another form of environmental pollution, are prius drivers aware of these facts?

Compared to who? The plains Indians of 100 years ago? The Inuit? Pre-20th century Americans? The anecdotal evidence suggests that we (Americans and the English) ate a lot more meat during the 19th century than we do now. The plains Indians (before they were screwed over by us) and the Inuit ate/eat meat almost exclusively. The Inuit diet is about 5% carbs. No scurvy, not diabetes, very low heart disease and cancer.

 

And how does our average lifespan compare to pre-20th century "Americans"?

I am neither Inuit, Native American nor English. Genetically I am not predisposed to be able to eat an Inuit diet without medical consequences.

I'd say most Americans of European descent could get by with less red meat without any medical consequences.

Starting a meal with a bowl of soup and a fresh salad could cut the size of that steak in half when the entree came. If that steak came with a baked potato instead of fries you'd be doing even better. (Sans sour cream of course.) Do like they do in Italy and add a pasta course before the steak arrives and it can be even smaller. Then you wouldn't need to eat a steak bigger than your foot.

 

The problem does not appear to be a nutritional composition. It appears to be a Western diet of processed food, the ever present high fructose corn syrup and meat coming from cows fed corn (cows eat grass remember?) that is the problem.

We have to stop thinking in terms of nutrients (stating carbs) and thinking more in terms of food. Thus the mantra of Michael Pollan's new book "in defense of food":

Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.

Damn. Flavor blasted goldfish are not food...

 

That's precisely what it is.

Which explains why American beef is devoid of Omega3 fatty acids, if I recall. It's also the main reason that, as Dave pointed out earlier, that beef is soaked in hydrocarbons.

I don't have a problem with that. But I'd say, eat whole foods. Eat what you need to. The problem of course is that refined carbohydrates are ubiquitous in our society. Even a lot of products marked as "whole wheat" aren't really. There's a lot of misleading labeling out there and it's very hard to know sometimes. That's the beauty of whole foods. You can't fake pinto beans.

What are you basing that statement on? What medical consequences are you thinking of? Heart disease? High cholesterol? You're cholesterol would be higher, but your triglycerides would be lower. Your HDL would be higher too. Total cholesterol, BTW, is not a risk factor for heart disease. LDL is a marginal risk factor, but it depends on the kind of LDL. If you have high triglycerides, then you most likely have the bad form of LDL. If not, the LDL in your blood is not likely to cause atherosclerosis.

Absolutely, I'm just saying it's not the demon that it's made out to be. However, if you're replacing the meat calories with refined carbs then you're asking for trouble.

You know the answer to that, but it's not a relevant question. A better question might be "what percentage of Americans die of cancer, diabetes, and heart disease now as compared to the 19th century?" In that case the answer is "substantially more". Type 2 diabetes, for example, is WAY WAY WAY more common now that it was 130 years ago. Obesity is also way up and it's not because people worked harder and exercised more (the theory that obesity is caused by overeating and under exercising is not supported by the scientific evidence). It's because they didn't eat refined carbohydrates.

 

Nix the fries for sure. No potato either. The salad's good. Pasta bad. The sour cream is indifferent, though you could make the argument that if it's got casein in it you're better off skipping it.

The research (dating back decades) suggests that minimizing insulin response and blood sugar levels will reduce your risk of a host of chronic diseases. Of course, that goes against the conventional wisdom, but the data do not support the conventional wisdom.

 

I'm talking about modifying a typical American restaurant dinner to a European restaurant dinner.

That means reducing a 16 oz (or more) steak with fries to a dinner that is healthier and still filling.

Most restaurants offer soup OR salad. And really *bad* for your appetizers.

Soup
Salad
(If you're a really big eater insert spaghetti here)
4-6 oz steak with plain baked potato and vegetable
Fruit for dessert.

The soup and salad would replace the fried Mozzarella or equivalent appetizer. The steak would be smaller. Pasta would be added for the big eaters. And the fruit would replace the double chocolate cake or cheesecake.
My family just had dinner at Claim Jumper. Three people ordered the chicken fried steak. The steak covered the plate which was the size of a serving platter, was covered in gravy and there was a huge mound of mashed potatoes. I ordered shrimp and had them substitute rice for the fries. They ordered different two appetizers involving a lot of frying. I had a small salad.

 

White rice isn't much better than french fries. You avoid the transfat, which is good, but otherwise you're just spiking your insulin and triglycerides. I completely agree that the typcial fare is lousy. It's fried (transfats) and/or filled with refined carbs. Mashed potatoes are in the same category as white rice. The pasta that you get at a typcial restaurant is the same. Getting the sour creame on the potato isn't a bad thing. Esp if you'd have eaten pasta or a sugary dessert in place of it. The potato itself is worse for you than the sour creame.

The trick is that the massive steak isn't a bad thing from a nutritional stand point. It IS from a enviromental standpoint, but that's down to the nature of the industrial agriculture that we've created. Grassfed cattle ought to be the norm, but given the massive subsidies that we have for corn, it's hard to see the return of it on a large scale in the near future.

My point with all of this is that simple being "vegan" or "vegetarian" doesn't make you healthier than and omnivour or a carnivor. Saturated fat is not the culprit. There are no studies that have been done over the past 100 years that implicate it. There are numerous studies that show that a diet high in carbs and low in fat cause the diseases of diabetes, heart disease, and obesity. Yes, it's possible to live a healthy life as a vegetarian. It's also possible to live a healthy life as a meat-o-saur. The thrust of this thread is (just like the very long thread that Ray Vynn started a couple of months ago) that the meat rich diet consumes large amounts of energy. That's abolutely true, at least as it stands right now. However, there are pitfalls that people must be aware of when pursuing any particular diet. There are many, many misconceptions about what's healthy and whats not and that's true of nutrition practitioners as well as joe 6-pack.

 

That sounds quite plausible and I was ready to believe it, since you'd be pulsing the insulin system with the carbs. Sounds stressful. However when I looked for the studies, I didn't find support for that. Almost the opposite.

This 2006 summary article from the American Diabetes Association says that there is insufficient evidence that a low glycemic diet will reduce the risk for diabetes:

They recommend that saturated fatty acids make up less than 7% of the energy in the diet. They do not recommend a low carbohydrate diet, due to the danger of losing important nutrients in the process.

The main ways, they say, to reduce the risk of diabetes are exercising frequently and not being overweight, getting plenty of dietary fiber and whole grains, and, interestingly, moderate alcohol intake. Though the report stopped short of actually recommending the last one. (I guess they figured no one needed to be told to do that.)

Of course, those are the ways to reduce the risk of most any ailment.

 

I strongly urge picking Michael Pollan's latest book: "In defense of food". I am a scientist and usually a complete reductionist. However, I recognize when the system is too complex to make sense of reductionistic claims.

The point is to go back to thinking about food as fish, meat and vegetables. As opposed to protein, fat and carbs. Hence, good healthy habits become: Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.

This last statement if you allow me to be reductionistic for a moment, lowers the consumption of high fructose corn syrup, prevents obesity, promotes a balanced diet and is good for the environment. High fructose corn syrup is the one inescapable toxin of the western diet that can be linked to diabetes and obesity.

Do you know what is the one dietary modification that has been shown without a doubt to extend a healthier life? Dietary restriction.

So forget about carbs and fats, omega fatty acids and such. Eat food! Not too much...

 

comparing lifespans from one time to another, diet would not be considered. medical advances has increased lifespans of the less healthy by as much as 20 years.

diseases you died of in your late 40's now can be controlled thru medication NOT diet...

 

There is a new book out by Dr. Gabriel Cousens called "There is a Cure for Diabetes".

He introduces a fairly new food measure called the "insulin index", which he uses in addition to the more familiar "glycemic index".

It turns out that meats are high on the insulin index, and this is a problem for diabetics. So in addition to avoiding highly processed carbs, they can benefit by avoiding animal foods. I think cheese was even higher than beef on the insulin index.

I'm only about a third into the book, so most of what I've read is a description of the problem. But I've heard Dr. Cousens talk several times, and the diet he uses is based on unprocessed plant foods.

Among his claims is that his treatments convert diabetics with blood sugars that vary wildly from over 400, into non-diabetics with stable blood sugars under 100. He even has one patient who was diagnosed as type-1, and has now been entirely off insulin for two years.

It's refreshing to read a diet book that isn't "pre-compromised". Many authors know the science, but water it down to make a more widely acceptable book. This book tells it like it is, and leaves any compromises to the reader. Good stuff to know even if you're not diabetic.

 

That doesn't jibe with the majority of the research. It also doesn't jibe with anecdotal evidence. Consider a variety of people from around the globe that consume diets very high in meat (Inuit, Plains Indians, etc etc). None of these populations showed diabetes UNTIL they started eating diets high in carbs and in particular high in refined carbs. In fact, if meat caused an insulin reaction these people would suffer from hypoinsulemia and, certainly in the case of the Inuit, would suffer from scurvy (the Inuit and many people who've lived among them eat nothing but meat) because insulin severely inhibits the body's ability to process Vitamin C. Based on that, I don't alone, I don't see how meat consumption alone can be associated with high insulin levels.

It flies in the face of studies that show that insulin level decline on low carb diets. This has been show again and again, despite the reserchers often trying to show that a high fat diet causes heart disease and related health problems like diabetes.

If you're interested in the subject, read "Good Calories, Bad Calories", it's a fascinating book by a fellow who writes for Science.

 

Read "Good Calories, Bad Calories". It's a book by a fellow named Gary Taubes, who writes for Science. He's not a health practitioner. What he's done is a massive review of the science that's been published over the last 100+ years on the subject. It's very, very interesting and frustrating.

The upshot is that there are numerous studies. Many of the studies that the ADA and AHA used to support their claims are NOT good science, don't control for sugar, and are not even conclusive considering those flaws.

 

Do they enumerate which nutrients? I'm assuming they're talking about dietary glucose because they're assuming that you need at least 130 calories from carbs to maintain brain function. This is actually a false assumption, keytosis can provide the necessary sugars. They don't have to come from dietary glucose. Experiments and anecdotal evidence has shown this to be true.

 

Except for the caveats... If you're on a "balanced" diet you'll be hungry most of the time. You'll also have less energy, run the risk of being depressed... You can circumvent that by doing a restricted carb, high protein - high fat diet. There have been numerous studies done (most of them are old now, having been done before 1970) that bear this out.

 

I see. So your source is a journalist. I hope you'll forgive me if I remain somewhat skeptical.

Nevertheless, I ordered the book and will read it.

 

Dr. Cousens' reference for insulin index is Holt, Miller, and Petocz, "An insulin index of foods: the insulin demand generated by 1000-kj portions of common foods." Am J Clin Nutr, 1997, 66:1264-1276

Quoting from Dr. Cousins' book,

Holt and her colleagues have noted that glucose and insulin scores are mostly highly correlated, but high-protein foods and bakery products (rich in fat and refined carbohydrates) "elicit insulin responses that were disproportionately higher than their glycemic responses."​

The book has about 38 pages of references to the medical literature. This one seems the most specific to the issue of insulin index.

The issue of Eskimos who ate high amounts of raw blubber not developing any significant heart disease or morbidity is covered briefly in the book. When they converted to a more modern diet including cooked blubber, white sugar, and white flour, there was an increase in Type-2 diabetes. So I guess fresh raw whale blubber is ok. Enjoy.

The issue of highly processed carbs is real. The problem is that dealing just with carbs is not enough to reverse diabetes. I counted about 20 items that must be addressed in order to get Dr. Cousens' results. Foods must be low glycemic, low insulin index, high enzyme, moderate vegetable fat, low toxin, non-irradiated, and a few more I haven't read about yet.

 

Taubes is a science writer...a first rate one who does his homework. Journalist would be the wrong label. His book "Bad Science" about the cold fusion mania is the best book describing that fiasco.

 

The Inuit diet (at the time of the study, which was in the 1910's) consisted of 70% Caribou, 15% fish, 10% seal, 5% Polar Bear, rabbit, etc. They generally cooked their food, though eating raw, uncooked food was not altogether rare.

So, this guy needs to show (and perhaps he has) that eating cooked meat increases insulin. Does he explain why this happens? What is the mechanism at work that causes cooked meat, by itself, not accompanied by refined carbohydrates, that causes increased insulin. This is counter what many other experiments have measured, so it needs to be investigated. Does he go into that in any detail?

FL_Prius_Driver, it's a brilliant book. He could have easily called it "Bad Science 2" because that's what he is describing. There are over 100 pages of notes at the back of the book. It's a very thorough, well written piece of writing.

 

I get the newsletter Nutrition Action. It is a nice and easy read.

Nutrition Action Healthletter

I really like the "Food Porn" section.