The silent killer

The silent killer... High blood pressure shows next to no symptoms and many don't even know they have it.  In fact, one in four adults suffer from it.

High blood pressure can lead to; damage to your arteries in the form of artery damage and narrowing, and aneurysm.  Damage to your heart in the form of coronary artery disease, enlarged left heart and heart failure.  It can also damage your brain leading to transient ischemic attacks (TIAs), stroke, dementia and mild cognitive impairment.  High blood pressure can also damage your kidneys leading to kidney failure, scarring of the kidneys and kidney artery aneurysm.

The causes of high blood pressure are many; smoking, being overweight or obese, too much salt in the diet, lack of physical activity, more than 1 or 2 alcoholic drinks per day, stress, age, genetics, family history of high blood pressure, chronic kidney disease, adrenal and thyroid disorders and sleep apnea.

Many of these causes, although not all, are due to lifestyle, so change your lifestyle and you will most probably reverse your high blood pressure.

There are several things you can do on a nutritional level to help lower your blood pressure, there are certain foods that you SHOULD eat and others that you should AVOID.

What you should AVOID:

Obviously you should lower your salt intake as this is one of the things that raises blood pressure.  However, it isn't that easy.  Yes, you can certainly lower the amount you put in your home cooked food, but salt or sodium chloride has been used as a flavor enhancer and preservative for centuries.

Adults need between 1.2 and 2.4g of salt per day, however most adults are consuming far more than that.  A review of studies involving 3,230 participants showed that reducing salt intake by 4.4g per day reduced systolic blood pressure by 4.2mmHg and diastolic blood pressure by 2.1 mmHg.  Among the participants who had high blood pressure there were even bigger reductions of 5.4 mmHg (systolic) and 2.8 mmHg (diastolic).

Stay clear of processed foods and watch your added salt intake.

As already said above, more than one or two alcoholic drinks per day is associated with a systolic blood pressure reading of about 2.7 mmHg, and a diastolic reading of 1.4 mmHg - this is higher than in non-drinkers.

When you consume alcohol your blood pressure actually goes down first, only to rise later on and this rise is more likely to happen while you are awake than when you are asleep.  However, the more you drink means the greater your risk of having high blood pressure especially in men, but to a lesser extent in women too.

High intakes of caffeine increase blood pressure in the short term.  Caffeine is most commonly consumed in coffee and tea, but also in cola and in huge amounts in energy drinks such as Red Bull.

In a review of 5 clinical trials, the participants were given one or two cups of strong coffee, their systolic blood pressure increased to 8.1 mmHg and 5.7 mmHg diastolic blood pressure, up to three hours after drinking the coffee.  However response to caffeine is very different in each person, some people don't have a problem with it whereas others are very sensitive to it.  So analyze its effect on you as an individual.

Liquorice has an active ingredient called glycyrrhizic acid (GZA) but most liquorice sweets sold nowadays have very little real liquorice root in it and therefore very little GZA.  GZA causes sodium retention and loss of potassium, which contributes to high blood pressure, so you need to check the labels and be careful if it contains liquorice root.

What you SHOULD eat:

Vitamin C also known as ascorbic acid, is found in lots of fresh fruits and vegetables where an average serving contains between 10-40mg of vitamin C.

Vitamin C has been shown to improve blood pressure in a review of 29 short-term studies where participants were given 500mg of vitamin C per day over a period of eight weeks.  Their blood pressure improved significantly, with an average reduction in systolic blood pressure of 3.84 mmHg and 1.48 mmHg for diastolic blood pressure.

However, people who are susceptible to kidney stones should be careful with vitamin C consumption as it can contribute to the formation of kidney stones as the excess vitamin C is excreted via the kidneys.

Another advantage of increasing your vitamin C intake from fruits and vegetables is that you also increase your potassium intake which helps counter the effects of sodium.

You should all know by now that fiber is extremely important for good health.  Investigators found rolled oats or 25g of oat bran per day had systolic blood pressure at 2.7 mmHg lower and diastolic blood pressure was 1.5 mmHg lower than those who didn't include this amount of fiber in their diets.
that people who ate about 60g of

For on extra gram of total daily fiber, there was an extra 0.11 mmHg reduction in diastolic blood pressure.  The recommended minimum daily intake for fiber in adults is 30g for men and 25g for women.  Just make sure it is good quality fiber.

Inorganic nitrate is a compound found in beetroot.  During digestion, this compound is converted into nitric oxide, which in turn, causes arteries to dilate directly lowering the pressure within.

Beetroot juice has been shown to reduce systolic and diastolic blood pressure in adult men who already had high blood pressure.  They were randomly assigned to drink 250ml of beetroot juice per day for four weeks or given a non-active placebo.

Those drinking the beetroot juice reduced their blood pressure over 24 hours, with systolic blood pressure 7.7 mmHg lower and diastolic blood pressure 5.2 mmHg lower.  

Be careful with beetroot though as it is also very high in sugar.

I can help you improve your health.  If you would like to make an appointment with me either in person or via Skype, just send me an email to lucycarr@socialnutrition.com

Legal Drug Pushers

Food manufacturers are pushing drugs legally.  Salt, sugar and fat are just as dangerous to our health as other "hard drugs".  And, the western world has been hooked on these three for so long that no-one really knows when it started.

However, the side effects of these drugs are not the ones you would normally associate with "hard drugs".  Sugar - especially in the form of High Fructose Corn Syrup, puts a great strain on the liver, raised levels of fat in the bloodstream and  a whole range of problems, which are all associated with cardiovascular disease.

Excessive intake of salt has been linked to high blood pressure and cardiovascular disease and over-consumption of fat to obesity, diabetes and other related epidemics.

The recommended daily allowance (RDA) for fat for women is 70g and for men 90-95g, for children aged 4-18 years of age it is 25-35% of total calories.  RDA for sugar for women is 25g or 6 teaspoons, men 37.5g or 9 teaspoons and children should keep sugar intake to 6g or less per day.  RDA for salt in adults is 2,300mg (2.3g) equivalent to about 1 teaspoon.  In children aged 2-3 years 1,000 mg (1g), ages 4-8 = 1,200 mg and ages 9-18 = 1,500 mg.

So what is being put in our food and why?

Food manufacturers put extra salt, sugar and fat in foods to make them taste better.  They even have a term for it: "BLISS POINT".  This is how manufacturers describe levels of sugar, fat and salt in processed foods that are so appealing they guarantee we will be coming back for more.

Michael Moss, an award winning investigative writer, has spent more than three years investigating the science of junk food for his new book: Salt, Sugar and Fat: How the food giants hooked us.

His investigations have uncovered an unsavory amount of tricks employed by food manufacturers to tempt us into buying foods that are often extremely unhealthy.  Tricks such as changing the physical shape of salt to altering the chemical make-up of sugar and even giving crisps a louder crunch.

Moss spoke to many executives and scientists at multinationals such as Pepsi, Kraft, Kelloggs, Unilever and Mars and discovered that at the heart of all the corporate strategies are three legal drugs: salt, fat and sugar.  Moss also found that there is no limit as to how far the industry will go to harness the seductive powers of these 3 drugs.

Companies use the results from MRI-scanning to study the sensory power of food - for example, how sugar lights up our brains the same way it does after someone has taken cocaine.

Their objective is to achieve the perfect link between food and pleasure in consumers' brains to make us come back for more, so the industry has become obsessed with finding that "BLISS POINT".

In the case of sugar, the Bliss Point is the precise amount of sweetness that makes food and drink most enjoyable.  There is a vast amount of work involved with pinpointing the Bliss Point; it means scientifically testing thousands of customers' preferences, intricate mathematical formulae, and analyzing surveys of populations for cultural and demographic differences.  For example; in China, people in the south of the country have a sweeter tooth than those in the north.  Bliss Points can also vary by age no just geographically; studies show that the Bliss Point for children can be an amazing 36% sugar content in food - three times that of most adults.

This means that the manufacturers who manage to hit on the most Bliss Points generate by far the biggest profits.  However, their profits come at a cost for the general public - those Bliss Points come with the side effects of many of their customers becoming dangerously obese and close to addiction.  The junk food industry even labels its most faithful customers as "HEAVY USERS", says Moss.

Moss, who works for the New York Times, managed to persuade three of the biggest food manufacturers to let him sample their products with significantly reduced levels of salt, sugar and fat, while researching his book.  He soon discovered how powerful these 3 ingredients can be.

Kellogg produced a salt-less version of a savory cracker that Moss loves:

"Without any salt, the crackers lost their magic.  They felt like straw, chewed like cardboard, and had zero taste," he says.

The same happened with soups, meats and breads that other manufacturers made for him including Campbell: "Take more than a little salt, or sugar or fat out of processed food, these experiments showed, and there is nothing left.  Or even worse, what is left are the inexorable consequences of food processing; repulsive tastes that are bitter, metallic and astringent."

However, it is still cheaper for food manufacturers to make sugar, salt and fat more alluring by interfering with their chemical make-up than attempting to make their products more appetizing.

Moss reports that Nestlé's scientists are actually modifying the distribution and shape of fat globules in foods to affect the way they feel in the mouth.

Research on brain reaction to food reveals that the pleasure of fatty foods is as much about the FEEL as the TASTE.  We feel fat through the trigeminal nerve, located above and behind the mouth.  It sends tactile information about fat to the brain, and the better the experience, the bigger the craving.

It isn't just the food manufacturers adding too much to processed foods.  At Cargill, the U.S. based world's leading salt supplier, scientists are pulverizing salt into a fine powder so that when consumed, it hits the taste buds faster and harder, improving the "flavor burst", says Moss.  It is developments such as these that have made crisps (potato chips) more irresistible than 20 years ago.

And it sin't just salt.  Sugar is also being altered in many different ways.  Not only have food scientists created enhancers to boost the sweetness of sugar by up to 200 times, one component, fructose, has also been crystalized into an additive that boosts the allure of foods with a naturally low content.

The Food and Drink Federation in Britain is keen to be seen in a friendly light and argues that its members are being responsible by lowering salt levels to help customers make healthy choices.

The Federation's Director of Food Safety, Science and Health, Barbara Gallani says:

"UK food and drink manufacturers' efforts to tackle obesity and diet-related diseases are long-standing."  

 She states that members of the Federation have voluntarily cut salt levels by 10% in the past 5 years and improved product labeling.

There is no current evidence that food is actually addictive, and Ms Gallani bases the Federation's defense on that,

"Recent scientific reviews show there is no evidence to suggest food addiction exists in people, either to specific foods or to nutrients like sugar or fat."

I am still trying to reconcile myself with her classing SUGAR as a NUTRIENT!

However, on the other side of the pond, Moss says no one is more aware of the problems caused by salt, sugar and fat than the processed food companies.

In 1999, the 11 heads of the largest U.S. food companies met in secret to discuss how to tackle the emerging obesity epidemic by managing recipes and strategies.  However, no positive action followed, these companies are totally dependent on these 3 ingredients and no one is willing to be the only one to probably lose profits against the others by producing healthier products for their customers.

In the UK, manufacturers have reduced salt in their products over the past 10 years.  However, obesity levels continue to rise, probably because companies have found a way to relieve the pressure put on them about making their products healthier.

Moss explains in his book that when food makers have to reduce on of the three key ingredients, they often increase the levels of the other two to make up for the lost appeal.  Therefore, products labeled "low salt" may have higher levels of fat and sugar.

"It is one of the industry's most devious moves," says Moss, that is why we must all be very wary of products whose labels proclaim: "Now low in..."

Proof of this is in the fact that most executives at the big food companies tend not to eat their own products, according to Moss,

"I found that many of the executives I talked to go out of their way to avoid their own products," he says, "especially if they have run into health problems." 

They prefer to eat fresh foods and take regular exercise to stay fit and healthy.

I believe that if the industry is going to put its customers first then the way to go is to gradually reduce salt, fat and sugar over time.  There is evidence that our taste buds do adapt over time.  Obviously a drastic cut too quickly would be rejected but a gradual one would go unnoticed.  However, if you really want to be healthy, my advice is to follow the example of the executives and eat fresh foods and take regular exercise - processed foods are not doing any of us any favors.


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

10 Packaged Foods you shouldn't buy.

We should all know by now that the healthiest way to eat is with natural whole foods that we prepare from scratch at home.  However, there is a whole culture of supermarket shopping which provides us with a never ending supply of pre-prepared foods which are supposed to make our lives easier.  However, these foods don't tend to make our lives healthy.  Here is a list of well known foods we should never buy.

1.  Canned or tinned soup.  This typically contains large quantities of salt, additives, monosodium glutamate (MSG) and genetically engineered (GE) ingredients.  Also, many companies still use bisphenol-A (BPA) in the lining of the cans.  BPA has been shown to interfere with the body's hormones and disrupt your endocrine system.  Homemade soup is quick and easy to make and so much healthier.

2.  Stock Cubes.  I looked up the ingredients for OXO beef stock while researching this article: Wheat flour, salt, yeast extract, maize starch, flavor enhancers (MSG, Disodium Guanylate), color (ammonia caramel), beef fat, flavorings, dried beef bonestock, sugar, lactic acid.

Now, I would first like to explain how to read an ingredient list.  Ingredients are listed in order by amount with the biggest amounts first continuing in descending order.  So if you look again at the list of ingredients for OXO beef stock what it has most of is wheat flour and salt... not good.

Homemade chicken stock is easy to make.  Just take one left over chicken carcass (I use the leftovers from a roast chicken), put into a large saucepan, add 2 leeks, 1 onion, and 2 celery stalks. Cover with water add a pinch of salt and 6 peppercorns.  Bring to the boil and simmer for 2-3 hours.  Drain the liquid into a bowl and leave over night to cool in the fridge.  The fat will solidify on the surface and you can remove it easily.  I then package the stock into individual packages to make one soup and freeze.  You can also use ice trays if you prefer.

Now, you tell me, which is healthier?

3.  Baked Beans.  Here we go back to point number 1 with the problem of BPA lined cans.  Also, if you take a typical can of baked beans - Heinz for example, and look at the ingredient list, remember what I said earlier about the order of the ingredients: Beans (51%), Tomatoes (34%), water, sugar, modified cornflour, salt, spirit vinegar, spice extracts, herb extract.  Sugar is way up there - again.

You can make these at home without all the added extras!

4. Hummus.  Homemade hummus is a very healthy dish and the internet is rife with different easy to make recipes.  Shop bought hummus contains: Chickpeas, water, tahini, soybean oil, garlic, salt, citric acid, potassium sorbate, natural flavor.  Do we really need all those additives?

5. Breakfast Cereal.  Almost all commercial cereals are a combination of high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) and genetically engineered corn.  Homemade muesli is easy to make and healthier.  You can store it in an airtight container and it will stay fresh for months.

6.  Microwave Popcorn.  Here the problem is in the bag more than the popcorn itself, although the amount of salt added is also a problem.  The bags are lined with Perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) which can leach into the popcorn when heated.   PFOAs have been linked to infertility and other health problems.  Making popcorn in a pan is not difficult at all and you can control the amount of salt you add.

7. Bottled water and "enhanced" water.  Plastic bottles aren't doing anyone or the environment any favors.  Also "enhanced" waters usually contain artificial sweeteners and colorings, large amounts of sugar and genetically engineered high fructose corn syrup, which adds to the numerous health problems caused by high consumption of HFCS and GE ingredients.

High quality water filters are your best bet for clean water.

8.  Bottled fruit and vegetable juice.  Bottled fruit juice is worse than vegetable juice.  Fruit is naturally high in fructose and when juiced and bottled the sugars tend to ferment quickly.  There are also added ingredients such as flavor enhancers.  You will get much more from eating whole fruit than bottled juice.  If you prefer juice - juice it at home and drink immediately.

9.  Yogurt.  Now, I am against all milk produce, but if you can't live without it then I suggest buying natural live yogurt from a health food store.  Pasteurized yogurts from normal supermarkets do not provide any of the health benefits of natural live yogurt.  The pasteurizing process destroys most of the precious enzymes and other nutrients.  Fortunately, kefir or fermented yogurt is easy and inexpensive to make at home.

10. Fermented Vegetables.  Cultured or fermented foods have many health benefits.  The culturing process produces beneficial microbes that are important for human health, as they help balance intestinal flora which boosts overall immunity.  Fermented foods are also great chelators and detox agents, this means they help rid your body of a wide range of toxins including heavy metals.  Although cultured foods are available at most supermarkets, you are better off culturing them at home.  There are many webs where you can learn the benefits and how to do this at home.