Using Open Innovation to Reinvent Primary Care white paper - Final 120710.pdf
"For average health outcomes, Americans spend extraordinary amounts of money on health care and do not receive full value for their expenditure. Current estimates suggest that medical costs consume 17 percent of our Gross Domestic Product (GDP). By 2025, these costs are anticipated to account for 25 percent of the nation’s total economic output. The rising cost of care is one of the biggest factors suppressing the take-home pay of American workers, particularly for moderate-income families. And currently, 10 percent of the population accounts for the majority of health care costs, further reducing the value derived from health care for most Americans. Not only is this high level of personal expenditure a poor value to the average American, a high level of spending on medical care creates unsustainable cost pressures on U.S. businesses that inhibit their ability to bring competitive products and services to market and jeopardizes our country’s global competitiveness."
www.hopestreetgroup.org/docs/DOC-2346
The above paragraph neatly sums up America's current dilemma. Spending "extraordinary amounts of money on health care...jeopardizes our country's global competitiveness."
What can America do to reduce health care costs? I'd say, reduce the demand for medical services by improving the quality of the food supply and by correcting the mistakes in the Dietary Guidelines for Americans (DGA).
The big hindrance to correcting the government's dietary advice is certain dogmas that have gained widespread acceptance due to corporate influence. For example, the International Food Information Council Foundation (IFICF) is a sort of vortex of corporate educational influence shaping the content of textbooks, public health messages, advertising, media articles, and news stories. Here's what the IFICF says about itself:
The International Food Information Council Foundation (IFICF) is the educational arm of IFIC. IFIC's mission is to communicate science-based information on food safety and nutrition to health and nutrition professionals, educators, journalists, government officials and others providing information to consumers.
IFIC's purpose is to bridge the gap between science and communications by collecting and disseminating scientific information on food safety, nutrition and health and by working with an extensive roster of scientific experts and through partnerships to help translate research into understandable and useful information for opinion leaders and ultimately, consumers.
Note that the IFICF collects and disseminates information and translates research into useful information for opinion leaders. Of course, I would have no problem with these sorts of activities were it not for the fact that bad dietary advice generates fatalities.
I did not become aware of the IFICF until after the 2010 DGA document was released on January 31, 2011. An article by Elizabeth Rahavi, RD entitled "New Dietary Guidelines Released by USDA and HHS" attracted me to the IFICF website and, for several days, I explored the site, fascinated by what I was learning. As is my custom when I notice mistakes, I wrote a letter to the CEO of the IFICF.
February 18, 2011
David B. Schmidt - President and CEO
International Food Information Council
1100 Connecticut Avenue NW Suite 430
Washington, DC 20036
Dear Mr. Schmidt,
I am a layman who studies nutritional controversies. I've been doing this for more than three decades. For almost that long I've been concerned about certain aspects of the American Dietetic Association's dietary advice.
In 2004 I read an article about the Center for Nutrition Policy and Promotion (CNPP). Since the CNPP appeared to be the vortex of nutritional authority that dictates consensus of opinion as to what constitutes acceptable dietary advice, I wrote to the Director and pointed out some erroneous doctrines in the Dietary Guidelines for Americans (DGA). After several more letters and a phone call to his office he responded, suggesting I submit comment to the 2005 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee, which I did. I also wrote letters to each of the Committee members. However, when the 2005 (DGA) document was released, the mistakes remained.
It's six years later, the 2010 DGA have been released, and still, the mistakes persist. Thanks to an article entitled "New Dietary Guidelines Released by USDA and HHS" written by Elizabeth Rahavi, RD, I think I now know why.
Evidently, for many years, the International Food Information Council (IFIC) and similar corporation-funded nonprofits have influenced the content of dietetics education. And since dietitians have long been regarded by government and conventional medicine as the only legitimate dispensers of dietary advice, dietitians were chosen to update the DGA. Question is: are they qualified to do so? It seems not. Why? I suspect their education. Quoting Dr. Samuel Johnson, "The Supreme end of education is expert discernment in all things -- the power to tell the good from the bad, the genuine from the counterfeit, and to prefer the good and the genuine to the bad and the counterfeit."
For several generations, Dietetics education has produced dietitians uniformly indoctrinated with a belief set that favors the interests of the industrial food system. The IFICF website makes clear the origins of this belief set. Now, while I affirm the right of corporations to protect their interests, occasional use of obfuscation and propaganda is not in the best interests of the public health or the corporations that engage in that sort of behavior. To be sure, IFIC educational content is largely correct. But where dietary advice is concerned, it takes only one mistake to generate fatalities.
CNPP staff controls all aspects of the Dietary Guidelines revision process from the selection of the DGA Advisory Committee to the writing of the final draft. Here's what the CNPP says about itself. "In formulating these Guidelines every five years, CNPP works to ensure that Americans hear 'one nutrition voice,' with a focus on consistent, factual messages supported by the science." Sadly, CNPP dietitians, food scientists, and nutritionists, appear to be immune to outside influence from scientists seeking to correct mistakes.[1]
Thus far I haven't enumerated the mistakes which affect both the quality of the food supply and nutrition messages Americans are exposed to via advertising, media articles, dietetics counseling, and dietetics literature. I'll have another do that. Here's what prominent heart surgeon Dr. Dwight Lundell was saying in early 2009:
We have done a disservice to the American people and it is time to right the wrong. Let me begin by saying quite emphatically based on scientific fact cholesterol does not cause heart disease...Over 25% of the population takes statin medications. Now there’s a feverish rush to prescribe statin medication preventatively to otherwise healthy people.[2] If statins prevented heart disease, why has heart disease soared year after year and is the number one taker of human life? Just that fact alone should have everyone questioning the validity of the cholesterol theory and taking statin medications.
Cholesterol does not cause heart disease–inflammation in the arteries does. What is inflammation and where is it coming from? The answer to that question is both tragic and sad. The very dietary recommendations born of the cholesterol theory of no-fat and low fat foods cause inflammation. Polyunsaturated Omega-6 oils; packaged and processed foods created for shelf life and not long life; sugars and simple carbohydrates create inflammation. This is the cause of an epidemic of heart disease, obesity and other chronic illnesses.[3]
More recently, cardiothoractic surgeon Dr. Mehmet Oz discussed inflammation on his nationally syndicated TV show in a segment entitled Know Your Omega Fatty Acids.[4]
Mr Schmidt, I urge you to look into this. As Dr. Oz noted, the American food supply is drenched in omega-6s and anyone who doesn't take steps to reduce omega-6 intake to a safe level is at risk for chronic inflammatory disease. One can try to balance omega-3s and 6s by increasing omega-3 intake but, as Dr. William Lands observed, that doesn't provide protection from heart attack - it simply improves ones chances of surviving one.[5]
I appeal to your sense of obligation to do what's best for this country. Please begin to educate yourself, your staff, and your corporate donors about the omega-6 hazard. The introduction of omega-6 seed oils into the food supply about a hundred years ago amounts to an uncontrolled experiment resulting in an ongoing public health disaster of unimaginable proportions.[6]
Finally, although my principle focus has been omega-6, I'm also concerned about excessive fructose intake, the recommendation to restrict total fat intake, and the incessant anti-saturated fat messages.[7] It's dubious practice to use observational studies to justify dietary advice to substitute foods rich in omega-6s for foods containing healthy saturated fats.
Regards,
David Brown
1925 Belmar Dr
Kalispell, MT 59901
Ph/406-257-5123
Nutrition Education Project
References
1. “In The Face Of Contradictory Evidence: Report Of The Dietary Guidelines For Americans Committee” by Adele H Hite, MAT; Richard D Feinman, PhD; Gabriel E Guzman, PhD; Morton Satin, MSc; Pamela Schoenfeld, RD; Richard J Wood, PhD, Nutrition, Volume 26, Issue 10 (October 2010) published by Elsevier. DOI: 10.1016/j.nut.2010.08.012.
2. Note: An ounce of secondary prevention can cost a ton of money.
3. The Cholesterol Theory– A Tragedy To Health http://inflammationawarenessnow.com/
4. http://www.doctoroz.com/videos/know-your-omega-fatty-acids-pt-1
5. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dgU3cNppzO0
6. http://180degreehealth.blogspot.com/2010/01/david-brown-on-omega-6-fats.html
7. http://www.sciscoop.com/controversial-saturated-fat.html
Monday, February 21, 2011
Wednesday, December 15, 2010
Message to Montana Lawmakers
The 2010 Dietary Guidelines for Americans is supposed to be released some time this month. From start to finish, the revision process has taken over two and one half years. One wonders if it isn't becoming increasingly difficult to maintain the illusion that the Guidelines are based on reliable scientific evidence. Barring a miracle, it's doubtful the four mistakes mentioned in earlier blog posts will get corrected this time around.
For what it's worth. here is my latest message to Montana lawmakers. Actually, I wrote two versions. This one was sent to lawmakers who have already served at least one term in the House or Senate.
Dear Senator ________,
In January of 2010 I had big plans to send you lawmakers a series of monthly messages pertaining to the Dietary Guidelines for Americans. Shortly after I sent the second message, a February snowstorm in Washington, DC forced the 2010 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee to postpone its 5th meeting for two months. Additionally, several lawmakers noted that they would not be returning to the legislature. So, I put the project on hold until after the election. As I resume sending messages, it seems wise to review my reasons for being concerned about the Guidelines. [1]
On the whole, both academia and government have failed to warn the public about the major nutritional hazards responsible for the increase in the incidence of obesity, chronic inflammatory diseases, and mental disorders, a direct consequence of the industrialization of the food supply. In the Preface to Food For Nought: The decline in nutrition Canadian biochemist Ross Hume Hall, PhD noted, "Nourishment of the American populace has undergone a startling transformation since World War II. A highly individual system of growing and marketing food has been transformed into a gigantic, highly integrated service system in which the object is not to nourish or even to feed, but to force an ever-increasing consumption of fabricated products."[2]
Food for Nought was published in 1973. The first Dietary Guidelines for Americans was issued in 1980. The latest edition, the 2010 Dietary Guidelines for Americans, is scheduled for release sometime this month. Normally, it takes about a year to revise the Guidelines. This time, the process has dragged on for more than two years. [3]
Tragically, the Dietary Guidelines document is regarded as authoritative by virtually all of academia, the public health sector, and government agencies [4,5]. In fact, many nations throughout the world pattern their own public health nutrition education programs after the American model. I say this is tragic because, from the earliest version, the Guidelines contained four major mistakes. And it's doubtful they'll be corrected this time around [6].
In my next message, I'll review those mistakes and suggest a course of action for Montana lawmakers. Meanwhile, it's important to know that the most egregious error has been the failure to warn the public about the omega-6 seed oil hazard. You can familiarize yourself with some of the particulars by watching this 37 minute video presentation - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dgU3cNppzO0 or by visiting this web page - http://www.omega3sealoil.com/Chapter3_1.html .
Regards,
David Brown
1925 Belmar Dr
Kalispell, MT 59901
Ph/406-257-5123
Nutrition Education Project
References
1. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7Byb6upXzU&feature=related
2. Excerpt: from the Preface to Food For Nought by Ross Hume Hall, PhD, 1973
Nourishment of the American populace has undergone a startling transformation since World War II. A highly individual system of growing and marketing food has been transformed into a gigantic, highly integrated service system in which the object is not to nourish or even to feed, but to force an ever-increasing consumption of fabricated products. This phenomenon is not peculiar to the American scene and occurs in every industrialized country. The United States, however, has progressed furthest in the transformation. Man can never be more than what he eats, and one would expect that a phenomenon with such profound effects on health and wellbeing as a radically changed system of supplying nourishment would be thoroughly documented and assessed by the scientific community. Such is not the case. The transformation has gone unmarked by government agencies and learned bodies. Government agencies, recipients of the public trust, charged with protecting and improving the public's food, operate as if the technology of food fabrication rested in pre-World War II days. Scientific bodies, supported by public funds and charged with assessing and improving the public's health, ignore completely the results of contemporary methods of marketing food...Failure to monitor and to appreciate the results of rapidly moving technology produces a brutal effect that forms the central theme of this book. Technology founded on mechanistic laws clashes head on with the processes of a natural world which adheres to very different laws. Modern industry, ignoring these biologic laws, molds and manipulates natural processes to suit and to promote its own mechanistic and economic goals.
3. The Long Road to the 2010 Dietary Guidelines for Americans http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/nutrition-news/dietary-guidelines-for-americans-2010/
4. 1985. HHS and USDA jointly issued a second edition of the Dietary Guidelines. This revised edition was nearly identical to the first. Some changes were made for clarity while others reflected advances in scientific knowledge of the associations between diet and a range of chronic diseases. The second edition received wide acceptance and was used as a framework for consumer education messages. http://www.nutriwatch.org/05Guidelines/dgahistory.html
5. The Dietary Guidelines are the basis for the USDA Food Pyramid, and serve as the foundation for nutritional information for Americans. The Guidelines also strongly influence nutrition education, research funding, governmental meal programs including school lunches, as well as providing direction for the food industry, regulatory agencies, consumer advocates, and the media. They have been largely immune from criticism, perhaps a result of their wide application. http://thesilverclouddiet.com/2010/10/scientists-challenge-the-proposed-dietary-guidelines-known-as-the-food-pyramid/
6. Abstract
Concerns that were raised with the first dietary recommendations 30 y ago have yet to be adequately addressed. The initial Dietary Goals for Americans (1977) proposed increases in carbohydrate intake and decreases in fat, saturated fat, cholesterol, and salt consumption that are carried further in the 2010 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee (DGAC) Report. Important aspects of these recommendations remain unproven, yet a dietary shift in this direction has already taken place even as overweight/obesity and diabetes have increased. Although appealing to an evidence-based methodology, the DGAC Report demonstrates several critical weaknesses, including use of an incomplete body of relevant science; inaccurately representing, interpreting, or summarizing the literature; and drawing conclusions and/or making recommendations that do not reflect the limitations or controversies in the science. An objective assessment of evidence in the DGAC Report does not suggest a conclusive proscription against low-carbohydrate diets. The DGAC Report does not provide sufficient evidence to conclude that increases in whole grain and fiber and decreases in dietary saturated fat, salt, and animal protein will lead to positive health outcomes. Lack of supporting evidence limits the value of the proposed recommendations as guidance for consumers or as the basis for public health policy. It is time to reexamine how US dietary guidelines are created and ask whether the current process is still appropriate for our needs.
www.spfldcol.edu/homepage/dept.nsf/.../$File/Hite_Nutrition_2010.pdf
For what it's worth. here is my latest message to Montana lawmakers. Actually, I wrote two versions. This one was sent to lawmakers who have already served at least one term in the House or Senate.
Dear Senator ________,
In January of 2010 I had big plans to send you lawmakers a series of monthly messages pertaining to the Dietary Guidelines for Americans. Shortly after I sent the second message, a February snowstorm in Washington, DC forced the 2010 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee to postpone its 5th meeting for two months. Additionally, several lawmakers noted that they would not be returning to the legislature. So, I put the project on hold until after the election. As I resume sending messages, it seems wise to review my reasons for being concerned about the Guidelines. [1]
On the whole, both academia and government have failed to warn the public about the major nutritional hazards responsible for the increase in the incidence of obesity, chronic inflammatory diseases, and mental disorders, a direct consequence of the industrialization of the food supply. In the Preface to Food For Nought: The decline in nutrition Canadian biochemist Ross Hume Hall, PhD noted, "Nourishment of the American populace has undergone a startling transformation since World War II. A highly individual system of growing and marketing food has been transformed into a gigantic, highly integrated service system in which the object is not to nourish or even to feed, but to force an ever-increasing consumption of fabricated products."[2]
Food for Nought was published in 1973. The first Dietary Guidelines for Americans was issued in 1980. The latest edition, the 2010 Dietary Guidelines for Americans, is scheduled for release sometime this month. Normally, it takes about a year to revise the Guidelines. This time, the process has dragged on for more than two years. [3]
Tragically, the Dietary Guidelines document is regarded as authoritative by virtually all of academia, the public health sector, and government agencies [4,5]. In fact, many nations throughout the world pattern their own public health nutrition education programs after the American model. I say this is tragic because, from the earliest version, the Guidelines contained four major mistakes. And it's doubtful they'll be corrected this time around [6].
In my next message, I'll review those mistakes and suggest a course of action for Montana lawmakers. Meanwhile, it's important to know that the most egregious error has been the failure to warn the public about the omega-6 seed oil hazard. You can familiarize yourself with some of the particulars by watching this 37 minute video presentation - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dgU3cNppzO0 or by visiting this web page - http://www.omega3sealoil.com/Chapter3_1.html .
Regards,
David Brown
1925 Belmar Dr
Kalispell, MT 59901
Ph/406-257-5123
Nutrition Education Project
References
1. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l7Byb6upXzU&feature=related
2. Excerpt: from the Preface to Food For Nought by Ross Hume Hall, PhD, 1973
Nourishment of the American populace has undergone a startling transformation since World War II. A highly individual system of growing and marketing food has been transformed into a gigantic, highly integrated service system in which the object is not to nourish or even to feed, but to force an ever-increasing consumption of fabricated products. This phenomenon is not peculiar to the American scene and occurs in every industrialized country. The United States, however, has progressed furthest in the transformation. Man can never be more than what he eats, and one would expect that a phenomenon with such profound effects on health and wellbeing as a radically changed system of supplying nourishment would be thoroughly documented and assessed by the scientific community. Such is not the case. The transformation has gone unmarked by government agencies and learned bodies. Government agencies, recipients of the public trust, charged with protecting and improving the public's food, operate as if the technology of food fabrication rested in pre-World War II days. Scientific bodies, supported by public funds and charged with assessing and improving the public's health, ignore completely the results of contemporary methods of marketing food...Failure to monitor and to appreciate the results of rapidly moving technology produces a brutal effect that forms the central theme of this book. Technology founded on mechanistic laws clashes head on with the processes of a natural world which adheres to very different laws. Modern industry, ignoring these biologic laws, molds and manipulates natural processes to suit and to promote its own mechanistic and economic goals.
3. The Long Road to the 2010 Dietary Guidelines for Americans http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/nutrition-news/dietary-guidelines-for-americans-2010/
4. 1985. HHS and USDA jointly issued a second edition of the Dietary Guidelines. This revised edition was nearly identical to the first. Some changes were made for clarity while others reflected advances in scientific knowledge of the associations between diet and a range of chronic diseases. The second edition received wide acceptance and was used as a framework for consumer education messages. http://www.nutriwatch.org/05Guidelines/dgahistory.html
5. The Dietary Guidelines are the basis for the USDA Food Pyramid, and serve as the foundation for nutritional information for Americans. The Guidelines also strongly influence nutrition education, research funding, governmental meal programs including school lunches, as well as providing direction for the food industry, regulatory agencies, consumer advocates, and the media. They have been largely immune from criticism, perhaps a result of their wide application. http://thesilverclouddiet.com/2010/10/scientists-challenge-the-proposed-dietary-guidelines-known-as-the-food-pyramid/
6. Abstract
Concerns that were raised with the first dietary recommendations 30 y ago have yet to be adequately addressed. The initial Dietary Goals for Americans (1977) proposed increases in carbohydrate intake and decreases in fat, saturated fat, cholesterol, and salt consumption that are carried further in the 2010 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee (DGAC) Report. Important aspects of these recommendations remain unproven, yet a dietary shift in this direction has already taken place even as overweight/obesity and diabetes have increased. Although appealing to an evidence-based methodology, the DGAC Report demonstrates several critical weaknesses, including use of an incomplete body of relevant science; inaccurately representing, interpreting, or summarizing the literature; and drawing conclusions and/or making recommendations that do not reflect the limitations or controversies in the science. An objective assessment of evidence in the DGAC Report does not suggest a conclusive proscription against low-carbohydrate diets. The DGAC Report does not provide sufficient evidence to conclude that increases in whole grain and fiber and decreases in dietary saturated fat, salt, and animal protein will lead to positive health outcomes. Lack of supporting evidence limits the value of the proposed recommendations as guidance for consumers or as the basis for public health policy. It is time to reexamine how US dietary guidelines are created and ask whether the current process is still appropriate for our needs.
www.spfldcol.edu/homepage/dept.nsf/.../$File/Hite_Nutrition_2010.pdf
Sunday, February 28, 2010
Omega-6: The Fat That Ruins Your Health
Letter #2 to Montana Lawmakers sent January, 31, 2010
However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the result.
Winston Churchill
Dear Senator _________:
In mid October, 2009 the Samueli Institute, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, and the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism jointly sponsored a two day workshop entitled Nutritional Armor for the Warfighter: Can Omega-3 Fatty Acids Enhance Stress Resilience, Wellness, and Military Performance?
On day two, Biochemist Bill Lands, PhD spoke on Why Omega-6 Fats Matter for Your Health. In his opening remarks he said "Pragmatically, I really want primary prevention. I mean, treatment is all well and good. But if you never had to treat something, wouldn't that be a wonderful world? So, how would a pragmatist create a wonderful world? Well, if you know biochemistry, you can trace the molecular events that caused the disease or the undesired consequence and prevent the underlying cause of the problem. That means you have to trace back - and we can do that - the context of this molecular event. And the context is competition between omega-3 and omega-6 for storage and for action".
These past four decades Americans been relentlessly bombarded with messages to consume less butter, choose low fat dairy products, eat less red meat, eat fewer eggs, etc. At the same time we've been told to replace animal fats with margarine and polyunsaturated vegetable oil products. But foods manufactured from seed oils are high in omega-6 fats. It's estimated that Americans consume 10 to 30 times more omega-6 fats than omega-3s. Both omega-3s and omega-6s are essential fatty acids. That means we have to eat them to be healthy. However, they need to be consumed in roughly equal amounts because the body does not have the ability to sort nutrients to balance their concentration in tissues.
Dr. Lands continues, "I heard several times yesterday about these chronic diseases that are preventable. If that's true, how come nobody's preventing them, for crying out loud?... These data have been out for a long time. Everyone knows that. Ancel Keys sort of knew this but he never really talked about omega-3 and omega-6. And it was a tragedy because we have had 40 some years when we could have really been preventing something and we didn't. We got off and we got on to distractions that were not mediators. But these are mediators of disease. People who have more than half of their HUFA (highly unsaturated fatty acids) as omega-6 HUFA, they really have a high incidence of cardiovascular death."
Elsewhere in his presentation Dr. Lands explained why it is wise to limit combined total intake of omega-3 and omega-6 fats to less than 1 percent of total caloric intake. These polyunsaturates are highly reactive, chemically. At the higher levels of consumption Americans normally ingest, the body's biochemical capacity to control the action of these chemically unstable molecules is compromised. The consequence for human health is the broad spectrum of chronic inflammatory diseases that are so costly to treat and impossible to prevent unless omega-6 consumption is reduced.
The omega-6 story began almost 200 years ago in France with the 1813 discovery of margaric acid by Michel Chevreul. Forty years later, the German structural Chemist Wilhelm Heintz analyzed margaric acid and found it to be a combination of stearic acid and the previously unknown palmitic acid. In 1869, Emperor Louis Napoleon III of France offered a prize to anyone who could make a satisfactory substitute for butter, suitable for use by the armed forces and the lower classes. Responding to the challenge, French chemist Hippolyte Mège-Mouriés invented a substance he called oleomargarine. The name became shortened to the trade name "margarine." Mège-Mouriés patented the concept but was unable make money manufacturing the product so in 1871 he sold the patent to the Dutch company Jurgens, now part of Unilever. In 1897, French chemist Paul Sabatier perfected a process called hydrogenation. In 1902, German chemist Wilhelm Normann was awarded a patent for the hydrogenation of liquid oils. In 1911, an American company founded by two immigrants, William Proctor, a candle maker from England and James Gamble, a soap maker from Ireland, began marketing a product called Crisco; the name being derived from the initial sounds of the expression "crystallized cottonseed oil."
So, around a hundred years ago, food technologists began manufacturing substitutes for butter (margarine) and lard (Crisco) from seed oils and about a decade later, the death rate from heart disease began to climb precipitously.
By the 1950s, heart disease was so prevalent and people were dying from it at such a young age that finding the cause became a major priority for medical researchers. The science of epidemiology was born and studies were carried out in many countries to determine if there was a connection between food intake and clogged arteries. Leading the charge was University of Minnesota physiologist Ancel Keys, PhD who enthusiastically promoted the idea that consuming too much saturated fat caused arteries to clog. The idea took hold and was vigorously promoted by vegetarian activists, sugar interests, the edible oils industry, and certain prominent scientists. In the late 1970s the federal government got involved and began issuing dietary advice to lower fat intake to control weight and restrict saturated fat intake to prevent heart disease.
But heart disease is just one of many health impacts resulting from excessive omega-6 intake. I think it's fair to say that anything that omega-3 treats can be more effectively treated or even prevented by reducing omega-6. Thus, the omega-6 problem fans out into many areas of concern including alcoholism, drug abuse, domestic violence, divorce rates, mental illness, birth defects, the quality of life for seniors, academic performance, work place safety, the cost of doing business in the USA, and ultimately, the cost of health care. My point: if we can prevent these chronic conditions and problems by removing omega-6 seed oil products from the food supply and restoring healthy fats, what are we waiting for?
We're waiting for grass roots efforts by people like myself to take hold and reduce demand for fabricated foods. At present, corporate agriculture and the food manufacturing industry are extremely powerful, politically. In addition, they have a close, enduring relationship with academia because of the research funding they supply. I'm hoping these are not insurmountable obstacles. I'm hoping my efforts to help you lawmakers understand what has taken place will bare fruit in the form of legislation aimed at encouraging the production of more high quality animal products, the correction of mistakes in the dietary advice furnished by the the state, and the legalization of personal sales of raw milk dairy products in Montana.
I urge you to watch the 37 minute presentation by Dr. Lands that I quoted from above. http://videocast.nih.gov/summary.asp?live=8108 Dr. Lands begins speaking at about 12 minutes 45 seconds into the webcast. Just drag the time control button on the line at the bottom slightly to the right to skip the preliminary remarks and dead time. There's also this 4 minute 10 second excerpt: http://video.aol.co.uk/video-detail/learn-why-omega-6-fat-matters-for-your-health-by-bill-lands-phd/2370016394
Finally, I encourage you to share information I send you with your spouse, relatives, friends, and political contacts. Thanks for your time.
Regards,
David Brown
1925 Belmar Dr
Kalispell, MT 59901
davebnep@yahoo.com
Ph/406-257-5123
Nutrition Education Project
However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the result.
Winston Churchill
Dear Senator _________:
In mid October, 2009 the Samueli Institute, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, and the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism jointly sponsored a two day workshop entitled Nutritional Armor for the Warfighter: Can Omega-3 Fatty Acids Enhance Stress Resilience, Wellness, and Military Performance?
On day two, Biochemist Bill Lands, PhD spoke on Why Omega-6 Fats Matter for Your Health. In his opening remarks he said "Pragmatically, I really want primary prevention. I mean, treatment is all well and good. But if you never had to treat something, wouldn't that be a wonderful world? So, how would a pragmatist create a wonderful world? Well, if you know biochemistry, you can trace the molecular events that caused the disease or the undesired consequence and prevent the underlying cause of the problem. That means you have to trace back - and we can do that - the context of this molecular event. And the context is competition between omega-3 and omega-6 for storage and for action".
These past four decades Americans been relentlessly bombarded with messages to consume less butter, choose low fat dairy products, eat less red meat, eat fewer eggs, etc. At the same time we've been told to replace animal fats with margarine and polyunsaturated vegetable oil products. But foods manufactured from seed oils are high in omega-6 fats. It's estimated that Americans consume 10 to 30 times more omega-6 fats than omega-3s. Both omega-3s and omega-6s are essential fatty acids. That means we have to eat them to be healthy. However, they need to be consumed in roughly equal amounts because the body does not have the ability to sort nutrients to balance their concentration in tissues.
Dr. Lands continues, "I heard several times yesterday about these chronic diseases that are preventable. If that's true, how come nobody's preventing them, for crying out loud?... These data have been out for a long time. Everyone knows that. Ancel Keys sort of knew this but he never really talked about omega-3 and omega-6. And it was a tragedy because we have had 40 some years when we could have really been preventing something and we didn't. We got off and we got on to distractions that were not mediators. But these are mediators of disease. People who have more than half of their HUFA (highly unsaturated fatty acids) as omega-6 HUFA, they really have a high incidence of cardiovascular death."
Elsewhere in his presentation Dr. Lands explained why it is wise to limit combined total intake of omega-3 and omega-6 fats to less than 1 percent of total caloric intake. These polyunsaturates are highly reactive, chemically. At the higher levels of consumption Americans normally ingest, the body's biochemical capacity to control the action of these chemically unstable molecules is compromised. The consequence for human health is the broad spectrum of chronic inflammatory diseases that are so costly to treat and impossible to prevent unless omega-6 consumption is reduced.
The omega-6 story began almost 200 years ago in France with the 1813 discovery of margaric acid by Michel Chevreul. Forty years later, the German structural Chemist Wilhelm Heintz analyzed margaric acid and found it to be a combination of stearic acid and the previously unknown palmitic acid. In 1869, Emperor Louis Napoleon III of France offered a prize to anyone who could make a satisfactory substitute for butter, suitable for use by the armed forces and the lower classes. Responding to the challenge, French chemist Hippolyte Mège-Mouriés invented a substance he called oleomargarine. The name became shortened to the trade name "margarine." Mège-Mouriés patented the concept but was unable make money manufacturing the product so in 1871 he sold the patent to the Dutch company Jurgens, now part of Unilever. In 1897, French chemist Paul Sabatier perfected a process called hydrogenation. In 1902, German chemist Wilhelm Normann was awarded a patent for the hydrogenation of liquid oils. In 1911, an American company founded by two immigrants, William Proctor, a candle maker from England and James Gamble, a soap maker from Ireland, began marketing a product called Crisco; the name being derived from the initial sounds of the expression "crystallized cottonseed oil."
So, around a hundred years ago, food technologists began manufacturing substitutes for butter (margarine) and lard (Crisco) from seed oils and about a decade later, the death rate from heart disease began to climb precipitously.
By the 1950s, heart disease was so prevalent and people were dying from it at such a young age that finding the cause became a major priority for medical researchers. The science of epidemiology was born and studies were carried out in many countries to determine if there was a connection between food intake and clogged arteries. Leading the charge was University of Minnesota physiologist Ancel Keys, PhD who enthusiastically promoted the idea that consuming too much saturated fat caused arteries to clog. The idea took hold and was vigorously promoted by vegetarian activists, sugar interests, the edible oils industry, and certain prominent scientists. In the late 1970s the federal government got involved and began issuing dietary advice to lower fat intake to control weight and restrict saturated fat intake to prevent heart disease.
But heart disease is just one of many health impacts resulting from excessive omega-6 intake. I think it's fair to say that anything that omega-3 treats can be more effectively treated or even prevented by reducing omega-6. Thus, the omega-6 problem fans out into many areas of concern including alcoholism, drug abuse, domestic violence, divorce rates, mental illness, birth defects, the quality of life for seniors, academic performance, work place safety, the cost of doing business in the USA, and ultimately, the cost of health care. My point: if we can prevent these chronic conditions and problems by removing omega-6 seed oil products from the food supply and restoring healthy fats, what are we waiting for?
We're waiting for grass roots efforts by people like myself to take hold and reduce demand for fabricated foods. At present, corporate agriculture and the food manufacturing industry are extremely powerful, politically. In addition, they have a close, enduring relationship with academia because of the research funding they supply. I'm hoping these are not insurmountable obstacles. I'm hoping my efforts to help you lawmakers understand what has taken place will bare fruit in the form of legislation aimed at encouraging the production of more high quality animal products, the correction of mistakes in the dietary advice furnished by the the state, and the legalization of personal sales of raw milk dairy products in Montana.
I urge you to watch the 37 minute presentation by Dr. Lands that I quoted from above. http://videocast.nih.gov/summary.asp?live=8108 Dr. Lands begins speaking at about 12 minutes 45 seconds into the webcast. Just drag the time control button on the line at the bottom slightly to the right to skip the preliminary remarks and dead time. There's also this 4 minute 10 second excerpt: http://video.aol.co.uk/video-detail/learn-why-omega-6-fat-matters-for-your-health-by-bill-lands-phd/2370016394
Finally, I encourage you to share information I send you with your spouse, relatives, friends, and political contacts. Thanks for your time.
Regards,
David Brown
1925 Belmar Dr
Kalispell, MT 59901
davebnep@yahoo.com
Ph/406-257-5123
Nutrition Education Project
Friday, February 12, 2010
Email to First Lady Michelle Obama
February 4, 2010
Michelle Obama firstladypolicy@who.eop.gov
Dear Mrs. Obama,
By way of introduction, I am a carpenter residing in Kalispell, Montana. I study and write about nutritional issues and controversies.
I've been meaning to write you ever since your husband mentioned your Anti-Obesity Campaign during his State of Union Address. I understand you met recently with Secretary Vilsack, Secretary Sebelius Secretary Duncan, Senator Blanche Lincoln, Congressman George Miller, Senator Tom Harken, Congressman Collin Peterson, Senator Saxby Chambliss, and Senator Mike Enzi to discuss possible changes in child nutrition programs. If you think this message has merit, please forward it to the above cabinet members, senators, and congressmen.
Regarding the obesity problem, I have some good news and some sad news. The good news is that at least a few scientists have identified the dietary factors responsible for the current epidemic of obesity and chronic disease. The sad news is that their voices are not being heard. In fact, the scientific evidence that supports their views has been ignored for at least four decades. What evidence? It's the data that demonstrates that excessive omega-6 fat consumption is responsible for the sort of metabolic impairment that promotes fat storage [1] and that excessive sugar consumption is responsible for the sort of appetite derangement that leads to overeating [2]. In other words, it's a big mistake to replace saturated fats with polyunsaturates and added sugars which is generally what happens when people try to eat according to the Dietary Guidelines for Americans.
The added sugars problem has been in the limelight of late so there's no point discussing it here [3]. In contrast, the omega-6 problem continues to be ignored. So allow me to introduce you to Dr. Bill Lands, a respected biochemist who must be terribly frustrated by the continued lack of interest in omega-6 research. Here are a few paragraphs from a 37 minute presentation he gave on day two of a recent Defense Department workshop on omega-3 fats [4,5].
In his opening remarks he said, Pragmatically, I really want primary prevention. I mean, treatment is all well and good. But if you never had to treat something, wouldn't that be a wonderful world? So, how would a pragmatist create a wonderful world? Well, if you know biochemistry, you can trace the molecular events that caused the disease or the undesired consequence and prevent the underlying cause of the problem. That means you have to trace back - and we can do that - the context of this molecular event. And the context is competition between omega-3 and omega-6 for storage and for action...
I heard several times yesterday about these chronic diseases that are preventable. If that's true, how come nobody's preventing them, for crying out loud?... These data have been out for a long time. Everyone knows that. Ancel Keys sort of knew this but he never really talked about omega-3 and omega-6. And it was a tragedy because we have had 40 some years when we could have really been preventing something and we didn't. We got off and we got on to distractions that were not mediators. But these are mediators of disease. People who have more than half of their HUFA (highly unsaturated fatty acids) as omega-6 HUFA, they really have a high incidence of cardiovascular death.
For half a century Americans have been relentlessly bombarded with messages about how bad saturated fats are for heart health. Of course, the purpose of this campaign has been to persuade everyone to consume supposedly heart healthy omega-6 seed oil products in place of artery clogging animal fats. It worked. When I began reading nutrition literature more than three decades ago we were consuming margarine and low-fat dairy products. After a few years of casual investigation we switched to butter and full fat dairy [6]. I'll have a student guest blogger featured on the American Society for Nutrition web site explain why [7].
Over the past decade the use of low fat milk has become more prominent than the use of whole milk...According to a cohort study of 12,829 US children aged 9 to 14 years, weight gain is associated with excess calorie intake and consumption of low fat or skim milk, but is not associated with drinking whole milk products. This finding although surprising is consistent with some animal findings. Pigs fed reduced-fat milk gain weight easily while pigs fed whole milk stay lean. Male rats fed whole milk had significantly lower concentrations of plasma triglycerides...than rats fed low fat milk. The effects of whole milk on lipid profile and body composition are not well understood, but the process of removing fat from milk may in part be responsible for some of the observed effects. Milk is an emulsion of butterfat globules and water-based fluid. Butterfat contains unique nutrients that support thyroid function and help the body develop muscle rather than fat…
So public health messages to consume low fat dairy do not produce the desired effect. What else is wrong with the government's dietary advice? I'll tell you. There's no warning to reduce omega-6 fat intake. None. Rather, we're told to restrict saturated fat consumption. This is a huge mistake because there is no scientific evidence that high saturated fat consumption poses a health hazard [8,9].
A few days from now, on February 9-10, the 2010 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee will convene for the fifth time to review the current Guidelines. Judging from past deliberations, it seems unlikely the Committee will alter its stance on omega-6 fats, saturated fats, or total fat intake. Consequently, if you intend to propose a truly effective strategy for juvenile weight control, you will need to issue advice substantially not in agreement with current nutritional wisdom. While this may embarrass the 13 distinguished scientists serving on the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee, it would surely be an encouragement to those of us who want to see significant progress in the war on obesity and chronic disease.
David Brown
1925 Belmar Dr
Kalispell, MT 59901
Ph/406-257-5123
Nutrition Education Project
1. http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2008/12/omega-6-linoleic-acid-suppresses.html
2. http://news.ufl.edu/2008/10/16/fructose-leptin/
3. http://www.uctv.tv/search-details.aspx?showID=16717
4. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJ9i-9JcTF4
5. http://videocast.nih.gov/summary.asp?live=8108
6. http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2009/10/butter-vs-margarine-showdown.html
7. http://www.nutrition.org/asn-blog/2009/08/the-milk-debate/
8. http://metabolismsociety.org/App_Themes/Images/AboutFat/Siri-Tarino%20SAFA%20CVD%20Risk.pdf
9. http://www.sciscoop.com/controversial-saturated-fat.html
Michelle Obama firstladypolicy@who.eop.gov
Dear Mrs. Obama,
By way of introduction, I am a carpenter residing in Kalispell, Montana. I study and write about nutritional issues and controversies.
I've been meaning to write you ever since your husband mentioned your Anti-Obesity Campaign during his State of Union Address. I understand you met recently with Secretary Vilsack, Secretary Sebelius Secretary Duncan, Senator Blanche Lincoln, Congressman George Miller, Senator Tom Harken, Congressman Collin Peterson, Senator Saxby Chambliss, and Senator Mike Enzi to discuss possible changes in child nutrition programs. If you think this message has merit, please forward it to the above cabinet members, senators, and congressmen.
Regarding the obesity problem, I have some good news and some sad news. The good news is that at least a few scientists have identified the dietary factors responsible for the current epidemic of obesity and chronic disease. The sad news is that their voices are not being heard. In fact, the scientific evidence that supports their views has been ignored for at least four decades. What evidence? It's the data that demonstrates that excessive omega-6 fat consumption is responsible for the sort of metabolic impairment that promotes fat storage [1] and that excessive sugar consumption is responsible for the sort of appetite derangement that leads to overeating [2]. In other words, it's a big mistake to replace saturated fats with polyunsaturates and added sugars which is generally what happens when people try to eat according to the Dietary Guidelines for Americans.
The added sugars problem has been in the limelight of late so there's no point discussing it here [3]. In contrast, the omega-6 problem continues to be ignored. So allow me to introduce you to Dr. Bill Lands, a respected biochemist who must be terribly frustrated by the continued lack of interest in omega-6 research. Here are a few paragraphs from a 37 minute presentation he gave on day two of a recent Defense Department workshop on omega-3 fats [4,5].
In his opening remarks he said, Pragmatically, I really want primary prevention. I mean, treatment is all well and good. But if you never had to treat something, wouldn't that be a wonderful world? So, how would a pragmatist create a wonderful world? Well, if you know biochemistry, you can trace the molecular events that caused the disease or the undesired consequence and prevent the underlying cause of the problem. That means you have to trace back - and we can do that - the context of this molecular event. And the context is competition between omega-3 and omega-6 for storage and for action...
I heard several times yesterday about these chronic diseases that are preventable. If that's true, how come nobody's preventing them, for crying out loud?... These data have been out for a long time. Everyone knows that. Ancel Keys sort of knew this but he never really talked about omega-3 and omega-6. And it was a tragedy because we have had 40 some years when we could have really been preventing something and we didn't. We got off and we got on to distractions that were not mediators. But these are mediators of disease. People who have more than half of their HUFA (highly unsaturated fatty acids) as omega-6 HUFA, they really have a high incidence of cardiovascular death.
For half a century Americans have been relentlessly bombarded with messages about how bad saturated fats are for heart health. Of course, the purpose of this campaign has been to persuade everyone to consume supposedly heart healthy omega-6 seed oil products in place of artery clogging animal fats. It worked. When I began reading nutrition literature more than three decades ago we were consuming margarine and low-fat dairy products. After a few years of casual investigation we switched to butter and full fat dairy [6]. I'll have a student guest blogger featured on the American Society for Nutrition web site explain why [7].
Over the past decade the use of low fat milk has become more prominent than the use of whole milk...According to a cohort study of 12,829 US children aged 9 to 14 years, weight gain is associated with excess calorie intake and consumption of low fat or skim milk, but is not associated with drinking whole milk products. This finding although surprising is consistent with some animal findings. Pigs fed reduced-fat milk gain weight easily while pigs fed whole milk stay lean. Male rats fed whole milk had significantly lower concentrations of plasma triglycerides...than rats fed low fat milk. The effects of whole milk on lipid profile and body composition are not well understood, but the process of removing fat from milk may in part be responsible for some of the observed effects. Milk is an emulsion of butterfat globules and water-based fluid. Butterfat contains unique nutrients that support thyroid function and help the body develop muscle rather than fat…
So public health messages to consume low fat dairy do not produce the desired effect. What else is wrong with the government's dietary advice? I'll tell you. There's no warning to reduce omega-6 fat intake. None. Rather, we're told to restrict saturated fat consumption. This is a huge mistake because there is no scientific evidence that high saturated fat consumption poses a health hazard [8,9].
A few days from now, on February 9-10, the 2010 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee will convene for the fifth time to review the current Guidelines. Judging from past deliberations, it seems unlikely the Committee will alter its stance on omega-6 fats, saturated fats, or total fat intake. Consequently, if you intend to propose a truly effective strategy for juvenile weight control, you will need to issue advice substantially not in agreement with current nutritional wisdom. While this may embarrass the 13 distinguished scientists serving on the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee, it would surely be an encouragement to those of us who want to see significant progress in the war on obesity and chronic disease.
David Brown
1925 Belmar Dr
Kalispell, MT 59901
Ph/406-257-5123
Nutrition Education Project
1. http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2008/12/omega-6-linoleic-acid-suppresses.html
2. http://news.ufl.edu/2008/10/16/fructose-leptin/
3. http://www.uctv.tv/search-details.aspx?showID=16717
4. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZJ9i-9JcTF4
5. http://videocast.nih.gov/summary.asp?live=8108
6. http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2009/10/butter-vs-margarine-showdown.html
7. http://www.nutrition.org/asn-blog/2009/08/the-milk-debate/
8. http://metabolismsociety.org/App_Themes/Images/AboutFat/Siri-Tarino%20SAFA%20CVD%20Risk.pdf
9. http://www.sciscoop.com/controversial-saturated-fat.html
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
November 7, 2009
President Barack Obama
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500
Dear Mr. President:
This is my second letter to you. The first elicited two form letter responses dealing with health care reform and immigration. Apparently, the White House does not receive sufficient correspondence regarding the quality of the food supply and the Dietary Guidelines for Americans debacle to warrant developing form letters for those issues. At any rate, in this letter I focus on the government's terrible dietary advice.
The Dietary Guidelines for Americans document is extremely important because the Guidelines are viewed as the final word as to what constitutes healthy eating in both the United States and in many other countries as well. Unfortunately, the Guidelines contain four major mistakes that need to be corrected.
The most important error is the doctrine that saturated fat is a health hazard because it raises cholesterol levels and supposedly clogs arteries. For more than three decades the public has been relentlessly bombarded with messages to that effect. The problem is, there is no hard scientific evidence behind this allegation; only the backing of the edible oils industry, sugar interests, vegetarian activists, the food manufacturing industry, and almost two generations of public health professionals trained to regard saturated fats as evil.
Soon after I began studying nutritional controversies more than three decades ago, I concluded that excessive sugar intake is a major dietary factor in heart disease. About 18 years later, after developing a leg ulcer, I learned that excessive omega-6 vegetable oil consumption promotes the inflammation associated with heart disease and other chronic conditions as well. Yet the Dietary Guidelines have never contained a strongly worded warning against excessive consumption of either food ingredient. Well, things are changing. Dr. Robert Lustig has an excellent 89 minute presentation entitled "Sugar: The Bitter Truth" and Dr. Bill Lands has a 37 minute presentation entitled "Why Omega-6 Fats Matter to Your Health." Both presentations are easily accessed by web search.
So far I've covered three of the Dietary Guidelines mistakes, demonizing saturated fat, failure to warn the public about added sugars, and the recommendation to replace healthy saturated fats with omega-6 vegetable oils. The fourth mistake is the standard advice to reduce percentage of total fat intake to control weight and prevent heart disease. Again, Dr. Christopher Gardener has an excellent presentation entitled "Battle of the diets: is anyone winning at losing?"
Thanks to a handful of astute researchers and health care professionals, and some grass roots educational activity, there is growing awareness that the findings of science are not being properly utilized. For example, a student guest blogger on the American Society for Nutrition web site recently noted, "Truly, I am neither an obesity researcher nor a public health policy expert. But I do read material on this issue every now and then, and recently, I asked myself, why? United States is blessed with enormous research resources, facilities, and funding, but still, why can’t we address the issue of obesity?"
Another student in an earlier blog post provided at least a partial answer when she observed, "Over the past decade the use of low fat milk has become more prominent than the use of whole milk because there is substantial scientific evidence that consumption of foods high in fat causes weight gain and increases the risk of heart disease and cancer. However, there is some controversy over whether processed low-fat pasteurized milk can meet the needs of developing offspring and whether it should be consumed during pregnancy and development....According to a cohort study of 12,829 US children aged 9 to 14 years, weight gain is associated with excess calorie intake and consumption of low fat or skim milk, but is not associated with drinking whole milk products. This finding although surprising is consistent with some animal findings. Pigs fed reduced-fat milk gain weight easily while pigs fed whole milk stay lean. Male rats fed whole milk had significantly lower concentrations of plasma triglycerides...than rats fed low fat milk. The effects of whole milk on lipid profile and body composition are not well understood, but the process of removing fat from milk may in part be responsible for some of the observed effects. Milk is an emulsion of butterfat globules and water-based fluid. Butterfat contains unique nutrients that support thyroid function and help the body develop muscle rather than fat…"
Sadly, negative publicity about saturated fat and heart disease has whipped up so much hysteria about the fat in animal products that a New Zealand researcher (Professor Rod Jackson) was prompted to say, "We have a health tax on alcohol and cigarettes and there should be a health tax on butter. It’s the most poisonous commonly consumed food in New Zealand . It’s about the purest form of saturated fat you can eat and it has no protein and no calcium. Butter has had all the good things taken out and just left the poison.
So here we are with an ever-increasing demand for medical services, an excessive national debt, and government dietary recommendations that make people fatter and sicker. You could do something about this, Mr. President. At various times you've said , "The American people understand that it is my job to get it right...our agriculture sector is...partly responsible for the explosion in our health care costs...junk food...is fueling an epidemic of obesity, putting far too many Americans, young and old, at greater risk of costly, chronic conditions."
As mentioned earlier, we at the grass roots level are doing our best to educate the public and improve the quality of the food supply. Unfortunately, we have to battle against government policies that promote wrong-headed notions about nutrition and discourage the production of high quality food. Some presidential action on these matters would be greatly appreciated by us and extremely beneficial for the country.
Regards,
David Brown
1925 Belmar Dr
Kalispell, MT 59901
Ph/406-257-5123
Nutrition Education Project
President Barack Obama
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500
Dear Mr. President:
This is my second letter to you. The first elicited two form letter responses dealing with health care reform and immigration. Apparently, the White House does not receive sufficient correspondence regarding the quality of the food supply and the Dietary Guidelines for Americans debacle to warrant developing form letters for those issues. At any rate, in this letter I focus on the government's terrible dietary advice.
The Dietary Guidelines for Americans document is extremely important because the Guidelines are viewed as the final word as to what constitutes healthy eating in both the United States and in many other countries as well. Unfortunately, the Guidelines contain four major mistakes that need to be corrected.
The most important error is the doctrine that saturated fat is a health hazard because it raises cholesterol levels and supposedly clogs arteries. For more than three decades the public has been relentlessly bombarded with messages to that effect. The problem is, there is no hard scientific evidence behind this allegation; only the backing of the edible oils industry, sugar interests, vegetarian activists, the food manufacturing industry, and almost two generations of public health professionals trained to regard saturated fats as evil.
Soon after I began studying nutritional controversies more than three decades ago, I concluded that excessive sugar intake is a major dietary factor in heart disease. About 18 years later, after developing a leg ulcer, I learned that excessive omega-6 vegetable oil consumption promotes the inflammation associated with heart disease and other chronic conditions as well. Yet the Dietary Guidelines have never contained a strongly worded warning against excessive consumption of either food ingredient. Well, things are changing. Dr. Robert Lustig has an excellent 89 minute presentation entitled "Sugar: The Bitter Truth" and Dr. Bill Lands has a 37 minute presentation entitled "Why Omega-6 Fats Matter to Your Health." Both presentations are easily accessed by web search.
So far I've covered three of the Dietary Guidelines mistakes, demonizing saturated fat, failure to warn the public about added sugars, and the recommendation to replace healthy saturated fats with omega-6 vegetable oils. The fourth mistake is the standard advice to reduce percentage of total fat intake to control weight and prevent heart disease. Again, Dr. Christopher Gardener has an excellent presentation entitled "Battle of the diets: is anyone winning at losing?"
Thanks to a handful of astute researchers and health care professionals, and some grass roots educational activity, there is growing awareness that the findings of science are not being properly utilized. For example, a student guest blogger on the American Society for Nutrition web site recently noted, "Truly, I am neither an obesity researcher nor a public health policy expert. But I do read material on this issue every now and then, and recently, I asked myself, why? United States is blessed with enormous research resources, facilities, and funding, but still, why can’t we address the issue of obesity?"
Another student in an earlier blog post provided at least a partial answer when she observed, "Over the past decade the use of low fat milk has become more prominent than the use of whole milk because there is substantial scientific evidence that consumption of foods high in fat causes weight gain and increases the risk of heart disease and cancer. However, there is some controversy over whether processed low-fat pasteurized milk can meet the needs of developing offspring and whether it should be consumed during pregnancy and development....According to a cohort study of 12,829 US children aged 9 to 14 years, weight gain is associated with excess calorie intake and consumption of low fat or skim milk, but is not associated with drinking whole milk products. This finding although surprising is consistent with some animal findings. Pigs fed reduced-fat milk gain weight easily while pigs fed whole milk stay lean. Male rats fed whole milk had significantly lower concentrations of plasma triglycerides...than rats fed low fat milk. The effects of whole milk on lipid profile and body composition are not well understood, but the process of removing fat from milk may in part be responsible for some of the observed effects. Milk is an emulsion of butterfat globules and water-based fluid. Butterfat contains unique nutrients that support thyroid function and help the body develop muscle rather than fat…"
Sadly, negative publicity about saturated fat and heart disease has whipped up so much hysteria about the fat in animal products that a New Zealand researcher (Professor Rod Jackson) was prompted to say, "We have a health tax on alcohol and cigarettes and there should be a health tax on butter. It’s the most poisonous commonly consumed food in New Zealand . It’s about the purest form of saturated fat you can eat and it has no protein and no calcium. Butter has had all the good things taken out and just left the poison.
So here we are with an ever-increasing demand for medical services, an excessive national debt, and government dietary recommendations that make people fatter and sicker. You could do something about this, Mr. President. At various times you've said , "The American people understand that it is my job to get it right...our agriculture sector is...partly responsible for the explosion in our health care costs...junk food...is fueling an epidemic of obesity, putting far too many Americans, young and old, at greater risk of costly, chronic conditions."
As mentioned earlier, we at the grass roots level are doing our best to educate the public and improve the quality of the food supply. Unfortunately, we have to battle against government policies that promote wrong-headed notions about nutrition and discourage the production of high quality food. Some presidential action on these matters would be greatly appreciated by us and extremely beneficial for the country.
Regards,
David Brown
1925 Belmar Dr
Kalispell, MT 59901
Ph/406-257-5123
Nutrition Education Project
Wednesday, October 7, 2009
Letter to President Obama
President Barack Obama
The White House
Eventually, I figured out that sugar interests, edible oils producers, and food manufacturers exert a powerful influence on both government and academia. I realized early on that sugar (Google "Sugar:The Bitter Truth"), not saturated fat, was the major factor in heart disease. But it was not until 1994, after suffering a leg ulcer, that I learned how dangerous excessive consumption of the supposedly "heart healthy" omega-6 vegetable oils can be (Google "Omega-6 Research News").
Which brings up another issue, the quality of nutrition instruction in this country. The Center for Nutrition Policy and Promotion (CNPP) is the arm of the U.S. Department of Agriculture responsible for educating Americans about nutrition. It is also the highest nutrition authority in the land.
Every five years, by law, the CNPP must appoint 13 distinguished scientists to review the Dietary Guidelines for Americans and recommend changes based on the latest scientific research. That process is currently underway and three meetings have already taken place.
Hopefully, four mistakes, that have persisted in the government's dietary advice for more than three decades, will be corrected this time around. They are as follows: 1) the universal recommendation to restrict fat intake to lose weight, 2) the doctrine that high saturated fat consumption leads to clogged arteries, 3) failure to warn consumers about the hazards of excessive fructose consumption, and 4) failure to warn consumers about hazards associated with excessive omega-6 polyunsaturated vegetable oil consumption.
Gary Taubes: award winning journalist and author of a 2002 New York Times Magazine article entitled "What if it's all Been a Big Fat Lie?" and the book Good Calories, Bad Calories.
Michael Pollan: author of The Omnivore's Dilemma.
Sally Fallon: founder of the Weston A. Price Foundation and author of Nourishing Traditions.
Joel Salatin: grass farmer and author of Everything I Want to Do is Illegal: War Stories from the Local Food Front.
Mark McAffee: California raw milk dairy farmer and owner of Organic Pastures Fresh Raw Dairy.
Nina Planck: created the first farmers' markets in London. Author of Real Food: What to Eat and Why.
Before closing, I have a few comments about health care reform. First, I am in favor of incentives that encourage people to make healthier lifestyle choices. In a recent New York Times Op-Ed article entitled "Big Food vs. Big Insurance" Michael Pollan suggests changes in insurance rules that could help accomplish this goal.
Second, I would like to have the option of a health savings account. Rather than being forced to purchase health insurance, I would like to be able to put tax-deferred money into savings that could be used for health emergencies. If spent on health care, the money would not be subject to taxation.
Third, my family has never purchased health insurance. We simply pay for medical services as needed. We would far rather spend our hard-earned money on high quality food than on medical screening. At our income level, being forced to purchase health insurance would pose a hardship making it more difficult for us to obtain high quality food. Seems like there ought to be a better reward for taking care of ones health than being forced to pay for something which one cannot afford and may never use.
In your inaugural address you said, "...our time of standing pat, of protecting narrow interests and putting off unpleasant decisions — that time has surely passed. Starting today, we must pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and begin again the work of remaking America."
You speak words of hope. But unless you and your policy advisers reeducate yourselves as to what constitutes healthy eating, eventually there will be no funds to "remake" anything.
Toward the end of your speech you said, "Those of us who manage the public's dollars will be held to account — to spend wisely, reform bad habits, and do our business in the light of day — because only then can we restore the vital trust between a people and their government."
Have governments ever been trustworthy? It is a nice thought.
In most respects I think elected officials are trustworthy. I believe they are doing their best to protect us and improve our circumstances. However, those narrow interests you mentioned are NOT trustworthy. And their influence, where food issues and nutritional controversies are concerned, is pervasive in business, academia, media, and government. And because governance involves a broad spectrum of political issues, it is understandable that the vast majority of politicians are not programmed, by either their education or their experience, to be interested in food issues, much less understand them. While this may continue to be the case, it would be incredibly helpful if grass roots efforts to improve the quality of the food supply and correct the government's horribly flawed dietary advice had the support of the President of the United States.
In closing, I note that you were elected to office on the strength of a promise; a promise that you would do things differently. My prayer is that you will study the connection between food choices and chronic disease until you fully understand the issues and that God will give you the ability to discern and the courage to do what needs to be done to reduce demand for medical services. Recall Dr. Hall's observation: "Man can never be more than what he eats..."
Regards,
David Brown
1925 Belmar Dr
Kalispell, MT 59901
Ph/406-257-5123
Nutrition Education Project
http://nutritionscienceanalyst.blogspot.com/
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500
Dear Mr. President:
Twice that I know of over the past year you have commented on food and health care costs. The first mention was during an October 2008 interview with Joe Klein. You said, "I was just reading an article in The New York Times by Michael Pollan about food and the fact that our entire agricultural system is built on cheap oil. As a consequence, our agriculture sector actually is contributing more greenhouse gases than our transportation sector. And in the mean time, it's creating mono cultures that are...partly responsible for the explosion in our health care costs because they're contributing to type 2 diabetes, stroke and heart disease, obesity, all the things that are driving our huge explosion in health care costs."
The second mention was in a speech to the American Medical Association delivered earlier this year. You said, "The second step that we can all agree on is to invest more in preventive care so that we can avoid illness and disease in the first place. That starts with each of us taking more responsibility for our health and the health of our children...It also means cutting down on all the junk food that is fueling an epidemic of obesity, putting far too many Americans, young and old, at greater risk of costly, chronic conditions. That's a lesson Michelle and I have tried to instill in our daughters with the White House vegetable garden that Michelle planted. And that's a lesson that we should work with local school districts to incorporate into their school lunch programs."
I congratulate you on paying attention to the quality of the food supply. It is a problem that began in the nineteenth century with the development of technology that made it possible to cheaply and efficiently produce enormous quantities of sugar, refined wheat flour, and omega-6 seed oils. As the science of chemistry advanced, chemical technology spawned the food manufacturing industry that supplies most of the calories Americans currently consume.
These developments have had disastrous consequences for human health. Periodically, various scientists, both here and abroad, have attempted to call attention to the problem. But sadly, academia and government have ignored them. For example, in the Preface to Food for Nought (1973), biochemist, author, and teacher Ross Hume Hall, PhD observed, "Nourishment of the American populace has undergone a startling transformation since World War II. A highly individual system of growing and marketing food has been transformed into a gigantic, highly integrated service system in which the object is not to nourish or even to feed, but to force an ever-increasing consumption of fabricated products. This phenomenon is not peculiar to the American scene and occurs in every industrialized country. The United States, however, has progressed furthest in the transformation. Man can never be more than what he eats, and one would expect that a phenomenon with such profound effects on health and well-being as a radically changed system of supplying nourishment would be thoroughly documented and assessed by the scientific community. Such is not the case. The transformation has gone unmarked by government agencies and learned bodies. Government agencies, recipients of the public trust charged with protecting and improving the public's food, operate as if the technology of food fabrication rested in pre-World War II days. Scientific bodies, supported by public funds and charged with assessing and improving the public's health, ignore completely the results of contemporary methods of producing and marketing food."
I began taking responsibility for my own health back in October of 1977 after sustaining a back injury. A week of hospitalization afforded time to think about my future. I decided to read some nutrition books and use what I learned to improve my body's ability to heal itself. I did not read one or two books; I read dozens, then hundreds. I did so because nutrition experts disagree and one cannot afford to be following the advice of experts who base their opinions on personal experience or consensus of opinion.
Washington, DC 20500
Dear Mr. President:
Twice that I know of over the past year you have commented on food and health care costs. The first mention was during an October 2008 interview with Joe Klein. You said, "I was just reading an article in The New York Times by Michael Pollan about food and the fact that our entire agricultural system is built on cheap oil. As a consequence, our agriculture sector actually is contributing more greenhouse gases than our transportation sector. And in the mean time, it's creating mono cultures that are...partly responsible for the explosion in our health care costs because they're contributing to type 2 diabetes, stroke and heart disease, obesity, all the things that are driving our huge explosion in health care costs."
The second mention was in a speech to the American Medical Association delivered earlier this year. You said, "The second step that we can all agree on is to invest more in preventive care so that we can avoid illness and disease in the first place. That starts with each of us taking more responsibility for our health and the health of our children...It also means cutting down on all the junk food that is fueling an epidemic of obesity, putting far too many Americans, young and old, at greater risk of costly, chronic conditions. That's a lesson Michelle and I have tried to instill in our daughters with the White House vegetable garden that Michelle planted. And that's a lesson that we should work with local school districts to incorporate into their school lunch programs."
I congratulate you on paying attention to the quality of the food supply. It is a problem that began in the nineteenth century with the development of technology that made it possible to cheaply and efficiently produce enormous quantities of sugar, refined wheat flour, and omega-6 seed oils. As the science of chemistry advanced, chemical technology spawned the food manufacturing industry that supplies most of the calories Americans currently consume.
These developments have had disastrous consequences for human health. Periodically, various scientists, both here and abroad, have attempted to call attention to the problem. But sadly, academia and government have ignored them. For example, in the Preface to Food for Nought (1973), biochemist, author, and teacher Ross Hume Hall, PhD observed, "Nourishment of the American populace has undergone a startling transformation since World War II. A highly individual system of growing and marketing food has been transformed into a gigantic, highly integrated service system in which the object is not to nourish or even to feed, but to force an ever-increasing consumption of fabricated products. This phenomenon is not peculiar to the American scene and occurs in every industrialized country. The United States, however, has progressed furthest in the transformation. Man can never be more than what he eats, and one would expect that a phenomenon with such profound effects on health and well-being as a radically changed system of supplying nourishment would be thoroughly documented and assessed by the scientific community. Such is not the case. The transformation has gone unmarked by government agencies and learned bodies. Government agencies, recipients of the public trust charged with protecting and improving the public's food, operate as if the technology of food fabrication rested in pre-World War II days. Scientific bodies, supported by public funds and charged with assessing and improving the public's health, ignore completely the results of contemporary methods of producing and marketing food."
I began taking responsibility for my own health back in October of 1977 after sustaining a back injury. A week of hospitalization afforded time to think about my future. I decided to read some nutrition books and use what I learned to improve my body's ability to heal itself. I did not read one or two books; I read dozens, then hundreds. I did so because nutrition experts disagree and one cannot afford to be following the advice of experts who base their opinions on personal experience or consensus of opinion.
Eventually, I figured out that sugar interests, edible oils producers, and food manufacturers exert a powerful influence on both government and academia. I realized early on that sugar (Google "Sugar:The Bitter Truth"), not saturated fat, was the major factor in heart disease. But it was not until 1994, after suffering a leg ulcer, that I learned how dangerous excessive consumption of the supposedly "heart healthy" omega-6 vegetable oils can be (Google "Omega-6 Research News").
Which brings up another issue, the quality of nutrition instruction in this country. The Center for Nutrition Policy and Promotion (CNPP) is the arm of the U.S. Department of Agriculture responsible for educating Americans about nutrition. It is also the highest nutrition authority in the land.
Every five years, by law, the CNPP must appoint 13 distinguished scientists to review the Dietary Guidelines for Americans and recommend changes based on the latest scientific research. That process is currently underway and three meetings have already taken place.
Hopefully, four mistakes, that have persisted in the government's dietary advice for more than three decades, will be corrected this time around. They are as follows: 1) the universal recommendation to restrict fat intake to lose weight, 2) the doctrine that high saturated fat consumption leads to clogged arteries, 3) failure to warn consumers about the hazards of excessive fructose consumption, and 4) failure to warn consumers about hazards associated with excessive omega-6 polyunsaturated vegetable oil consumption.
I am not the only one disturbed by the government's dietary guidelines. Many Americans are voicing their concerns to the 2010 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee. In January, these poignant remarks, submitted by someone named Ethyl, were published in the federal register.
"Here's how I'd like to answer the members of the USDA if I could speak to them personally about what nutritional guidelines to provide for Americans:
"Here's how I'd like to answer the members of the USDA if I could speak to them personally about what nutritional guidelines to provide for Americans:
1. You need to decide what is more important to you: support for the wheat, soy, corn, and sugar industries or the health of Americans.
2. You need to wrap your minds around the fact that the nutritional advice you have dispensed for the past forty years is dead wrong. A diet with carbohydrates as the largest daily food group makes people fat and/or sick.
2. You need to wrap your minds around the fact that the nutritional advice you have dispensed for the past forty years is dead wrong. A diet with carbohydrates as the largest daily food group makes people fat and/or sick.
3.You have been embarrassingly wrong for the past forty years about the dangers of fat in the diet. The extreme fat reduction you have recommended makes people fat and/or sick.
4. Your dietary recommendations for the past forty years are largely responsible for the amount of obesity, diabetes, heart disease, cancer, autoimmune disorders, depression, and more that Americans experience in ever-increasing numbers.
5. I visited the MyPyramid.gov Web site and found your pyramid to be what one would expect government bureaucrats to create: unnecessarily complicated, confusing, filled with misinformation, and condescending. It claims to be "science-based" but does not admit - or understand? - that it is based on junk science that has been poorly conducted.
6. If you want to give the public at large advice about what to eat to be healthy or correct many health problems, it should go something like this:
a. Eat mostly real food, not food products processed in food labs.
b. Make the time to prepare almost all of your meals at home from scratch. Know what's in the food you eat.
c. Retrain your body to derive its energy from fat ... by fueling it with quality fats such as lard, coconut oil, butter, nut oils, and olive oil. Eliminate all trans fat from the diet, and drastically reduce the amount of fat from vegetable oils. Saturated fat is good for you, enjoy it..."
5. I visited the MyPyramid.gov Web site and found your pyramid to be what one would expect government bureaucrats to create: unnecessarily complicated, confusing, filled with misinformation, and condescending. It claims to be "science-based" but does not admit - or understand? - that it is based on junk science that has been poorly conducted.
6. If you want to give the public at large advice about what to eat to be healthy or correct many health problems, it should go something like this:
a. Eat mostly real food, not food products processed in food labs.
b. Make the time to prepare almost all of your meals at home from scratch. Know what's in the food you eat.
c. Retrain your body to derive its energy from fat ... by fueling it with quality fats such as lard, coconut oil, butter, nut oils, and olive oil. Eliminate all trans fat from the diet, and drastically reduce the amount of fat from vegetable oils. Saturated fat is good for you, enjoy it..."
Mr. President, clearly our industrialized food supply is making us fat and sick. And the cost of dealing with health issues is destroying our economy. But your mention of the monoculture/junk food connection to chronic disease and obesity in relation to "our huge explosion in health care costs" raised hopes that you will study the matter further. Below is a short list of individuals who can help you visualize what needs to be done to improve the food environment by, first and foremost, correcting the Dietary Guidelines for Americans.
Fred and Alice Ottoboni: retired public health scientists and authors of The Modern Nutritional Diseases.
Fred and Alice Ottoboni: retired public health scientists and authors of The Modern Nutritional Diseases.
Gary Taubes: award winning journalist and author of a 2002 New York Times Magazine article entitled "What if it's all Been a Big Fat Lie?" and the book Good Calories, Bad Calories.
Michael Pollan: author of The Omnivore's Dilemma.
Sally Fallon: founder of the Weston A. Price Foundation and author of Nourishing Traditions.
Joel Salatin: grass farmer and author of Everything I Want to Do is Illegal: War Stories from the Local Food Front.
Mark McAffee: California raw milk dairy farmer and owner of Organic Pastures Fresh Raw Dairy.
Nina Planck: created the first farmers' markets in London. Author of Real Food: What to Eat and Why.
Before closing, I have a few comments about health care reform. First, I am in favor of incentives that encourage people to make healthier lifestyle choices. In a recent New York Times Op-Ed article entitled "Big Food vs. Big Insurance" Michael Pollan suggests changes in insurance rules that could help accomplish this goal.
Second, I would like to have the option of a health savings account. Rather than being forced to purchase health insurance, I would like to be able to put tax-deferred money into savings that could be used for health emergencies. If spent on health care, the money would not be subject to taxation.
Third, my family has never purchased health insurance. We simply pay for medical services as needed. We would far rather spend our hard-earned money on high quality food than on medical screening. At our income level, being forced to purchase health insurance would pose a hardship making it more difficult for us to obtain high quality food. Seems like there ought to be a better reward for taking care of ones health than being forced to pay for something which one cannot afford and may never use.
In your inaugural address you said, "...our time of standing pat, of protecting narrow interests and putting off unpleasant decisions — that time has surely passed. Starting today, we must pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and begin again the work of remaking America."
You speak words of hope. But unless you and your policy advisers reeducate yourselves as to what constitutes healthy eating, eventually there will be no funds to "remake" anything.
Toward the end of your speech you said, "Those of us who manage the public's dollars will be held to account — to spend wisely, reform bad habits, and do our business in the light of day — because only then can we restore the vital trust between a people and their government."
Have governments ever been trustworthy? It is a nice thought.
In most respects I think elected officials are trustworthy. I believe they are doing their best to protect us and improve our circumstances. However, those narrow interests you mentioned are NOT trustworthy. And their influence, where food issues and nutritional controversies are concerned, is pervasive in business, academia, media, and government. And because governance involves a broad spectrum of political issues, it is understandable that the vast majority of politicians are not programmed, by either their education or their experience, to be interested in food issues, much less understand them. While this may continue to be the case, it would be incredibly helpful if grass roots efforts to improve the quality of the food supply and correct the government's horribly flawed dietary advice had the support of the President of the United States.
In closing, I note that you were elected to office on the strength of a promise; a promise that you would do things differently. My prayer is that you will study the connection between food choices and chronic disease until you fully understand the issues and that God will give you the ability to discern and the courage to do what needs to be done to reduce demand for medical services. Recall Dr. Hall's observation: "Man can never be more than what he eats..."
Regards,
David Brown
1925 Belmar Dr
Kalispell, MT 59901
Ph/406-257-5123
Nutrition Education Project
http://nutritionscienceanalyst.blogspot.com/
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
Unabsorbed Calories
Most weight control experts teach that reducing caloric intake and increasing caloric expenditure through exercise are absolutely necessary to achieve and sustain weight loss. Many dieters have been successful with this approach but does it work for everybody? Not really. Why? Well, some people are not genotrophically equipped to thrive on a low-fat/low-calorie diet no matter how much exercise they get. (The genotrophic concept, by the way, simply refers to the fact that each of us is biochemically and physiologically unique and that this uniqueness is determined by genes.)
A number of books have been published over the years suggesting that adding calories (especially fat calories) to the diet can produce weight loss. The first I'm aware of is Calories Don't Count by Herman Taller, MD. It caused quite a stir as reported by Ruth Adams in her 1972 book Did You Ever See A Fat Squirrel? In Chapter 7 subtitled Calories Do Count or one foot is a lot different than ten feet she reports, "The case of Calories Don't Count reached the halls of Congress in the fiery address of one knowledgeable congressman who called the FDA's attack on the book "Trial by press release." A lot of unfair and inaccurate things were said about Dr. Taller and his book in the decade following its publication. The government seized his books and safflower oil capsules displayed nearby from health food stores calling the capsules "drugs" and the book "labeling" of these drugs. While Dr. Taller's book contained a few inaccuracies and despite it's apparent contradiction, his approach, which recommended a daily intake of 3935 calories (more or less) as calculated by Ruth Adams, did work for a lot of people. But on to the next book.
Published two decades later, Why Calories Don't Count by biochemist Paul Stitt, MS did not attract any attention, probably because Robert Atkins was taking so much heat at the time. Poorly edited and clumsily written, the book actually contains a reference to research documenting unabsorbed calories.
Another book entitled How to Lower Your Fat Thermostat by Remington, Fisher, and Parent describes force feeding experiments where subjects were unable to gain more than small amounts of weight despite huge amounts of extra eating. Most subjects quickly returned to their pre-study weight after a return to normal caloric intake. There's also some interesting discussion describing how food denial (caloric restriction) can increase the surface area of the gut which increases efficiency of calorie absorption. They noted, "Rats eating only one meal a day have a markedly increased rate of food digestion and absorption. Many obese people also seem to digest food more quickly, perhaps because of dietary efforts and periods of food denial."
Fast forwarding to the present, Prevention magazine recently released a 52-page booklet advertising The Doctors Book of Food Remedies. I'm ordering a copy to see if the book contains any references to research that documents what the advertiser asserts; namely that some fats, calories, and cholesterol do not get absorbed but are excreted when certain fiber-containing foods are eaten with every meal. Here's a few pages of that advertisement:
Fat-Blocker foods!
Foods that fill you up...block absorption of calories & fat...and make it easy to shed 10, 20, 30 pounds, or more.
Page 9 - Imagine being able to shed all the pounds and inches you want, NOT by starving yourself, but by actually eating MORE of certain types of food?
Oh, how satisfying that would be! But it couldn't possibly be true, could it? Doctors are responding with a resounding YES! Here's the story...
Medical researchers have identified dozens of delicious foods bursting with this amazing combination of benefits - they're not only scrumptious, but they also block the absorption of fat and calories in the other foods you eat!
What's more, the same foods leave you feeling full - totally satisfied - for much longer periods of time, so you automatically eat less during the day. In other words, these delicious foods give you an enormous DOUBLE advantage in your efforts to lose weight. First, you automatically eat less because you feel full and satisfied longer. And then, (Page 10) when you do eat, you absorb far fewer fat and calories! (Their mistake, not mine.)
That's why these "fat-blocker foods" are a dieter's dream-come-true. And in The Doctors Book of Food Remedies, you're going to learn all about them, and how to use them to lose more weight than you've ever thought possible.
The Greatest Weight-Loss Secret of All-Time ?
The secret behind Mother Nature's incredible fat-blocker foods can be summed up in a single word - fiber.
But not just any fiber. In recent years, researchers have discovered that foods rich in a certain type of fiber have an almost magical power to trap fat and calories as they pass through your system...block their absorption...and carry these unwanted fats and calories right out of your system before they have a chance to pack their weight on your thighs, hips, rear, or belly.
But only one type of fiber does this, and on pages 201-203 of The Doctors Book of Food Remedies, you're going to discover the many foods that are richest in it. Thank goodness, there are dozens of these fat-blocker foods to choose from, so you'll easily find a host of favorites to enjoy for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snacks, as you watch pound after pound melt away so easily.
Blocks Out the Fat in Your Steak...So You Don't Absorb It!
Just how easily does it work? Let's look at an example...
A big reason we gain weight - and find losing it so hard - is because of the fat in our diets. Fat makes you fat! When you eat a steak, for example, molecules of fat and cholesterol pass through your intestinal wall and into your bloodstream...and eventually get deposited as fat someplace in your body where you least want it.
Page 12 - But before that can happen, the special fiber in these fat-blocker foods prevents you from absorbing these fats and calories in the first place. When you eat these foods, their special fiber dissolves in your digestive tract, forming a sticky gel that acts like a protective coating, preventing fat and cholesterol from getting through your intestinal wall.
Remember the example of the steak? If you accompanied it with a heaping serving of one of these fat-blocker foods, its special fiber would turn into gel, trapping molecules of fat and cholesterol and preventing them from getting into your body. And because this fiber itself isn't absorbed, it passes out of your body, taking the fat and cholesterol with it!
You'll get complete details of this wonderful form of fiber on page 201 of The Doctors Book of Food Remedies. Then on page 202, you'll see all the foods richest in this near-miraculous ability. This information is worth its weight in gold because it makes losing weight so much easier than you've ever experienced!
Now you can lose by eating, not starving! There are no pills to take, no unhealthy fad diets to follow, and, best of all, no starvation! Losing weight was never so easy!
What's more, these fiber-rich fat-blocker foods bring you many other benefits, as well. They keep you as regular as a Swiss watch. They lower your cholesterol, and cut your risk of heart disease in half. They can also reduce your risk of cancer by 31% because they sweep food particles out of your colon faster and keep your insides cleaner. This is why some doctors call fiber "Mother Nature's broom."
In another section starting on page 32 and titled Cut Your Risk of Heart Attack by 80 % or more, there's further mention of unabsorbed fat and cholesterol. For example, on page 33 under the heading Traps Cholesterol in Your Body Like Velcro and Flushes It Away Harmlessly one reads, "Take Pears for example. They contain an all-natural compound called lignin, which is Mother Nature's most ingenious antidote to high cholesterol. Lignin acts just like nutritional Velcro, attaching itself to the cholesterol in your body, trapping it in your intestine, and ushering it right out of your system so you don't absorb it!"
Finally, on page 35 under the heading Your Internal Cholesterol-Busting "Police Force" one reads, "You'll get an entire list - plus lots of recipes - of the best cholesterol-busting foods you can eat. All share this incredible benefit: they're filled with a substance that forms a gummy gel in your digestive tract that mops up fat and cholesterol, dragging it straight out of your body before it gets deposited on your artery walls."
Well, don't you just love advertising copy? Considering the darth of information on the subject, one wonders where the author(s?) of Food Remedies got the idea that fiber can "sweep" fat, calories, and cholesterol out of the body. There are no references to research.
Dave Brown
A number of books have been published over the years suggesting that adding calories (especially fat calories) to the diet can produce weight loss. The first I'm aware of is Calories Don't Count by Herman Taller, MD. It caused quite a stir as reported by Ruth Adams in her 1972 book Did You Ever See A Fat Squirrel? In Chapter 7 subtitled Calories Do Count or one foot is a lot different than ten feet she reports, "The case of Calories Don't Count reached the halls of Congress in the fiery address of one knowledgeable congressman who called the FDA's attack on the book "Trial by press release." A lot of unfair and inaccurate things were said about Dr. Taller and his book in the decade following its publication. The government seized his books and safflower oil capsules displayed nearby from health food stores calling the capsules "drugs" and the book "labeling" of these drugs. While Dr. Taller's book contained a few inaccuracies and despite it's apparent contradiction, his approach, which recommended a daily intake of 3935 calories (more or less) as calculated by Ruth Adams, did work for a lot of people. But on to the next book.
Published two decades later, Why Calories Don't Count by biochemist Paul Stitt, MS did not attract any attention, probably because Robert Atkins was taking so much heat at the time. Poorly edited and clumsily written, the book actually contains a reference to research documenting unabsorbed calories.
Another book entitled How to Lower Your Fat Thermostat by Remington, Fisher, and Parent describes force feeding experiments where subjects were unable to gain more than small amounts of weight despite huge amounts of extra eating. Most subjects quickly returned to their pre-study weight after a return to normal caloric intake. There's also some interesting discussion describing how food denial (caloric restriction) can increase the surface area of the gut which increases efficiency of calorie absorption. They noted, "Rats eating only one meal a day have a markedly increased rate of food digestion and absorption. Many obese people also seem to digest food more quickly, perhaps because of dietary efforts and periods of food denial."
Fast forwarding to the present, Prevention magazine recently released a 52-page booklet advertising The Doctors Book of Food Remedies. I'm ordering a copy to see if the book contains any references to research that documents what the advertiser asserts; namely that some fats, calories, and cholesterol do not get absorbed but are excreted when certain fiber-containing foods are eaten with every meal. Here's a few pages of that advertisement:
Fat-Blocker foods!
Foods that fill you up...block absorption of calories & fat...and make it easy to shed 10, 20, 30 pounds, or more.
Page 9 - Imagine being able to shed all the pounds and inches you want, NOT by starving yourself, but by actually eating MORE of certain types of food?
Oh, how satisfying that would be! But it couldn't possibly be true, could it? Doctors are responding with a resounding YES! Here's the story...
Medical researchers have identified dozens of delicious foods bursting with this amazing combination of benefits - they're not only scrumptious, but they also block the absorption of fat and calories in the other foods you eat!
What's more, the same foods leave you feeling full - totally satisfied - for much longer periods of time, so you automatically eat less during the day. In other words, these delicious foods give you an enormous DOUBLE advantage in your efforts to lose weight. First, you automatically eat less because you feel full and satisfied longer. And then, (Page 10) when you do eat, you absorb far fewer fat and calories! (Their mistake, not mine.)
That's why these "fat-blocker foods" are a dieter's dream-come-true. And in The Doctors Book of Food Remedies, you're going to learn all about them, and how to use them to lose more weight than you've ever thought possible.
The Greatest Weight-Loss Secret of All-Time ?
The secret behind Mother Nature's incredible fat-blocker foods can be summed up in a single word - fiber.
But not just any fiber. In recent years, researchers have discovered that foods rich in a certain type of fiber have an almost magical power to trap fat and calories as they pass through your system...block their absorption...and carry these unwanted fats and calories right out of your system before they have a chance to pack their weight on your thighs, hips, rear, or belly.
But only one type of fiber does this, and on pages 201-203 of The Doctors Book of Food Remedies, you're going to discover the many foods that are richest in it. Thank goodness, there are dozens of these fat-blocker foods to choose from, so you'll easily find a host of favorites to enjoy for breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snacks, as you watch pound after pound melt away so easily.
Blocks Out the Fat in Your Steak...So You Don't Absorb It!
Just how easily does it work? Let's look at an example...
A big reason we gain weight - and find losing it so hard - is because of the fat in our diets. Fat makes you fat! When you eat a steak, for example, molecules of fat and cholesterol pass through your intestinal wall and into your bloodstream...and eventually get deposited as fat someplace in your body where you least want it.
Page 12 - But before that can happen, the special fiber in these fat-blocker foods prevents you from absorbing these fats and calories in the first place. When you eat these foods, their special fiber dissolves in your digestive tract, forming a sticky gel that acts like a protective coating, preventing fat and cholesterol from getting through your intestinal wall.
Remember the example of the steak? If you accompanied it with a heaping serving of one of these fat-blocker foods, its special fiber would turn into gel, trapping molecules of fat and cholesterol and preventing them from getting into your body. And because this fiber itself isn't absorbed, it passes out of your body, taking the fat and cholesterol with it!
You'll get complete details of this wonderful form of fiber on page 201 of The Doctors Book of Food Remedies. Then on page 202, you'll see all the foods richest in this near-miraculous ability. This information is worth its weight in gold because it makes losing weight so much easier than you've ever experienced!
Now you can lose by eating, not starving! There are no pills to take, no unhealthy fad diets to follow, and, best of all, no starvation! Losing weight was never so easy!
What's more, these fiber-rich fat-blocker foods bring you many other benefits, as well. They keep you as regular as a Swiss watch. They lower your cholesterol, and cut your risk of heart disease in half. They can also reduce your risk of cancer by 31% because they sweep food particles out of your colon faster and keep your insides cleaner. This is why some doctors call fiber "Mother Nature's broom."
In another section starting on page 32 and titled Cut Your Risk of Heart Attack by 80 % or more, there's further mention of unabsorbed fat and cholesterol. For example, on page 33 under the heading Traps Cholesterol in Your Body Like Velcro and Flushes It Away Harmlessly one reads, "Take Pears for example. They contain an all-natural compound called lignin, which is Mother Nature's most ingenious antidote to high cholesterol. Lignin acts just like nutritional Velcro, attaching itself to the cholesterol in your body, trapping it in your intestine, and ushering it right out of your system so you don't absorb it!"
Finally, on page 35 under the heading Your Internal Cholesterol-Busting "Police Force" one reads, "You'll get an entire list - plus lots of recipes - of the best cholesterol-busting foods you can eat. All share this incredible benefit: they're filled with a substance that forms a gummy gel in your digestive tract that mops up fat and cholesterol, dragging it straight out of your body before it gets deposited on your artery walls."
Well, don't you just love advertising copy? Considering the darth of information on the subject, one wonders where the author(s?) of Food Remedies got the idea that fiber can "sweep" fat, calories, and cholesterol out of the body. There are no references to research.
Dave Brown
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