Shocking Dietary Advice?

For those of you who think cholesterol and saturated fats are your enemy and a low-fat diet is your salvation: THINK AGAIN!

Modern "health authorities" are dishing out poor advice based on garbage "science" pushed by big business interests. Money talks and money is the root of all evil when it comes to these misguided conventional dietary recommendations.

The cholesterol theory of heart disease is based on shoddy "science" that has been promoted by big food companies and pushed by big pharmaceutical companies - the biggest drug pushers in the world! Anthony Colpo's excellent book, "The Great Cholesterol Con" exposes this flawed "science" as a sham. The first major proponent of the cholesterol theory, Ancel Keys, selectively chose six countries that fit his theory to show a correlation between cholesterol and heart disease. However, he conveniently ignored data from eight other countries that did not support his theory. And this is just the beginning tip of the iceberg. Read Anthony Colpo's book for more details on how this unfortunate myth was perpetuated.

Cholesterol is vitally important to our health. It is involved in the body's immune and repair processes and is the precursor to many important hormones as well as vitamin D via sunshine. Elderly people with higher cholesterol levels live longer than those with lower cholesterol levels! There is no real evidence that cholesterol and saturated fat "clog" our arteries to cause heart disease. Evidence more strongly points to oxidation of unsaturated fats and glycation of associated lipoproteins as important factors in heart disease. These lipoproteins also contain cholesterol, but there is no evidence that the cholesterol itself causes any harm. Glycation is aggravated by excess blood sugar that can result from diets high in sugar and refined carbohydrates.

Saturated fats have been falsely accused of causing problems that are more correctly blamed on artificial trans-fats, another recently-invented processed-damaged food. Can you say "hydrogenated"? If you see that word on a label, that food has artificial trans-fats in it. Now even the "health authorities" have finally recognized that artificial trans-fats are bad. Just a few years ago, they were touting margarines loaded with trans-fat as "healthy".

The real culprits in heart disease and even cancer and diabetes appear to be huge increases in sugars and often rancid refined vegetable oils in the modern diet. Our ancestors did not eat these foods. One hundred years ago, heart attacks, cancer, and diabetes were rare - even in the elderly. Lots of sugars and vegetable oils are packaged with modern foods of convenience and heavily advertised, often as "healthy" foods. Low-fat diets for many people contribute to cravings for sweets and ironically, excess sugar is converted into saturated fat by our bodies, leading to obesity. Our healthy ancestors ate good quality animal and dairy fats, with mainly fruits for sweets. Now people are addicted to processed convenient foods laden with sugar and high fructose corn syrup or artificial sweeteners as well as "healthy" vegetable oils (not to mention all the other artificial junk in them). Too much sugar and refined carbohydrates raise insulin levels. Too much insulin causes accelerated aging. Elevated blood sugar and too much polyunsaturated fats from vegetable oils also suppress the immune system and are major factors leading to diabetes and autoimmune diseases. No wonder obesity, diabetes, cancer, and heart disease are running rampant!

So, avoid processed fake foods like the plague! Choose foods that have nurtured our ancestors for thousands of years. The most nutritious foods are meats, organs, and raw dairy from fully pastured or wild animals along with organic vegetables, heritage whole grains, nuts, and fruits. This is what our healthy ancestors ate!

Oh .... please, don't take my word for it. Go to the "Health Links" on the right side bar and read the abundant and compelling information they provide. For some healthy recipe ideas, see the "Healthy Cooking Ideas" links. And if you like to discuss health with like minded people, join us in the "Health Discussion Groups".

Let food be your medicine. Say NO to drugs :)

Food Nutrient Information

Here are some resources for information about nutrients in food.

Search the USDA National Nutrient Database
The USDA has nutrient data for a large number of foods. You can even download their entire data base if you want. They also have convenient Nutrient Lists sorted alphabetically or by nutrient content.

Danish National Food Institute
A much smaller but complimentary nutrient data base with measurements for European foods.

Linus Pauling Institute
Excellent detailed information about nutrients.

Worlds Healthiest Foods
More good information about nutrients in food and a few anti-nutrients. Just ignore their fat phobia and love of soy :)

NutritionData
They offer nutrient data from the USDA data base in a convenient form. Be sure to ignore their misguided conventional dietary advice. They require registration to get full access to their most useful features, but it's free and so far I have not had any spam from giving them my e-mail address. To get summaries of the nutrients in the food you eat, first search for each food item and add it to your "Pantry" by clicking on the "Add to Pantry" button at the top of the food nutrient information. Then go to the "Pantry" (menu selection) and enter the food amounts for a meal or a day's worth of food and click on the "Total +" button at the bottom. All the nutrients are quickly tallied for the foods and amounts you have selected. If you enter or change amounts, it keeps accumulating the results until you click the "Total 0" button at the bottom of the "Pantry" to reset to zero. You can also save "Recipes" for foods or meals you make with multiple items. Overall it's a very powerful, fast, and relatively easy to use system. Too bad they don't have better dietary advice.

FitDay
Offers free online tools to help you monitor your daily nutrition and exercise to meet health goals. I haven't tried it yet but it looks useful. I did look at the tutorial and it looks like FitDay is geared towards weight loss.

Dietary Nutrition Calculator
This is my Excel workbook that allows you to estimate your daily intake of nutrients from the foods you eat. Click the link above for more information.