Somewhat interesting article on diet

[ApatheticNoMore]

Not just about fat, argues that the thing most strongly positively correlated with weight is omega 6 fats - hmm don't know about that but interesting. Argues also why women tend to gain weight after a pregnancy:

http://life.salon.com/2011/12/19/why_women_need_fat/

[mtnlaurel]

what a great article - thanks for posting it

My favorite part at end
"I’m a big advocate of family farms. I don’t think there’s any reason why we can’t have family farms in virtually any part of the country. Because the U.S. has commoditized corn and soybeans, there’s been a progressive consolidation of farms into big industrial agribusinesses. But family farms, that raise animals on the land, are a really good alternative. And when animals are grass-fed it changes the fatty acid profile of their meat — how much omega-6 and how much omega-3 is in it, which makes it healthier meat to consume. I don’t think that grass-fed or free-range is an elitist kind of food, I think it’s the natural, normal kind of food that we could have anywhere if we patronized our local farmers."

It's like the gov is subsidizing our demise.

[Rosemary]

Good observation, mtnlaurel - if you look at the foods that receive subsidies, they are at least subsidizing obesity.

[HappyHiker]

what a great article - thanks for posting it

My favorite part at end
"I’m a big advocate of family farms. I don’t think there’s any reason why we can’t have family farms in virtually any part of the country. Because the U.S. has commoditized corn and soybeans, there’s been a progressive consolidation of farms into big industrial agribusinesses. But family farms, that raise animals on the land, are a really good alternative. And when animals are grass-fed it changes the fatty acid profile of their meat — how much omega-6 and how much omega-3 is in it, which makes it healthier meat to consume. I don’t think that grass-fed or free-range is an elitist kind of food, I think it’s the natural, normal kind of food that we could have anywhere if we patronized our local farmers."

It's like the gov is subsidizing our demise.

Yes, it IS like the government (and the food manufacturers who lace our foods with chemicals and disease-causing additives) are subsidizing/manufacturing our demise and creating disease. A healthy population is not a profit-generating population...

I touched on this issue of toxic food in my new book, Falling Through Time, where an advertising executive from our time finds she must defend some of the food products she helped market to the citizens in the year 2084 when she ends up there...

Kirkus Review called the book "Back to the Future meets An Inconvenient Truth" and the reviewer did not especially like the space I devoted to exploring the issue of food and ecological toxicity...oh well, the readers "get it," even if the reviewer did not.

[ApatheticNoMore]

Did get the book. Some interesting points:

1) A woman will not only gain some weight after pregnancy (at whatever age). But also will start to gain some weight after age 34 if she is childless/childfree :\. This is because the body is making a last ditch attempt to make any pregnancy that does occur successful, it needs to make sure there is enough fat. In short you are unlikely to have the body you had at 19 in terms of weight regardless of whether you have kids or not.
2) They have apparently created a type of canola oil now that is low in omega 3. This is distressing. Not because I cook with canola oil (I don't), but because I eat it in prepared food occasionally and because it means in general everyone's omega 3s will just be that much lower. Everything gets designed to be less healthy it seems.

And the whole premise of the book is: besides woman's weight being caused by genetics and evolution (pregnancy and age), excessive weight even beyond whatever would occur naturally is caused by high omega 6 and low omega 3.

The whole omega 3 omega 6 ratio thing, even if you don't buy it itself as being the main cause of weight gain, is IMO incredibly useful as what Micheal Pollan called a "heuristic". Pollan had a whole bunch of heuristics for making food decisions like "don't eat food if your grandmother wouldn't recognize it" and "don't eat food with ingredients if you don't know what those ingredients are and they sound more like they belong in a chemistry lab than a kitchen" etc..

If you add to that a decision/heuristic to eliminate all added omega 6 from your diet, which is mostly omega 6 oils (even the book says plain nuts are ok), it will by itself DRIVE healthy behaviors - like eliminating or drastically reducing restaurant food, and even eliminating most of the few processed foods you may still be eating even if they aren't chemistry labs, and the excuse you make for touching that candy drawer at work. And it will do so without radicalism as in: I must never eat a potato or an animal product again or something (although this does seem to work for some, just not me). It will also drive you to seek more pastured animal products (chicken and meat) when you do eat them (although apparently dairy is low in omega 3, even when it's not grass fed, which is good to hear, since really who can be perfect about everything!).

So a few heuristics followed: 1) never eating food with chemistry lab ingredients 2) focusing on eliminating unnecessary omega 6 .... and you will wake up one day finding you have a natural healthy real foods diet, just happens automatically. Yea don't go crazy on sweets either, but that's actually not that easy to do if you are watching your fat balance (and aren't baking all the time )

[Rosemary]

I haven't read the book, but I think that using evolutionary arguments in the face of the mountain of processed foods that many Americans eat every day just doesn't make sense. While I think his comment about needing to have the baby to be smaller to be born was true a long time ago, today women gain weight after pregnancy not because they no longer have that concern, but because of what they are eating... foods that were not at all available to our ancestors. And that weight gain is not inevitable. There are plenty of women who maintain a healthy weight for much of their adult lives.

For more on the omega-6 fats and health, see http://www.susanallport.com/ -- author of a book about omega-3s. The article about her month-long personal experiment with changing from a high-omega-3 diet to one that used more omega-6 fats while still looking, at least on paper, to be far healthier than the standard American diet, is very interesting.

Eliminating processed foods will certainly lead just about anyone toward a healthier body and a lower weight, whether it is done to eliminate added oils or added sugars. I have also quit using added oils in almost all of my cooking - I've found that it simply is not needed. Everything cooks just fine without it. (Exceptions: I use butter in the pan before cooking eggs, because otherwise they stick like crazy. I oil baking pans. But I don't use oil for stir-fries, sauteeing, etc.)

[ApatheticNoMore]

I haven't read the book, but I think that using evolutionary arguments in the face of the mountain of processed foods that many Americans eat every day just doesn't make sense. While I think his comment about needing to have the baby to be smaller to be born was true a long time ago, today women gain weight after pregnancy not because they no longer have that concern, but because of what they are eating... foods that were not at all available to our ancestors. And that weight gain is not inevitable.

The argument in the book is women gain weight after pregnancy regardless, but gain even more with modern food (all due to omega balance in their view). According to the book in most of the world with adequate food supplies (which yes generally is the developed world) even where people are thinner than Americans, women gain some weight after pregnancy. They weigh more and have more fat after a few pregnancies (or if not that then with advancing age) than they did at say 19 before they were ever pregnant.

There are plenty of women who maintain a healthy weight for much of their adult lives.

The book doesn't actually believe being what is considered overweight is particularly unhealthy, at least not until it reaches the point of obesity *maybe*. It also thinks weight has a genetic component which will make some women heavier than others naturally (but they all will be EVEN heavier than they would have been in the past due to diet).

I actually use added oils in most of my cooking. Always localish olive oil. I think eliminating all added sugars is a lot harder than just eliminating omega 6 oils. Because omega 6 oils aren't even a sacrifice, olive oil or butter are just as good if not actually much tastier.

[mm1970]

I find it interesting that small waists were associated with smaller babies, because that was definitely my experience.

[Jemima]

There are other things to beware of, particularly soy and corn oils because they're likely to be genetically modified. I also read an article this morning that said the BPA in can linings and other plastics can easily break down into a hormone that causes weight gain. I am personally concerned enough about hormones in meats that I avoid all beef and pork, and I'm just now tracking down free range chicken meat for sale in my area.

[Rosemary]

Jemima, as far as I know, hormones are not permitted to be used even in commercial poultry production. The primary concerns with battery-raised poultry are antibiotics, lack of humane conditions, and poor diet (corn and soy, resulting in higher omega-6 content of fats, and more fat in general compared to free-range birds, which eat a lot of insects and greens). So - there are plenty of concerns, but hormones are not (legally) among them!