Signs of Life

I've been a vegetarian for over a decade, and, naturally, I think everyone else should be a vegetarian, too. But I keep my pro-veggies agenda to myself because there's nothing more annoying -- and less effective -- than a self-righteous foodie diatribe.  Strong opinions just beget equal and opposite strong opinions, and so if someone asks me about my food beliefs or for vegetarian cooking advice, I share. Otherwise, I keep quiet.

But I had to speak up this morning after reading about this new study showing that consumption of red meat and processed meats (like hot dogs and cold cuts) correlates with an overall risk of dying of any reason. Previous studies have shown a link between red meat consumption and colorectal cancer, but this study looked at overall mortality and found that it was 30 percent higher for those who consumed about four ounces of red meat a day (the equivalent of a few slices of ham or a small hamburger).

I'm often the first one in line to call broad conclusions drawn from new studies into question -- and this one is no exception. More studies probably need to be done to really solidify the link between meat and disease, and more and different factors likely need to be controlled for, but I think the mounting evidence against a red meat heavy diet is worth paying attention to. Besides, there's no evidence showing that eating slightly less red and processed meat is harmful. So why not scale back the meat we eat just a bit?

And even if time proves the link between red meat and mortality to be weaker than now believed (though I have my doubts), we know without question that heavy meat consumption is a huge drag on the environment. Many aspects of large-scale livestock production -- greenhouse gas emissions, energy consumption, water shortages, etc. -- contribute to environmental degradation.

Eating just one less meal with meat a week will help the environment for sure and your health probably. So why not start today? T-bone-less Tuesdays, anyone?! And, of course, if you want to become a full-blown vegetarian, that sounds fine to me, too!

The US government regulates how food is labeled and what those labels mean. If a food product is labeled USDA organic, for example, it is at least 95% organic.

There are NO similar regulations for labeling health and body care products (HBC, for short). As a result, the words "natural" and "organic" can mean very, very little when they appear on a shampoo or lotion bottle.

Here are some top things to remember and look out for when you're shopping for HBC products:

1. There's no such thing as full disclosure -- HBC companies do NOT have to disclose their full ingredient list (unlike with food products) -- and many don't. So it's important to do your homework and be sure you can trust the company that produces your product. Visit the Cosmetics Database, a service of the Environmental Working Group, where you can search by product, ingredient or company and get the nitty-gritty on what's in your products.

2. Go Fragrance-free -- In many HBC ingredient lists, you'll find the word "fragrance." Most often "fragrance" denotes a mixture of synthetic chemicals combined to form that product's unique scent -- a unique scent that is considered a "trade secret." And the individual ingredients in a trade secret don't have to be disclosed. Pretty much, if the product contains safe scents, like essential oils, it will say so. If not, it will say "fragrance."

3. Lose the Lather -- When a soap, shampoo, or detergent produces a super-sudsy lather, we tend think of it as a super-duper cleaner (psychologically, we equate lather with effectiveness). The truth, however, is that a lather-laden soap gets us no cleaner than one with less suds -- and the agents used to create lather -- the most common are phosphates -- are damaging both to personal health and the environment.

 

4. Avoid these ingredients -- Certain ingredients should be avoided whenever possible. Here are some of the top bad guys:

• Parabens (butyl, methyl ethyl, and propyl) -- Parabens are a type of synthetic preservative that are known to increase the risk of cancer and which can act as endocrine disruptors.

• Propylene glycol -- A humectant widely used in cosmetics (and, scarily, antifreeze), propylene glycol has been classified as a skin irritant by the National Library of Medicine, and is believed to increase the risk of cancer and fertility problems. It is also classified as both an endocrine disruptor and a neurotoxin.

• Sodium lauryl sulfate -- Used as an emulsifier in many cosmetics, this additive is a harsh skin irritant. Research has also show that it increases risk of cancer and developmental/reproductive toxicity.

The skin is the body's biggest organ and it absorbs everything it comes in contact with. Make sure what you deliberately put on your skin isn't undermining your health!

Someone commented on my last blog post asking for research backing up the claim that whole milk is the healthiest choice. Adding the science is a great idea. (I didn't put it all in the first time because I didn't want to make the first entry too long.) Rather than explicate all the science here (which could get long and tedious), I'm going to link to relevant, well-vetted studies and resources, and you can click through to the ones that are most interesting to you.

1. For a general overview of the failure of the lipid hypothesis and science-based support for eating whole foods in their most natural state, consult the amazing (and amazingly well-written) book:

In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan (Penguin, 2008) -- Pollan tells the story of how nutritional scientists over the past four decades have sold us on the low- and no-fat diet and why following that diet has made us fat, unhealthy and miserable.

2. For a deeper and more detailed look at why its not how much we eat, but WHAT we eat that makes us fat and causes heart disease -- and for manifold scientific evidence that dietary fat isn't the villain we've been told it is (and that the true villain is refined carbohydrates like white flour and white sugar), read:

Good Calories, Bad Calories by Gary Taubes (Anchor, 2008) -- The book is well researched and geared toward overturning (through sound science) the idea that the low-fat diet prevents obesity and reduces risk of heart disease. Taubes argues that its not the quantity of what you eat, it's the quality.

Watch Taubes' hour-long lecture on the science behind his theory here.

3. Read the abstract from this study, Factors Associated with Calcium Absorption Efficiency in Pre- and Peri-Menopausal Women, from The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition (August 2000).

4. The nutritionist and biochemist, Mary Enig, PhD, was an early critic of trans fats and partially hydrogenated vegetable oils. She has two books that help make sense of healthy and unhealthy fats:

Know Your Fats by Mary Enig (Bethesda, 2000) -- This book is a smart primer on dietary fat

Eat Fat, Lose Fat: The Healthy Alternative to Trans Fats by Mary Enig and Sally Fallon -- They assert that beneficial saturated fats should be more heavily incorporated into our diets. They advocate traditional, whole foods diets.

5. Find information on fat-soluble vitamins here.

6. Read this seminal article from The Journal of the American College of Nutrition, led by Harvard nutritionist Frank Hu, MD, PhD, called Types of Dietary Fat and Risk of Coronary Heart Disease: A Critical Review.

I'll post more links to more research as I come across them.

I drink whole milk and eat full-fat yogurt, cream cheese, and sour cream. Sure, full-fat dairy products taste better than the skim/fat-free versions, but I don't eat them for the taste. I eat full-fat dairy because it's better for my health and my weight.

Yep, you heard me right: I eat dairy products with all the fat god gave 'em, and I do it because it's good for me.

Here's why:

1.    Our bodies cannot digest the protein or absorb the calcium from milk without the fat.

2.    Vitamins A and D are also fat-soluble. So you can't absorb them from milk when all the fat has been skimmed off. (This makes fortified skim milk the biggest sham of all -- you can pump fat-free milk full of a year's supply of vitamins A and D, but the body can't access them).

3.    Milk fat contains glycosphingolipids, types of fats linked to immune system health and cell metabolism.

4.    Contrary to popular belief, low-fat and fat-free diets do not help prevent heart disease (see my last blog post), and science has now revealed that the link between saturated fat (long villainized as a cause of heart disease) and heart disease is tenuous at best.
 
5.    In fact, studies now show that eating saturated fat raises good cholesterol -- the kind of cholesterol you want and need in your body.

6.    The world's healthiest foods are whole foods -- foods that have not been processed. Why? The nutrients in whole foods have a natural synergy with one another -- that is, they work best in and are most beneficial to the body when they are taken together (not when they are isolated in, say, beta-carotene supplements of Vitamin C capsules). So when you pull some or all of the fat out of milk, you throw its nutritional profile out of whack. Basically, you discard all of the health benefits when you discard the fat.

7.    And last but definitely not least: healthy dietary fat will NOT make you fat. We've been taught for years that dietary fat is the root of all evil (again, see my last post). But we need healthy fat in our diet for proper body composition and long-term weight maintenance. The key factor here is knowing the difference between good fats and bad fats (for more on good and bad fats and the role healthy fat plays in weight maintenance, see Weight Loss Rules to Rethink).

A final note: When it comes to whole milk, you should also drink nonhomogenized when you can. Homogenization is "the technique of crushing milkfat globules into droplets too small to rise to the surface in a cream layer," writes Anne Mendelson in Milk: The Surprising Story of Milk Through the Ages (Knopf, 2008). Homogenization offered two big advantages to the dairy industry: (1) the abolition of the "creamline," as it's called, made it possible to package milk in more convenient [read: disposable] cardboard packaging instead of traditional glass bottles and (2) homogenizing made it possible for a commercial dairy to "calculate the amount of fat in incoming milk, completely remove it, and homogenize it back into milk in any desired proportion...In effect, 'whole milk' could now be whatever the industry said it was."

To put it more bluntly: homogenized whole milk isn't whole. The dairy-processing industry decided that whole milk should be milk with 3.25% fat (raw milk straight from the cow averages between 4 - 5.5% fat). That way, no matter what cow produced the milk, after homogenization all the milk would taste the same.

When you buy homogenized milk, you're buying a whole food that isn't whole -- it's had it's fat removed, evened out, and injected back into it in an amount less than what appears in nature. So choose whole milk, skip homogenization, and enjoy!

Over the last 30 years, one of the main tenets of nutrition science has been that dietary fat is bad for you.

The theory that dietary fat causes chronic diseases -- dubbed the lipid hypothesis -- has been preached for decades. And the message has really sunk in. Witness today's supermarket shelves piled with "low-fat" this, "fat-free" that, and "cholesterol-free" everything.

The trouble, as most experts now realize, is that the lipid hypothesis is wrong -- and that the advice to avoid dietary fat and opt for low- or no-fat options has not made us healthy and thin. In fact, science now points to the fact that the low-fat diet has made us sadder, fatter, and less healthy.

Here's an excerpt from a 2001 study by nutrition scientists at Harvard School of Public Health (quoted by Michael Pollan in In Defense of Food) that puts the situation in frank, uncompromising terms:

During the past several decades, reduction in fat intake has been the main focus of national dietary recommendations. In the public's mind, the words "dietary fat" have become synonymous with obesity and heart disease, whereas the words "low-fat" and "fat-free" have been synonymous with heart health.

It is now increasingly recognized that the low-fat campaign has been based on little scientific evidence and may have caused unintended health consequences.

 -- from "Types of Dietary Fat and Risk of Coronary Heart Disease: A Critical Review;" Frank B. Hu, Journal of the American College of Nutrition, Vol. 20 (2001)

The evidence against the lipid hypothesis is manifold and conclusive, though there isn't room here to riffle through all the science. But there IS room to write a handy list of some of the facts now known about dietary fats and another list of great resources if you want to learn more about the right kinds of dietary fat. I'm hoping there's enough info here and in the books and links below, that you ditch low- and no-fat foods for good!

Why Low-Fat and Fat-Free Foods Make You Sadder, Fatter, and Less Healthy

 1.    The amount of saturated fat in your diet has little to no bearing your risk of coronary heart disease.
 
2.    There is no direct evidence linking egg consumption (eggs are high in cholesterol) and increased risk of coronary heart disease. In fact, the link between cholesterol intake in the diet and cholesterol in the blood has always been tenuous at best.

3.    Eating more of certain types of fatty acids -- specifically, omega-3 fatty acids -- reduces "coronary and total mortality" in heart patients. That's right: eating more of certain fats decreases risk of heart disease.

4.    Although a major purported benefit of the "fat-free" diet is weight loss, a review of research from the last 30 years failed to turn up any evidence of a connection between low-fat and fat-free foods and weight loss. In fact, the review turned up evidence that replacing fats in the diet with carbohydrates leads to weight gain.

5.    The human brain is about 60 percent fat (every neuron is covered in a protective layer of fat). If we don't get enough of the right kinds of fats, we're not just short-changing our bodies, we're short-changing our brains.
 
6.    Michael Pollan writes in In Defense of Food: "Fats make up the structure of our cell walls, the ratios between the various kinds influencing the permeability of the cells to everything from glucose and hormones to microbes and toxins. Without adequate amounts of fat in the diet, fat soluble vitamins like A and E  can't pass through the intestinal walls."

7.    Refined carbohydrates (which are the primary replacement for fat in low- and no-fat diets), writes Pollan, "interfere with insulin metabolism in ways that increase hunger and promote overeating and fat storage in the body."

(This list culled from "Types of Dietary Fat and Risk of Coronary Heart Disease: A Critical Review;" Frank B. Hu, Journal of the American College of Nutrition, Vol. 20 (2001) and In Defense of Food (Penguin, 2008) by Michael Pollan.)

Experience Life stories on healthy fats:

"Big Fat Controversy" -- Expert fats researcher Dr. Mary Enig offers surprising insider views on good fats, bad fats and the "food police."

"Build a Better Brain" -- Fitness is more than just losing weight and toning up - it's a whole-body pursuit, one that includes tending to the health of one of your most important organs: the brain.

"All About Oils" -- Some fats and oils are good for us - and critically important to our health. Others are just plain bad. And with some fats, it depends. Here's how to make sense of this slippery subject and make the very best choices about what you put into your body.

Good books on dietary fat and the lipid hypothesis:

Good Calories, Bad Calories: Fats, Carbs, and the Controversial Science of Diet and Health by Gary Taubes (Anchor, 2008)

In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan (Penguin, 2008)

Know Your Fats by Mary Enig, PhD (Bethesda Press, 2000)

Real Food: What to Eat and Why by Nina Planck (Bloomsbury, 2006)

Eat, Drink, and Be Healthy by Walter Willett, MD, with Patrick J. Skerrett (Free Press, 2005)

UltraMetabolism: The Simple Plan for Automatic Weight Loss by Mark Hyman, MD (Scribner, 2006)

What to Eat by Marion Nestle (North Point, 2007)

Bent on world destruction? Simply encourage us to keep on eating the way we have been eating in recent decades, writes Sy Safransky, editor of The Sun magazine, one of my favorite periodicals (other than Experience Life, of course!).

It's harsh imagery, but its powerful -- and powerfully motivating.

"Everyone knows that diets don't work -- everyone except the tens of millions of Americans like me who are always dieting. I was eight when I went on my first diet. I lost twenty pounds, then gained it back. More than half a century later, I'm still dieting, still gaining and losing that twenty pounds. Now researchers at Johns Hopkins predict that within ten years 75 percent of adult Americans will be overweight and more than 40 percent will be obese -- with obesity becoming the leading preventable cause of death surpassing alcohol consumption and smoking. If the terrorists were smart, they'd just encourage us to keep eating. Why strap on a suicide vest and blow yourself up when your enemies are already blowing themselves up with artery-clogging pizza and greasy French fries?"
                                                                         -Sy Safransky, The Sun (September, 2008)

As the scary chemicals in makeup and beauty products get more mainstream press, many health-savvy consumers have been switching to natural and mineral makeup alternatives.

Now you can add teenagers to the group. Teens for Safe Cosmetics, a teen-run initiative to eliminate harmful chemicals from makeup and beauty products, has partnered with the ecofabulous blog, to write product reviews for the site. (Click here for a compilation of the teen reviewers' favorite natural products.) Consult this adolescent oracle before Xmas shopping this year. You'll be your teen's favorite parent/aunt/friend for life!

If you or your teenager (or anyone you know) want more information on safe cosmetics, check out The Cosmetics Database, run by the Environmental Working Group. You can search lists and lists of products and find out how they rank on a scale of not-toxic to it's-so-toxic-it-could-make-your-skin fall off. The site has a wealth of information.

And it pays to vet your products with a site like the Cosmetics Database. Labeling guidelines for health and beauty products are basically nonexistent in the US. That might not be such a big deal if the FDA regulated more of the dangerous chemicals. Currently, the FDA bans fewer than 12 chemicals. By comparison, the European Union bans over 1,000.

Sigh.

Starbucks is giving out a free, 12oz cup of brewed coffee to anyone who votes tomorrow. After you vote, take proof of voting (in states without proof of voting, SB is relying on the honor system) to your nearest store and get a caffeine boost for nothing! Hooray for democracy and free coffee!

Last entry, we took a brief peak at the Farm Bill, the sprawling piece of legislation that heavily influences nearly every aspect of current food culture, from what crops get grown and how, to what calories are most available to us, what school children eat at lunch, what pesticides, fertilizers, antibiotics and growth hormones we're exposed to in our food, where our food comes from, and on and on. Pretty much, every bite of food you take has been influenced by the Farm Bill.

Why does all this matter? There are several top reasons:

(1)    Health. The Farm Bill regulates subsidies, which are government-backed financial aid packages for farmers who grow certain crops, namely corn and soybeans. This results in a A LOT of farms growing corn and soybeans. And it's hard to blame them -- growing a subsidized crop is guaranteed money. The big drawbacks are on the consumer side of the equation: because corn and soybeans are what's being grown, corn and soybeans have become the main source of calories in processed foods (and they are not the healthiest calories). Ever wonder why they use corn syrup -- and not plain old sugar -- in most sweetened product? It's because we have so much corn that it's cheaper to turn corn into a sweetener and add it to everything than just use sugar. And that's what's happening to most processed foods: they get bulked up -- or, in other words, made more energy-dense but no more nutritious -- because we have to do something with all our surplus subsidized crops. The result for you? More calories, less nutrition.

 (2)    Environment. Farm policy that encourages farmers to grow just a few main crops also wreaks havoc on the environment. Monoculture crops, or the same crop grown on the same land year after year, depletes the soil of the nutrients required to support that crop. Depleted soil requires loads of fertilizer to sustain that crop, and all that fertilizer then runs off into our lakes and rivers and does a whole host of damage. Each application also increases the soil's dependency on the fertilizer, further weakening and destroying the soil. It's an ugly cycle that pollutes our waterways and ruins or soil. What's more, soil quality directly affects the nutrients in our food: the crappier the soil, the fewer nutrients in the food grown on it. (For more on how soil quality affects nutrition, read this great article in the October issue of EL). In short, monoculture farming damages the environment and robs our food of nutrients.

 (3)    National Security. At first glance, suggesting that the Farm Bill affects National Security might feel like a stretch, but it's not. The two are directly related. The modern American food system is one of the biggest energy gobblers of our time. From powering the large-scale farm equipment used in production to transporting the food across the country (and the world), producing processed-food packaging to keeping giant supermarkets lit and running 24-hours-a-day, much of the food we eat is saturated with oil. In terms of oil consumption, eating large-scale processed foods or an apple shipped here from New Zealand is the culinary equivalent of driving a Hummer. If the Farm Bill promoted growing diverse crops, more types of healthy food could be grown closer to home for all Americans. Food would travel a shorter distance to reach your plate; small farms that rely on less oil-intensive production methods could thrive, and our reliance on foreign countries for simple sustenance would be greatly diminished.

To read more about our oil-drenched food culture, read this eye-opening and absolutely amazing article by food journalist Michael Pollan in last Sunday's New York Times Magazine.

With the presidential election coming up, I'm struck by how little I know about official health policy in the US. Take the Farm Bill, which, many experts have noted, should rightly be called the Food Bill for the manifold ways it affects the food available to us.

Very few people (save for a few legislators from farm-heavy states) know much about the Farm Bill. But we should, say the pros. Prominent food writer and journalist, Michael Pollan, writes in the forward to Daniel Imhoff's Farm Bill primer, Food Fight: The Citizen's Guide to the Food and Farm Bill: "Nothing could do more to reform America's food system, and by doing so, improve the condition of America's environment and public health, than if the rest of us were to weigh in [on the Farm Bill]."

So I've decided it's about time to do my part and learn about the Farm Bill -- and drag you along for the ride. Here's the thing, though: I fear learning about the Farm Bill is going to be a wonky drag. So I think we should create some rules. First, we should break our lesson up into installments. Next, we should keep the installments short. And, finally, we should put the information we talk about in lists (who doesn't love lists? They're cute and friendly, and they make the information contained in them seem real important-like. Ahem.).

Let's get started with some facts about what the Farm Bill is (I'm summarizing this info from Food Fight):

1. The Farm Bill dates back to the Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1933, and it has been renewed every five to seven years since.

2. It is, perhaps, the single most significant piece of legislation effecting land use in the United States.

3. It addresses many issues, but the two biggest are: (1) food stamps and nutrition programs and (2) crop subsidies.

4. The other issues it addresses are many -- and they vary widely, from trade policy to foreign aid to forestry (to name only a very few). And Congress prefers it that way because the more they stuff into one single bill, the more incomprehensible the bill becomes -- and the less apt the general public is to understand, and try to influence, the bill. (How shameless! I feel so used!)

5. The Farm Bill's original goals were noble indeed: they sought to provide a safety net for a fickle profession (farming) and for a vulnerable public (impoverished children and adults who did not otherwise have access to enough calories to sustain themselves). But...

6. Something happened along the way and now, instead of bolstering the health of family farms and meeting the nutritional needs of underprivileged children, the Farm Bill subsidizes the richest 5 percent of corporate farms and promotes the creation of surplus commodity crops, which, more often than not, get turned into cheap, processed foods that contribute to our collective, national weight gain and ill-health.

Okay, that's a good start. Tune in for our next exciting installment: Why the Farm Bill matters. (I know you're holding your breath in anticipation!!)