Seduced by Food: Obesity and the Human Brain

[Guest Hester]

Hester, I live in the 21st century and looking to see how to best make use of the current knowledge to my advantage. I have learned a bunch about investing, diet (thanks to a bunch of posters) and human behavior through this board including yourself  ;D. There is nothing personal here buddy  :)

 

Nothing personal either. Sometimes passiona and dispassion are difficult to express via internet. In any case, hey, we learned about fossils today.

[Guest Hester]

Hester I agree with you that we should eat what our ancestors ate. I'm not hawking white bread and soda by any means, I am just questioning the virtue of embracing a 65:35 animal to plant ratio for our diet. I think meat and high fat diets really do impact our health in a negative way if eaten too often, and most likely show up as health problems later in life. Our ancestors did not have to worry about later life problems because you're right, a broken ankle, lion, or a jealous rival  got them first.

 

The alternative I would propose is a mostly plant based diet. Keeping with the paleo plants is probably a good idea. I don't think cereal grains are necessarily bad, but they shouldn't make up the foundation of anyone's diet. I don't think the paleo diet is bad by any means I just don't like the high concentration of animal calories.

 

There are some people taking the paleo diet a little too far. When I was researching it, I found blogs with people switching their A:P ratio with the newest research, fasting for a day or two, sleeping in 4 hour shifts, and arguing about which vegetables are ok.

 

The research I have seen about vegetarian cultures shows that the people do not develop the same kinds of diseases we see in the western world. I would bet though, this is because they are not eating our processed foods and not due to the absence of meat. It does demonstrate that people can survive without meat; the opposite is not true. I know I'm just rambling now. I could have summed it all up by saying I agree with eating the kinds of food that our ancestors ate, I just don't agree with eating meat in that high of proportion because we die from diseases of old age today (diseases in which many nutritionists today suggest are caused by animal based diets). Our ancestors didn't worry about living to a ripe old age, they could eat all the whale blubber and elk liver they could find and is long as they had a few children and lived to 40, they were evolutionarily successful.

 

I would agree that you can survive fine without meat, but I would say you can also survive without vegetables. I think the only good alternative to a meat centric diet would be a plant/nut centric diet.  Perhaps we are just on different parts of the same side.

 

I do believe there are problems with heavy or pure plant based diets. I guess it depends on the plants. There was a study done in the early 1920's (that I cannot find a link to) that showed a very strong correlation between the health/longevity of a society and the amount of vitamin D and A the people consumed. You won't get enough of those on a vegetarian diet.

 

But like I said, I think one can survive off of an all meat diet, although I wouldn't, nor would I want to. The many eskimos/inuits get about 80% of their calories from pure fat. Despite having a lower life span than most westerners, they still live into their late sixties on average today, despite eating pretty much nothing but meat (they would live much longer if they had better access to things like healthcare). You can read accounts of explorers mingling with eskimos/inuits and noting they, even those very old in age, almost never had any malignant diseases.

 

The more I read, the more I start to realize there are negative health effects from literally every kind of food/diet. Of course most have plenty of positives too. It becomes like Winston Churchill said about Democracy, "Democracy is the worst form of government, except all the other forms." 

 

[biaggio]

I am in middle of reading Martin CApital letter to shareholders (from Mi investing notebookwebsite), he says:

 

"Human beings (and most other living species for that matter) have lived under conditions of

scarcity throughout virtually all of history and therefore are simply not hard-wired for abundance,

real or imagined.  Today’s neuroscientists say primal neural instincts take over that compel creatures

to consume far more than they rationally know they should when presented with the opportunity. 

They overlook long-term consequences in favor of short-term rewards. "

 

Makes sense to me.

 

Lots of folks making healthy choices-except most of us are eating way too much.

 

Other issues that food is just not what it used to be due to modern processing- decreased omega 3 in meats, increased fructose content in various "low fat" or "lite" products.

[tyska]

Interesting thread, seeing how I just had this sort of debate with my 17 year old son who wanted to go paleo. I couldn't see the logic in it and I think he is questioning it also. I challenged him to look back through our genealogy and tell me which relative of his he thought would have lived a longer or healthier life by having cut grains out of their diet. Both sides of the family have the benefit of most relatives from the last three generations living fairly close by, so have first hand knowledge of health problems for them. But even the genealogy from generations before, while the average lifespan may have been shorter. When a person looks at it, a lot of the deaths were children with pneumonia or young women in child birth, which lowers your average life expectancy quite dramatically.

I think a lot of the problems of the last two generations can be connected to processing. Which I guess is avoided in the paleo diet, but can be avoided with grains also if you work at it. The grains eaten a few generations ago were oatmeal and bread. The oatmeal would have consisted of rolled oats and water, the bread - whole wheat or rye probably ground at home,yeast,butter,salt and honey or a little sugar. Look at the ingredients list on a package of instant oatmeal or a loaf of bread today.

On a slightly similar note I could never figure out all these stories on how pasteurization of milk stopped the spread of all these illnesses. Outside of the obvious  if your cow is sick with some disease like tb or brucelossis . As everyone that I knew growing up drank raw milk, and my whole family still drinks raw milk with no problems. Then I read this book about milk and the crap they were trying to sell from the swill dairies and such back then. The problem wasn't really raw milk then. Even today with the mechanization of milking, there is no way one can get all the crevices in the machines, the piping, the holding tanks, transfer hoses, transport trucks, processing equipment  clean. So I can see the need for pasteurization. But that still doesn't mean that raw milk is dangerous, you just have to use a little logic.

[bargainman]

I think some of this article sums up the complexity of this argument very well:

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/07/07/magazine/what-if-it-s-all-been-a-big-fat-lie.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm

 

Scientists are still arguing about fat, despite a century of research, because the regulation of appetite and weight in the human body happens to be almost inconceivably complex, and the experimental tools we have to study it are still remarkably inadequate. This combination leaves researchers in an awkward position. To study the entire physiological system involves feeding real food to real human subjects for months or years on end, which is prohibitively expensive, ethically questionable (if you're trying to measure the effects of foods that might cause heart disease) and virtually impossible to do in any kind of rigorously controlled scientific manner. But if researchers seek to study something less costly and more controllable, they end up studying experimental situations so oversimplified that their results may have nothing to do with reality. This then leads to a research literature so vast that it's possible to find at least some published research to support virtually any theory. The result is a balkanized community -- ''splintered, very opinionated and in many instances, intransigent,'' says Kurt Isselbacher, a former chairman of the Food and Nutrition Board of the National Academy of Science -- in which researchers seem easily convinced that their preconceived notions are correct and thoroughly uninterested in testing any other hypotheses but their own.

 

What's more, the number of misconceptions propagated about the most basic research can be staggering. Researchers will be suitably scientific describing the limitations of their own experiments, and then will cite something as gospel truth because they read it in a magazine. The classic example is the statement heard repeatedly that 95 percent of all dieters never lose weight, and 95 percent of those who do will not keep it off. This will be correctly attributed to the University of Pennsylvania psychiatrist Albert Stunkard, but it will go unmentioned that this statement is based on 100 patients who passed through Stunkard's obesity clinic during the Eisenhower administration.

 

Personally I think it's a number of things at work.

- genetics - different people will react differently to different diets.  Some will tolerate wheat without a problem, others will have a major auto immune reaction (and to varying degrees.. some will tolerate small portions others large).

- exposure - having to do with portions.  If you are healthy and eat a bit of crappy food, your body can tolerate it, but the large the portions the larger the problem.

- food industry - Ever heard of pink slime?  look it up.  The food industry is incentivized to get you to eat more food!  They do it very successfully.  Not sure what the answer is here.  Regulation of crappy food in schools might help, so would education.

- sugar and fructose in particular (see the earlier post about its toxic nature in anything more than token amounts).

- exercise

 

I think that due to the complexity of the problem, it's almost like religion, or economics!  The dismal science.  I mean, any complex open system is going to be provably impossible to explain.  I think there are just certain limits, and when you bump up against them you run into problems.  I think of all the research I've read, the only thing I think that is indisputable is that sugar in large quantities is very bad for you.  White flour and carbs too.  Everything else has proponents one way or another.

[rkbabang]

Bargainman, Excellent post.  Let me make a few comments.

 

Personally I think it's a number of things at work.

- genetics - different people will react differently to different diets.  Some will tolerate wheat without a problem, others will have a major auto immune reaction (and to varying degrees.. some will tolerate small portions others large).

 

This is important, which is why the "Optimal Human Diet" for all doesn't exist. But the optimal diet for you does exist and if you are not getting good results with what you are doing you need to change what you are doing. Someday I'm sure you will just put some of your DNA on a detector attachment to your handheld device and it will tell you what you should and shouldn't eat, but until there's an app for that everyone is basically conducting their own N=1 experiment.

 

Which is what I like about the paleo diet.  It is basically a general outline of quality foods you should consume and certain foods to avoid for specific reasons and you customize it for yourself from there.  Some eat a lot of meat, others don't.  I've even heard of vegetarian paleo.  It just says avoid processed foods, most food additives, and most dairy, legumes and grains.  Most people still eat butter, cream, some cheese, and white rice is making a come back into the paleo movement with some calling it a "safe starch".

The argument for rice goes, if you are avoiding grains mostly because of the gut harming anti-nutrients and white rice doesn't contain these isn't it safe?  Now you have to take into account the glycemic load of white rice, but if you're healthy a little rice now and again isn't going to kill you.  Many eat a low-carb version of paleo because they are recovering from obesity, diabetes and/or metabolic syndrome, but others use a much higher carb version containing starchy vegetables because they are endurance athletes or something.  And a moderate carb version should work just fine for any healthy person.  Again this is always an N=1 experiment, you need to find what works for you and be willing to make changes when it doesn't.  I find many people are just not honest with themselves and not willing to make changes even when what they are doing isn't working for them, because they have this preconceived notion (probably because they have been told this by an "authority") that what they are doing is the "correct" way to eat.  How many diabetics go to the nutritional class their doctor recommends, starts eating a low fat diet containing all those "healthy" whole grains, see that their diabetes get worse and worse, yet aren't willing to try anything new?  I was one of these people for a number of years, so I know how easy it is to fool yourself especially when you have what you view as an "authority" such as your doctor behind you, encouraging you on further into the abyss of bad health.  What you have to realize is that when it comes to nutrition you can spend about a week of intense research and know far more than your doctor has ever learned and will ever know.  Doctors know a lot about treating acute illnesses, but next to nothing about what you should eat.  The attractive lady that took him out to lunch the week before gave him all kinds of info on how to treat your cholesterol with statins, so that is what he does.  He won't look for a dietary way to treat you except parrot what he learned in his one nutrition class in medical school, which taught him the corporate created USDA recommendations (which he has never questioned).

 

 

- exposure - having to do with portions.  If you are healthy and eat a bit of crappy food, your body can tolerate it, but the large the portions the larger the problem.

 

This should be obvious as well, but isn't to many. To a healthy person going to a party having a beer and a slice of pizza isn't going to kill you, but living on beer and pizza isn't a good idea.  It is what you do the vast majority of the time that is important and the further from optimal you are the less you should go off the wagon. And again be honest with yourself. How do you feel the next day after consuming this stuff? How does your gut feel?  Is your body trying to tell you something?

 

 

- food industry - Ever heard of pink slime?  look it up.  The food industry is incentive to get you to eat more food!  They do it very successfully.  Not sure what the answer is here.  Regulation of crappy food in schools might help, so would education.

 

...

 

I think that due to the complexity of the problem, it's almost like religion, or economics!

 

I put these two quotes together because this is a huge problem that most don't see and the problems with both food and economics have many of the same root causes.  That is government and the corporations which control it.  The USDA has no incentive to say that grains or sugar are bad for you.  The USDA has every incentive to believe what ADM and Monsanto want them to believe and every incentive to spin things in that direction.  So this is what happens. In the same way that a government school will happily teach an economic theory (like Keynesianism" which says the government spending is not only harmless but can solve all the worlds problems all the time like magic. No government funded institution or government paid bureaucrat will ever use or approve a text book which takes a critical look at these things.  So you have a situation where some of the most educated people have the most skewed (towards the corporate owned state) views.  And the people who do see the problems and do look at root causes from first principles become almost fanatical about it. This is partly because they are so out numbered by the majority who never questions what they are told at any fundamental level. They feel like they are out numbered 1000 to 1 (and they are).

 

[bargainman]

I take vitamin B12 and D3 everyday. B12 and D3 are two of the most common deficiencies in the U.S today. Most milk in the supermarkets is fortified with cheaper D2 which is stored in your bones and makes them more brittle. As a value investor I research everything to death and have found Source Naturals Life Force to be a relatively cheap for a high quality multi vitamin. I also take turmeric every day (in addition to cooking lots of Indian food!) which has all sorts of health benefits worth checking out.

 

Good call on the D3 by the way.  Vitamin D is supposed to be one of the most important vitamins. It's supposed to be a prohormone, and it's supposed to be involved in all sorts of immune functions.  Especially in influenza.

Guess why most people are deficient in vitamin D?  Well check out the dietary sources:

http://www.algaecal.com/vitamin-d/vitamin-d-sources.html

 

basically to get 100% (and several recommend that you get > 3x that), you have to go for cod liver oil or Salmon, Tuna or sardines or fortified milk.  So what is going on?  How could our body need a vitamin so badly that it can only get from a very limited type of food? 

 

Well we're supposed to synthesize it from the sun!  Oh but wait, we don't go out in the sun anymore, and when we do, they tell us to put on 30 SPF which prevents our bodies from generating any vitamin D at all! 

 

I also remember reading that people were still getting the same amount of skin cancer even after SPFs went through the roof.  The explanation, which made sense to me, is that you don't get skin cancer from tanning, you get it from burning.  So when people use SPF 30 all the time, they don't build up sun tolerance, and the one time they forget to put it, they burn, which is what causes the cancer. 

 

So how crazy is that?  We sure live in a wild wild world filled with unintended consequences!

 

So.. take your vitamin D pills folks!  Unless you eat a lot of fish, or go out in the sun a lot, you're probably low.

[rkbabang]

Eric,

 

I'm just starting my research into the Paleo diet and came across this website on "bulletproof coffee". Ignore all the coffee they are trying to sell, but I'd be curious on your opinion on this. Basically the breakfast is coffee blended with butter (grass fed only) and MCT oil (or coconut oil). Lots of claims on the site, but I'd be curious to get your opinion.

http://www.bulletproofexec.com/how-to-make-your-coffee-bulletproof-and-your-morning-too/

 

I just went to download Robb Wolf's latest Podcast Episode 127 (I listen to these regularly) and noticed that the first topic is "Mycotoxins and Bulletproof Coffee".  I haven't listened yet, so I don't know what his take on it is, but I'll be interested to hear it.

 

It's funny how once you start talking about something you find it starts coming up everywhere.

 

[PullTheTrigger]

One man's experience by taking a year off sugar:

 

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rick-foster/no-sugar-diet_b_1397439.html?ref=tw

 

 

[rkbabang]

One man's experience by taking a year off sugar:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rick-foster/no-sugar-diet_b_1397439.html?ref=tw

 

Good article thanks.

 

"My triglyceride count lowered from 141, a "high normal," to 117"

 

If he'd give up his pasta and bread he'd get these way further down.  My triglycerides were over 140 16-months ago and after only 3 months on a lowish-carb paleo diet they were already under 100.  My triglycerides were in the 60s as of my last blood test a few months ago.

 

--Eric

 

[Guest Hester]

http://waroninsulin.com/nutrition/gravity-and-insulin-the-dynamic-duo

 

Good article that tries to answer the question of:

 

 

If insulin is so important in regulating fat metabolism, why do some people eat whatever they want and not get fat? Conversely, why do some people following the strictest carbohydrate-reduced diet remain fat?

 

[Kiltacular]

I recently read the (dense) "Good Calories Bad Calories".  For those interested in the paleo diet or just diet and nutrition in general, I can't recommend it enough. 

 

Like good value investors, some of you ferreted out this idea ahead of others.  Together with a recommendation to read this book, it was commentary here that got me to pay attention.  Now, even the NY Times is catching on.

 

This subject has huge implications for both children and adults.  I was dismissive of these ideas.  I think I was dead wrong.

 

This NY Times article is fully supported by the extremely in depth arguments of Gary Taubes in "Good Calories Bad Calories".

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/02/health/low-carb-vs-low-fat-diet.html?action=click&contentCollection=Fashion%20%26%20Style&module=MostEmailed&version=Full&region=Marginalia&src=me&pgtype=article

[stahleyp]

Kil,

 

I'd also recommend Wheat Belly and/or Grain Brain. I'm (usually) on paleo and the results have been quite good.