Jonny Bowden's Blog, page 27

Sweeteners: The Good, The Bad, and The Truly Disgusting

Here’s the dirt on artificial sweeteners. Whether we’re talking about forms of aspartame (Equal and Nutrasweet) or saccharin (Sweet ’n Low, Splenda, or sucralose), they are all chemicals, and none of them are good for you.

Aspartame is made up of three components—phenylalanine, aspartic acid, and methanol. According to board-certified internist H.L. Roberts, MD,  when aspartame is exposed to heat (i.e. cases of diet soda sitting in your garage, or in warehouse during the summer), it breaks down into metabolites, the effects of which are basically unknown. Neurosurgeon Russell Blaylock, MD goes even further, calling aspartame a “neurotoxin” in his book, Excitotoxins.

Metabolically, excessive amounts of a substance called phenylalanine, found in many artificially flavored foods and drinks, can also greatly affect mood by causing a decrease in the levels of the mood regulator serotonin. As a result, carbohydrate cravings go up and the thought of a successful diet goes out the window.

Some researchers speculate that artificial sweeteners “trick” the brain into thinking something with calories is coming, and when it doesn’t, appetite and cravings get deregulated. This might partially explain why, in a number of studies, there is a positive relationship between the risk for obesity and the consumption of diet soda.

My advice: banish artificial sweeteners from your diet if you possibly can. You could switch to xylitol, (also known as birch sugar) an FDA-approved natural sweetener, which is classified as a sugar alcohol. It has no undesirable side effects, is associated with less cavities, and doesn’t do anything bad to your blood sugar balance (it scores a low 7 on a glycemic index scale of 100, so it’s ideal for people with both diabetes and a sweet tooth). It also doesn’t sabotage your mood and energy levels.

You could also try stevia, a South American herb, (perfectly healthy with a slight licorice aftertaste), erythritol (sold as TruVia) and Lo Han. None of these will raise your blood sugar.

If you don’t have a problem with blood sugar or insulin and are just looking for a healthy alternative to sugar, I’m a big fan of blackstrap molasses, which is a real food with actual nutrients (like iron). And some cold-pressed, raw organic honey is always nice although your body still treats it as a sugar.

Of course, you probably already know what I think of agave syrup. (A hint is in the title of this piece: truly disgusting.) It’s a complete lie that agave syrup is a healthy alternative to anything. It’s nothing more than super-high fructose corn syrup. Unless you’re using just a tiny amount for the sake of a recipe, stay away.

There is no reason to resort to unhealthy, risky artificial sweeteners or garbage versions of sugar, when there are so many better options available. Once you make the switch, you’ll have a hard time tolerating the aftertaste of the artificial, toxic substances.

Artificial Sweeteners versus Natural Sweeteners

The following is an excerpt from The Healthiest Meals on Earth: The Surprising, Unbiased Truth about What Meals to Eat and Why

Here’s the dirt on artificial sweeteners. Whether we’re talking about forms of aspartame (Equal and Nutrasweet) or saccharin (Sweet ’n Low, Splenda, or sucralose), they are all chemicals, they are all toxic the body, and they are all unhealthy.

Aspartame is made up of three chemicals that when ingested and heated up in the body become toxic substances that have been linked to some cancers and the production of neurotoxins.

Saccharin, which has been around for more than 100 years, is 300 times sweeter than sugar with a noticeable aftertaste.

Metabolically, excessive amounts of a substance called phenylalanine, found in artificially flavored foods and drinks, can also greatly affect mood by causing a decrease in the levels of the mood regulator serotonin. As a result, carbohydrate cravings go up and the thought of a successful diet goes out the window. Artificial sweeteners, therefore, can sometimes contribute to compulsive eating instead of controlling overeating. In face, in one study at the University of Texas, the risk of obesity increased 41 percent for every can of diet soda consumed.

Banish artificial sweeteners from your diet if you possibly can. Switch to xylitol, an FDA-approved natural sweetener, which is also known as birch sugar and classified as a sugar alcohol. It does not carry any undesirable side effects, does not alter blood sugar balance (it scores a low 7 on a glycemic index scale of 100, so it’s ideal for people with both diabetes and a sweet tooth), and does not sabotage your mood and energy levels. Other natural sweeteners are stevia, a South American herb, honey, and Lo Han.

There is no reason to resort to unhealthy, risky artificial sweeteners when there are other natural, better options available. Once you make the switch, you’ll have a hard time tolerating the aftertaste of the artificial, toxic substances.

The Top Ten Ways to Cut Back on Sugar

Tattoo this under your eyelids: Sugar turns to fat.

Not only that, research in the past decade has implicated sugar in cancer, gout, diabetes, obesity, and heart disease.

Sugar is inflammatory, and inflammation is now believed (correctly) to be at the heart of every degenerative disease we know of.

And it’s no longer even possible to defend the idea that sugar isn’t a drug. It is—and an addictive one at that. (Maybe you’ve noticed.) A number of peer-reviewed studies have demonstrated the addictive nature of sugar—in one study, it was shown to be eight times more addictive than cocaine.

What to do, what to do?

Here’s a list of ten things you can do right now to cut back on sugar. It’s not a complete list, but it’s a good start. (If you’ve got your own favorite ways to cut back or eliminate, please share them with me!)

Don’t add it to foods. This is the easiest and most basic way to immediately reduce the amount of sugar you’re eating. Biggest targets: cereal, coffee, and tea
Don’t be fooled by “healthy sugar” disguises. Brown sugar, turbinado sugar, raw sugar, agave nectar, brown rice syrup—it’s all the same thing as far as your body is concerned. Don’t kid yourself.
Reduce or eliminate processed carbohydrates. Most processed carbs—breads, bagels, pastas, snacks, crackers, cereals—are loaded with flour and other ingredients that convert to sugar in the body in a New York minute. That sugar gets stored as triglycerides, a fancy way of saying “fat”.
Watch out for “fat-free” snacks. The whole “fat-free” concept is just stupid beyond words, but one of the many reasons it’s been so destructive to our health is that most fat-free snacks are loaded with sugar. Read the label. You’ll be disgusted.
Shop for color. The more your grocery basket looks like a cornucopia of color, the better. It usually means you’re getting more fresh vegetables and low-glycemic fruits such as berries, cherries and apples.
Become a food detective. My friend, nutritionist Ann Louise Gittleman, says that “to reduce sugar, you have to know where it is”. She’s right. Start reading labels!
Beware of artificial sweeteners. Unfortunately, artificial sweeteners can increase cravings for sugar and carbohydrates. They can also deplete the body’s stores of chromium, a nutrient crucial for blood-sugar metabolism.
Do the math. Look at the label where it says “total sugars” and divide the by four, since there are four grams of sugar per teaspoon. The number you wind up with is the number of teaspoons of sugar you’re ingesting, and that’s just “per serving”! Want a laugh? Read the “serving size”—most “servings” have nothing to do with what normal people eat. This exercise alone should scare the pants off you.
Limit fruit and add more vegetables. (Notice I didn’t say ‘eliminate’ fruit, though those with the most amount of weight to lose might want to do just that—at least for a while.) Fruit has fiber and nutrients, but it’s also loaded with fructose. Don’t overdo it. For weight loss purposes, I’d keep fruit to two portions a day max, and make those low-glycemic (apples, cherries, berries, grapefruit).
Dump the fruit juice. Whoever sold parents on the idea that apple juice is a healthy drink for kids should be sentenced to a lifetime of community service, preferably hauling vending machines out of our schools. Pure juice is a pure sugar hit, and there’s no place for it in the diet of your kids. There are benefits to unsweetened juices like pomegranate and cranberry, but dilute them with water and use intelligently.

It may not be possible for you to completely eliminate sugar from your diet—and you may not even want to.

But to the extent that you can, you’ll be doing yourself—and your heatlh—a great service.

Which Diet Is Better for Weight Loss, Low-Carb or Low-Fat?

The following is a guest blog from my friend, Steven Masley, MD, CNS, star of PBS television and author of the best-selling book, “The 30-Day Heart Tune-Up”.

 

Which Diet Is Better for Weight Loss, Low-Carb or Low-Fat?

By Steven Masley, MD, FAHA, FACN, FAAFP, CNS

The news media has highlighted a fascinating study published in the Annals of Internal Medicine that compared Low-Carb with Low-Fat Diets. It is terrific that they measured weight loss and cardiovascular risk factors. Of course, the media only got the message half right.

Before you hear the results, you need to understand what the people in the study actually did, something the media failed to understand.

The investigators randomized 148 obese men and women to follow two diets:

Diet #1: Less carb, higher fat, higher protein 

These subjects increased fat intake from 34% of calories to 40% of calories and increased their protein from 17% of calories to 24% of calories. They were supposed to increase their fiber, but didn’t (their fiber intake stayed the same). The biggest increase in fat was from nuts and olive oil (monounsaturated fat), and they were asked to eliminate hydrogenated fat. They were also given shakes to help them follow the plan.

Diet #2: Less fat, higher carbs, same protein

These subjects decreased their fat intake from 34% to 28-30% (not really low fat enough to be a low-low fat diet), and increased their carb intake from 46% to 54% of calories. They didn’t increase their fiber (they were asked to, but it stayed the same) instead, they added more starch (potatoes, white bread, white rice and pasta).

Both groups were asked to not change their activity and they were given meal plans to reduce their calorie intake and lose weight.

The low-carb, higher fat, higher protein group dropped fromm eating 2000 calories per day to only 1200-1400 calories per day for 12 months. They lost 12 pounds in the first 3 months, and then their weight stayed the same for the rest of the year. Their cholesterol profile improved nicely.

The higher refined carb, lower fat, same protein group dropped form eating 2000 calories per day to only 1400-1500 calories per day for 12 months. They lost 5 pounds in the first 3 months, and then gained half that weight back over the rest of the year, and their cholesterol profile worsened.

What did this study really show?

When you look at the real results, you can see that eating more “healthy” fat, more protein, and less refined carbs (less potatoes, rice, bread, and pasta) helped people lose weight and improve their cholesterol profile. They were also given a shake a day to help change their eating habits.

Asking people to eat less fat and more refined carbs (sugar and starch) without fiber isn’t very effective for weight loss and increases your risk for heart problems

The bottom line from this study is that you should eat more “healthy” fat and protein, and less refined carbs.

I suspect the reason the subjects in the higher refined carb diet gained their weight back despite following the low calorie intake, is that without extra protein, their metabolic rate (calorie burn rate) decreased. Adding more protein to the low-carb, higher fat plan boosts calorie burn and was a smart idea!

Notice that the people in this study were obese, yet they only lost 12 pounds. They likely would have lost twice as much weight if they had added more FIBER (fiber makes you full and satisfied and improves your cholesterol profile), but the fiber must come from eating more vegetables, beans, nuts, and fruits–not from eating more flour!

If they had added more activity, they would have kept losing weight after 12 months and their cholesterol profile would have looked even better. So unlike the results in this study,  the ideal plan would have been more “healthy” fat and protein, less refined carbs, more fiber, and more activity.

I wish you the best of health!

Steven Masley, MD, FAHA, FACN, FAAFP, CNS

Chocolate Peanut Butter Protein-Power Milkshakes

Here’s a great way to make a milkshake healthier: Use frozen yogurt and real peanut butter. The classic milkshake is really high in calories because of the premium ice cream and chocolate syrup. No one loves ice cream more than I do, but in combination with pure chocolate syrup, it is lethal from a sugar and calorie point of view. Frozen yogurt lowers the calories and using real peanut butter is an inspired touch, adding healthy fat, some protein, and a ton of flavor without breaking the calorie bank. (And with lots less sugar than the “classic” version.) The added nuts and protein powder will not only lower the glycemic impact (the impact on your blood sugar) but will also beef up the protein and keep you satisfied much longer.

Ingredients

8 small high-quality, all-natural chocolate cookie snaps (such as MI-DEL)

1 pint vanilla frozen yogurt

2 scoops unsweetened, indentured vanilla whey protein powder, softened

3 tablespoons (48 g) natural peanut butter, no added sugar

3/4 cup (175 ml) milk (cow’s milk, unsweetened vanilla soy or almond)

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Instructions

Crush the cookies into small pieces in a resealable bag with a rolling pin or in a food processor. Add the crushed cookies, frozen yogurt, protein powder, peanut butter, milk, and vanilla to a high-powered blender and blend until mostly smooth.

Yield: 4 servings

You Put What In That Recipe??

Occasionally a reader will politely question me about the inclusion of a particular ingredient in one of my recipes. She might wonder why I include agave nectar, a substance I have frequently said is no better than high fructose corn syrup. (It’s not.) Or asked me why another recipe might include honey. Or why I am even posting recipes for things like muesli in the first place, given that I’m no fan of American breakfast cereals (muesli is a traditional Swiss breakfast, but you get the point).

Sometimes the inquiries are not so polite. I’ve been accused of nutritional heresy, of straying from the straight and narrow, of being a traitor to the “cause”.

So here’s the deal.

I’ve now worked on about seven cookbooks containing a total of probably over 600 recipes, and I can tell you that on occasion, you throw in an ingredient because the recipe will simply not work without it.

Take the aforementioned agave. While I think agave nectar is nothing more than sugar masquerading as a health food, I have occasionally allowed recipe developers to use a drop of it here and there in some of our cookbooks because it was simply impossible to make a dessert that anyone will eat without SOME sweetener.

So you make a judgment call. If the price of getting someone to eat brownies made with garbanzo beans– brownies that have over 5 grams of fiber per serving and a ton of antioxidants– is a very small amount of an ingredient I’m not crazy about, so be it. I think it’s a fair bargain. If you have 9 ingredients with enormous health benefits and adding a spoonful of one not-so-terrific ingredient makes the other 9 palatable, on balance, you’ve got yourself a good nutritional deal.

Remember that each recipe is NOT perfect for every person on the planet. If you’re completely avoiding grains, you won’t want the recipes that have them. If you’re completely avoiding dairy, ditto for the recipes that have a bit of dairy. I’m fully aware that each recipe won’t be suited to every diet. These dishes weren’t meant to be all things to all people. They were meant to be used and enjoyed by the people who can use them, and left alone by those who can’t.

Occasionally a recipe has been questioned because of glycemic index concerns. But remember that both glycemic index and glycemic load reflect only the impact of a food eaten by itself. That impact can change significantly when you combine the food (or ingredient) with other ingredients. Even pure glucose with an index of 100 wouldn’t raise your blood sugar much if you used a teaspoon of it mixed with plenty of high fiber foods (i.e. if you put it in a sauce and used a small amount of the sauce on a heaping plateful of broccoli, Brussels sprouts and spinach).

Finally, let’s address the whole “purist” thing. I am not—and never have been—a purist, a fanatic, or a true believer when it comes to a particular nutritional “path”. I think there’s far too much “partisanship” going on both in politics and in nutrition (which resembles politics much more than people realize). I don’t slavishly follow any diet or any dietary prescription, either in my own life or in my recommendations. My main principle is just to use and recommend REAL food, at least when it’s at all possible.

I also live in the real world where the biggest challenge is to get people who are eating terribly to start to eat better, and the only way you can do that is to make things taste good. AND you also have to sometimes come up with healthier versions of foods that people are already used to—that’s why it’s so easy to get people to try things like brownies and muesli and so hard to get them to try sea urchin.

In that spirit, I hope you will enjoy the recipes that work for your dietary restrictions, and let others enjoy the ones that work for theirs.

My Video Interview With Steven Masley

The following is a short discussion i had about high fat diets with my friend Steven Masley, MD, CNS, star of  PBS television and author of The 30-Day Heart Tune-Up.

Dr. Masley and I had just come from the annual meeting of the American College of Nutrition in San Antonio, where we heard a lecture on high-fat diets for athletes and “regular” people. I asked Steve what he thought of the lecture…. listen to this, it’s pretty cool.

Health Giving Hollandaise Sauce

There’s nothing better than homemade healthy hollandaise that’s not only super simple to make, but packed full of goodness and fantastic flavor. This one is loaded with protein and healthy fats that most store-bought brands are devoid of and that usually contains inferior, genetically modified oils such a soybean or vegetable oil.

 

Ingredients:

3 egg yolks

2 tablespoons (28ml) filtered water

3/4 cup (165 g) of grass fed unsalted butter, cubed

2 tablespoons (28 ml) fresh lemon juice

1/4 teaspoon of salt, Celtic or sea

Dash of black pepper

 

Instructions:

Place a heatproof bowl over a medium-size saucepan filled a quarter of the way with hot, but not boiling water and maintain a temperature at a simmer. Put the egg yolks and water into the bowl and whisk for about 3 minutes, or until the mixture thickens and has doubled in volume. Add the butter, one cube at a time, ensuring each cube has fully melted before adding the next. This will take approximately 10 minutes. Whisk constantly until  sauce thickens and then remove from heat. Whisk in Lemon juice, salt, and pepper. Feel free to use electric whisk to speed up the process and reduce time. Serve immediately. The sauce is best used soon after making it and does not keep well in refrigerator.

Yeald: About 1 cup

Note: include this hollandaise over your favorite egg dishes, such as eggs Benedict, or over fresh, steamed asparagus, spinach, kale, broccoli, or cauliflower.

Health giving hollandaise sauce

There’s nothing better than homemade healthy hollandaise that’s not only supersimple to make but packed full of goodness and fantastic flavor. This one is loaded with protein and healthy fats that most store-bought brands are devoid of and that usually contains inferior, genetically modified oils such a soybean or vegetable oil.

 

Ingredients:

3 egg yolks

2 tablespoons (28ml) filtered water

3/4 cup (165 g) of grass fed unsalted butter, cubed

2 tablespoons (28 ml) fresh lemon juice

1/4 teaspoon of salt, Celtic or sea

Dash of black pepper

 

Instructions:

Place a heatproof bowl over a medium-size saucepan filled a quarter of the way with hot, but not boiling water and maintain a temperature at a simmer. Put the egg yolks and water into the bowl and whisk for about 3 minutes, or until the mixture thickens and has doubled in volume. Add the butter, one cube at a time, ensuring each cube has fully melted before adding the next. This will take approximately 10 minutes. Whisk constantly until  sauce thickens and then remove from heat. Whisk in Lemon juice, salt, and pepper. Feel free to use electric whisk to speed up the process and reduce time. Serve immediately. The sauce is best used soon after making it and does not keep well in refrigerator.

Yeald: About 1 cup

Note: include this hollandaise over your favorite egg dishes, such as eggs Benedict, or over fresh, steamed asparagus, spinach, kale, broccoli, or cauliflower.

What Can We Learn About Saturated Fat from Home Depot?

I’m attending the annual American College of Nutrition conference, and I’m listening to a lecture by one of the leading researchers on low-carb diets, Professor Jeff Volek, RD, PhD— and suddenly, I’m thinking about paint.

Yes. Paint. The kind you get at Home Depot.

See, Volek was making the case—supported by a ton of published research—that the effect of dietary saturated fat in your body is almost completely dependent on what it’s eaten with.

And the best example of that is mixing paint.

See, the color white produces a certain result when you mix it with black, a different result when you mix it with blue, and an entirely different result when you mix it with yellow.

And so it is with saturated fat.

As Volek explained, saturated fat in the context of a low carb diet, is a wonderful source of fuel and the body will be delighted to use it as such. Mix that saturated fat with sugar and carbs—i.e. the typical American diet—and all bets are off.

Here’s why: There is an association between saturated fat and an increased risk for some diseases—but the association isn’t with saturated fat in the diet. It’s with saturated fat in the blood.

If that seems like a minor distinction to you, let me explain why it’s anything but minor.

The saturated fat you eat has very little effect on your blood levels. (In this way, it’s similar to dietary cholesterol which has practically no effect on the blood levels of cholesterol that your doctor measures.) Eating a lot of saturated fat doesn’t drive up your blood levels of saturated fat, just as eating eggs doesn’t drive up your LDL. And cutting back on saturated fat doesn’t drive your blood levels down.

What sends your blood levels of saturated fat skyward is…. the sugar you eat with it. Or the starch, or the processed carbs, or whatever else drives your blood sugar up through the roof. Therefore, as researchers writing in the Netherlands Journal of Medicine pointed out, the best way to lower saturated fat in the bloodstream is to lower sugar in the diet.

If you’re eating a ketogenic diet—or a very low carb diet that keeps you “flirting” with ketosis—saturated fat is going to have absolutely no negative effects on your health. In fact, the absolute worst thing you could say about saturated fat is that it’s neutral—essentially harmless. Unlike olive oil or fish oil, saturated fat doesn’t have a resume of studies saying we should eat more of it—but, contrary to popular belief, the research does not support that we should eat less of it.

We have much more important dietary challenges to be concerned with than reducing our intake of saturated fat. In fact, one major study at Harvard showed that swapping saturated fat for the almighty carbohydrate actually increased the risk for heart disease!

The only concern I have about saturated fat from animal products has nothing to do with the fat being saturated. It has to do with the quality- or lack of quality—in factory farmed meat. Fat tissue in mammals is like a safe house for toxins. We store all the crap we’re exposed to—from hormones to pesticides to environmental poisons—right there in our fat cells, and that’s true for cows and humans. So when you eat fat from toxic, factory farmed animals, you’re consuming those toxins.

And therein lies the problem.

It has nothing to do with the fat. If a crop of broccoli was contaminated with e. coli would you think broccoli was unhealthy? The only thing that makes animal fats “unhealthy” is the stuff the animals are exposed to if they’re factory farmed. No one has the slightest thing to fear from saturated fat that comes from grass-fed animals.

My opinion: Concentrate on getting a lot of great fat from omega-3’s, omega-9’s (olive oil), a tiny bit of cold-pressed omega-6, vegetable saturates like coconut oil (I like Barlean’s) and palm oil (I like the sustainable kind that comes from Malaysia).

And for goodness sake, stop worrying about saturated fat.

If you’re inclined to worry about your food and the food you feed your family, you’d be better advised to focus on the foods that really rob you of your health: high glycemic, processed carbohydates.

The very same foods that make us fat, sick, tired, and depressed.