Odds stacked against you

[unixronin]

Last night, someone I know pointed me at a July 2007 blog article by a Dr. William Davis, talking about why excessive consumption of processed wheat products is bad for your health.  That includes breads, cakes (see, you always knew Ho-Hos were evil!), pasta, and even those breakfast cereals with the boxes plastered with logos telling you how heart-healthy they are.¹

It’s an interesting blog overall. The title of this post comes from part of Dr. Davis’ capsule “about” text:  “You’ve been playing the health game by someone else’s rules with the odds stacked against you.”

Davis stresses that he’s not dispensing medical advice, just sharing information and discussing health issues frankly as he sees them.  But it seems to me there’s a lot of good information here.

I’ve just syndicated his Atom feed here on LJ as heartscanblog.  If you want to become a little more of an informed player in the health game, you might want to pick the feed up.

[1]  Oh, wait, wait, most of them don’t actually come right out and say that they’re heart-healthy ... they usually wrap the insinuation in weasel-words like “Supa Wonda Brekky Bikkies can be part of a heart-healthy diet” and let you draw the conclusion they want you to, without ever actually making explicit claims.  Well, cellulose packing peanuts can be “part of” almost any diet you care to name, too, but I still don’t recommend eating them.

Comments

[masgramondou.livejournal.com]

I refuse to believe that stoneage people ignored grains - in season. Obviosuly as hunter gatherers they would eat other things too but no grain is just as stupid as no meat.

We don't eat that much carbo relatively speaking, but I doubt I'd be able to do the vigorous exercise bit with no carbs in the diet. If you do vigorous exercise you can eat whatever you like. That's why I exercise hard.

[unix-jedi.livejournal.com]

Sure, they'd eat what they could get - but the amounts were much reduced, and the ability to grind the grains wasn't really available until, IIRC, right before the Egyptians took over the ME. (Which is why it's interesting that many of the mummies that have been examined have large amounts of plaque buildup in their arteries....)

If you do vigorous exercise you can eat whatever you like.

Cautionary Tale:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Fixx

[perspicuity.livejournal.com]

as well, our modern methods of processing grains remove a lot of nutrients - esp the white[r] flours; the kernel is gone, and so are the fats/oils; trivia: i only recently read the reason to lose those is to get a shelf stable material that can sit around for months at room temperatures without going rancid. nice! it also produces a really nice, consistently smooth end product useful for all sorts of pretty things.

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[masgramondou.livejournal.com]

The move from hunter-gatherer to agriculture certainly severely impacted nutrition - but the trade off was that on the whole more infants survived (infant mortality in hunter gatherers is really grim, as are the maternal stats for that matter) and the farm lifestyle supports massively higher population densities. I'd rather have been an ancient egyptian than an ancient hunter gatherer. The same tradeoff happened again with urbanization, even worse diets (i.e much more processed grains and even fewer vegetables/meats in exchange for even higher population density). Really its only been in the last 150 years or so that poor city dwellers have had the option of a decent diet - and I suspect if you asked a resident of any 1850s city whether they'd swap their life for one in the deprived parts of the US today they'd jump at it in a heartbeat. Historically humans have been too thin not too fat.

In re exercise and diet. I suspect that prior overindulgence (and genetics) contributed to Mr Fixx' heart problems. Personally I've never been a lardass or smoked heavily and while I've not weighed myself religiously but I doubt my weight has ever been above 90kg and I know my waist has never been above 38". Mind you having said "can eat whatever" I generally don't pig out on Foie gras or even cakes. I eat them with gusto on occasion but in general we eat a lot of cooked and raw veggies, meat and fish as well as the carbo sources of rice, potatoes and grains. It seems to me the key is to eat in moderation most of the time.

[perspicuity.livejournal.com]

i'm sure they gathered what they could, but it amounted to "very little" and as you say, in season.

the "paleo" thing has little to do with stoneage authenticity as opposed to a simple system that is rich in nutrients and variety while easily ignoring the crap that's out there; spinach is spinach. meat is meat.

that whole grain bread is ... what? 19+ ingredients? did they manage to sneak in some corn syrup? sugars? whale brains? tricky.

and apparently these guys just aren't eating a lot of simple carbs, it's in the fruits and veggies, but locked in down deep.

i like to keep it seasonal too. i have a hard time wanting apples in the Spring for instance. but now? om nom nom nom.

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