Harvard says NO to Dairy

You all know my feelings on milk and dairy produce, I've written many times about the dangers of milk and dairy products in a diet, and now it seems Harvard is doing the same.  You have also heard me talk about the dangers of the government food pyramids and plates that are supposed to give guidelines on healthy eating... if we all followed their advice we'd all by overweight.

The Harvard School of Public Health has released its Healthy Eating Plate food guide.  This new guide has been published in response to the USDA's new MyPlate Guide.

Harvard's nutrition experts have declared that the university's food guide is based on sound nutrition research and more importantly is NOT influenced by food industry lobbyists.

The most gratifying news is that there is a clear absence of dairy products from the Healthy Eating Plate, based on Harvard's evaluation that:

"high intake can increase the risk of prostate cancer and possibly ovarian cancer."

The experts at Harvard also referred to the high levels of saturated fat in dairy produce and suggested that other foods such as bok choy, fortified soy milk (organic) and baked beans (beware of sugar content) are safer choices than dairy for obtaining calcium, as are high quality supplements.

Harvard also promotes a higher intake of fruits and vegetables as well as healthier protein options such as fish, beans or nuts.

I have to congratulate the Harvard experts for going against the food industry lobbyists and proving to the USDA what healthy eating is really about.

However, it is blatantly clear that we need to get our calcium from somewhere.  It is impossible to get calcium from milk for one simple reason; when you drink milk or milk products it causes acidity in the body.  The human body needs and alkaline environment to function correctly, so when the acidity level rises, the body leeches calcium from the bones to bring the acidity level down.

Other Calcium rich foods are:

1. White beans
2. Canned salmon
3. Sardines
4. Dried figs
5. Bok choy
6. Kale
7. Black eyed peas
8. Raw Almonds
9. Oranges
10. Any green leafy vegetable and Broccoli. 

Social Nutrition:  You can make an appointment to improve your health with Social Nutrition either in person (Madrid) or online (Skype).  Just send an email to lucycarr@socialnutrition.com

Does your child have a weight problem?

According to the World Health Organization website:

Childhood obesity is one of the most serious public health challenges of the 21st century. The problem is global and is steadily affecting many low- and middle-income countries, particularly in urban settings. The prevalence has increased at an alarming rate. Globally, in 2010 the number of overweight children under the age of five, is estimated to be over 42 million. Close to 35 million of these are living in developing countries.

Overweight and obese children are likely to stay obese into adulthood and more likely to develop noncommunicable diseases like diabetes and cardiovascular diseases at a younger age. Overweight and obesity, as well as their related diseases, are largely preventable. Prevention of childhood obesity therefore needs high priority.

However, as worrying as this is... it gets worse.

Researchers at Imperial College London found that three quarters of parents with fat children are in denial about their child's weight, claiming that 77% of parents with overweight children believed that
their child's weight was "normal".  This finding suggests that obesity has been normalized among parents and our perception of what being overweight or obese has changed.  Another worrying factor is that only 41% of parents who recognized that their child was overweight, accepted their child's health might be at risk in the future.  Lots of the parents made excuses such as:

• It's the genes
• He/she has a big build
• It's puppy fat
• He/she is no bigger than other children

And this denial isn't just in Britain, last week research from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, USA, published findings which suggested that half of parents with an overweight child are in denial about their child's size.  The research showed that the parents believed that their child was slimmer than they actually were.  Others with an obese child thought their son or daughter was normal or slightly heavy, while one in seven parents whose child was a healthy weight worried that they were too skinny.  

Many children who are overweight have parents who are overweight but this is not a general rule.  What we teach our children at home stays with them for life.  If children are allowed unhealthy snacks such as a packet of crisps/ chips every day that amounts to 5 liters of cooking oil ingested every YEAR - and it isn't even good quality cooking oil!!!  Add on top of that the fast food habit that many homes have.  There are many families who don't cook healthy meals from scratch and rely on pizza, hamburgers, Chinese and Indian takeaways, etc.  Here the main excuse from the parents is that they don't have the time to cook.

Jaime Oliver has crusaded for years to try and improve children's eating habits and to change those of their families'.  

Another study released this week revealed that children who live near a lot of fast food outlets are more likely to be overweight or obese.  Researchers at the University of East Anglia and the Centre for Diet and Activity Research looked at weight data from over 1million children and compared it with the availability of unhealthy food outlets including fish and chip shops, burger bars, pizza places and sweet shops.

They found that older children were more at risk of having a weight problem when living in close proximity to a high density of unhealthy eating outlets.  They found that secondary school students were more likely to have a weight problem from fast food habits because they have more spending power and can therefore choose the food they want.

Children with a weight issue are at risk of childhood diabetes, low self-esteem, orthopaedic and cardiovascular problems and roughly 70% of obese children and teenagers also go on to have weight problems in their adult life.

So, it is up to the parents to teach their children about healthy eating and the importance of exercise.  Even our children are becoming more and more sedentary which only adds to the problem.  The best thing parents can do is to teach by example.

Social Nutrition:  You can make an appointment to improve your health with Social Nutrition either in person (Madrid) or online (Skype).  Just send an email to lucycarr@socialnutrition.com

How to stick to a diet

How many times have you grabbed a sandwich while on the run between meetings, or eaten a chocolate bar on the way to pick the kids up from school?  Most of us are on such tight schedules nowadays that food isn't even thought about, but is left to an automatic response to what ever is put in front of us at the precise moment we have a few minutes available to eat something.  More often than not we don't even think about what we are eating when swallowing it.

If we payed as much attention to our food as we do to other things in our lives, lots of people wouldn't have weight issues or health problems.  I often hear that someone has gained weight during pregnancy and then found they put even more weight on after giving birth, because they were running around after the kids all the time, and snacking on the kids' leftovers before going on to eat an evening meal with their husbands.  Or you meet up for coffee with a friend who orders a coffee and cake, and you automatically order the same.

A lot of people with weight issues just aren't designating enough time to thinking about what they are doing to themselves.  And, this isn't just happening to people with weight issues but to most of us.  We don't stop and think and most of the time we don't even remember what we've eaten afterwards.

Mindfulness is something I have read a lot about applied in many areas to life.  According to the Wikipedia:

Mindfulness or awareness is a spiritual or psychological facility that, according to the teaching of the Buddha , is considered to be of great importance in the path to enlightenment.  It is one of the seven factors of enlightenment.

 Mindfulness when eating means that you are truly aware of what you are doing and what you are eating.  You should focus on your food and only your food and when chewing, really savor the flavors and textures and even imagine how the food's nutrition content is going to favor your mind and body.  For example, focus on the vitamins and minerals in fruits and vegetables that will benefit your immune system.

Anyone on a diet knows how difficult it is to stick to a restrictive regime, and how easy it is to be lead astray even by one's self, you need to start thinking about what you are eating and the consequences:

1. What are your triggers?  We all have moments or temptations that lead us to break a diet.  As I said before, you meet a friend for coffee and have cake just because she's ordered some.  Those tempting chocolate bars at the check out in the supermarket when you're rushing to do the shopping before picking the kids up from school and you haven't had time for lunch.  Relax time in front of the TV in the evening when the kids are in bed are a real killer.  However, it isn't just the temptations around us all day, we also eat to be polite, sociable and to keep others company and to show our appreciation.  We also eat differently depending on who we are eating with; if your companion is a fast eater, you will tend to eat quicker too.  This is a real danger as eating quickly does not give your gut the chance to send the correct messages to the brain that you are full, so you tend to eat more than you would if you were with someone who eats slowly.  Over the next week, take stock and write down every situation when you eat without thinking or aren't even hungry.
2. Be aware of your eating patterns.  There are several questions you can ask yourself and the answers will give you guiding information as to how you can change from mindless to mindful eating.

• Are you a grazer?  Do you snack or nibble without being hungry or even deciding to eat?  That sliver of left over pizza, the handful of peanuts, the children's leftover dinner all contribute to many people's weight gain or regain after a diet.  The constant stream of 50 calories here, 100 calories there over months and years will make you gain weight.  You only need an extra 100 calories a day (that's a chocolate biscuit or a sliver of cheese) to gain 10 lbs in a year.
• Do you eat until hunger disappears or until you are full and can't eat any more?  There is a huge difference between the two, however, many of us have lost the ability to distinguish between being "satisfied" and "full up".
• Do you clean your plate or leave food on it?  Lots of us were educated to eat everything on our plate even though we had already had enough.  It is quite hard to switch off something that has been taught from childhood and we may also teach our children the same way.
• Do you taste each mouthful or do you "inhale" it?  There are lots of people out there that literally inhale their food at high velocity!  If you rush food you aren't being mindful and you won't enjoy it as much, and undoubtedly you will eat more than you need.
3. Stock your kitchen according to your goals.  This is a very important one, especially if you have small children in the house.  If you are on a diet to lose weight and still need to buy some biscuits, puddings, etc because of the little ones in the house, then hide them from view.  I love chocolate and have little ones at home.  I don't need to lose weight, but I do try to eat healthily on a daily basis, I also try to teach my children the basics of healthy eating.  However, my youngest goes to a school where his mid morning snack is dictated by the school: Monday = biscuits, Tuesday = Dairy, Wednesday = sandwich, Thursday = fruit, and Friday = what ever he wants.  I keep the children's biscuits, etc as far out of reach as possible for the whole family.  In my case I leave them in the store room in the basement.  If I'm hungry at night and fancy a nibble on something, the basement is cold and two floors down from my bedroom.  The kitchen is closer, and I always make sure there are strawberries or melon in the fridge for a late night snack.
4. Downsize your portion sizes and avoid leftovers.  
• Don't leave open packets on the kitchen counter or within easy reach in the fridge.
• Use smaller packets and plates; a serving that looks lost on a large plate will fill a smaller one and mean that you will feel satisfied but eat less.
• Choose tall, thin glasses.  Research shows that people pour more into short, fat glasses than into taller, slimmer ones.
• Cook the right amount for the number of people attending the meal.  Try and not have leftovers to tempt you later on - especially if dessert is involved!
5. Learn how to eat mindfully.

• Stop and think before you eat and rate just how hungry you are on a scale of 1-10 to give you a sense of what your body really needs.
• Be aware of what is on your plate, read the ingredient list and the fat, sugar and calorie content before deciding whether or not to eat it.  Better still, make all meals from scratch using fresh produce - that way, you'll know exactly what you are eating.
• Always sit at a table to eat.  Take time to smell and savor your food.  Take small bites, chew it well and put your fork down between mouthfuls to give yourself time to appreciate what your are eating and how it makes you feel.
• If you are at a dinner party, find the slowest eater and sit next to them, their slow eating habits will make you slow down too.
• Don't read or watch TV when eating.  Distractions take your mind off the task at hand and you will inevitably eat more.
• Only eat when you are truly hungry, if you fancy eating something, stop and think if you are really hungry, if you are, then choose something healthy, a piece of fruit or a small handful of raw almonds.
• Make meals that are fresh and colorful and appetizing to the eye, brain and digestive system.

Social Nutrition:  You can make an appointment to improve your health with Social Nutrition either in person (Madrid) or online (Skype).  Just send an email to lucycarr@socialnutrition.com

Look after your liver

I read an alarming article this week about liver disease.  For decades, liver disease was associated with heavy drinkers.  Too much alcohol means that fat becomes deposited in the liver which damages liver cells, but at this stage it's often symptomless.  However, if this process continues over years, the constant repeated damage to the liver cells can lead to scar tissue - severe scarring is known as liver cirrhosis.  This scar tissue makes the liver hard and lumpy and as a result it becomes unable to function properly.

New information has arisen that says that a fatty liver does not necessarily happen only due to heavy drinking, but also has a lot to do with over eating.  Being overweight encourages the progression of liver disease, as high levels of visceral fat becomes stored around the organs.  Visceral fat releases fatty acids and other inflammatory substances that further damage the liver cells, according to Professor Massimo Pinzani, a liver specialist and director of the Institute for Liver and Digestive Health at University College London.

One of the biggest problems is that liver disease is difficult to spot before it is at an advanced stage.  Andrew Langford, chief executive of the British Liver Trust explains;

"There are very few symptoms.  The liver doesn't have any nerve endings - so when it's damaged, you don't always feel it."

The first signs of a problem are:

• Extreme fatigue
• Dark urine
• Pale stools
• Jaundice - this is caused by a build-up of the waste product bilirubin, which the malfunctioning liver can no longer remove.

"If someone says 'Oh you look well, have you been on holiday?' and you haven't, it could be that you've got a very mild form of jaundice," says Mr. Langford.

Other complications of the advanced stages of the disease are episodes of confusion, memory loss and even hallucinations.  This has a clinical name of hepatic encephalopathy and is due to the build-up of toxins in the body that affect the brain, this can often cause a dementia type state.

Liver disease is the fifth biggest killer in the UK, and the number of deaths has soared by 25% in the last decade - in part because of heavy drinking, but also due to our expanding waistlines.  Not only is liver disease killing more of us, but it is doing so more quickly.  The average age of someone dying from liver disease is now 57, but just two years ago it was 59, and in the mid-eighties it was 63.

With two-thirds of Britons officially overweight, and 30% classed as obese, Dr Jude Oben, a liver expert at the Royal Free Hospital and St. Thomas' Hospital in London says:

"Over-eating and being overweight are by far the most significant risk factors for liver diseases now."

Dr Oben, who helped found the charity Obesity Action Campaign, thinks non-alcoholic fatty liver, as the condition is known where the patient is not a drinker, should be re-labelled as obesity-induced liver disease.  However, the truth is that you don't need to be obese to suffer from non-alcoholic fatty liver.  Professor Pinzani warns that anyone with a BMI over 25 is at risk of developing fatty liver disease.  One strong indicator of the risk is your waist circumference because this can more accurately reflect how much fat is stored around your organs.  Measuring around your belly button, anything above 80cms for a woman and 94cms for a man is a cause for concern, says Dr. Oben.

Liver disease also has a strong link to cancer;

"A significant percentage of patients with cirrhosis will develop liver cancer," says Professor Pinzani.  This could be as many as 45 out of 100 patients.

However, there is another cause of cirrhosis which is also diet related and has nothing to do with being obese or alcohol.  Lots of people have too much iron in their body, and not many people know about it - even lots of doctors don't include it in standard blood tests.

Iron is essential to good health in the human body, but too much can have the opposite effect.  Hemochromatosis is more common in men than in women.  Women, during their fertile years, use up their iron reserves every month during menstruation.  Men obviously don't.  Women can develop hemochromatosis after menopause when their menstrual cycle has stopped.  The build up of iron in the body means that the protein Ferritin, stores the iron where it can, usually around the soft organs such as the liver, for future use.  However, depending on your diet and your lifestyle, you may not use up those stores and more is being constantly added.  These iron deposits can oxidize and cause damage to the liver and other organs.  Particularly, it can cause cirrhosis of the liver, you may have heard of a young man dying from cirrhosis at the age of 35 and how people comment that he "never drank".

I say this is diet related because lots of the foods we eat contain iron: red meat, egg yolks, green leafy vegetables such as spinach, broccoli,  sea food, iron enriched cereals, turkey giblets, chicken livers, dried fruits, etc.

The good news is that the problem is easy to detect.  The next time you go for a check-up and have a blood test, ask them to check your ferritin levels too.  If they are high, then you need to watch what you are eating, cut out as much iron as possible from your diet (only if you have high levels of ferritin), for a period of time and then get another test done to see if the ferritin level as come down.  If not, the easy solution is to donate blood once a month, that will kick start your body into using up it's deposits.

So, I encourage you - as always, to eat healthily, watch your weight, take regular exercise and get a yearly blood test, just to keep an eye on things.

Social Nutrition:  You can make an appointment to improve your health with Social Nutrition either in person (Madrid) or online (Skype).  Just send an email to lucycarr@socialnutrition.com