Protein Power Review of "Big Fat Surprise"

Nina Teicholz is a married mother of two living in New York City. She is an investigative journalist and food writer by trade. When she first moved to New York, she was following a low-fat, USDA Food Pyramid style diet. Her life changed when she began writing restaurant reviews. She ate whatever the chefs she was reviewing sent out, which was often “paté, beef of every cut prepared in every imaginable way, cream sauces, cream soups, foie gras – all the foods [she] had avoided [her] entire life.”

She ate an enormous amount of fatty food, and despite her worries to the contrary, her cholesterol numbers didn’t go through the roof. But best of all, she lost the ten pounds she had been struggling to shed.

Her editor at Gourmet asked her to write an article about trans fats. The article ended up getting her a book contract, and the research she did for it launched her on her Herculean task of researching and writing The Big Fat Surprise (BFS). She tells the story of how we Americans went from eating enormous amounts of saturated fat (all the while suffering virtually no heart disease) to now eating fats in restaurants that, when heated, throw off a shellac-like substance so toxic it requires workers in hazmat gear to clean up after them.

http://www.proteinpower.com/drmike/low-carb-diets/big-fat-surprise/

In another couple of years, no one will bat an eye at these books, as the Ship of Lowfatisbad will have completed the turn, and sugar will be the recipient of all of saturated fat's hate - except for a few true believers who love animals and thus can't get with saturated animal fats under any circumstance. It is taking a long time, but the light may be seen at the end of the tunnel.

Shout out to Gary Taubes, the first science writer/researcher to get this topic back on the scope of legitimate scientific inquiry!

Kresser: Your Personal Paleo Code

This book is not new news, but it is the best book on eating for health I've yet to read.  It's not too sciency, but it's authoritative in its arguments.  It's not off the paleo deep end, but it's detailed enough to help ANYONE sort through their diet/health issues.  It is laid out very, very well, and easy to read.  Here's an excerpt I like early on:

"The inuit are a group of hunter-gatherers who live in the Arctic regions of Alaska, Canada, and Greenland. They eat primarily fish, seals, whale, caribou, walrus, birds and eggs: a diet very high in fat and protein, with very few vegetables or fruits.  They live in a harsh environment that is marginal at best for human habitation yet early explorers, physicians and scientists unanimously reported that the inuit they encountered enjoyed excellent health and vitality.

"Dr. John Simpson studied the inuit in the mid-1850s. He noted that the inuit were "robust, muscular and active, inclining rather to spareness, rather than corpulence, presenting a markedly healthy appearance.  The expression of the countenance is one of habitual good humor.  The physical constitution of both sexes is strong."  This is especially remarkable considering the inhospitable environment the inuit lived in, and it's a testament to nutrient density of the animal foods that made up the majority of their diet."

How to Make Doctors Irrelevant - The Daily Beast

Now she is conducting clinical trials in MS patients to prove this wasn't a fluke, and the studies are going very well. In addition, she uses a nutritional approach at the VA with her traumatic brain injury patients, as well as those in her therapeutic lifestyle clinic. She finds that all kinds of people get better—even those with difficult-to-treat conditions like Parkinson's, fibromyalgia, obesity and other autoimmune conditions. "The first thing that happens [to patients in my clinic] is they have decreased pain, better mental clarity, and more energy," Dr. Wahls said. "The women say the weight is falling off and the men say that their love lives are better."   http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/04/23/how-to-make-doctors-irrelevant.html 

People who make predictions about the future are people who choose to feel certain in the face of evidence that 99+% of predictions are wrong.  I predict this is a very good picture of what medicine will become in the future.  You and I both will be better off if I'm right.

That's Kind of Cute

This is a write up that can best be described as kind of cute.  It's funny to see t-nation taking pot shots at CrossFit while still trying to acknowledge that CF's not the joke they've been saying it was for the last 7 or so years (as long as I've known about tnation).  I remember back then it seemed like someone might care about what is written in tnation.

Except for the author's cheap shots, it's not off the mark factually, but it is telling that the author's still think their readers want them to take cheap shots against CF even in an article that in some ways has articulated what is good about CF.

It's pretty simple to me.  If you don't like CrossFit, don't do CrossFit.  If you have goals that do not include increased work capacity across broad time and modal domains, don't do CrossFit.  If you are not interested in a broad, general non-specialized fitness, don't do CrossFit.  When you deviate from "paying your money and taking your chances" with your own life, and pretend to know what is best for others, you just made yourself into an idiot.

https://www.t-nation.com/training/in-defense-of-crossfit

Newsflash - More Physical Capability Is Better

Low levels of physical capability (in particular weak grip strength, slow chair rise speed and poor standing balance performance) in midlife can indicate poorer chances of survival over the next 13 years, while greater time spent in light intensity physical activity each day is linked to a reduced risk of developing disability in adults with or at risk of developing knee osteoarthritis, suggest two papers published on bmj.com today.

Previous systematic reviews of the literature and meta-analyses have shown that lower levels of physical capability are associated with lower survival rates in older community dwelling populations. Various explanations of these associations between physical capability and death have been postulated including the suggestion that low levels of physical capability may reflect undetected disease and ageing processes. However, there are a number of gaps in existing literature and a lack of studies which have examined these associations at younger ages.
http://www.sciencecodex.com/simple_tests_of_physical_capability_in_midlife_linked_with_survival-132686

Saturated Fat Is Your Friend

A very nicely written summary of why:
-Saturated fats were never proven to be unhealthy, and why other foods we've been substituting for sat fats may be "really" unhealthy
-Why polyunsaturated oils, recommended for years for their cholesterol lowering qualities, may be much worse for you than sat fats, especially when hydrogenated
-Why carbs are problematic as substitutes for fat in the diet, and have been a part of making us fat, sick and diabetic
-Why women in particular need to think about cholesterol levels differently than we've all been told

Eat meat, vegetables, nuts and seeds, little fruit or starch, no sugar/wheat.

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303678404579533760760481486?mod=WSJ_hppMIDDLENexttoWhatsNewsSecond&mg=reno64-wsj&url=http%3A%2F%2Fonline.wsj.com%2Farticle%2FSB10001424052702303678404579533760760481486.html%3Fmod%3DWSJ_hppMIDDLENex

PN on IF

This is a concise summary of various approaches to intermittent fasting, and how to do them well.  This is, in my experience, a very powerful strategy for health, glucose regulation and fat loss.
http://www.precisionnutrition.com/intermittent-fasting/chapter-3