Don’t have time to cook- or is that just what you’ve been told?

A former commissioner of the FDA, David Kessler, joined faculty and students at Stanford University for dinner on 2/4, followed by a thought provoking talk on “the insatiable American appetite”.

If everyone were given access to lots of cheap cocaine, we’d probably have pretty high rates of addiction, right? Well Dr. Kessler thinks that restaurants and food companies have managed to find the perfect combinations of sugar, fat, and salt to make many foods affect our brains just like addictive drugs do, inducing dependency. And since these foods are cheap, found absolutely everywhere, high in calories and engineered to be easy to chew and swallow, we eat a lot and gain weight.

What can we do about this? Go back in time to when the foods we had around were not addictive? The solution is easier than time travel- buy some meat or beans and vegetables and cook your own dinner. With a little practice, it takes less time to whip up an omelet or to heat up some lentil soup that you made on your day off than it does to drive to a restaurant.

The problem isn’t a lack of time to cook, it’s that ads for restaurants and frozen dinners have brainwashed us into believing that we don’t have the time or skills to prepare food. We’re out of the habit of cooking- once you get back in the habit you’ll see how easy it really is.

A vitamin deficiency that causes osteoporosis is common- are you okay?

News flash- data show that you, as a typical American, are likely to be deficient in a vitamin, and that this deficiency causes weak bones and muscles, joint pain, osteoporosis, and having white blood cells that can’t kill the tuberculosis bacterium. Wait- there’s more- groups of people who don’t get enough of this vitamin also have more breast and prostate cancer than people who get plenty.

Must be a new, unusual, and expensive vitamin? Not at all, it’s free actually- all you have to do is to get a little sunshine (without sunscreen) and your skin can make vitamin D. You can get a teeny little bit from milk, and a small amount from pills, but when you get 10 minutes of sun on your legs (30 minutes if you’re dark skinned) you’ll make tons of vitamin D. Therapy for tuberculosis used to be sun baths- doesn’t sound so dumb now.

Good health is all about the happy medium- drink enough water but not too much, eat enough food but not too much, and get enough sunshine but not too much. Just because you can kill yourself drinking too much water doesn’t mean that your doctor is telling you not to touch a drop. The same should go for sunshine. It’s natural.

Can nutrition help a stiff neck?

No, but a chiropractor can. Oh my god my neck and shoulders feel so much better after seeing fantastic Dr. Jack. Why did I wait this long? (http://www.drjackbourla.com/)

Eat beans, no bread, and live longer??

Have you heard about the diet experiments in which animals can be made to live longer than their normal lifespan? The only problem is that the diet used is essentially a starvation diet- the animals are fed much less than normal for their entire lives. Personally I am not looking forward to the discovery that a starvation diet will also allow humans to live longer.

But there is hope- cutting out one little nutrient (while eating normal amounts of food) also allows animals to live longer lives (and be thinner), and that nutrient is methionine. Methionine is an amino acid, one of the building blocks of protein, and it is essential for life, but perhaps in smaller quantities than we usually eat.

Now for the type of wild speculation that I usually make fun of- would it be good for us to eat less methionine and how would we accomplish this? Methionine is high in grains and seeds, moderate in animal foods (milk, meat, eggs) and corn, and low in beans, nuts, soy, and peanuts.

Would it make a difference to cut out grains (wheat, rice), eat less animal products, and eat more legumes? You would not be able to achieve the low methionine intake that has been found to work in animals, and amazing results in animal experiments almost never translate to useful recommendations for people, but it’s something to think about.

http://www.healthyfat.com

Holiday eating and New Year's resolutions

The time around Thanksgiving and Christmas is difficult for people in so many ways, including dealing with food. With all the food preparation, parties, food gifts, holiday meals, travel, and visitors, it’s hard to maintain regular habits and you won’t be alone if you end up feeling guilty and unhappy with your behavior.

It might help to understand that this season really does require super-human behavior. We evolved to want to overeat whenever possible. Our brain is screaming at us to eat so that we’ll gain weight and survive any future famine.

If all the foods around you were healthy whole foods, eating wouldn’t be such a struggle. Of course this includes fruits, nuts, seeds, veggies, beans, soy, whole grains, and seafood. But did you know that eggs, pecans, macadamia nuts, peanut butter, mayonnaise, shrimp and even beef, especially if it’s grass-fed, are included in the healthy whole food category?

Instead of worrying about your lack of will power, give yourself a break and start the new year by making your environment healthy- surround yourself with healthy foods.

Is tap water still safe to drink?

In April 2009 I recommended in this blog that instead of using plastic water bottles people should fill glass bottles with tap water. According to an investigation by Charles Duhigg published in the New York Times yesterday, the quality of tap water in this country made a steep dive during the Bush administration as water pollution increased and regulation was lax.

Journalists like to make things sound as dire as possible, so I wish I had the time to read all of the scientific studies he refers to, as I would if this were a matter of nutrition instead of toxicology. But I’m glad that when our water started tasting of chloramine a few years ago, we started using a filter.

Tamoxifen in the news

In the Science Times today, Tara Parker-Pope tries to make the case that women are being illogical in not taking tamoxifen to prevent breast cancer.

I'm a scientist and the conclusion I draw from Ms. Parker-Pope's data differs from hers. Is it really logical to take a drug that when given to 100 high risk women, will lower the number of breast cancer cases from 1.9 to 1.0, but cause 8.5 additional cases of endometrial cancer, blood clots, cataracts, and sexual problems and 12 additional cases of hot flashes and irregular periods?

Are women really being illogical when they are willing to take birth control pills, but not tamoxifen? If the same 100 women were sexually active and not using birth control, 85 of them would become pregnant. Birth control pills would reduce this number to 1 to 8. If the pill were as ineffective as tamoxifen, women would be in big trouble.