5 Nutrition Truths
/"The problem is NOT what you DON'T KNOW. It is what you THINK you know that just AIN'T SO." --Mark Twain
There are so many things about nutrition that I thought I knew. These things were taught to us as absolutes in school and I never even thought to question them. The truth is that nutrition is a science still in its infancy and we are learning new things everyday.
It was finding the truth that brought me back to nutrition. I was frustrated that eating “the healthy way” had not brought me health and I couldn’t bring myself to tell another person to eat less and exercise more. Knowing how much I had wrong, I now can’t keep my mouth shut.
Let’s discuss FIVE things that you think you know that just aren’t so.
1. Eat less + Exercise more = Weight loss. Our bodies have a natural set point, a weight range that it works hard to stay at. When you eat more, your body uses more energy and when you eat less, your body conserves energy.
Go on a low calorie diet, you lose weight but your body slows your metabolism to conserve energy and burns muscle instead of fat as its fuel source. Your weight loss will slow and eventually stop unless you cut your calories further. You will go back to your old ways because lets face it – you are starving. The body replaces the weight that was lost as fat and you need fewer calories to gain weight because your metabolism has slowed significantly. This is why most people gain back all their weight plus more after a low calorie diet.
So, if your body has a set point, how do people get overweight? Eating nutrient poor food, like what is found in the Standard American Diet, deregulates the hormones that guard our set point. Reviving these hormones with nutrient rich real food will get you back to your natural set point.
Here is more bad news – Exercise alone will not make you thin. Exercise is important! However, there has been research study after research study (over the last 20 years) that show the average person will only loose 1 pound per year if they exercise for 60 minutes 5 days a week and make no dietary changes. When you exercise, you eat more to make up the calories lost and are more likely to eat nutrient poor food.
2. Fats make you fat. The low-fat myth is like a zombie: it just won’t die. It was born out of bad science and has been propagated by the USDA that clings to it for some unknown reason. Every time you think it’s finally gone, it just shows up again in another form. The current versions look something like – Fat makes you overeat and fat is empty calories. There’s no evidence that eating fat from real food sources causes weight gain of any kind, or that fat is “empty calories” that you’re better off without. In fact, some of the most nutritious foods around are high in fat and especially saturated fat (Think meat, organ meat and egg yokes). They certainly won’t make you fat, and they might even help you lose weight and feel better in the process.
Following a low-fat diet will leave you hungry every 2 hours because fat is the slow burning fuel that keeps you satisfied longer. You will be lacking fat-soluble vitamins A, D, E and K and many other micronutrients that come packaged with real food sources of fat. Fat has important jobs in our body like cell construction, nerve function, digestion, and the formation of the hormones that regulate everything from metabolism to circulation. Fat is an essential nutrient and should not be feared or avoided.
You are not alone if this is one that you struggle with. It was a difficult piece of knowledge to re-learn for me. I was afraid of fat and would do everything possible to cook with as little as possible. I refused to eat many foods that I now enjoy and would even make my family have vegetarian night even though we were hungry again before bed. If you are reintroducing fat, take it slow. It will take time for your body to get use to the extra fat and start producing the enzymes needed to digest it.
3. Whole grains are necessary to health. The general consensus among medical professionals it that whole grains are not only healthy, but the necessary foundation of our diet (hence the USDA recommendation of 6 – 11 servings per day). The sad truth is that grain consumption, especially in the forms found today, is a blatant departure from the way humans have eaten for most our history. The ability to grow and process grains more easily has allowed more people to afford grain products like flour, a “luxury” previously reserved for the wealthy. I believe that making grains the foundation of our diet has had devastating effects on our health. Here’s why:
HIGH CARBOHYDRATE INTAKE AND ELEVATED INSULIN
Chronically elevated insulin is one of the major health problems in our society. To quickly summarize insulin’s role, its primary job is to lower blood sugar after you consume any form of sugar or carbohydrate. When insulin has too much sugar to deal with, it stores it as fat. Also, when insulin is overworked, inflammation begins and cells become resistant to insulin, so your pancreas has to produce even more of it. When your cells have become resistant to insulin, you’ve become diabetic. This is the new epidemic of westernized countries that we also call the metabolic syndrome.
Guess what? The main food sources of carbohydrate in our diet are grains (wheat, corn, rye, oats, barley, rice). Bread, cookies, cakes, crackers, rice, pasta, pastries and breakfast cereals are all staples and are consumed at almost every meal by almost everyone. This leads to a high carbohydrate load at every meal and this is why people get hungry all the time and have so much fluctuation in their energy levels because their blood sugar levels are unstable.
GLUTEN, LECTINS, and PHYTATES OH MY – THREE POISINS YOU CAN LIVE WITHOUT
Living organisms all develop ways to protect themselves against predators – it’s basic survival. Animals usually run or attack, but plants have to find another way. Grains are the offspring of soon to become grasses and contain toxins that inhibit their own grown until they have what they need to grow – soil and water.
Gluten – the worst offender. Gluten is a sticky, water-soluble protein that is found in your favorite grains (wheat, rye, barley, etc). Gluten doesn’t just affect the 1% of the population that has Celiac Disease or the other 30% that has gluten intolerance. Gluten breaks down the microvilli in your small intestine, eventually letting particles of your food leech into your blood stream (called leaky gut syndrome) causing allergies, digestive disturbances or autoimmune problems.
Lectins – these are gluten’s sidekicks. They inhibit the repair of the GI tract. They are not broken down in the digestive process and bind to the receptors in the intestine, allowing them and other food particles to leech into your blood stream. The body views these lectins and the food they bring in with them as dangerous invaders and initiates an immune response to get rid of it. This immune response to particles of common foods explains the allergy creating potential of grain.
Phytates – are a mineral blocker that prevents the absorption of calcium, magnesium, iron, copper and zinc. Think again if you believe that whole grains provide more nutrition than fruit and vegetables.
It all boils down to this: Grains are not healthy and they are toxic to the body. That is the way they were designed. Studies have shown, that a no-grain diet can end digestive disturbances, promote weight loss, reduce inflammation, increase fertility and dramatically improve energy levels.
From personal experience, I can tell you that there is no comparison between how you feel when you don’t eat grains and when you do. I understand the idea of giving up grains might sound absurd, even impossible. I also know giving up grains is one of the best things that your can do for your health. Don’t believe me? Give it a try and let your body tell you what it thinks.
4. Whole grains are the best source of fiber. I think we can all agree that fiber is important if not, essential. It decreases hunger by turning off the hunger hormone, ghrelin. It slows sugar absorption into the blood stream, which helps regulate insulin. Fiber also helps bind toxins and hormones in the gut to help eliminate them instead of reabsorbing them into the body.
But I would say fiber’s most important function is to feed the 70 – 100 trillion microorganisms that live in your digestive tract. When you eat plenty of fiber from vegetables and fruit, it’s harder for bad bacteria to grow in you digestive tract by creating a more acidic environment inside your intestines. This is great for the good guys who are suppose to live there and at the same time makes it harder for the bad guys to survive.
Having a healthy diversity of gut bacteria is known to help regulate the immune system, increase intestinal motility (bowel movements), reduce inflammation in the body, alter genes in the liver that control fat storage and metabolism, and even influence the neurotransmitters in your brain by boosting your mood and reducing stress.
There is more and more research pointing to vegetable and fruit fibers as being the optimal food for the right kind of microorganisms in your digestive tract. In contrast, fibers from grains seem to feed a different set of bacteria, ones that aren’t linked to health benefits or that may even be linked to health problems. Yet another reason to replace the pasta on your plate with extra vegetables.
5. Milk is necessary for strong bones. The relationship between calcium intake and bone health is complex and poorly understood. Calcium alone is not enough to keep your bones strong. You need an array of cofactors that includes vitamin A, D, and K2 for the body to use the calcium that is consumed. Vitamin D acts as a hormone telling our body to use and absorb calcium properly in concert with vitamin A and vitamin K2 tells the body where to put the calcium. There must be a synergy between this group of nutrients that can only be found when you eat real whole foods.
A glass of conventional milk does not provide the cofactors needed to use the calcium that is found in it. Factory farms raise cattle that are not fed their natural diet (so no vitamin K2) and then their milk is homogenized, pasteurized, reconstituted, and fortified. The vitamins that conventional milk does contain have been added back in a synthetic form that your body does not know how to use.
We don’t need to drink milk to have strong bones but we do need to make sure that we are eating nutrient rich food and getting plenty of sunshine. If bone health is an issue, think fixing like with like. Drink lots of bone broth and use it in cooking to increase your bone health. It has everything that your bones need. Calcium is important but we likely need less calcium and more cofactors.
Were any of these things new? What other “nutrition truths” have you seen crumble when questioned?
