At least it's natural...

Can you tell me what all of the following products or ads have in common?

Splenda Artificial Sweetener w/ Fiber

Cinnamon Toast Crunch Cereal w/ Whole Grains

Cherry 7UP Soda w/ Antioxidants

American Spirit Cigarettes w/ Natural, Additive Free Tobacco

All of these products are harmful to your health, no matter what has or hasn't been added to them. In short: if it has a marketing team, avoid it like the plague.

Waste

My ideas on removing government subsidies for grain crops and finding ways of lowering the cost of vegetable crops are not surprisingly quite radical and unrealistic. There seems to be so much power (read: money) in the food technology and food processing industries that the day broccoli is cheaper than a Big Mac will likely never come. Up until now, I wasn't even sure the best way to go about approaching the situation.

I stumbled across a brand new book written by Tristram Stuart called Waste: Unocovering The Global Food Scandal. The book is an alarming study on the terrible problem of food waste throughout the world. Stuart brings to light the pathetic lack of information available on food waste produced by the industry. Disfigured and blemished vegetables are left to rot in the fields. Slightly damaged packaging from shipping is cause for a frozen dinner to go straight to the trash can. Food that is close to expiration is not sent to shelters, but simply tossed for fear of being responsible for food poisoning the homeless (even though the law protects them from this). It is often cheaper for a company to throw away unsold food than to lose a sale because they've run out. Millions of tons of food are wasted every year at all levels of the farm to wholesale to retail to consumer chain. This is an issue.

Stuart also poses another point later in his book. Why are we not donating that food to shelters or composting it or just simply making less? All these solutions seem to be viable options in solving our problems. They all keep America fed and keep garbage out of our landfills. It also decreases the demand for food and lowers the price because we aren't throwing away perfectly good food. It also decreases the demand for farm land if we don't have to grow as much food to keep up with demand. This allows us to grow the lower calorie (but higher nutrient) vegetables and fruits that we should be eating more of in the first place.

It seems so easy. Just stop wasting food. I'm sure the food industry will soon find a way of keeping this problem quiet, too.

If you are interested in environmental issues, sustainability, and food, you'll find Waste quite interesting. The research, photo documentation, presentation of the fact, and funny English spelling does an incredible job of convincing you to maybe just go ahead and eat that bruised banana.

"You Climb What You Eat"

I've been getting some great feedback and responses to my website these past few months, and I was recently approached by Amanda Fox at Urban Climber magazine about doing a profile on me and my thoughts about athletic performance and diet. After a series of interviews, here it is! Check it out in the November 2009 issue of Urban Climber. Also, if you've just found my site from the article, then welcome and I hope you find my site useful, interesting, or otherwise. Click the thumbnails for larger versions.

Wise beyond his years...

If you've never seen Jack Lalanne do his thing, you've been seriously missing out.

"Sugar: The Bitter Truth"

Vitameatavegamin

Spoon your way to health! ...Yeah, right.

Vitamin supplements are a fantastic (albeit expensive) tool commonly used today to improve the amount of nutrients available to our body. Supplements are extremely beneficial to your health.

BUT

If Americans would eat a proper diet of foods with a high nutrient to calorie ratio and had these foods readily available to them in the first place, we would have no need for expensive supplements! Whole foods have been proven time and time again to be better sources of vitamins and minerals. Some recent studies have even shown negative effects associated with megadosing on certain vitamins.

So do I take vitamins? Certainly, but only a select few.

1. Fish oil - I've discussed very briefly in a previous article the necessary balance of omega-3 and omega-6 fatty acids. Omega-3's are an amazing tool at lowering inflation in the body, but it it darn near impossible to maintain an ideal ratio unless you catch your own fatty cold water fish, raise chickens in your backyard, and eat 100% grass fed beef 100% of the time. A fish oil supplement provides a few extra grams of omega-3's that keep your body running efficiently.

I take two to three daily, but skip out on them on the days I eat salmon or tuna (which I try to do at least twice a week). Check out this video from Dr. Barry Sears (author of The Zone diet book) on the benefits of omega-3 fatty acid.

2. Multi-Mineral - I've also discussed briefly the fact that large amounts of vitamin D and calcium aren't necessary when eating real whole food and restricting grain and legume products, but multi-mineral supplements do ensure that you are getting just enough. They also include things like manganese, iron, and copper. You are likely getting enough of these from your protein sources, but if your protein requirements are a little lower (older adult males and all females), the extra little bit certainly won't hurt. I take two each day.

In short, forget acai extract and goji extract and green tea extract and fiber this and fiber that and reservatrol and ultra super mega man sport pills. Eat real, whole, natural food to limit your need for vitamin supplements. The real thing is always better than the $50 pills at GNC.

Why vegetarianism isn't the answer

PETA recently began a new ad campaign and put up a billboard in Jacksonville, FL suggesting that overweight Americans should turn to a vegetarian way of eating to "lose the blubber." See the story here.

I've said before that if you maintain a vegetarian lifestyle due to moral/ethical reasons, then more power to you, but it is very far from the ideal human diet for optimum health and weight loss. In my opinion, humans require protein (and more explicitly animal protein) to function at their best.

It is very difficult to obtain all the necessary amino acids (proteins), vitamins, and minerals living a vegetarian lifestyle without supplements (which are not nearly as effective as obtaining them from whole foods). Plant protein sources are "incomplete proteins" because each only contain select amino acids. Animal meats contain all essential amino acids and therefore are "complete protein sources." Sure, you can get all the essential amino acids from plant sources by eating a large variety of plants, but most vegetarians tend to turn to soy based proteins (tofu, edamame, soy milk, etc.) and beans. Soy has long been marketed as a health food (just like wheat breads and corn cereals), but you have to remember that this is one of the top crops grown in the U.S. (like wheat and corn) and subsidized by the government (like wheat and corn). Soy has been linked to many issues including thyroid problems, immune system malfunction, breast cancer, and increased estrogen. Vegetarians also eat beans for protein, but your body has trouble digesting beans efficiently and effectively. Everyone knows beans cause gas right? That's your body telling you it didn't really like those beans you fed it last night at Casa Ranchero or whatever.

In addition, if you are not eating 400 to 800 calories a day from protein, your body will find another way to get those calories that it needs to function. I promise that more often than not a vegetarian will choose to get those calories from carbohydrates. Most vegetarians easily consume over 3oog of carbohydrates each day in pasta, bread, cereal, crackers, energy bars, milk products, soy products, and everything else (which the government loves), but these carbs are spiking insulin levels leading to insulin resistance and the storage of fat. I feel like a broken record sometimes, but it's the truth and you need to know it.

Exercise won't help? Seriously?

Yesterday I added a new article from Time to the recommended reading links list. It's by John Cloud and called "Why Exercise Won't Make You Thin." One of my readers sent it to me and asked for my response to it and what seems to be a rather ridiculous idea. If you haven't already read the article, check it out here. It is a bit long (and I encourage you to read it all), but you can probably get the idea from just the first page. Below is the response I gave.

"I agree with the author on nearly 100% of that article. Exercise does lead to increased energy expenditure, increased hunger, and often increased weight. When you burn calories through exercise that were once available to your stomach (to digest food) or your brain (to think) or your legs (to walk), your brain recognizes a lack of available energy and causes you to consume more food whether you do it knowingly or not.

"The issue (in my opinion anyway) is our diet. We consume too many carbohydrates and too many chemicals and too much processed food that our bodies have no idea what to do with. Extra carbs are stored as fat and cholesterol whereas dietary fat is stored as fat, but in a form the liver can more easily utilize. If someone's goal is to lose fat around the ab area, sit-ups are only going to make it BIGGER if he/she don't change his/her diet. It will build muscle under the fat that is already there (which needs to be burned). Fat loss is 95% in the diet. You have to train your body to switch back to the way it was originally intended to work and that's done by controlling insulin levels through the foods you choose.

"I'm sure you've heard this before about the Atkins diet: 'It works, but when you come off the diet, you gain all the weight right back.' Of course you do. When you begin to consume recommended amounts of carbohydrates again, then there's absolutely no doubt in my mind you'll gain weight and continue fostering insulin related issues. There needs to be a fundamental change in the way we think about our diet and the subsidies offered to the farmers who are growing soybeans and corn.

"I exercise probably around 5 days a week now (down from very often 10 or 12 days straight). Climbing, hiking, sprinting, olympic weight lifting (deadlifts, snatches, presses, squats, jerks), gymnastic bodyweight work (pull-ups, dips, push-ups), etc. I do only very mild cardiovascular work in my weight training, and hardly ever run more than a 5k. Just as we aren't designed to eat wheat and grains, we aren't designed to run long distances. If you have no idea where to begin, walking for 30 to 45 minutes 5 to 6 days a week is a fantastic form of exercise and give you the benefits of exercise (and free!).

"I don't do weight machines and neither should anyone else unless he/she is interested in wasting his/her time. Machines work only very concentrated groups of muscles whereas olympic lifts and gymnastics are considered 'compound movements' requiring work from many different muscle groups throughout the body.

"Olympic lifting will not make women 'hulk out' either. Look at Jessica Biel. She's pretty hot, right? Well, she lifts and sprints.

"Exercise is a fantastic thing you can do for your body. It'll improve your heart function, ability to deal with stress, make you look and feel better, improve cholesterol and insulin sensitivity, etc. However...

"The author of the article has it exactly right by saying that exercise is nearly useless for weight loss."

Sin Tax

Lawmakers are currently considering a "sin tax" be placed on soft drinks and other sugary drinks (including energy drinks, Gatorade, Vitamin Water, etc.) to help pay for their health care reform bills that are in the forefront of the headlines. While I certainly am not a supporter of government run health care (Canada anyone?), you can only imagine my elation at this tax.

Soft drink sales and consumption have rapidly increased over the last 20 years. Since 1990, sales have gone up an average of 3% annually. A small drop occurred in 2006 (coinciding with the beginning of our economic troubles), but have still remained strong. And that's just soda. I can only imagine the explosion in energy drink consumption the last few years. This is a huge problem that has largely contributed to our nation's waistline and medical bills. It goes back to costs. Soda is an extremely cheap way to consume enough calories in a day for the poor and struggling in America, but unfortunately offers absolutely no nutritional benefit (just a rather large insulin spike).

The poor are also the least likely to have health insurance and therefore pay their medical bills which increases your health care costs. I've said it before and I'll say it again: Our health care troubles are caused by the poor diet you are encouraged to eat by a government using flawed science.

In addition to an unnatural insulin response leading to insulin resistance leading to diabetes, studies have shown sugary drinks can lead to kidney disease, gout, cavities, so on, and so forth.

The proposal is tax soda $0.01 per ounce. This could increase the cost of a 12-pack of Coke by $1.44 which has been said will decrease sales by as much as 10%. Just as we have done to cigarette smokers, we will do to chronic Coke drinker.

...I am still a bit confused though. Now we are planning to tax something (soda) that contains a product (HFCS) that we (the government) subsidizes (corn) because it contains that product (HFCS). Why don't we support farmers who grow organic lettuce and raise grass-finished beef instead of corn, soybeans, and wheat?

Regarding Food Inc.

There's been a lot of buzz on the documentary and independent movie scene about a film that is taking on our food industry. It's called Food Inc. and I had the pleasure of being able to see it a few days ago. If you haven't heard of it, check out the trailer here. (Does that first line sound familiar?)

The first thing that struck me about the film regards an issue I discuss pretty regularly which is the corn phenomenon. Americans eat literally tons and tons of corn each year without even realizing it. It is used to make high fructose corn syrup, pectin, maltodextrin, and a host of other harmful and unnatural ingredients created in a science lab. The same can be said about soybeans. It is found in all sorts of technological products such as soybean oil, lecithin, and many others. You still think fat is making you fat? Our processed foods contain incredibly unhealthy amounts of these chemicals and products that you are consuming. Add to that, the majority of these food products contain wheat flours and sugar and you begin to see just why we are an obese nation.

The upsetting part to me is that this is what you are being told to eat. The USDA's food pyramid is a prime example of the propaganda put out by the corn and soybean industry. Another way you are being told (that you may not realize) is by the prices in the supermarket. Processed food products that contain these government subsidized ingredients (wheat, corn, soy, etc.) cost much less than a healthy cut of beef or a bell pepper. Not to mention, the density of calories per gram in this cheaper unhealthy food is much greater making it a clear choice in the eyes of someone who only has a few bills to keep their stomach full this week. The poor in this nation are struggling over whether to spend money on healthy food or medicine to continue to live (that they might not have needed in the first place had healthy food been available to them). The 99 cent double cheeseburger at McDonald's or the $1.50 organic apple at the farmer's market?

Though my interests lie mainly in what you eat, there is something to be said for where it comes from as well. The movie goes on to show how a corn and soybean based diet is making our cattle and livestock just as sick as we are and the pathetic conditions they are raised in.

Food Inc. is a disturbing look at the food industry and how it is controlled by a handful of large corporations that you must see. If you haven't yet, please look for it in a theater close to home.