat consumption with coronary heart disease, stroke,and diabetes.
Guess what they found.Red meat intake was not associated with coronary heart disease or diabetes. However, processed meat intake was associated with a 42% higher risk of coronary heart disease and a 19% higher risk of diabetes. Researchers also found that both red and processed meat consumption were not associated with incidence of stroke.
So what can we take from this research? The consumption of processed meats (like burgers, sausage, sausage rolls and generally anything out of a packet, microwave meal or ready meal) is certainly not great to eat, but eating red meats in the form of quality cuts of lamb, beef or other red meat is good to eat, especially if you shop for grass fed organic meat. Meat is a great source of protein, zinc and B vitamins so don't be scared to eat it. Having said that it probably not wise to eat it every day - just balance what you eat with white meat, fish and seafood and you'll benefit from a fantastic diet.
Fruit
Now, we all know that we are supposed to get 5 portions of fruit and vegetables a day, and I would bet that most people either don't manage to eat this or just eat several portions of fruit a day to make up for the shortfall in vegetables. We are led to believe that fruit is good for us. However, although fruit truly is a healthy food - eating too much may not be a good thing. The problems comes from a type of sugar that is found in fruit - fructose. Research is now showing that fructose may not be as healthy as once thought and may actually cause more harm than good.
A study published in the Journal Cancer Research found that refined fructose caused cancer cells to proliferate (not good) - however not directly attributed to fruit consumption but to high fructose corn syrup (more on this later). Fructose consumption has also been linked to a condition known as fatty liver - like that seen in alcoholic liver damage. Research is showing that high carbohydrate diets and not high protein or high fat diets can actually lead to this fatty liver disease (although this research was carried out in mice not humans).
The American Heart Association have demonstrated that 200g of fructose on top of a normal diet demonstrated notable changes in triglyceride levels, insulin levels and measures of insulin resistance, as well as lowering the supposedly 'healthy' HDL levels. All of this is not good. What seems to be the problem here is a substance called high fructose corn syrup - a cheap form of processed sugar made from corn. This gets added to foods as a sweetener but it really is the worst possible thing you could eat.
Now back to fruit, although good for you it's probably not a wise idea to be eating unlimited portions of fruit per day as this will lead to excess fructose consumption and some of the deleterious health effects. Experts are suggesting that most sedentary people consume no more than 5g of fructose per day which is roughly 2 portions of fruit (i.e. and apple and a pear, or a banana and a serving of berries for example). If you are more active you might be able to eat 3 potions a day. But the take home point from this is to consume more portions for vegetables to get your "5 a day" (what should actually be your" 7-9 a day").
Fruit Juice
Fruit juice is portrayed as a healthy food and conventional medicine, dieticians and marketing on TV will tell you that fruit juice counts as one of your "5 a day". However, I'm going to show you some research that blows this out of the water.
A study published in the Journal Diabetes Care followed 73,000 women over a period of 18 years looking at the relationship between the consumption of green vegetables, whole fruit and fruit juice and the risk of developing diabetes
The results of this study showed that an increase in consumption of whole fruit andgreen vegetable was associated with a reduced risk of diabetes. But, an increase in fruit juice consumption of one serving a day was associated with an 18 per cent INCREASED risk of diabetes. Also consider research published in the journal Paediatrics that showed children drinking fruit juices are at greater risk of being overweight and it becomes clear that fruit juice is not that great. In fact I would consider most brands of fruit juice to be junk food! One of the reasons for this is that juice has none of the fibre that is found in fruit and is basically water loaded with the sugar fructose that I talked about earlier. Many fruit juices also get sweetened with high fructose corn syrup that is associated with liver damage, type 2 diabetes and possible cancer.
Take home point - avoid fruit juice!
Now, if you want to make a smoothie - that fine. Because you blend up all the fruit fibre and sugar, add a little protein in the form of whey protein and add some nuts, seeds or vegetables and you have a very different drink, one that is truly healthy.
by Steve M Hines
Steve Hines is an expert health professional who runs the popular website peakxvfitness specialising in nutrition and exercise for weight loss
__________________
Basskilleronline.com - Articles
Food Myths - Looking at What the Science Says About Healthy and Unhealthy Food
We are bombarded everyday on television, billboards, and in magazines with the latest fad, functional foods and processed health foods. We all known that omega 3 and fibre are good for us, but does that omega 3 enriched bread or margarine really have any health benefits for us, or that breakfast cereal that is "full of fibre?" So to help you navigate through this minefield I'm going to discuss some common misconceptions concerning healthy eating - I'm going to talk about saturated fat, red meat consumption, margarine, fruit consumption and fruit juice.
Current dietary wisdom would have us believe that saturated fat, and red meat are bad for us and things like margarine, fruit and fruit juice are good for us. However, I will try to establish what the research really says about eating these foods, rather than what appears in the media or gets spouted by doctors and dieticians.
One of the biggest misconceptions in nutrition and medicine is that saturated fat increase heart disease. However, according to a new study published in the Journal of Clinical Nutritionthere was insufficient evidence from prospective epidemiologic studies to conclude that dietary saturated fat was associated with an increased risk of coronary heart disease, stroke, or cardiovascular disease. This meta analysis examined data from 21 studies across the world involving over 350,000 people, so the results are quite astounding.
Avoiding saturated fat is the conventional dietary advice to prevent cardiovascular disease through fears that it raises cholesterol, however I feel that cholesterol is a bit of a red herring in terms of CVD, important to know, but only alongside other health markers such as C reactive protein. I believe a major contributor to CVD is inflammation, cholesterol just seems to get oxidised and contributes to narrowing arteries via inflammation - rather like an innocent bystander getting caught up in a shoot out.
One piece of advice that gets pushed around is to avoid butter (as it raises cholesterol) and to eat margarine as a substitute as it's made from "healthy" oils like soybean, sunflower, and corn oil, lower in saturated fat and higher in polyunsaturated fats and that it helps to reduce heart disease. However, consider a study published in The New England Journal of Medicine that randomised 5000 men and women who had previously had a heart attack to include in their diet one of the following four foods:
Margarine
Margarine enriched with EPA and DHA (omega-3 fats found in fish)
Margarine enriched with ALA (omega-3 fats found in plants)
Margarine enriched with EPA, DHA and ALA
During the 40 months of follow up participants consumed an average of 19g of margarine per day. What did the results show? There was NO reduced risk of further heart attacks, strokes or other cardiovascular events from consuming margarine fortified with a small dose of EPA, DHA or ALA.
Now, the media are reporting that perhaps omega-3 fats are not as heart healthy as we once thought. However this is quite a perverse angle of spin on the results from this study. It was not omega 3 fats that were being tested here, but margarine. Also consider that there was only 376 mg of EPA/DHA added to the margarine - a dose that is clearly insufficient to make a huge difference to your heart health.
So what else could we conclude from these studies? That consuming margarine (that the media and commercials claim is heart healthy) does not reduce cardiovascular death in people who had suffered a previous heart attack and who were taking "state of the art" cardiovascular medicine.
I feel this is not surprising. Margarine is a chemically manufactured food from plant oils. These oils are often times hydrogenated or partially hydrogenated that makes them more solid at room temperature. This slurry of semi solid plant oils then has to be scented and dyed to look more like butter and is also fortified with things such as plant sterols or omega 3 fats. This processing of fats creates trans fats. Research has shown that trans fats significantly increase the risk of heart attacks.
So this begs the question should you use margarine instead of butter - I would say no, butter used in small amounts is absolutely fine.
Some interesting research conducted by Harvard School of Public Health about red and processed meat consumption now reveals that red meat may not be as bad for us as gets pushed by conventional medicine and the big grain industries. Unfortunately these two different types of meat get lumped together and tarred with the same brush - red meat is full of saturated fat, it contributes to bowel caner and heart disease etc etc....
But these researchers conducted what is known as a systematic review and meta-analysis (basically where they take a whole bunch of independent studies and compare all the results) on 20 research papers in this area looking for relationships between unprocessed red meat,processed meat, and total meat consumption with coronary heart disease, stroke,and diabetes.
Guess what they found.Red meat intake was not associated with coronary heart disease or diabetes. However, processed meat intake was associated with a 42% higher risk of coronary heart disease and a 19% higher risk of diabetes. Researchers also found that both red and processed meat consumption were not associated with incidence of stroke.
So what can we take from this research? The consumption of processed meats (like burgers, sausage, sausage rolls and generally anything out of a packet, microwave meal or ready meal) is certainly not great to eat, but eating red meats in the form of quality cuts of lamb, beef or other red meat is good to eat, especially if you shop for grass fed organic meat. Meat is a great source of protein, zinc and B vitamins so don't be scared to eat it. Having said that it probably not wise to eat it every day - just balance what you eat with white meat, fish and seafood and you'll benefit from a fantastic diet.
Fruit
Now, we all know that we are supposed to get 5 portions of fruit and vegetables a day, and I would bet that most people either don't manage to eat this or just eat several portions of fruit a day to make up for the shortfall in vegetables. We are led to believe that fruit is good for us. However, although fruit truly is a healthy food - eating too much may not be a good thing. The problems comes from a type of sugar that is found in fruit - fructose. Research is now showing that fructose may not be as healthy as once thought and may actually cause more harm than good.
A study published in the Journal Cancer Research found that refined fructose caused cancer cells to proliferate (not good) - however not directly attributed to fruit consumption but to high fructose corn syrup (more on this later). Fructose consumption has also been linked to a condition known as fatty liver - like that seen in alcoholic liver damage. Research is showing that high carbohydrate diets and not high protein or high fat diets can actually lead to this fatty liver disease (although this research was carried out in mice not humans).
The American Heart Association have demonstrated that 200g of fructose on top of a normal diet demonstrated notable changes in triglyceride levels, insulin levels and measures of insulin resistance, as well as lowering the supposedly 'healthy' HDL levels. All of this is not good. What seems to be the problem here is a substance called high fructose corn syrup - a cheap form of processed sugar made from corn. This gets added to foods as a sweetener but it really is the worst possible thing you could eat.
Now back to fruit, although good for you it's probably not a wise idea to be eating unlimited portions of fruit per day as this will lead to excess fructose consumption and some of the deleterious health effects. Experts are suggesting that most sedentary people consume no more than 5g of fructose per day which is roughly 2 portions of fruit (i.e. and apple and a pear, or a banana and a serving of berries for example). If you are more active you might be able to eat 3 potions a day. But the take home point from this is to consume more portions for vegetables to get your "5 a day" (what should actually be your" 7-9 a day").
Fruit Juice
Fruit juice is portrayed as a healthy food and conventional medicine, dieticians and marketing on TV will tell you that fruit juice counts as one of your "5 a day". However, I'm going to show you some research that blows this out of the water.
A study published in the Journal Diabetes Care followed 73,000 women over a period of 18 years looking at the relationship between the consumption of green vegetables, whole fruit and fruit juice and the risk of developing diabetes
The results of this study showed that an increase in consumption of whole fruit andgreen vegetable was associated with a reduced risk of diabetes. But, an increase in fruit juice consumption of one serving a day was associated with an 18 per cent INCREASED risk of diabetes. Also consider research published in the journal Paediatrics that showed children drinking fruit juices are at greater risk of being overweight and it becomes clear that fruit juice is not that great. In fact I would consider most brands of fruit juice to be junk food! One of the reasons for this is that juice has none of the fibre that is found in fruit and is basically water loaded with the sugar fructose that I talked about earlier. Many fruit juices also get sweetened with high fructose corn syrup that is associated with liver damage, type 2 diabetes and possible cancer.
Take home point - avoid fruit juice!
Now, if you want to make a smoothie - that fine. Because you blend up all the fruit fibre and sugar, add a little protein in the form of whey protein and add some nuts, seeds or vegetables and you have a very different drink, one that is truly healthy.
by Steve M Hines
Steve Hines is an expert health professional who runs the popular website peakxvfitness specialising in nutrition and exercise for weight loss
__________________
Basskilleronline.com - Articles
