Healthy soil and sustainable growing

["Tradingpost" <tradingpost@lobo.net>]

[and this adds great support to the move to grow your own, cook from basic 
foods, and eat low on the food chain]

   "Through their direct effects on insulin and blood sugar, refined 
carbohydrates, starches and sugars are the dietary cause of coronary heart 
disease and diabetes. They are the most likely dietary causes of cancer, 
Alzheimer's disease and other chronic diseases of modern civilization."
-- Dr. Andrew Weil


Fat or Carbs: Which Is Worse?
Dr. Andrew Weil
Founder and director of the Arizona Center for Integrative Medicine
Posted: July 2, 2010 08:00 AM
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/andrew-weil-md/healthy-eating_b_629422.html

In my home state of Arizona, a restaurant named "Heart Attack Grill" does 
brisk business in Chandler, a Phoenix suburb. Waitresses in nurse-themed 
uniforms with miniskirts deliver single, double, triple and quadruple "bypass 
burgers" (featuring one, two, three and four hefty patties, respectively) 
dripping with cheese, to patrons who wear hospital gowns that double as bibs. 
The motto: "Taste Worth Dying For!"

Now, there is much for a medical doctor (as opposed to "Dr. Jon," the 
stethoscope-wearing, burger-flipping owner) to dislike in this establishment. 
If you visit, I implore you to steer clear of the white-flour buns, the 
sugary sodas and the piles of "flatliner fries" that accompany the burgers in 
the restaurant's signature bedpan plates. This is precisely the sort of 
processed-carbohydrate-intensive meal that, via this and other fast-food 
establishments, is propelling the epidemic of obesity and diabetes in America.

But the Grill's essential, in-your-face concept is that the saturated fat in 
beef clogs arteries, and hamburger meat is consequently among the most 
heart-damaging foods a human being can consume. As the Grill literature puts 
it, "The menu names imply coronary bypass surgery, and refer to the danger of 
developing atherosclerosis from the food's high proportion of saturated 
fat..." Aimed at a certain crowd, this is clever, edgy marketing. Some people 
enjoy flirting with death.

The problem? It's not true. The saturated fat lauded in this menu won't kill 
you. It may even be the safest element of the meal.

Saturated fat is made of fatty acid chains that cannot incorporate additional 
hydrogen atoms. It is often of animal origin, and is typically solid at room 
temperature. Its relative safety has been a theme in nutrition science for at 
least the last decade, but in my view, a significant exoneration took place 
in March of this year. An analysis that combined the results of 21 studies, 
published in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition found that "saturated 
fat was not associated with an increased risk" of coronary heart disease, 
stroke or coronary vascular disease.

Although this was not a true study, it was a big analysis. It aggregated 
information from nearly 348,000 participants, most of whom were healthy at 
the start of the studies. They were surveyed about their dietary habits and 
followed for five to 23 years. In that time, 11,000 developed heart disease 
or had a stroke. Researcher Ronald M. Krauss of the Children's Hospital 
Oakland Research Center in California found that there was no difference in 
the risk of heart disease or stroke between people with the lowest and 
highest intakes of saturated fat.

This contradicts nutritional dogma we've heard repeated since 1970, when a 
physiologist named Ancel Keys published his "Seven Countries" study that 
showed animal fat consumption strongly predicted heart attack risk. His 
conclusions influenced US dietary guidelines for decades to come, but other 
researchers pointed out that if 21 other countries had been included in that 
study, the association that Keys observed would have been seen as extremely 
weak.

Meanwhile, in the years since, there has been increasing evidence that added 
sweeteners in foods may contribute to heart disease. Sweeteners appear to 
lower levels of HDL cholesterol (the higher your HDL, the better) and raise 
triglycerides (the lower the better). That's according to a study of more 
than 6,000 adults by Emory University and the Centers for Disease Control and 
Prevention, and published in April in The Journal of the American Medical 
Association.

People who received at least 25 percent of their daily calories from any type 
of sweetener had more than triple the normal risk of having low HDL levels 
than those who consumed less than five percent of their calories from 
sweeteners. Beyond that, those whose sugar intake made up 17.5 percent or 
more of daily calories were 20 to 30 percent more likely to have high 
triglycerides.

Science writer Gary Taubes has done more than anyone else to deconstruct the 
Keys mythos and replace it with a more sensible view, informed by better 
science. I recommend his book, Good Calories, Bad Calories: Challenging the 
Conventional Wisdom on Diet, Weight Control and Disease. It presents more 
than 600 pages of evidence that lead to these conclusions:

   1. Dietary fat, whether saturated or not, is not a cause of obesity, heart 
disease or any other chronic disease of civilization.

   2. The problem is the carbohydrates in the diet, their effect on insulin 
secretion, and thus the hormonal regulation of homeostasis -- the entire 
harmonic ensemble of the human body. The more easily digestible and refined 
the carbohydrates, the greater the effect on our health, weight and 
well-being.

   3. Sugars -- sucrose and high-fructose corn syrup specifically -- are 
particularly harmful, probably because the combination of fructose and 
glucose simultaneously elevates insulin levels while overloading the liver 
with carbohydrates.

   4. Through their direct effects on insulin and blood sugar, refined 
carbohydrates, starches and sugars are the dietary cause of coronary heart 
disease and diabetes. They are the most likely dietary causes of cancer, 
Alzheimer's disease and other chronic diseases of modern civilization.

My point here is not to promote meat consumption. I've written here 
previously about humanitarian and ecological reasons to avoid a meat-centric 
diet, especially if the meat comes from factory-farmed animals. Instead, my 
purpose is to emphasize that we would be much healthier as a nation if we 
stopped worrying so much about fats, and instead made a concerted effort to 
avoid processed, quick-digesting carbohydrates -- especially added sugars. 
The average American consumes almost 22 teaspoons of sugars that are added to 
foods each day. This obscene amount is the principal driver of the 
"diabesity" epidemic, sharply increases coronary risks and promises to make 
this generation of children the first in American history that will die 
sooner than their parents.

My Anti-Inflammatory Food Pyramid emphasizes whole or minimally processed 
foods -- especially vegetables -- with low glycemic loads. That means 
consuming these foods keeps blood sugar levels relatively stable, which in 
turn lowers both fat deposition and heart-disease risk. If you make a 
concerted effort to eat such foods and avoid sugar, you'll soon lose your 
taste for it. The natural sugars in fruits and vegetables will provide all 
the sweetness you desire.

While saturated fat appears to have no effect on heart health, eating too 
much can crowd out vitamins, minerals and fiber needed for optimal health. So 
I recommend sticking to a "saturated fat budget" which can be "spent" on an 
occasional steak (from organic, grass-fed, grass-finished cattle, see 
LocalHarvest for sources), some butter, or, as I do, high quality, natural 
cheese a few times a week.

Andrew Weil, M.D., invites you to join the conversation: become a fan on 
Facebook, follow him on Twitter, and check out his Daily Health Tips Blog. 
Dr. Weil is the founder and director of the Arizona Center for Integrative 
Medicine and the editorial director of www.DrWeil.com.