An organization called NuVal has come up with a simplified system for telling us which foods we should eat. Instead of continuing to strain our brains by counting grams of fat, carbohydrates, sugar, fiber, and protein, we can now just read the NuVal score, which ranges from 1 to 100. Check it out:
After watching the video, I couldn’t quite figure how the NuVal people assign scores to foods, so I went to their web site for the answer.
The NuVal(tm) Nutritional Scoring System is powered by the Overall Nutritional Quality Index (ONQI(tm)), a patent-pending algorithm for measuring the nutritional quality of foods and beverages based on the influence they have on overall dietary goals.
That’s a great start. I’ve always believed choosing quality foods requires at least one algorithm and a patent or two. As you probably know, archeologists have found several algorithms etched into the walls alongside Paleolithic cave paintings. There’s even a theory that Neanderthals died out because their primitive tools were incapable of producing the symbol for division.
Developed by a team of leading nutrition, public health, and medical experts, the ONQI algorithm uses the Institute of Medicine’s Dietary Reference Intakes (DRIs - quantitative reference values for recommended intakes of nutrients) and the Dietary Guidelines for Americans (advice from the Department of Health and Human Services and the U.S. Department of Agriculture about how good dietary habits can promote health and reduce risk for major chronic diseases) to quantify the presence of more than 30 nutrients - including vitamins, minerals, fiber, and antioxidants; sugar, salt, trans fat, saturated fat, and cholesterol.
So they’re using the USDA’s dietary guidelines to create the algorithm. That would explain some of the foods that receive a high NuVal score:
Chicken Breast (boneless) - 39
Pork Tenderloin - 35
Turkey Breast - 31
Ground Sirloin (Beef 90/10) - 30
Ham - 27
Coconuts (husked) - 24
But I figured there must be more to a patent-pending algorithm than USDA recommendations, so I called the NuVal people and asked for an interview. One of them agreed to speak to me on the condition that I wouldn’t reveal his name.
Fat Head: Back in the 1990s, the FDA mandated a standardized food label that promotes a high-carb, low-fat diet, and since then we’ve gotten fatter. Why did you decide American consumers need a simplified version of the same advice?
NuVal: The FDA and USDA did a pretty good job of helping millions of people to become obese and diabetic, and we applaud their efforts. But if you look at the statistics from recent years, rates of obesity and Type 2 diabetes are starting to level off somewhat. We concluded that the government’s plan to fatten up the population has run into an unforeseen barrier.
Fat Head: And what’s that?
NuVal: Mathematical illiteracy. As often happens with the federal government, one branch didn’t know what the other was up to. So while the FDA and USDA were working to make people fatter by offering detailed nutrition advice, the Department of Education was busy making sure millions of Americans can’t do math.
Fat Head: I’m not sure I see how that –
NuVal: Let me give you an example. We’ve been telling people to get at least 60 percent of their calories from carbohydrates, because we know that will produce runaway blood sugar for a whole lot of them, right?
Fat Head: Right.
NuVal: Okay, so you’re looking at a food label, and it says 60 carbohydrates, 30 grams of fat, and 10 grams of protein. I bet you think that means 60 percent of the calories come from carbohydrates.
Fat Head: No, because fat has more than twice as many calories per gram than carbohydrates. So it’s more like 43 percent carbohydrates.
NuVal: How did you … ? Never mind. The point is, a lot of people aren’t eating enough carbohydrates to jack up their blood sugar because they’re lousy at math. Plus that whole “gram” thing doesn’t make sense to anyone except the drug addicts, and they eat plenty of carbohydrates already. We needed something simple.
Fat Head: I see. So that’s why it’s called “A Food System for Dummies” on your web site.
NuVal: Exactly. Now people can just choose foods that rank high on the NuVal scale and keep their blood sugar jacked up all the time, without all that math.
Fat Head: But I noticed you also give sugary foods a low score and green vegetables a high score. That would seem to undermine your goal of turning more people into diabetics.
NuVal: True, but we also discourage people from eating anything with adequate amounts of animal protein or fat, so we know they’ll be hungry and fill up on carbohydrates eventually. Besides, the system has to look credible when it comes to vegetables or no one will use it.
Fat Head: Let’s talk about that scoring system a bit. In your algorithm, you give foods a high score for certain nutrients, but then you divide by what you consider bad nutrients: trans fat, sugar, sodium, saturated fat and cholesterol.
NuVal: It’s complicated, but yes, that’s basically it.
Fat Head: That’s where I’m getting confused. Trans fat and saturated fat have different chemical structures and different effects in the body. Trans fats lower HDL, while saturated fat raises it. Trans fats weaken cells, while saturated fats make them stronger. Recent studies show zero association between saturated fat and heart disease. So how did saturated fat become what you call a denominator?
NuVal: We consider them biochemically equivalent because our algorithm showed that if you take all the letters that are common to both trans fat and saturated fat, you can create a long list of the same words.
Fat Head: But that doesn’t seem like a good way to–
NuVal: Fat Rats, Fast Rat, Fat Arts, Fat Star, Star Aft, and my favorite, Sat Fart.
Fat Head: I see. So biochemically, you’d consider Tom Naughton the equivalent of a Math Nut Goon.
NuVal: Yes. Or a Homo Gnat Nut.
Fat Head: I also don’t see why cholesterol and sodium are denominators. Your site says the inputs for the algorithm are based on broad scientific research. Can you actually point to any research that proves cholesterol and sodium are bad for us?
NuVal: We conducted an exhaustive review of the literature and found that in nearly every case, the federal government said cholesterol and sodium are bad.
Fat Head: Your algorithm is also supposed to take the glycemic index into account, according to your web site. I was pleased to see white bread receive a low score, for example. And yet Silk Chocolate Soy Milk received a score of 68, despite containing nearly as much sugar per cup as Coca-Cola. What’s that about?
NuVal: Boobs.
Fat Head: Excuse me?!
NuVal: We love boobs. The isoflavones in soy are chemically similar to estrogen, so if we can get kids drinking a lot more soy milk, we won’t have to wait until they’re teenagers to see some boobs.
Fat Head: But …you realize that can happen to the boys too, right?
NuVal: I consider myself very open-minded.
Fat Head: Well, as someone who developed boobs as a boy, I don’t think that’s healthy, physically or mentally, unless you enjoy having other boys call you names.
NuVal: Like “Homo Gnat Nut”?
Fat Head: No, but you’re in the ballpark. The point is, why the heck would you give anything made out of soy a high score? How is soy milk a healthier option than a slice of ham or a chicken breast?
NuVal: Don’t say breast. It makes me think of b-
Fat Head: Thank you for your time.
So there you have it: A simple system to help people choose a low-fat, high-carb diet based on processed grains and soy, while limiting perfectly natural proteins and fats. Obesity, diabetes, autoimmune diseases, and premature puberty made easy.
The only bright spot is that NuVal is a commercial enterprise, so if they fail, they’ll probably go away. If they were a government health agency, failure would be an excuse to double their budget.
I probably shouldn’t be laughing about this, but I can’t help myself. When a group of Weight Watchers members in Sweden got together recently for their regular weigh-in, the floor collapsed. As Dave Barry would say, I am not making this up. Here are some quotes from the online news story:
“We suddenly heard a huge thud; we almost thought it was an earthquake and everything flew up in the air,” one of about 20 group members said to the Smalandsposten newspaper. “The floor collapsed in one corner of the room and along the walls.”
After the initial collapse on Wednesday evening, the floor started to cave in other parts of the room, and the stench of sewage crept into the clinic, which is in Vaxjo, a city in south central Sweden. The group is looking for an alternate location for future meetings, Weight Watchers consultant Therese Levin told the Swedish paper.
Since they were able to break the floor badly enough to stir up some sewage, I’m guessing these people were 1) brand-new members of Weight Watchers or 2) long-time members of Weight Watchers.
I’ve known a handful of people who joined Weight Watchers at least once — all women, by the way. They all lost some weight. And they all gained it back, usually with a few extra pounds as a going-away present.
Given what Weight Watchers believes constitutes a good diet, I’m not surprised. Their entire program is based on the belief that the federal government’s nutrition guidelines are actually based on something resembling science. So Weight Watchers preaches the same guidelines: fat is bad, a bit of protein is okay, and carbohydrates are wonderful.
I never joined Weight Watchers, but before I knew better, I did try living on their low-fat Smart Ones meals (along with Lean Cuisines and other diet meals I could nuke.) By the end of the day, I’d be famished. Eventually I’d give up and then, like most dieters, blame myself for not having any discipline. Now I understand the problem wasn’t a lack of discipline; it was a lack of good nutrition.
To illustrate the problem, I went to the Weight Watchers site and put together a sample diet for one day. Since I’m a male, I allowed myself about 1700 calories. Figuring three meals and couple of side dishes, I chose a breakfast sandwich, angel hair pasta with marinara, chicken enchiladas, chicken on grilled flatbread, mac and cheese, and rice and beans. That’s a pretty fair sample of the kind of meals I chose back in the day. Here’s how they add up:
As a percent of total calories, it works out to 20% fat, 18% protein, and 62% carbohydrates — just what the FDA prescribes. It’s also a prescription for hunger.
If you’re a regular reader or have seen Fat Head, you already know that fat is the most satiating macronutrient … in addition to being cricual for mood, hormone formation, vitamin absorption, etc. I won’t go into the many wonders of fat here, except to say that this diet contains far too little of it. That’s one reason I was so hungry.
The diet is also too low in protein. The FDA would approve, but not the people who actually know what they’re talking about, like Drs. Mike and Mary Dan Eades. According to their calculations, I need more like 120 grams of protein per day. Eating too little protein produces exactly the kind of physical effects dieters don’t want.
For one, it’ll make you hungry — never mind the calories. Research shows that primates eat until they satisfy their protein requirements. If the food is low in protein, they’ll eat more of it. Here are some quotes from an article on the subject:
Nutritional ecologist Professor David Raubenheimer’s just-published collaborative study with international colleagues found the Bolivian rainforest spider monkey regulates protein intake by eating greater quantities of low protein/high carbohydrate foods when protein-rich foods are not available.
“This is interesting because our experiments show that humans do the same,” says Professor Raubenheimer from the University’s Institute of Natural Sciences at Albany. The consequence is the current obesity epidemic.
Professor Raubenheimer has been involved in a range of similar studies on other primates, as well as human subjects in Australia, the Philippines and Jamaica, to observe how the protein content of their diets influences energy intake.
The findings, published in the latest issue of the journal Behavioural Ecology, reinforce the theory that humans and other primates are physiologically predisposed to maintain a constant level of protein in their diets. But when the range of foods available to them is low in protein (yet high in fats and carbohydrates) they are compelled to eat greater quantities in order to maintain correct protein levels.
Trust me, I definitely felt compelled to eat greater quantities. I just didn’t allow myself to, at least until I couldn’t stand it anymore.
The other problem with eating too little protein is muscle loss. I’ve heard some researchers claim people lose the same amount of weight on almost any diet if the calories are controlled — that hasn’t been my experience, but let’s suppose it’s true. So what? The point of dieting isn’t really to lose weight, it’s to lose fat. Digesting your own muscles is a lousy idea. In Protein Power, Drs. Eades & Eades wrote:
On typical low-calorie, high-carbohydrate, low-fat diets, protein intake is often marginal, and as a result as much as 50 percent of weight loss can be muscle weight. Each pound of active muscle mass lost reduces your rate of metabolism.
Now, a pound of muscle loss isn’t going to dramatically affect your metabolism, but I don’t think most people – especially men — go on a diet hoping to shed a few pounds off their biceps and pecs. Muscle makes a body look good, whether the body is male or female.
The biggest problem with the diet is, of course, the 62% carbohydrates. If you’re insulin resistant — and most fat people these days are — all those carbs are going to drive up your insulin and tell your body to store a disproportionate share of the 1673 calories as fat. Then you’ll starve at the cellular level and really feel hungry. Keep it up, and you’ll probably make your insulin resistance worse.
And as I learned from an excellent article by Dr. Doug McGuff, insulin resistance can also shrink your muscles. Dr. McGuff wondered why so many fat people have weak muscles — they are, after all, hauling a lot of weight around. That ought to make them stronger, but usually doesn’t. Here’s an edited version of what he figured out (the full article is worth the read):
The key to the paradox of the obese-yet weak client was insulin sensitivity. The modern Western diet is very high in refined carbohydrates when compared to the diet in our evolutionary past. In the face of very high carbohydrate intake, one’s glycogen stores will become completely full. Once the glycogen stores are completely full, glucose will begin to stack up in the blood stream. The evolutionary-based response is to increase insulin to drive more glycogen storage. However, pushing more glucose into a cell whose glycogen stores are full can be very damaging.
In the chronically overfed state, the body protects itself by decreasing the sensitivity of insulin receptors on the muscle cells and preserving (actually increasing) insulin sensitivity on the fat cells. By this mechanism blood sugar can be held in check without making the interior of the cells a syrupy mess, and energy is stored for future starvation (which never comes). The problem is, insulin not only controls glucose homeostasis, it is a major hormone for nutrient storage and all of the anabolic processes of the body. In the state we describe above, a vicious form of nutrient partitioning begins to occur. Nutrients used for growth and differentiation are shunted away from the muscle and the liver and are diverted to body fat. The muscles become smaller and weaker and the liver becomes infiltrated with fat as it desperately tries to produce VLDL.
Not a pretty picture, is it? I know, because by the time I was 14, I was a fat kid with skinny muscles. I finally started reshaping my body a bit when my older brother bought some barbells and more or less insisted we work out together. Our high-school health teacher also us to cut back on sugar, potatoes and bread if we wanted to lose weight, so I did. Then the low-fat diet craze hit, and I got stupid all over again.
Now I’m at least smart enough to know that Smart Ones aren’t going to help most people lose weight and keep it off, and neither will Weight Watchers. They claim a success rate of nearly 50%, based on a study they funded. But it’s interesting how they came up with that figure.
First off, the study only included people who were already lifetime members. To become a lifetime member, you have to reach your goal weight and stay there for six weeks. That means all the people who yelled “I’m starving!” and quit after a month or so were excluded … as were all the people who stuck it out but didn’t reach their goal weight.
After five years, most of the lifetime members included in the study had regained at least half of what they lost — but Weight Watchers defined “success” as weighing 5% less than when they first joined. So if you started at 200 pounds, reached your goal weight of 170, and went back up to 190, you were counted as successful. Wow. Sounds like “budget-cutting” in Washington.
A blogger analyzed the study, crunched his own numbers based on Weight Watchers’ enrollment figures, and calculated something closer to 6% of all members ever reaching their goal weight and staying there for six weeks … and when he crunched them again, counting only people who stayed at their goal weight for five years, he calculated a success rate of about two in a thousand.
I’d say the best thing Weight Watchers could do is reinforce their floors.
Earlier this week, I posted links to several old margarine commercials, including a Blue Bonnet ad in which French chefs declared “no difference” when comparing the taste of industrial vegetable goo to real butter. This demonstration made such an impression on the French, they immediately continued their habit of putting real butter in pretty much everything.
Compared to Americans, the French consume four times as much butter, three times as much pork and 60% more cheese. Their overall consumption of saturated animal fat is double ours. Since the experts have told us over and over that saturated fat will clog your arteries, the heart-attack rate in France must be higher than the Eiffel Tower, right?
Wrong.
The heart-disease rate in France is about one-third the rate in the United States and United Kingdom, in spite of the fact that the rate of smoking in France is also 10% higher. Since everyone knows saturated fat causes heart disease, the experts refer to this as the French Paradox — and for years, they’ve been falling all over themselves to explain it away.
First they blamed the paradox on all that red wine. Yes, that must be it … animal fat will kill you, but red wine protects you! Just one little problem: people consume even more red wine in countries like Hungary and the Czech Republic, where the heart-attack rate is three or four times higher.
So the experts tried blaming the French Paradox on vegetables. Animal fats will kill you, but not if you eat eggplants and peppers! But again, there’s a problem: it doesn’t hold true around the world. The heart-attack rate in the vegetarian region of India, for example, is nearly twice as high as in the region where most people eat meat. No meat, lots of vegetables, but lots of heart attacks too … how embarrassing.
With wine and vegetables unable to excuse the paradox, the experts next assigned magical powers to garlic. Perhaps cholesterol was originally spread to humans by vampires and is therefore repelled by garlic. That theory looked promising until clinical trials concluded that garlic merely tastes good … assuming it’s properly roasted or sautéed.
Clearly, there must be some untested but uniquely French trait or behavior that protects arteries from the well-known clogging effects of saturated fat. So in the interest of both science and personal health (I do, after all, eat a lot of saturated fat), I’ve decided to try making myself a bit more French … or at least more French-like. Here are some ideas I’m considering testing to see if they protect my heart:
Adopting more cultured table manners.
Through a bit of online research, I discovered that table manners in France are similar to the American version, but with a few significant differences. To be more French-like, I will:
Keep my hands on the table instead of in my lap. I have no idea where this tradition started. Perhaps after the Norman conquest, French lords sitting down to dinner in their newly-acquired English estates learned the hard way that a hand under the table could be holding a dagger. If you are reasonably sure your dinner guests have no intention of stabbing you, your stress level will be lower — and we all know stress can cause heart disease.
Place the bread on the tablecloth, not on my plate. I don’t eat bread, so I’m more than happy to leave more room on my plate for the meat and vegetables.
Place my napkin on my lap only after the lady of the house does. That’s fine by me too, even if my wife forgets to place a napkin on her lap. For the past five years, pretty much every spill that’s landed on my lap had to travel all the way across the table from the general direction of wherever my daughters were sitting. If I’m paying attention, I can usually get out of the way.
Peeing in public.
Travel sites warn Americans not to be shocked by the sight of French men relieving themselves on the street. As someone who often made the mistake of drinking an Iced Venti Americano shortly before driving off and getting stuck in L.A. traffic, I think the French have the right idea here. Trying to create a vise grip with your thighs as traffic inches along and joggers pass by is extremely stressful. And there’s no telling what all those unreleased toxins are doing to your body.
Sunbathing topless at the beach.
I wouldn’t do this for years. Yes, I know French women are comfortable doing it, but for much of my life, I had bigger boobs than they did. That’s not the case anymore, and I believe soaking up some extra vitamin D may protect against heart disease.
Stretching the lunch hour to three hours.
I’ve never actually done this, because I’ve always avoided government jobs. But since I’m self-employed and work at home, there’s nothing to prevent me from closing my office door from noon until 3:00 and taking a nice nap after lunch. If my blogging becomes less frequent, please be patient; I’m only trying to protect my heart.
Watching Jerry Lewis movies.
This may be the hidden key that has eluded serious-minded researchers. Laughter is a great stress-reducer and releases feel-good hormones. The only trouble is, I can’t find any Jerry Lewis movies at the video store. I suspect, however, that the heart-healthy benefits don’t derive from watching Jerry Lewis specifically … just someone goofy, spastic, clueless, and inept. So I’m going to substitute watching the House of Representatives on C-SPAN.
Speaking in a breathy, sexy, accented voice.
Many years ago, I worked as a computer geek in an office where one of the employees had transferred in from Paris. She was always impeccably dressed, tastefully perfumed, and perfectly coiffed. We had occasional conversations that went something like this:
(In a breathy, accented voice) “Hellohhh, Tohhhm. How was your luhhhnnnch?”
“Yes, I’d be honored to marry you and bear your children!”
(In a breathy, accented, slightly alarmed voice) “Par-done moi?”
“Oh, sorry … old Yankee expression. It means lunch was quite good, thank you.”
Perhaps breathing deeply to load the lungs for speaking oxygenates the blood and lowers blood pressure. I tested this theory last night by speaking to my wife using a breathy French accent. She responded by looking over my shoulder with obvious concern. When I asked what was wrong, she explained that she was waiting for some Chinese guy to leap from the closet and karate-chop me.
Kissing business associates on the cheek.
I spent ten years in Hollywood, so I’m used to people kissing each other’s cheeks to get ahead. The French version is, if anything, more pleasant and easier on the back. Either way, physical affection is known to have healing properties. I plan to test this theory the next time I sign a contract for a programming gig.
Keeping a mistress.
This one makes perfect medical sense. With a wife and a mistress, you’d get double the exercise. And there’s another advantage: in a very French, open-mistress situation, you can tell your wife you’re spending the evening with your mistress, tell your mistress you’re spending the evening with your wife, then go to a sports bar and watch Monday Night Football.
However, I won’t be testing this theory. I explained it to my wife, and she assured me that several recent studies concluded that keeping a mistress is actually associated with a significantly shorter lifespan, especially in my case.
There is one other theory about the French Paradox that I might eventually get around to testing: While the French consume a lot more animal fat than we do, they also consume about 5% as much sugar – and almost no vegetable oils, apart from olive oil.
Vive la France. May she always be a poke in the eye to the nutrition experts.
Senator Tom Harkin of Iowa recently wrote an op-ed piece to explain how Congress is going to design a new and improved health-care system that will take care of everybody while focusing on preventing diseases.
I’ve copied some quotes from Harkin’s op-ed, which are in italics. My comments on the quotes aren’t.
With the Senate health committee convening daily to craft a comprehensive health reform bill, the basic outline of this landmark legislation is now clear. Yes, it will ensure access to affordable, quality care for every American. But, just as important, it will hold down health care costs by creating a sharp new emphasis on disease prevention and public health.
When politicians talk about holding down costs, it’s time to hold onto your wallet. When Medicare was enacted in 1965, it was projected to cost $12 billion in 1990. The actual cost in 1990 was $107 billion. The congressional budget-crunchers were only off by 792 percent.
We spend a staggering $2.3 trillion annually on health care - 16.5 percent of our GDP and far more than any other country spends on health care - yet the World Health Organization ranks U.S. health care only 37th among nations, on par with Serbia.
I’m not happy with our health-care system either, but the World Health Organization’s rankings are waaaaay skewed. (Honestly, would you rather be taken to an emergency room in the U.S. or Costa Rica?) I looked up how they calculate those rankings and will write about that - plus more about health-care costs, etc. - on the TomNaughton.com blog, probably next week.
How can this be so? The problem is that we have systematically neglected wellness and disease prevention. Currently in the United States, 95 percent of every health care dollar is spent on treating illnesses and conditions after they occur. But we spend peanuts on prevention.
I agree; we medicate symptoms instead of preventing diseases in the first place. Hey, maybe this Harkin fellow is onto something …
Consider this: Right now, some 75 percent of health care costs are accounted for by heart disease, diabetes, prostate cancer, breast cancer, and obesity. What these five diseases and conditions have in common is that they are largely preventable and even reversible by changes in nutrition, physical activity, and lifestyle.
Yes! These are the “diseases of civilization” and they can certainly be prevented. Go, Harkin, go, Harkin, go, Harkin, go! Maybe I’ll move back to Iowa, where I spent much of my childhood, just so I can vote for Senator Prevention in the next election.
Listen to what Dr. Dean Ornish told our Senate health committee: “Studies have shown that changing lifestyle could prevent at least 90 percent of all heart disease. Thus, the disease that accounts for more premature deaths and costs Americans more than any other illness is almost completely preventable, and even reversible, simply by changing lifestyle.”
AAAAAAAAAARGGGGHH!!! Cancel that move back to Iowa. Senator Prevention is quoting Dean Ornish, one of the biggest promoters of grain-based, lowfat diets. This is the same diet recommendation that triggered the rise in obesity and the epidemic of diabetes we see today.
We also have to realize that wellness and prevention must be truly comprehensive. It is not only about what goes on in a doctor’s office. It encompasses workplace wellness programs, community-wide wellness programs, building bike paths and walking trails, getting junk food out of our schools, making school breakfasts and lunches more nutritious, increasing the amount of physical activity our children get, and so much more.
Ah, yes, that’s why our grandparents were lean and had a fraction of the Type II diabetes rates we see today: it was all those wellness programs, bike paths, walking trails, and federal school-lunch programs. Boy, if we just hadn’t gotten rid of those programs, we’d be in fine shape today.
Winston Churchill famously said that “Americans always do the right thing - after they’ve tried everything else.” Well, we’ve tried everything else, and it has led us to bad health and the brink of bankruptcy.
Yes, we have tried everything else … like federal nutrition guidelines pushing a lowfat diet, a federally-designed Food Pyramid, a school-lunch program that’s required by law to follow that pyramid, and a federal committee that declared dietary fat and cholesterol to be the cause of heart disease.
Okay, enough of the Harkin quotes. You can read his full op-ed here. The point is, nothing’s going to change.
Preventing heart disease, obesity and diabetes is a great idea. But if you think solid advice on how to do it is going to come from the federal government, you must have been asleep for the past 30 years. It was yet another Senate committee, plus the USDA and FDA, who told us to avoid fat, eat lots of whole grains, and go on low-fat diets. The federal committee that was just assembled to re-write the federal nutrition guidelines is comprised of the usual suspects: so-called experts who think the key to health to simply eat less and cut back on fat.
And let’s think a bit about Senator Harkin himself. He’s a senior member of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee. That means he’ll be deeply involved in any new health and nutrition guidelines that are woven into the new health-care bill. He’s also the senior senator from Iowa - you know, the state that grows all that corn we learned so much about in the documentary King Corn.
Mountains of federally-subsidized corn are the reason you find high-fructose corn syrup in pretty much everything these days. Cheap corn syrup is the reason 7-11 can sell you a 44-ounce Big Gulp that costs less than a bottle of carbonated water, and fast-food restaurants can hand you a cup the size of your head and let you have unlimited refills. Dirt-cheap corn is also the reason ranchers don’t raise their cattle on grass anymore.
So … what do you suppose the odds are that Senator Harkin’s committee will conduct an exhaustive study of what’s causing obesity, diabetes and heart disease, then announce an end to all federal corn subsidies?
What are the odds that the USDA - whose mission is to sell grains - will announce that putting breads and cereals at the base of the Food Pyramid was a dumb idea?
What are the odds that the hundreds of scientists who work for the National Institutes of Health but have lucrative contracts with pharmaceutical companies will stand up and declare that cholesterol doesn’t actually cause heart disease and the anti-fat campaigns where misguided?
Yes, our health is declining and our health-care system is an expensive mess. Kids are becoming insulin-resistant now, and nearly one-quarter of all senior citizens have Type II diabetes - and that figure doesn’t even count the millions of pre-diabetics who are nonetheless suffering the health consequences of producing too much insulin.
Thank God the federal government is going to do something about it. They did such a bang-up job last time around.
I already knew that humans and pigs share a lot of the same DNA. (Some would argue this is more true for men than women.) But it only occurred to me recently that we might also store the same kind of fat in our bodies.
The thought was sparked by some literature my wife brought home from a town fair. A registered dietician had her own booth, and she was passing out pamphlets that warned – surprise! – against consuming too much “artery-clogging saturated fat.”
Yada, yada, yada … same old bologna about how saturated fat drives up your cholesterol, the cholesterol sticks to the inside of your arteries, and then someday you clutch your chest and realize you should’ve tried hang-gliding when you had the chance. I’ve heard it thousand times, and I’ve known for at least two years that it simply isn’t true, so my reaction was, “Okay, whatever.”
Then I checked another pamphlet, which explained how we should all eat less and exercise more to lose weight. Yada, yada, yada. But then my usual “Okay, whatever” screeched to halt at about “whatev—.”
Looking at both pamphlets, I started thinking about the twin pillars of The Holy Church of Accepted Advice For Living A Long and Healthy Life: Don’t consume animal fat, because it’ll kill you. And you should eat less to lose weight – which means consuming your own body fat.
Uh, wait a second … that sounds a teeny bit inconsistent. Are we talking about two totally different kinds of fat here? Or is it more likely that the fat in fat-back bacon is similar to the fat in Fat-Back Francis Bacon? So I looked them up.
It’s easy to find the breakdown of lard on the internet. It’s mostly oleic acid, palmitic acid and stearic acid, with several others making up the balance. Add them up, and it turns out that lard is about 38 percent saturated, 11 percent polyunsaturated, and 45 percent monosaturated. (The numbers don’t add up to 100 because some of the trace fats were unclassified.)
So most of the fat in lard isn’t even saturated, and nearly half of it is monosaturated, like olive oil. Pretty interesting, considering that in The Holy Church of Accepted Advice For Living A Long and Healthy Life, monosaturates are worshipped as The Great Protector Of Arteries and Valves. And while stearic acid is saturated, it’s been shown to raise HDL. That hardly sounds like a killer fat.
For some reason, finding an analysis of human body fat was trickier. (I suppose it’s because few of us care about the smoke point or other cooking properties.) I finally found a paper in which the researchers stated that they extracted human body fat from the subjects’ buttocks. Since research subjects are often college sophomores, I’m guessing this took place at a fraternity initiation.
In any case, I saw pretty much the same list of fatty acids. Add them up, and it turns out that human body fat is about 35 percent saturated, 51 percent monosaturated, and the rest polyunsaturated. In other words, it’s similar to lard.
The implications are interesting. For one, if you were fat growing up, this means the skinny snot-nosed kid who used to call you a “lard butt” might not have been such a bad kid after all. He may have just been studying biochemistry – secretly, of course, because if the classroom bullies found out, they would make alterations to his biochemistry during recess.
For another, if the anti-fat hysterics are correct, then we know why cannibals are mostly extinct: they died of atherosclerosis. I’ve already started writing the docu-drama:
EXT. The Cannibals’ Camp – Day
The cannibals are tying Livingston to a pole. He remains calm, chin up, even as other cannibals begin lighting the kindling around his feet.
Livingston
Go ahead, you savages! Wait until my beer
belly collides with your coronary arteries. Ha!
EXT. The Cannibals’ Camp – Night
A feast is in full swing. A grinning CANNIBAL takes a hearty bite from a roasted leg. Then, wide-eyed, he clutches his chest and falls to the ground. From inside his chest, we hear LIVINGSTON LAUGH.
The other cannibals drop the bones they’ve been chewing and begin fighting over the pile of untouched vegetables.
FADE OUT
So let’s do a little math. If you consume 2500 calories per day and half of them come from fat, that’s 1250 calories – pretty close to my daily fat intake, in fact.
Now, suppose you’re overweight and burn about 2500 calories per day. The High Priests of The Holy Church of Accepted Advice For Living A Long and Healthy Life (otherwise known as dieticians) would happily put you on a diet in the 1200-calorie range, with very little fat. Why? So you’ll burn your own body fat to make up the difference and lose weight.
This is considered healthy. But it means you’d be getting 1300 of your daily calories from fat. Even if your diet consisted of nothing but Weight Watchers “Smart Ones” meals (just 1 gram of fat per serving!), more than 52 percent of your fuel would come from fat. And not just fat: human body fat, which is nearly as saturated as lard.
So, much as I did when I was in catechism classes, I have an annoying question to ask: when this porky fat streams out of your adipose tissue and invades your unsuspecting muscles and organs to be burned for fuel, why isn’t your health at risk? Why don’t your arteries clog up?
Maybe you’d be better off leaving all that “artery-clogging saturated fat” safely imprisoned in your buttocks. After all, it’s an unrepentant killer.
Or perhaps there’s something about body-fat the High Priests haven’t told us. Perhaps our own fat knows a secret password it can use to identify itself so the body doesn’t try to commit suicide – which is, of course, what it does when saturated fat mounts an invasion via the digestive system.
“Red alert! Red Alert! Fat globules attempting flanking maneuver!”
“Roger! Liver, crank out the artery-clogging LDL! Small particles, full charge, dead ahead! Stop the heart! Stop the heart! They’ll never take us alive!”
“Wait, sir! The fat globules are signaling! I’ll issue the challenge. Flash!”
“Thunder!”
“Abort! Abort! They’re ours! Proceed back to full health; I repeat, proceed to full health!”
Then, of course, the muscles and organs would welcome the fat globules, who would regale them with stories about life trapped in a prisoner-of-war buttocks, and express their gratitude to have finally escaped. Then they’d be ceremonially eaten.
Maybe I’m missing something here, but I don’t see the difference. If you go on the Atkins or Protein Power diet and get most of your calories from fat, why is that more dangerous that consuming your own body fat on a calorie-restricted diet?
According to the theories espoused by the High Priests, Mother Nature screwed up, big time. She designed our bodies to store our fuel reserves as a fat that could kill us when we actually need it. But I don’t think Mother Nature is that stupid. After all, she was smart enough to make pigs. She was also smart enough to make fat-back bacon delicious.
But for the record, I have no opinion on Fat-Back Francis Bacon.
A couple of days ago, I was thumbing through the April issue of Parents Magazine and came across an article titled “Super-Healthy, Super-Easy Snacks.” The article explains that since kids have tiny tummies, they fill up easily at meal times and actually need snacks in-between to keep their energy up.
Fair enough. But then the article goes on to offer a “super snack planner” that will make it easy to “stack the chips in favor of your kid’s health.”
Chips? Did they mention chips? Of course they did – because tortilla chips are one of those “super-healthy” snacks … and “super-easy” too: just lightly coat two whole-grain tortillas with vegetable-oil spray (yee-uck!), bake them for 10 minutes, cut them into wedges, and use them to scoop up some pineapple chunks. The entire snack is only 112 calories and – best of all – only 2 grams of fat!
Well, heck, with so little fat, it must be “super-healthy.”
Before I go on, let me answer the question I know you probably want to ask, especially if you’re a female: “You’re a man, and you actually read Parents magazine?”
Yes, of course I do. I’m like any other dedicated father – if I’m already sitting down in the bathroom, I’ll read whatever is within arm’s reach. I’m reasonably sure my wife arranges the magazines with exactly this purpose in mind. When my girls were toddlers, I could offer informed opinions about the hottest must-have toys in the Fisher-Price catalog (which I affectionately referred to as the “For Sure Overpriced catalog).
I know the editors mean well, but this article is just another load of the same old bologna: Carbohydrates are wonderful, and fat is bad. If you want to be a good mommy, you must be vigilant in protecting your progeny from the evils of dietary fat.
Here are few more examples of the “super snack planner” ideas:
Biscotti Gone Bananas: basically, a banana-bread mix shaped into biscotti and baked. Just 101 calories and 3 grams of fat.
Breadstick Snails: breadstick mix, curled up to look like a snail, mixed with pesto sauce. Just 96 calories and 3 grams of fat.
Peach Crisp: canned peaches in light syrup (uh, that would be sugar), topped with cinnamon, low-fat granola, and low-fat yogurt. Just 101 calories and 1 gram of fat.
Only 1 gram of fat? Well, that’s a relief; it makes the math easy.
The 1 gram of fat provides 9 calories. We’re looking at perhaps 2 or 3 grams of protein, at 4 calories per gram. Split the difference, and you get 10 calories. That means this “super-healthy” 101-calorie snack provides 82 calories from carbohydrates.
Congratulations … thanks to the nutrition experts at Parents magazine, you just served Little Johnny the equivalent of nearly two tablespoons of sugar – more than six times the amount of sugar in his bloodstream. To avoid going into sugar-shock, Little Johnny’s pancreas will have to crank out some insulin to smack his blood sugar down.
I think I’ll send the editors of Parents magazine an article titled “Feed Your Kids Sugar!”
It’s 3:30 in the afternoon, and dinner is still nearly two hours away. Little Johnny’s tummy is rumbly, but you’re already swamped with making dinner and helping Johnny’s big sister Sally with her homework. So what’s a busy mom to do?
Here’s a simple but effective trick: go to the sugar bowl, and scoop two tablespoons of those delicious white granules into a plastic serving cup. Then hand the cup to Johnny, along with his favorite Spider-Man spoon, and voila! – Johnny is happy, and so are you, because you can return your attention to Sally’s homework.
Kids love sugar, and best of all it’s fat-free! After all, you don’t want Johnny’s brain – which is growing at a rapid rate and is made almost entirely of fat – to overdevelop. Next thing you know, those ADD symptoms will mysteriously vanish and he’ll be pestering you with annoying questions, such as “Why does eating corn make cows so fat?” or “Have you and Dad started a college fund yet?”
But I’m pretty sure the editors would reject my article. I might even find some helpful people from Child and Family Services standing on my porch the next time the doorbell rings. They’d order me to take a state-approved parenting class, where I’d learn that sugar is only a “super-healthy snack” if it’s dressed up as a breadstick.
To be fair, the authors did suggest a few higher-fat snacks, such fruit-and-cheese kabobs, or fruit dipped in dark chocolate. But most of the “super-easy snacks” are based on bread, crackers, waffles, or granola … otherwise known as starch, starch, and more starch, with a little sugar thrown in.
The irony here is that the same issue features advertisements for ADD drugs, plus an article on how to deal with temper-tantrums.
Well, that’s just great: in one article, you can learn how to prepare Little Johnny a snack that will take his blood sugar on a roller-coaster ride. Then, while Johnny is busy bouncing off the walls, you can flip to another article and prepare yourself for the meltdown. If you’re a fast reader, you might even finish the article before Johnny’s blood sugar crashes. Then you can confidently attempt to use psychology to handle a problem that is almost purely biochemical.
I’m no psychologist, but I did take a couple of classes in college, so here are some verbal techniques I’d suggest, depending on your parenting style:
“Johnny, it doesn’t make Mommy and Daddy proud of you when your blood sugar crashes. You want us to be proud of you, don’t you? If you stop crashing right now, I’ll put a gold star on your chart.”
“Johnny, stop that crashing this instant! If you don’t stop crashing, you won’t get a big, sugary dessert after supper!”
“You want something to crash about?! I’ll give you something to crash about! Now stop crashing!”
But I don’t expect kids to stop crashing anytime soon. For the past 30-some years, the nutrition experts have managed to scare parents into cutting the animal fat from their kids’ diets and serving them more juices, more starchy vegetables, and more grains. Do-gooders like the Center for Science in the Public Interest harassed schools into serving skim milk instead of whole milk. The American Heart Association seal of approval is proudly displayed on boxes of Cocoa Puffs – a low-fat, whole-grain food! (Just be sure to pour skim milk on that big bowl of carbohydrates … you wouldn’t want a glob of fat to slow down the sugar buzz.)
The result of the anti-fat campaign has been skyrocketing rates of juvenile diabetes and attention-deficit disorders, not to mention a lot more kids wearing what we used to call “huskies.” Naturally, after witnessing the sorry outcome of their efforts, the experts reached the obvious conclusion: we should continue doing exactly what they’ve been telling us to do, only more of it.
I am, of course, accustomed to seeing dietary bologna promoted in the popular media. But it was a bit jarring to realize I actually give subscription dollars to a magazine that’s helping to spread the anti-fat hysteria and advising parents to feed their kids sugar and starch.
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Developed by a team of leading nutrition, public health, and medical experts, the ONQI algorithm uses the Institute of Medicine’s Dietary Reference Intakes (DRIs - quantitative reference values for recommended intakes of nutrients) and the Dietary Guidelines for Americans (advice from the Department of Health and Human Services and the U.S. Department of Agriculture about how good dietary habits can promote health and reduce risk for major chronic diseases) to quantify the presence of more than 30 nutrients - including vitamins, minerals, fiber, and antioxidants; sugar, salt, trans fat, saturated fat, and cholesterol.
Earlier this week, I posted links to several old margarine commercials, including a Blue Bonnet ad in which French chefs declared “no difference” when comparing the taste of industrial vegetable goo to real butter. This demonstration made such an impression on the French, they immediately continued their habit of putting real butter in pretty much everything.
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