Nutrition in the headlines again - or it should have been!

I just finished reading this book, The Big Fat Surprise: Why Butter, Meat and Cheese Belong in a Healthy Diet by  Nina Teicholz (https://thebigfatsurprise.com/)

It's familiar territory to me, but what an indictment of our nutrition authorities! Nina documents the shocking refusal of so-called nutrition experts to entertain the idea that there might be another way to look at the issue of saturated fat, instead accusing those who have studied the research carefully of 'quackery' for suggesting that saturated fat is not bad. They simply refuse to look at all the research with an open mind - a very bad habit for anyone calling themselves a scientist!

Two recent stories in The New York Times (one after the other in my large print weekly edition) make me wonder if we’ll ever get the nutrition right!

“Rising Obesity Rates Put Strain on Nursing Homes”

relates the problems nursing homes are having taking care of massively obese patients. And I’ll bet they are feeding them the very low fat high carb type of diet that made them fat in the first place, since that is the standard diet in nursing homes. And that is what we’ve been told is a healthy diet for nearly 40 years - still recommended in the government’s 2015 Dietary Guidelines for Americans.

This is what guides food policy in many institutions, including our public schools.  Pity the poor children that can have low fat chocolate milk with extra sugar, but not the whole milk that is truly nourishing – and never any butter on their tasteless vegetables.

Which leads me to the other shocking article, where nutrition is completely ignored, as babies are given drugs for problems that are probably the result of missing nutrients.

“Still in a Crib, Yet Being Given Antipsychotics”

Imagine giving babies,  or even toddlers, Prozac or Risperdal for depression! The doctors who prescribe these drugs know so little about nutrition, they have no idea that faulty nutrition of the child or even the mother could be at the root of the problem. Yet good nutrition is essential  for the brain to work properly. The influence on behavior of several common nutrient deficiencies is detailed in this article:

“Violent Behavior: A Solution in Plain Sight”

And good natural fats, like butter, are needed to absorb several of these important nutrients.

Parents who follow the Dietary Guidelines based on the research of Dr. Weston A. Price, DDS, rich with natural fats, have healthy happy children with little in the way of behavior problems. As evidence, check out the Healthy Baby Photo Gallery

These happy faces are an inspiration!

Kris, retired and reformed dietitian

Fat be not proud

It seems like there are item daily in the newspaper that I'd like to respond to. Here's a recent letter to The Blade responding to a Blade editorial called 'Fat be not proud' http://toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20091206/OPINION03/912060316 (4th letter down the page)

While it's true that obesity is a major and growing health problem in our country, Congress and industry certainly need to share the blame. Agricultural subsidies support the growing of far too much wheat, corn and soybeans than we need, while our food industry turns them into the heavily advertised processed foods that line our grocery store shelves, foods that are stripped of essential vitamins and mineral that contribute to good health and laced with processed vegetable oils that undermine our health. Then our health authorities have provoked fat phobia, telling us to eat less fat and cholesterol, more fiber, and exercise more - none of which has proved particularly effective for successful weight loss. In Good Calorie, Bad Calories, Gary Taubes traces the research showing that the carb foods we're advised to eat are the very foods that contribute to weight gain, diabetes, and all the associated health problems. Cutting calories by trying to eat a low fat diet while avoiding high carb foods leaves you hungry and unhappy. My advice - avoid processed foods, limit carbs, overcome your fat phobia, eat natural whole foods, including meat, butter and eggs from pasture raised animals - the foods our ancestors ate without being plagued by diabetes, heart disease and cancer. Let's put our unemployed back to work doing the wonderfully satisfying job of raising high quality fruits, vegetables, grains and pastured animals on well managed organic farms that can be very bit as productive as our present commercial agriculture, while supporting, rather than undermining our health, our communities and the environment.

Kris Johnson, retired dietitian

There's more on my Website if you want to pursue these issues:

Carb Issues

Planning Healthy Meals

Justice and Agriculture Issues

Obesity taking toll on U.S. health care

Obesity continues to make headlines - not surprising, because the very recommendations that contribute to obesity are still being touted by the 'experts'. Looking at Cleveland Clinic's website for their recommendations, I see skim milk (actually good for fattening pigs), various margarines & oils (modern vegetable oil industries don't want you to know that obesity and chronic disease have risen right along with the rise in oil consumption), soy foods (the soy industry doesn't want you to know all the problems that modern soy foods can cause), artificial sweeteners (the industry certainly doesn't want you to know of their links to obesity), low fat this and that - though there is precious little evidence that restricting traditional fats contributes to obesity, but lots of evidence that carbs, with their effects on blood sugars and insulin, are the real culprits. USDA and the food industry don't want us to know that we don't need all the wheat & corn concoctions recommended on the Food Pyramid - bad for business! The pop industry refuses to acknowledge how bad refined sugar is for us. My fellow dietitians don't want to look seriously at the evidence and admit that they've been wrong about butter and saturated fat all these years. Dietitians will scream foul, but they don't realize how brainwashed they are by the system that makes money off all this. FDA threatens anyone claiming nutritional healing, yet they approve all kinds of drugs developed from natural healing substances into patentable forms (read profitable), in spite of their many side effects. Is it any wonder that health care reform is so contentious with all these conflicting interests making money off our ill health!
It might contribute to the recession if we had real health care reform and got truly healthy!

Healthcare Reform and Our Food System

The headlines are discouraging – ‘Obesity rates soar among boomers,’ ‘Serious ailments in our health-care debate.’ Somehow things don’t change.

I wrote this letter to the Blade 3 years ago:
"I am disappointed that the Blade is promoting the misleading recommendation that a low fat diet is still best. True, if you follow a low fat diet, you avoid the troublesome fats, like trans fats and highly refined vegetables oils that are too high in omega-6 fats while short in valuable omega-3’s, and you limit the high calorie feed-lot fattened meat that is lacking in omega-3’s, vitamin E and antioxidants that are found in good pasture raised meat. But you can still fill up on white bread, low fat cookies and ice cream, leaving you short on many vitamins and minerals, while lacking the good fats that leave you satisfied and supply essential fat soluble vitamins. The real secret is to avoid highly processed and refined foods, but watch the sparks fly from the food industry when you say that! If you eat old fashioned whole foods in moderation – fruits, vegetables, meat and dairy from pastured animals, butter, whole grains properly prepared, you’d do well. The notion that saturated fats are not good for you is based on bad science, however much you see that repeated. After all mother’s milk is high in saturated fat! But the company that saturated fat often keeps just makes it seem bad by association."

So what do I see in today’s Blade – a recipe for ‘Creamy Caramelicious Milksicles’ from that "expert" authority, the National Dairy Council. What does it contain? Low fat milk, sugar, cornstarch, and caramel topping – 20% of low fat calories from milk and 80% from highly processed and refined foods of little nutritional value! It works out to about 125 calories each milksicle, containing a measly quarter cup of milk, missing the valuable nutrients in the cream, and leaving you hungry for sure for something more satisfying. The typical dietitian response – ‘kids need the calories.’ My response – those kids need the calories and nutrients in real foods. We have no idea what the long term consequences of such empty calories will be, though the research of Dr. Weston A. Price revealed that when previously healthy isolated groups of people started eating Western refined foods they developed cavities, crooked teeth and a host of other health problems. What a shame that Dr. Price’s research has been ignored (suppressed?) in our modern world of commercial foods.

Why is that? A thumbs-up review of "The Liberation Diet" in the new issue of the Wise Traditions Journal gives a clue: "About one hundred years ago Carnegie and Rockefeller, who had a large vested interest in pharmaceuticals, established the accreditation system for medical schools. Only schools teaching a pharmaceutical approach to medicine received accreditation. Before that there was plenty of competition from natural, homeopathic and nutritional approaches." I can see signs of that same heavy handed influence in the world of dietetics. The milksicles of dubious value are the result. Healthcare reform will never succeed if we don’t also somehow reform the food system.

A headline in today's paper reads "Study finds 1 in 5 U.S. 4 year olds are obese" I had to comment!

The finding that 1 in 5 U.S. 4 year olds are obese is not surprising considering the heavy dose of sugar, white flour, and refined vegetable oils provided by many of the foods in our grocery stores. It’s a mistake to blame fat for our obesity epidemic when the carbs in sugar and flour are more readily converted to fat in the body. It’s a crime that our schools have been convinced to remove whole milk from the schools to cut calories. People should be aware that skim milk is good for fattening pigs, while they will lose weight if fed coconut oil (and pig metabolism is remarkably similar to human metabolism in that respect)! I’m waiting for the day when our media and our politicians will have the courage to place the blame where it belongs – on our agriculture and food industries and their addiction to corn, soy, and wheat, and all the refined and processed foods made from them. In the name of sustainability let’s put the animals back out on pasture where they belong and do what it takes to encourage our small local farmers to produce real food and our families to prepare and eat it.