Cut the sugar

It seems to me that we live in a society where success - be it at work or socially - is measured by how you look.  Are you thin enough?  Is your hair beautifully luscious?  Are you wearing the right designer label?  Do you drive the right car?

We are constantly confronted with top models airbrushed to perfection and headlines screaming out the next best diet that promises miracles in half an hour with no suffering.  Women strive to be a size 0, while teenagers;  boys and girls alike are struggling with Anorexia and Bulimia just to be accepted.

And, of course, there is the other side of the coin... obese and over weight people are turning to dangerous operations such as gastric bands and gastric bypasses to lose weight quickly.  Childhood obesity is on the rise and children are being bullied about their weight.  Obese people have admitted to being socially outcast and I have even spoken to people who have suffered mobbing in their workplace because their boss didn't like "fat" people.

We judge people on their appearance.  We think we can form an opinion of someone just by what they look like.  Well you can’t.  For example, there are many reasons behind obesity, it isn’t just someone eating too much.  Some people have serious psychological problems, others have illnesses which lead them to put on weight such as hypothyroidism, others have to take medication that makes them gain weight…

Stats:

• 1/3 of adults worldwide are now overweight.  The number has QUADRUPLED since 1980 in the developing world.
• In the UK alone 64% of adults are classed as obese.
• A global explosion means that 1.46 billion adults across the globe are obese or over weight (this means they have a Body Mass Index of over 25).
• Obesity = greater risk of heart attacks, strokes, cancer, diabetes and other health related issues.
• At 70% North America has the highest percentage of overweight adults, but regions such as Australasia and Southern Latin America are catching up with 63%.
• North Africa, the Middle East and Latin America saw overweight and obesity rates increase to a level similar to Europe, around 53%.

So why is this happening?

I think a lot of the problem is down to lifestyle choices.  A poor diet and lack of exercise can lead to a whole host of health problems including weight gain, obesity,  and as I said before, heart attacks, cancer, strokes, diabetes, etc..

Then add on that we are constantly bombarded with publicity from fast food companies and soft drink companies who are just dying to sell as much of their product as they can, and promise to make our lives so much easier as we can just pick up the phone and magically a pizza will appear on our doorstep, or Chinese food, or Indian, or… and the list goes on.

ALL fast food, processed food, soft drinks, basically anything with an ingredient label is packed full of vast amounts of sugar and salt.  Both of which contribute vastly to weight gain.

This week, I was reading the press from the UK, on any given day there are various articles about diet, sugar, fat, etc., in fact this week on one day I saw these three headlines:

1. "The hell of giving up sugar (and why it's worth all the agony in the end)..."
2. "Rising obesity levels force NHS to spend extra 5.5 million pounds on adapting hospitals and buying specialist equipment to cope with overweight patients."
3. "Slap a 20% 'health tax' on fizzy drinks.  Experts call for action to slash UK sugar intake."

For years the government “health” bodies have been telling us that fat is the killer.  We have a vast range of low fat and no fat products on the market all meant to magically make us thin - but they don’t.  Ever since Senator George McGovern created the first ever dietary guidelines way back in 1977 we have had a health problem.  At the time saturated fat consumption from animal sources was at an all time high in the States and so were heart attacks.  It was therefore decided that heart attacks were being caused by the consumption of saturated fat.  So the US Government decided that we should all be using vegetable oils and margarines to lower the consumption of saturated animal fat (e.g: butter).  However health problems continued to increase - including heart attacks in a time when saturated fat consumption was at an all time low. 

As it turns out, vegetable margarines which were marketed as the healthy substitute for animal fat, are packed full of trans fats and far more dangerous to your health than eating butter.  One of my first ever posts on this blog was about trans fats… you can read it here.

However we are still on a low fat health kick.  All you have to do is walk around a supermarket and see just how many low fat products there are.  However, what you have to stop and think is that if you remove the fat from something you have to replace it with something else - otherwise it tastes pretty nasty!  So what do they replace it with?  SUGAR AND SALT.

We now know that the real killer is not fat at all and in fact our bodies need fat (in moderation), there are certain vitamins (A, D, E, and K) that are only soluble in the presence of fat.  But still our governments publish food pyramids and food plates that tell us to eat carbs and just a little bit of animal protein - because of the fat content.  Sugar and refined carbs are the real killer - so yes tax that sugar, make people healthier!

Refined sugar has no nutritional value, refined flour has no nutritional value, white rice has no nutritional value…  Sugar and salt do you NO good at all.  Stay natural and stay healthy.

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

THE TRUTH ABOUT SATURATED FATS

Everyday we are finding out more and more information as to how food affects our bodies and consequently our health.  For years the “health authorities” have told us that the food pyramid is the guideline for healthy eating.

This pyramid has been proven scientifically to be wrong.  But still the “health authorities” stand by this long-standing mistake.  Why?  Who knows?  Maybe it’s because grains are cheaper and more abundant than fish, meat and poultry.  Basing our diets on grains means that the “health authorities” can guarantee to a certain extent that a large part of the population will be “well fed”. 

However, if we just take into account one point, the food pyramid makes no sense at all.  That point is:

Our digestive systems have not changed in over 10,000 years, however our eating habits have changed beyond recognition.

10,000 years ago, man ate what he could catch (fish, meat, poultry), and what he could gather, (vegetables and fruit).  There were no such things as processed foods, vegetable fats that have been manufactured in a factory or refined sugars and flours.  What is posing the biggest threat to our health is the processed food that the “health authorities” are trying so hard to get us to eat.  Add to that our sedentary lifestyles and you have a recipe for disaster.

You don’t even have to go back 10,000 years.  Our great grandparents (in some cases) and our grandparents didn’t eat processed food.  They ate meat, vegetables, butter, and full fat milk but also had a more active lifestyle.

It is widely accepted that the causes of coronary heart disease are saturated fats and cholesterol, and few people date to question this.  It is called the lipid hypothesis idea.  This idea has dominated medical thinking about heart disease for the past 50 years.

The theory is that when we eat foods high in saturated fats and cholesterol, these substances are deposited in our arteries in the form of plaque.  The plaque builds up over time, causing our arteries to get narrower until one day, little or now blood can pass through, thus a heart attack occurs.

This does make a degree of sense, and so the lipid hypothesis idea gained many followers.  However, the theory that saturated fats and cholesterol causes heart disease fail to explain other observations.

In America, the rate of heart disease soared during a period when saturated fat consumption fell sharply while cholesterol intake remained basically unchanged.

Before 1900, heart disease was rare in America only affecting about 8% of the population.  By 1950, heart disease caused 30% of all deaths in America.  Today, it causes about 45% of all deaths.

During this period the consumption of butter fell from 18lbs per person per year at the turn of the century, to about 10lbs per person per year by 1950.  Today it is even lower, however, the rate of heart disease continues de rise.

During this same period, margarine consumption rose from 2lbs per person at the turn of the century to about 8lbs per person – something that was promoted as being healthier than saturated fats.

There is strong evidence that the trans fats used in making vegetable oils and margarines are far more harmful to our bodies than naturally produced saturated fats.

To fully understand the meaning and dangers of trans fats, I urge you to go to the following website:

http://www.stop-trans-fat.com/what-is-trans-fat.html

This is a very comprehensive web, which tells you the dangers of trans fats and where they can be found in our daily food.

Many studies have been carried out to verify the build up of plaque in different nationalities according to their diet.  One of the biggest studies carried out to establish that saturated fats is the main cause of coronary heart disease was the International Atherosclerosis Project 1968, in which over 22,000 corpses from 14 different nations were examined for plaques in the arteries.  This study found roughly the same degree of plaque build up in all the 14 nations studied.  The same build up among people who had meat based diets as well as those who ate little of no meat.  The same build up among people with high rates of heart disease as well as those with little or no heart disease.

I also recommend watching a very interesting video on www.youtube.com called Big Fat Fiasco by Tom Naughton “on how the misguided fear of saturated fat created a nation of obese diabetics”.

To this we also need to add the toxic effects of sugar.  Sugar and high fructose corn syrup consumption has risen drastically over the years and can be found in the most surprising places (Heinz baked beans contains 5g sugar per 100gr of product, Special K red berries cereal 23g of sugar per 100gr of product, etc).  Recently an article was published called The toxic truth about sugar by Robert H. Lustig, Laura A. Schmidt and Claire D. Brindis which states that sugar is so lethal to our health that it should have the same restrictions as tobacco and alcohol.  The article states that sugary foods and drinks are the cause of illnesses such as obesity, heart disease, cancer and liver problems.  They say that the damage done through sugar consumption mirrors the damage done by drinking too much alcohol (made from distilling sugar).

So what should we do to be healthy?  We need to go back to a healthy and varied diet based on meat, fish and poultry, fruit and vegetables and any grains should be whole grains rather than refined grains.  And, we need to move.  Our sedentary lifestyles have a dramatic effect on our health.  However, contrary to popular belief, you don’t need to go mad and sign up for a marathon or payout an expensive gym fee.  All you NEED to do is to walk, 30 – 45 minutes 5 days a week, at a pace that leaves you short of breath.  Now this could mean getting off the tube or bus a few stops early.  Anymore exercise than this is totally up to you.  My main advice would be to find a sport that you truly enjoy, or organize a walking group so that you can do it in company – this will also motivate you, if you have arranged to meet other people, it isn’t so easy to find an excuse not to go.  It really isn’t that difficult.