Does low-fat food cause weight gain?

Nutritionist Jonny Bowden contends that low fat diets caused the obesity epidemic. I suspect he's right on some counts. He goes back to the start of the low-fat craze.

"The race was on to produce low-fat and no-fat foods, and to engineer the saturated fat out of everything. This, in turn, led to a slew of "food-like" products, manufactured and processed edible substances bearing little resemblance to whole foods, and to idiotic experiments like margarine. Add to this witches' brew the invention of high-fructose corn syrup and hydrogenated oils (to replace saturated fat) and you had the perfect dietary storm."

Sally Fallon wrote about the fallacies of low-fat cooking in her book Nourishing Traditions: The Cookbook that Challenges Politically Correct Nutrition and the Diet Dictocrats. She tells us how

• Your body needs old-fashioned animal fats.
• New-fangled polyunsaturated oils can be bad for you.
• Modern whole grain products can cause health problems.

Disclosure: If you buy her book from the link above, I get a small credit from Amazon which I can eventually use for buying my own books.

How Cows (Grass-Fed Only) Could Save the Planet

This is heartening for those of us who crave a little beef: How Cows (Grass-Fed Only) Could Save the Planet - from TIME.com

Experts Say a Big Butt is Healthy!

Having a big bum, hips and thighs 'is healthy' reports on the BBC. Here are highlights from the report:

1. Hip fat mops up harmful fatty acids and contains an anti-inflammatory agent
2. Having too little fat around the hips can lead to serious metabolic problems, as occurs in Cushing's syndrome.
3. "Fat around the hips and thighs is good for you but around the tummy is bad."
4. Fat around the thighs and backside is harder to shift than fat around the waist.

Ha, tell me about it!

Read the article.

Can Stevia Help Fight Osteoporosis?

A self-healing website published a page on stevia as a fighter against brittle bones. Japanese researchers have found that the herb stevia increases calcium density in animals. It also decreases body fat. Whether this translates to a medical use in humans remains to be proven. But as a stevia user, I find it intriguing.

By the way, always read the labels on sugar substitutes. The inactive ingredients (fillers) can be a problem for some people.

More About Coffee

Interesting article on how coffee can irritate the intestinal tract.

• All coffee beans, decaf included, contain an enzyme that irritates the entire digestive tract.
• Drinking coffee first thing in the morning, on an empty stomach, offers absolutely no buffer for the acid, irritant, and stimulant effects of the beverage.

Coffee - It's not just Caffeine

An article from the McDougall Newsletter that summarizes some of the problems with coffee: Coffee Pleasure and Pain.

"Coffee contains several hundred different substances (in addition to well-known caffeine) and many of these have powerful pharmacological effects on the human body. Two cholesterol-raising substances – cafestol and kahweol – are found in coffee beans. Not only do they raise total cholesterol, but also “bad” LDL-cholesterol and triglycerides, too."

Fortunately, using a paper filter will save your cholesterol levels from this effect.

"Both regular and decaffeinated coffees cause indigestion by reducing the function of the lower esophageal sphincter – a valve that prevents the stomach acid from refluxing up into and burning the esophagus.4-6 Regular coffee and decaffeinated coffee both stimulate acid production in the stomach by similar amounts."

Read Coffee Pleasure and Pain. Author John A. McDougall, MD has been writing about the effects of nutrition on disease for over 30 years.

Is there a NEW link between vaccines and autism?

Many parents have claimed that their child's symptoms of autism showed up after receiving vaccinations. A theory was developed that mercury in vaccines causes autism. But researchers could not prove it, although mercury is a known neurological poison.

Now some researchers have another theory: that hydrolyzed gelatin in the MMR vaccine may bring on autism. Read this report to find out about this research on autism.

Natural Sweeteners? Probably Not Erythritol...

I came across a post about fructose in Vitamin Water that also had some interesting facts about erythritol, which is sometimes sold as a "natural" sweetener. Here are quotes from patents and scientific papers:

The present method of producing erythritol by fed-batch and repeated fermentation of sugars by microorganisms which produce erythritol.
By fed-batch fermentation is meant a fermentation in which microorganisms are fed by the successive addition of substrates, and in which the product and the co-products of the fermentation remain in the medium until the end of fermentation.
By sugars is meant in the present invention all the carbonaceous sources which may be directly assimilated by the microorganisms which produce erythritol. Such sugars are chosen for example from the group consisting of glucose, saccharose, fructose, maltose, xylulose and maltulose, on their own or in a mixture. By extension, sugars also means certain sugar alcohols (or polyols) such as mannitol or sorbitol which, being assimilated by said microorganisms, will also lead to the production of erythritol.

As the writer at the Golden Spiral says, "I’m sorry… does that sound natural?"