(I’m probably the last blogger to arrive at this party, but just in case you’re not already aware of it …)

I frequently receive comments and emails from vegetarians who tell me that if I’d just read The China Study by T. Colin Campbell, I’d see the error of my ways and start counseling everyone to live on a plant-based diet with as few animal foods as possible.  I usually reply that since Dr. Weston A. Price observed amazingly healthy people all over the globe –  most of whom lived on diets rich in seafood, animal fats, and animal protein — I don’t really care what The China Study says, especially since I’m not Chinese.

Dr. Mehmet Oz and Dr. Neal Bernard also cite The China Study while exhorting their TV audiences to stop eating meats and animal fats.  Considering that I became leaner, stronger and more energetic after giving up grains and eating more animal fat (not to mention improving my blood-sugar and lipid profiles), once again, I don’t really care what The China Study says.  (And I’m increasingly convinced that Drs. Oz and Bernard are what Larry, Moe and Curly would describe as “intelligent imbeciles.”  They both, for example, seem to think hydrogenated trans fats and natural saturated fats are identical.)

I’ve read critiques of The China Study before, but a young blogger recently posted her own, and it’s a thing of beauty.  As I’ve mentioned in a few posts, my college physics professor told us, “Learn math.  Math is how you know when they’re lying to you.”  Denise Minger, who blogs about diet and nutrition from a raw-foods perspective, knows math — and that’s how she knows T. Colin Campbell is lying to us.

Okay, she’s actually too polite to call Campbell a liar.  And given her talent for number-crunching and logic, she doesn’t have to … instead, she takes the data from his own study and smacks him around with it.  She also drives home a point I frequently try to make on this blog:  associations are just that — associations.  They don’t necessarily tell us about cause and effect.

For example, Campbell cites statistics showing that people who eat green vegetables frequently have lower rates of heart disease.  His conclusion:  vegetables protect against heart disease.  Minger digs into the data and shows us that while eating vegetables frequently (especially year-round) is associated with a lower rate of heart disease, there’s no such association with simply eating a LOT of vegetables.  The difference, as she explains, is probably due to geography — the people who eat vegetables frequently live in the southern regions of China:

If green vegetables themselves were protective of heart disease, as Campbell seems to be implying, we would expect their anti-heart-disease effects to be present in both quantity of consumption and frequency of consumption. Yet the counties eating the most greens quantity-wise didn’t have any less cardiovascular disease than average. This tells us there’s probably another variable unique to the southern, humid regions in China that confers heart disease protection-but green veggies aren’t it.

Some of the hallmark variables of humid southern regions include high fish intake, low use of salt, high rice consumption (and low consumption of all other grains, especially wheat), higher meat consumption, and smaller body size (shorter height and lower weight). And as you’ll see in an upcoming post on heart disease, these southerly regions also had more intense sunlight exposure and thus more vitamin D-an important player in heart disease prevention.

Basically, Campbell’s implication that green vegetables are associated with less cardiovascular disease is misleading. More accurately, certain geographical regions have strong correlations with cardiovascular disease (or lack thereof), and year-round green vegetable consumption is simply an indicator of geography. Since only frequency and not actual quantity of greens seems protective of heart disease and stroke, it’s safe to say that greens probably aren’t the true protective factor.

That’s just one example.  She shreds several more of Campell’s leaps in logic, and uses his own data to show that some of healthiest people in China live in regions with the highest levels of meat consumption.  As other critics have pointed out, the only solid conclusion we can take away from The China Study is that rats who are fed a diet of nothing but casein (an isolated dairy protein) will become sick and die.  From this, Campbell indicts all animal products. 

I doubt the vegan true believers will read Minger’s critique, and I doubt their fat-deprived brains could comprehend it if they did.  No matter.  The next time you’re confronted by a vegan who tells you The China Study proves we should all be living on plant-based diets, send a link.  If nothing else, Minger’s logic may confuse the vegan into shutting up for awhile.

In the meantime, read Minger’s post for your own benefit.

Swamped with work again. If only Fat Head had the kind of exposure in the USA that it’s had in, say, New Zealand, I might be happily unemployed right now. Oh well. While I’m busy trying to wrap up my latest project, here’s an interesting lecture on sugar and fructose. Not a whole lot of new information, but it’s good to be reminded why cookies and ice cream aren’t worth the temporary pleasure.

Some interesting points: 

I tend to gain weight on starches and I don’t get along with wheat, but lectures like this one have me convinced that starch is clearly not as damaging as sugar.  If you’re not going to stick to a low-carb diet, at least avoid the sweet stuff.

I’ve read in several articles that only a small fraction of the population is salt-sensitive.  The rest of us can salt our food to our heart’s content and the salt won’t give us high blood pressure.  Dr. Johnson explains where what could make the difference:  once fructose has damaged the kidneys (apparently through producing high levels of uric acid), salt does raise blood pressure.  So don’t eat sugar and enjoy your salt … even while the FDA works to limit the salt in packaged foods and doesn’t say diddly about sugar.

How many times have we talked about how the “gluttony and sloth” crowd has it backwards?  That is, they say we gain weight because we’re lazy and eat too much, whereas people like Gary Taubes have said we become lazy and eat more because we’re gaining weight.  As Dr. Johnson explains here, fructose affects the appetite and promotes weight gain, and at the same time it depletes energy.  Who the heck wants to go for a jog when it feels like work just to stand up?

Perhaps we should show clips from this lecture next to those stupid “Sweet Surprise” ads put out by the Corn Refiners Association, then see who people believe.

A reader posted a link to this slide show and lecture.  There’s a  LOT of biochemistry in the lecture and it’s 49 minutes long, so if you decide to watch it, congratulations — but you may want to grab a cup of coffee first.

The brief synopsis:  there’s good scientific evidence that hypertension is largely the result of too much uric acid, and elevated uric acid is largely caused by (drum roll, please) … TOO MUCH FRUCTOSE! 

So let’s think about this … the FDA is demanding that the food industry reformulate their recipes (at no small expense) to drastically reduce the sodium content.  This is in spite of several studies in which drastically reducing sodium showed little effect on blood pressure.  And of course, it’s likely that people will respond to low-sodium foods by adding salt. 

Meanwhile, the federal government continues to subsidize corn, just in case the Great Depression ever comes back.  Thanks to those subsidies, high-fructose corn syrup is dirt cheap, which is why it’s in a gazillion food products and also why our consumption of fructose has skyrocketed since 1970.  If the federal government really wanted to encourage better health, they could stop demanding that the food industry produce low-sodium foods and drop the corn subsidies instead … but that won’t happen because it would mean saving taxpayer dollars instead of spending them.

@#$%ing brilliant …

Hat tip to Gwen for the link.

Check it out.  The reporter seems resistant to the idea that anything could be wrong with giving kids juice boxes, and of course we had to hear from the Corn Refiners Association and a doctor who works for them.  But seeing Dr. Lustig on national TV is a real step forward.

I always find it interesting when doctors explain that we’re becoming fatter simply because we’re eating more.  Shouldn’t that explanation immediately spark another question … namely, WHY ARE WE EATING MORE?  Doesn’t appetite have something to do with food intake?  Shouldn’t we be looking for the reason our appetites have gone out of control?  As Gary Taubes pointed out, blaming obesity on eating too much is a bit like saying the cause of alcoholism is drinking too much.

Dr. Lustig says fructose messes up our leptin levels and makes us hungrier, so we eat too much.  Dr. Corn Refiner’s reply is that we eat too much.  That doesn’t even qualify as a retort if you think about it.

Someone sent me a message on the YouTube channel recommending this lecture. It’s very good. Enjoy.

Dr. Connelly: Talks About Insulin pt. 2 from PROGENEX on Vimeo.

I’m not exactly obsessed with checking my blood sugar, but I’ve certainly become more diligent about it since returning from the low-carb cruise.  As I mentioned in a previous post, Dr. William Davis gave an excellent presentation on why we should monitor blood-sugar levels.  Here’s a quote from one of his blog posts on the subject:

If you’re not a diabetic, why bother checking blood sugar? New studies have documented the increased likelihood of cardiovascular events with increased postprandial blood sugars well below the ranges regarded as diabetic. A blood sugar level of 140 mg/dl after a meal carries 30-60% increased (relative) risk for heart attack and other events. The increase in risk begins at even lower levels, perhaps 110 mg/dl or lower after eating.

We use a one-hour after eating blood sugar to gauge the effects of a meal. If, for instance, your dinner of baked chicken, asparagus brushed with olive oil, sauteed mushrooms, mashed potatoes, and a piece of Italian bread yields a one-hour blood sugar of 155 mg/dl, you know that something is wrong. (This is far more common than most people think.)

This makes perfect sense to me, for all kinds of reasons.  We know that high blood sugar damages organs and blood vessels, and yes, that includes the coronary arteries.  That’s why diabetics can lose limbs, suffer kidney failure, or go blind.  It’s why they have such a high rate of heart disease. We also know that glucose feeds cancer and accelerates the aging process by encouraging the formation of advanced glycation end-products, or AGEs. 

Dr. Uffe Ravsnkov, who believes heart disease begins with infections, pointed out in our interview that glucose competes with vitamin C and depresses the immune system.  Even if you don’t buy the hypothesis that infections cause heart disease, you don’t want your immune system depressed.  One source I checked online stated that when your blood sugar reaches 120 mg/dl, your body’s ability to swallow up viruses, bacteria and cancer cells is reduced by 75%.

How high is too high?  That depends on who you ask.  I’ve read articles that claim anytime your blood sugar is over 200 mg/dl, you’re being damaged — and by the way, it’s common for people to reach that level after a bowl of Cheerios.  Others put the number at 140.  Dr. Davis prefers to see post-meal blood-sugar levels below 125, and ideally closer to 100.

So after returning home from the cruise, I bought a blood-sugar meter to check my response to different meals.  There’s good news and bad news.

The good news is that most of the meals I now enjoy don’t have much of an impact.  I’ve checked my fasting blood sugar a few times in the morning, and it’s consistently in the 85-90 range.  A little lower might be better, but that’s where I’m at.  So with that as a baseline, here are the one-hour results after some meals:

• Chopped ham & three eggs scrambled in butter:  92
• Two burger patties with raw-milk cheese and sautéed onions, mustard, a dollop of mayonnaise:  101
• Homemade stew (beef, onions, carrots, red wine, beef bullion):  105
• Chicken and broccoli with pesto sauce:  109
• Protein shake with whey protein and heavy cream:  102
• Sausage with whipped cauliflower “fauxtatoes” (my low-carb version of bangers ‘n’ mash): 98

I was also pleased to learn that low-carb ice cream doesn’t produce much of a spike.  When I first switched to a low-carb diet, I consumed a bowl of Carb Smart ice cream or a couple of their ice cream bars at least a few nights per week.  Since then, I’ve lost much of my taste for desserts, so I rarely eat the stuff.  I’ve also read that sugar alcohols can produce a bit of a blood-sugar spike some people.

I don’t plan to become a regular ice-cream eater again, but as an experiment, I had a full cup of Carb Smart ice cream earlier today.  An hour later, my blood sugar stood at 112.  That’s not great, but it’s less than I would’ve predicted.  I’ve also found that iced tea sweetened with three packets of Truvia has virtually no effect on my blood sugar … the meter showed 93 mg/dl when I checked.

That’s the good news.  The bad news is that I don’t seem to tolerate sugars and starches very well at all.  As I mentioned in an earlier post, on St. Patrick’s Day I added one small potato to my meal of corned beef, carrots and cabbage.  An hour later, the meter showed a blood-sugar level of 162 mg/dl.

I had an even bigger surprise a couple of days ago.  I was busy and didn’t feel like cooking, so I threw together a meal of Costco meatballs with a 1/2 cup of marinara sauce and a wee small serving of spaghetti left over from a meal my wife had served to my daughters and my niece.  (My niece doesn’t like most meats, but loves pasta.)  By “wee small,” I mean perhaps 1/2 cup of cooked spaghetti.  The meatballs also had a few carbs in them thanks to the bread crumbs.  Adding up the counts from the labels, I estimated that my meal included about 40 grams of carbohydrate.

The result:  an hour later my blood sugar stood at 174 mg/dl. Back when I thought meat and fat were bad, I used to live on pasta and potatoes.  No wonder I started showing signs of pre-diabetes and felt lousy so often.  I suppose if I hadn’t screwed up my metabolism with too much sugar as a kid and too much starch as a vegetarian adult, small servings of potatoes and pasta wouldn’t produce such dramatic spikes, but they do.  I just shouldn’t be eating them.

That’s why it’s important to test your own reactions to various foods:  we’re all different.  What’s right for you may not work for me, and vice versa. 

I saw an example of that last night.  My sister-in-law was in town to pick up her daughter.  Like my wife, my sister-in-law is naturally thin … if anything, she’d like to gain a few pounds.  She saw me testing my blood sugar, and it piqued her curiosity, especially since their naturally-thin father is a type 2 diabetic.  So an hour after dinner — which for her included chicken, a sweet potato, and a generous serving of pasta — I gave her the finger stick.  Her blood sugar was only 112 mg/dl.  Feed me the same dinner, and I’d probably be looking at something closer to 200.

So the bottom line for me:  no starchy foods.  And I’m perfectly happy living without them.