Here are more “this is what we’re up against” items from the news sent to me by readers:

The Diabetic Diet

By the diabetic diet, I of course mean a diet that will help you become a diabetic … even though that’s not quite what the National Diabetes Information Clearinghouse had in mind when designing it.

In case you somehow overlooked it among the many other federal health agencies, the National Diabetes Information Clearinghouse (NCD) is a division of the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK), which is a division of National Institutes of Health (NIH), which is a division of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).

Ya know, I think what would really improve the nation’s health (NH) would be to add a few more layers (FML) to the federal government’s health bureaucracy (FGHB).  After all, they’ve done such a bang-up job (BUJ) reversing obesity and diabetes over the years.

Anyway, here’s how NCD (a division of NIDDK) is telling people to eat to manage their diabetes:

Healthful eating helps keep your blood glucose, also called blood sugar, in your target range. Physical activity and, if needed, diabetes medicines also help. The diabetes target range is the blood glucose level suggested by diabetes experts for good health. You can help prevent health problems by keeping your blood glucose levels on target.

So far, so good.  But what exactly is the target glucose level suggested by experts?

Target Blood Glucose Levels for People with Diabetes
Before meals: 70 to 130
1 to 2 hours after a meal: less than 180

Well, there you have it, folks:  Diabetics should aim for post-meal glucose levels that are well into the “diabetic” range.  I guess that “if needed, diabetes medicines also help” statement is more like a prediction than a suggestion.  Of course, you pretty much have to set high blood sugar targets when your recommended diet looks like this:

Choose this many servings from these food groups to have 2,000 to 2,400 calories a day:

• 10 starches
• 4 vegetables
• 5 to 7 ounces meat and meat substitutes
• 2 milks
• 4 fruits
• up to 5 fats

Ten starches and four fruits.  Good luck keeping your blood sugar below 180 if you’re already battling diabetes or pre-diabetes.  For the diabetics who are more visually oriented, the NCD (a division of NIDDK) provided this helpful graphic as well:

Well, I can see why they grouped fats and sweets in the same category.  They have nearly opposite effects on your blood sugar, but the important thing is that they both have an S and a T in their names.  Put a couple more letters in between those, and you can spell out what I think of the advice handed out by NCD (a division of NIDDK).

Heart UK’s Ultimate Diet Plan

Britain’s equivalent (I guess) of the American Heart Association refers to itself in press releases as Heart UK – UK’s leading cholesterol charity.  I was of course pleased to see that description.  There are millions of people around the world who can’t afford foods high in cholesterol, and I’m all in favor helping them out.  I’ll happily donate 100 dozen eggs.

Unfortunately, it turns out the cholesterol charity is anti-cholesterol, and they’re promoting a diet to lower cholesterol levels.  Here’s their plan to “revolutionize heart health in the UK”:

Step 1 – Motivational behaviour strategies to drive dietary success and reverse negative consumption patterns.

Here’s the behavior strategy you need to adopt:  go to the pantry and throw out everything that includes sugar or white flour.  Then walk to the fridge and find some meat and eggs.  Cook the eggs and meat and eat them.  Then you’ll feel motivated.

Step 2 – Reducing saturated fat without compromising on treats and taste. Swapping a chocolate éclair for a hot cross bun is not life changing but the 93% saturated fat drop makes the life-saving recommendation to drop our saturated fat intake so much more achievable.

So a chocolate éclair is the key to avoiding heart disease, is it?  Next you’ll be telling me to eat soy.

Steps 3, 4, 5, 6 – A pick ‘n’ mix of four cholesterol-busting foods!

• Soya foods e.g. soya milk and yogurt alternatives
• Products with plant sterols/stanols e.g. Alpro soya plus milk alternative, cholesterol ­lowering spreads, cholesterol-lowering yogurts.
• Nuts
• Soluble fibre from oats, other whole grain foods and beans and pulses.

They should’ve listed “nuts” last -– as a polite commentary on everything above it.  Still, one out of four ain’t a bad hit-to-miss ratio for the typical do-gooder health charity.  (I’m assuming the nuts weren’t roasted in some horrible vegetable oil.)  As for the soy, absolutely, go for it … because what the world needs now is more men with boobs –- they’ll be more understanding when their daughters start puberty.

I must say, though, I can’t help but wonder why Heart UK – the cholesterol charity is so high on soy milk.

The UCLP Ultimate Teaching Tool is available to all health professionals free of charge. The UCLP has been funded by an educational grant from Alpro soya UK.

Boy, it’s really generous of Alpro soya UK to provide health professions with free literature recommending Alpro soya UK products to their patients.  But if they were really smart, they’d team up with whichever company  finally manufactures the manssiere.

Over the Counter Lipitor?

Surprise, surprise … now that the patent on Lipitor is due to expire, Pfizer is hoping to sell the stuff over the counter.

Selling a version of the drug to consumers without a prescription would allow Pfizer to retain some of the $11 billion in annual revenue that Lipitor has been generating.

However, a nonprescription version would not be available immediately after the patent on Lipitor expires because Pfizer would first have to convince the Food and Drug Administration that consumers could take the drug without a doctor’s supervision.

That’s a bit like worrying that heroin addicts may shoot up without a drug-dealer’s supervision.

An over-the-counter version of Lipitor would no doubt be welcomed by insurers because it would cost less.

I can see the advantage there.  Ruining your muscles and your memory shouldn’t be expensive.  You’ll need to save as much money as possible to pay for the walkers and the Alzheimer’s care.

In the past, the F.D.A. advisers have been concerned that over-the counter versions of statins could not be used safely, that some patients who did not need the drugs would take them.

I’d be worried about that too.  It’s much better to have doctors prescribe cholesterol-lowering drugs to people who don’t need them.

Since high cholesterol is a symptomless condition, consumers would not know whether the drug was working without having their cholesterol checked periodically.

Don’t be silly … of course consumers will know if the Lipitor is working.  They’ll wake up in the morning and say, “Holy crap, my muscles and joints are killing me!  It must be the … the … Honey, what’s the name of that stuff I’ve been taking?”

MSN – the More S@#$ Network

MSN Health is, in my opinion, one of the worst offenders when it comes to handing out lousy dietary advice.  Here are a couple of gems from a recent online article titled Get a Grip! 9 easy ways to help lower your cholesterol right now:

5. Double cholesterol whammy.  Dietary cholesterol can elevate your blood cholesterol levels, but saturated fat has an even worse effect. However, the two are often found in the same foods, including meat, butter and full-fat dairy. So by limiting your intake of foods rich in saturated fat, you’ll also help reduce your intake of cholesterol.

Even Ancel Keys, the Grand Poopah of Lipophobes, admitted that dietary cholesterol has no effect on the cholesterol level if your blood.  As for saturated fat, yes, it will raise your cholesterol … specifically, your HDL and your large, fluffy LDL.  Those are both beneficial.

9. Check for tropical oils. Lots of products are now “trans-fat free” but in some cases, these fats are being replaced with saturated fats, such as palm and coconut oils. You may have heard that palm and coconut oils do not negatively affect cholesterol levels, but the research isn’t conclusive and palm kernel oil contains 80 percent saturated fat. Instead, look for products that use polyunsaturated and monounsaturated fats, which help lower LDL cholesterol.

Hey, now there’s a technique all the bad scientists can applaud:  if a study doesn’t show what you want it to show, simply label the results as “inconclusive.”  I’ve got news for you:  if palm kernel oil and coconut oil did raise cholesterol, the results of those studies would be conclusive.

The Coconut Oil Supermodel

At least someone who spends a lot of time in her underwear knows not to fear coconut oil.

When a Victoria’s Secret runway model confesses her beauty secret, women will undoubtedly listen. Coconut oil is the new buzz in the beauty world, and now it’s been revealed that supermodel Miranda Kerr swears by it. She says that her shiny hair, perfect skin, and svelte body are the results of healthy living and daily use of this good oil.

Miranda Kerr, who famously bounced back to her pre-baby body just weeks after giving birth to her first child with actor Orlando Bloom, confesses in Daily Mail that her beauty secret is coconut oil. The supermodel says she dilutes the oil either in green tea or drizzles it over salads to keep her glowing. “I’ve been drinking it since I was 14 and it’s the one thing I can’t live without,” she tells Daily Mail.

For everyday beauty, coconut oil can be used as an all-over moisturizer, hair conditioner, and as a gentle eye make-up remover.

We’ll just pause here for a moment so the men in the audience can enjoy the idea of a Victoria’s Secret model using coconut oil as an all-over moisturizer.

…

Okay, guys, that’s enough.  Naturally, the anti-saturated-fat hysterics had to reply to Ms. Kerr’s beauty advice:

US experts yesterday warned against consuming large amounts of coconut oil after Australian supermodel Miranda Kerr said the high-fat oil was the key to her clear skin, shiny hair and trim figure.

The World Health Organization has also warned the oil could contribute to an increased risk of coronary heart disease if taken to excess.

Keith Ayoob, director of the nutrition clinic at the Children’s Evaluation and Rehabilitation Center at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, said the oil will not give you the body of a supermodel.

It won’t?  Rats!  I’ve been sitting here spreading coconut oil all over myself hoping to look good in a bikini next summer.

“I can’t say I’d want people consuming lots of coconut oil. You should use it sparingly,” Ayoob said.  “You want to cut back on saturated fats in your diet. I don’t know what benefit it would have for weight management because it has just as many calories as any other fat.”

Well, allow me to explain to you, Ayoob the Boob:  the type of fat in coconut oil –- medium-chain triglycerides –  is actually difficult to store in your adipose tissue, so you tend to burn it off instead.  It’s also good for your mood and helps curb your appetite.

Kerr’s dose of four tablespoons a day adds up to about 460 calories, which Ayoob said was too much saturated fat for most people. “She’s getting two and a half times the amount of saturated fat I would recommend for a person consuming 2,000 calories per day,” he said.

Ah, well, if you don’t recommend saturated fat, that proves it’s bad for us.  Sorry I didn’t recognize the logic in that sooner.  I must’ve been distracted by the Ayoobs.

If you’ve seen Fat Head, you know I’m no fan of the American Heart Association, which has been one of the leaders of anti-saturated-fat hysteria ever since Ancel Keys joined their board of directors.  I’ve heard rumors that they’re changing their tune on saturated fat … but if so, you certainly can’t tell by reading their web site.  Here are some dietary guidelines I pulled from the site today:

• Fiber-rich whole grains: At least three 1-ounce-equivalent servings a day
• Saturated fat: Less than 7% of total energy intake

Eat your mutant grains and avoid saturated fats, folks.  And in case those general guidelines aren’t enough for you, they also offer specific shopping advice:

• Select fat-free (skim) or low-fat (1%) milk.
• Choose fat-free, low-fat or reduced-fat cheeses.
• Use egg whites or egg substitutes instead of egg yolks. (Substitute two egg whites for each egg yolk in recipes that call for eggs.)
• Choose soft margarines that contain “0 grams trans fat” instead of buying butter. (These  margarines usually come in tubs.)
• Choose cuts of red meat and pork labeled “loin” and “round”; they usually have the least fat.
• Buy “choice” or “select” grades of beef rather than “prime,” and be sure to trim off the fat before cooking.
• When buying or eating poultry, choose the leaner light meat (breasts) rather than the fattier dark meat (legs and thighs). Try the skinless version or remove the skin yourself.
• When you must use oils for cooking, baking or in dressings or spreads, choose the ones lowest in saturated fats, trans fats and cholesterol — including canola oil, corn oil, olive oil, safflower oil, sesame oil, soybean oil and sunflower oil.
• Stay away from palm oil, palm kernel oil, coconut oil and cocoa butter. Even though they are vegetable oils and have no cholesterol, they’re high in saturated fats.

Great advice:  skip most of the fats created by Mother Nature and go for the chemically-processed frankenfats instead.  Yes, the key to heart health is to buy a tub of canola-oil margarine.  That’s why heart disease was at such a screamingly high rate 100 years ago – we didn’t have the industrial technology back then to extract gray, foul-smelling oily mush from rapeseeds and turn it into dedeodorized, artificially-colored, artificially-flavored margarine.

Naturally, the site also encourages shoppers to look for the Heart Association’s seal of approval, which they’ll happily put on any low-fat processed grain food if the manufacturers are willing to pony up the license fee.

Thanks to their lousy advice, I believe the quacks at the American Heart Association have caused more heart attacks than they’ve prevented.  So imagine my amusement when I received this email at my job:

Lace up your sneakers and please make plans to join us on Saturday, October 1, for the Heart Walk — the American Heart Association’s premiere event that brings communities together to raise funds and celebrate progress in the fight against this country’s No. 1 and No. 3 killers, heart  disease and stroke.  This year’s walk will start at Vanderbilt University at 8 AM with fun activities planned throughout the day for you and your family members – even your four-legged family members!  And we have a month of fun activities leading up to the Heart Walk including those listed below.  More specific information regarding each will be provided closer to time.

September 5 – heart sale:

We will sell hearts for a nominal donation that can be made in memory or honor of a loved one, and the hearts will be posted in the break room for the month of September.  All donations will be contributed to American Heart Association.

Awesome idea.  We should definitely post the names of everyone who died of a heart attack while following the AHA’s dietary advice.  Sort of a wall of shame.

September 12 — lunch and learn: Hosted by American Heart Association.

Lunch?  Too bad it’s not breakfast … then we could all snarf down some Frosted Mini-Wheats or one of the other sugary cereals that sport the AHA’s seal of approval.

September 19 — health fair:

American Heart Association will participate in our annual health fair, scheduled for September 21, by hosting an informative booth.  Be sure to stop by!

Only if I’m carrying a concealed weapon.  But wait … here’s the best activity of all … wait for it …

September 26 — bake sale:

Team members are encouraged to bring in baked goods that will be sold for a nominal amount, with all proceeds donated to American Heart Association.  Get creative and bring in copies of your recipe if you’re willing to share.  Heart healthy recipes encouraged, but not required!

Now you’re talking.  Bring in some sugary grain-based foods and sell them, then give the money to the American Heart Association so they can do a better of job of telling us to eat more grains.

But since heart-healthy recipes are encouraged, maybe I’ll participate after all.  I’ll bring a big pan of baked bacon.

A reader sent me a paper about a study in which researchers got people to eat less by adding pureed vegetables to foods.  (Maybe they didn’t like the puree.) That wasn’t the interesting part.  This was — a breakdown of where the average American adult’s calories come from, according to the USDA’s data.

I can almost hear the members of the Dietary Guidelines Committee tsk-tsking about the 638.6 calories of added fats and oils and the 468.8 calories of added sugars — and of course I’d agree about the sugar, which they now recommend only “in moderation.”  (How about none?  Is that too extreme?)

But look at the calories from grains — 617 calories.  In America, grains mostly means wheat.  So the average adult is getting around 1,000 calories per day from sugar and wheat.

I recently finished reading an advance copy of Dr. William Davis’ soon-to-be-released (and terrific) book Wheat Belly. I already knew wheat is bad news, but until I read his book, I didn’t realize how dramatically the wheat we consume today differs from the wheat people consumed just 100 years ago.

I’ll write a full review of the book next week.  Until then, I’ll just say that 1,000 calories per day of sugar and wheat is a prescription for lousy health and runaway health-care costs — in other words, pretty much what we’re facing today.

One of the most common questions I receive in emails goes something like this:  I know you don’t normally live on fast food like you did for your documentary, so what do you actually eat?

The answer is that my diet is what I’d call “modified paleo”:  meats, seafood, eggs, vegetables, nuts, a bit of low-sugar fruit, and a few dairy products.  But as with a lot of other low-carbers I know, my diet has evolved over time.

At first, I focused exclusively on keeping my carb intake down.  Anything labeled “low-carb” was acceptable, so I happily filled my refrigerator and pantry with low-carb versions of the high-carb foods I used to love … low-carb bagels, low-carb chips, low-carb bread, low-carb pastas, low-carb granola, low-carb ice cream, even low-carb candy bars.  I think that’s where a lot of us start.

But as I continued reading up on nutrition and health, I began asking myself if eating frankenfoods made from soy protein and other strange ingredients was really such a good idea.  Did I miss pasta that much?  Couldn’t I make it through the weekend without a bagel and cream cheese? Are nachos an essential food group once you’ve left college?

I eventually decided I could live without low-carb versions of high-carb foods and I’d probably be healthier without them.  That’s when I started shifting to more of a real-foods, modified paleo diet.  And over time, a strange and wonderful thing happened:  my tastes changed.  My “starch tooth” disappeared.  It no longer required discipline to say no thanks to pasta and bread, because they didn’t appeal to me anymore.

That’s why I never bothered trying Dreamfield’s pasta, which the manufacturer claims has only 5 net carbs per serving. Through the magic of “protected carbs,” most of the 41 carbs per serving supposedly slip by without causing a rise in blood sugar.  Frankly, even if that were true, I wouldn’t eat the stuff just because it’s made out of wheat.  But I also had my doubts about that “protected carbs” concept.

Dr. Andreas Eenfeldt had similar doubts and tested Dreamfield’s pasta on himself.  He showed us the results during his excellent presentation on the low-carb cruise, and today he wrote about them on his English-language blog.  I’ll let you go there to read about his results, but I am going to borrow a graphic he posted.  What you see below are the results of a small clinical study comparing the average blood-sugar readings of people who ate Dreamfield’s pasta for one test, then regular pasta for another:

Whoop-tee-do … what a difference, eh?  That one-hour peak of around 150 mg/dl is all I need to know. By contrast, I had a big ol’ gyros salad with extra gyros meat today while out running errands, then tested my glucose when I got home.  My 60-minute post-meal reading stood at 95 mg/dl.  Give me the gyros salad any day.

Jimmy Moore gave the head honcho at Dreamfield’s a chance to reply to the recent study results.  I’ve posted Jimmy’s YouTube video of that interview below.  Jimmy will also be posting the interview, along with his own test results.

I’m not going to comment on the interview.  I think it speaks for itself.  My only comment is this:  if you’re switching to a low-carb diet, your goal should be to make it a low-carb real-foods diet.  Buying low-carb breads and pastas is just another attempt to have your cake and eat it too.  Eventually, you’ll need to wave goodbye to that cake and move on.

Addendum:  Jimmy Moore posted the results of his own test a couple of hours after I wrote this post.

I’ve mentioned in several posts that back in my grain-eating days, I developed arthritis –- especially in my left shoulder, which eventually required surgery to remove a bone spur the surgeon described as “tremendous.”  (He wasn’t paying the spur a compliment.)

At dinner one night on the low-carb cruise, I spoke with a fellow blogger named Howard Harkness (above, with his wife Georgene and Dana Carpender) who recounted a similar experience …  all the more harrowing in his case, since he plays and teaches violin, as he explained recently on his blog:

I had a number of health problems, including high blood pressure, poor night vision, chronic acne, almost constant heartburn — and a mysterious pain in my hands and knees. That “arthritis” started back in the mid-90′s, and had gradually worsened to the point where I was forced to quit playing my violin in public because I was unable to practice enough to preserve my skill — it hurt too much. I had complained to several doctors about it, and none of them could find anything wrong. One gave me some medication which had side-effects even worse than the arthritis (and, as I discovered when I quit taking it, it was highly addictive!). I decided to simply quit complaining and just live with it after one doctor suggested that I see a shrink.

… A little less than a week into the diet, I cut out the grains completely. No more bread. No more raisin bran with skim milk. No more rice, no more oatmeal. At that point, my wife and I went through the kitchen throwing out stuff.

It was almost as traumatic as going through a divorce, throwing out all those boxes of cereal, loaves of bread, bags of flour (we baked our own bread in those days, because we thought it was ‘healthier’ that way…), canned colas, popcorn (along with the air-popper) and other items we decided we weren’t going to eat anymore.

Two days after I had cut out all grains, something amazing happened. I woke up that morning with no hand pain!

You read the full story here.

Just imagine how many cases of arthritis could be avoided if more doctors made the connection between grains and auto-immune disorders.  Then they’d prescribe a gluten-free diet instead of a visit to a shrink.

When I was in college, a psychology professor told our class about a phenomenon called selective blindness – the inability to perceive things that are right in front of you.  He described experiments conducted on kittens:  some were raised in environments where everything was painted in horizontal bars; others were raised in environments where everything was painted in vertical bars.  When the “horizontal” kittens were placed in a box with vertical barriers, they couldn’t perceive them and couldn’t find their way around them.  They would ignore vertical toys, but play with horizontal toys.  Same for the “vertical” kittens, only in reverse.

I thought about selective blindness last week when some researchers announced that, much to their surprise, well-to-do ancient Egyptians apparently suffered from heart disease.  Check out the opening paragraph from this story in the Los Angeles Times and see if you can spot the selective blindness:

CT scans of Egyptian mummies show that many of them suffered from hardening of their arteries, researchers said Sunday. Cardiologists have generally believed that atherosclerosis is a byproduct of the modern lifestyle, caused by eating foods that are too high in fats, lack of exercise and smoking. The new findings indicate that “we may understand atherosclerosis less well than we think,” Dr. Gregory S. Thomas, a cardiologist at UC Irvine, told a New Orleans meeting of the American College of Cardiology. It may be that humans “are predisposed to atherosclerosis,” he said, “that it is part of our genetic makeup.”

I give Dr. Thomas credit for admitting he and his colleagues may understand less about atherosclerosis than they previously supposed.  But later in the article, it becomes clear he was raised in an environment full of horizontal bars labeled fatty meat causes heart disease!

The Egyptians ate more fruit and vegetables and less meat than we do and their meat was leaner. They also led a more active lifestyle and were not thought to have smoked. Given that they developed atherosclerosis anyway, Thomas said, it becomes even more important to take measures to forestall development of the disease as long as possible, including stopping smoking, eating less red meat and losing weight.

Got that?  The Egyptians ate more fruit and vegetables than we do, ate leaner meat and less of it, and were more active — but they were prone to heart disease, so this proves we should cut back red meat and try to be more active.  Oh, and don’t forget to eat your fruits and vegetables.

Head.  Bang.  On.  Desk.

Here’s how the diet the experts tells us will prevent heart disease worked out for the wealthy Egyptians:

Thomas and his colleagues reported 18 months ago on a study of 16 mummies, in which they found hardening of the arteries in nine. Eight of those nine were older than 45 when they died.

In the new study, Thomas and his colleagues in the U.S. and Egypt expanded the study to 52 Egyptian mummies dating from about 1981 BC to AD 364.  They were able to identify arteries and heart tissue in 44 of the mummies and observed calcification — a clear sign of hardening of the arteries that is also seen in modern patients — in nearly half of them. That included 20% of those who had died before the age of 40 and 60% of those who were older than 40 when they died.

In their horizontal world, the doctors are confused by these findings.  They’re bumping into vertical bars and not even seeing them.  The vertical bars are sugar and starch in the form of honey, wheat and beer.  Here’s how one site describes the diet of the ancient Egyptians:

Bread was the staple diet of most Egyptians. The average kitchen was usually situated at the rear of the house, or on the roof. Mostly it was in the open, but may have been partially shade. Egyptian food was cooked in simple clay pots, using wooden utensils and stored in jars.

Beer was the national drink and was also made from barley. To improve the taste the Egyptians would add spices and it was usually stored in labeled clay jars. The importance of beer to the ancient Egyptians should not be underestimated as it was esteemed so highly that it was regularly offered as libation to the gods.

I understand.  I’ve been known to talk to God after indulging in beer myself.  But apparently, the real crowd-pleaser (and deity-pleaser) in ancient Egypt was honey, which was too expensive for the peasants, but a favorite among the royals.

Honey and beekeeping were very much part of the daily lives of the Egyptian people in ancient times.    Records show that it was used as a symbol for Egyptian royalty.   It was sought after by Pharaohs, who used it as gifts for their gods.  Honey was also found to be used when the ancient Egyptians died.   It was one of the materials used in their embalming.   Honey has been found in pots next to Pharaohs in their tombs to be used in the after life.

You’ve got to really like honey to carry a pot of it into the next life.  But I’m guessing all that honey, along with the bread, beer and the other tasty treats, punched the Pharaohs’ tickets to the next life a little sooner than they hoped.  One description I found online of a meal from “the king’s table” listed bread, beer, meat, vegetables, fruits, honey, cakes, wine and oils.

Ah, there you go:  meat was mentioned.  This, of course, proves we should all cut back on red meat to avoid the kind of heart disease that afflicted ancient Egyptians who didn’t eat much red meat.

No, that doesn’t make any sense.  But in a horizontal world, it’s the best we can do.