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April 28, 2006
A Tale of Two Fishies
One of the staple proteins of a sensible low carb diet has always been fish. One of the best food sources for important nutrients, such as omega fats, is fish. But all the bad news about PCBs, heavy metals, and other toxins found in fish makes you pause to reconsider the wisdom of enjoying them very often, whatever the weight loss, brain health, or cardiovascular benefits might be. After all, you can get protein from other less toxic sources--pasture-fed beef and lamb, natural chicken and pork, cage free eggs. And you can get purified omegas from both marine and farmed algae sources and not have to worry about the contaminants.
But, doggone it, if you like fish (and I do) how can you reconcile feasting on them in good conscience?
With these thoughts in my head, I happened to be sorting through the big bags of literature that Mike and I lugged home from the big Natural Foods Expo West that we attended in March, when I stumbled onto a handy little wallet sized card I'd picked up at the Nordic Naturals booth. (Nordic Naturals is a company that makes a really high quality line of fresh, pure omega-3 supplement products for adults and kids--free of heavy metals, dioxins, and PCBs.) The card they were handing out contains a quick reference to the mercury levels found in all the fish we typically consume as food. It avers that its data came from the Natural Resources Defense Council or NRDC, so I clicked onto their website, which indeed contains the same helpful groupings of fish by 'Highest" "High" "Lower" and Lowest" mercury content and a whole lot more fish and shellfish info. Their data, so they say, comes from tests conducted by the FDA.
I was gratified to see that some of my favorites are in the lowest category: Anchovies, calamari, caviar, spiny lobster, oysters, and sardines. I admit that I was secretly pleased to see mackerel in the "Highest - Avoid Eating" category, since I don't especially like mackerel and now I have a good reason to eliminate it from my sashimi combo in the future. Sadly, other of my favorites--Maine Lobster and Tuna--were in the "High" category.
I suppose I can take some small measure of solace that my beloved lobsters weren't in the very highest category. That's not to say I won't eat them now and again, because my love of eating a big, hot, Maine lobster with the butter dripping down my chin and onto my lobster bib is legend; I enjoy one every time we visit Maine and intend to continue to do so. Fortunately, we don't travel to Maine as often as we once did, so my heavy metal exposure will have a limit. If I lived on the coast of Maine, I fear I would probably have destroyed my brain with mercury long go.
In the meantime, thanks to this info, I can order up a plate of oysters on the half shell and pile extra anchovies on my Caesar salad with a clear conscience.
Posted by mdeades at 4:29 PM | Comments (4)
April 26, 2006
Playing The Numbers Game: HDL, LDL and Risk
Mike wrote a blog piece a while back called "The Low Fat Hammer" about how entrenched the belief in the health benefits of the low fat diet remains in the minds of the media, the public, and (Heaven help us) in the minds of many doctors, despite the mountain of scientific evidence amassed to the contrary. In virtually every head to head contest that has pitted low fat against low carb, low fat has failed miserably across the board.
Study after study has shown the low fat diet to be a failure in treating obesity, in solving diabetes, in reducing blood pressure or in decreasing heart disease risk. Granted the low fat diet does offer some mild reduction in total cholesterol and LDL, but with the offsetting side-effect that it also lowers HDL and changes the type of LDL particle made from the healthier large, fluffy ones to the small, dense ones that promote atherosclerosis. So even that minor benefit--i.e., lowering total cholesterol and LDL, if those really were benefits, which looks more and more suspect by the day--would be a wash. And yet, still, many of my well-intentioned, fellow physicians across the country continue to prescribe the low fat diet for their patients with elevated cholesterol. And, as per drug company marching orders, when the low fat diet fails (which it surely will) they turn to their favorite cholesterol lowering drug. No matter what, they just gotta get those cholesterol numbers down. Never mind that it appears that those particular numbers don't really mean much. As Mike pointed out in a recent blog, if a cholesterol number is important, it's HDL, not LDL and not Total.
I am constantly amazed when I hear stories of healthy people--even women--who are counselled to take cholesterol lowering drugs to treat these numbers even when they're accompanied by offsetting positives. For instance, a woman I recently learned about was wrestling with her doc's recommendation of taking a statin drug because her LDL was 149. The kicker, however, was that her HDL (the good stuff, the one you want as high as possible) was a whopping 135!! As the study Mike wrote about in his blog pointed out, LDL and total cholesterol didn't matter a whit in determining heart disease risk, but every 1 point increase in HDL correlated with a 1% reduction in risk.
For crying out loud, with a normal HDL reading for a woman being in the neighborhood of 50 or 60, how low is this woman's risk? Seventy-five or 85% lower than average? If her triglycerides were also below 100 (and I'll bet the farm they were) she's really in good shape.
Would she benefit from taking a statin? I doubt it.
Would it harm her? Maybe not, but maybe so, since side effects (even very serious ones) are not uncommon for these drugs.
But shouldn't she get that evil cholesterol down? Bear in mind that most of the cholesterol in the blood comes, not from the food we eat, but from production in the liver. Its manufacture is under the control of a particular enzyme that goes by the unwieldy name HMG Coenzyme A Reductase. Statin drugs work by inhibiting (or slowing down the activity of) this enzyme, with the end result being that the liver makes less cholesterol.
All fine and well, but could there be a better, less potentially toxic method to achieve the same end?
Yep. Since insulin stimulates the activity of this enzyme, and since a low carb diet reduces insulin levels, eating a low carb diet reduces the activity of this enzyme and reduces cholesterol production. And if the total number is still up higher than you like and this worries you (probably needlessly), why not try a dose of inositol hexanicotinate (a B vitamin marketed under the name No-Flush Niacin) instead? It's been proven clinically to work well, is cheaper, and has fewer potential side effects.
Posted by mdeades at 9:53 AM | Comments (4)
April 20, 2006
What's up with 7UP?
An article by Karen Robinson-Jacobs in today's Dallas Morning-News business section caught my eye. (Registration, if required, is free) Its title
7UP takes a natural next step: Plano-based soft drink reformulates to appeal to the health-conscious
fair took my breath away. What's up with 7UP? Has the soda pop giant finally turned over a new leaf?
Once I recovered from my initial shock, my mind began to race with possibilities. Maybe they have decided to begin a process of dialing down the sweetness in their product for the sake of America's health, say with a gentle move from 39 grams of high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) to 35, 30, 25, 20, 15, and on down. By the time they got to zero, kids (and parents) would be drinking pure water and loving it! What a concept!
Or, miracle of miracles, maybe they decided to replace the current almost quarter-cup of health-damaging HFCS with something a tad less deadly? Say first go to plain old table sugar, which is only half fructose, instead of 55% - 90% fructose. That would be a good first step. Then they could begin to dilute the sugar with glucose syrup, bit by bit, until it became all glucose and no fructose. Since fructose is about 150% sweeter than pure glucose, this maneuver would also begin the dialing down process of the nation's sweet tooth. Substituting 39 grams of pure glucose for HFCS would, in itself, be a good step, since glucose isn't nearly as damaging a sugar as fructose.
From there, they could begin a slow, stepwise reduction in the glucose content from 39 to 0 and again, the nation would be enjoying lightly lemon-lime flavored water.
But as I read further in Ms. Robinson-Jacobs' piece, I realized my hopes were not even on the drawing table. The whole rebranding of 7UP as '100% Natural' is nothing but a marketing gimmick to appeal to the unwary consumer.
Compare the two formulations and judge for yourself.
Old 7UP is made with carbonated water. New 7UP is made with filtered carbonated water.
An improvement, to be sure, but a slight one.
Old 7UP is made with citric acid. New with natural citric acid.
Okay.
Old 7UP was made with natural flavors. The new one still is.
Old 7UP was preserved with calcium disodium EDTA. New uses natural potassium citrate.
Again, okay.
Old 7UP had 140 calories, 39 grams of HFCS, no caffeine, no calcium, and no protein. And in every case (even sadly the HFCS) so does the New '100% Natural' formula.
Nothing new (or particularly healthy) there. But there are two things I can't figure out. First, how did HFCS get to be 'natural.' I mean, clearly, it's an engineered product--granted made from a 'natural' one, i.e. corn, but certainly not like anything found in nature and certainly not healthy. Besides, just being 'natural' doesn't automatically make something good for you to eat. Afterall, crude oil is natural, but you wouldn't want to eat it.
And, just on a label housekeeping note, if old 7UP was preserved with calcium disodium EDTA, then how come the label said it didn't have any calcium in it? Hmmmm? Can't always trust a label.
To sum up, the only difference between the old and new and natural formulations is filtered water, natural citric acid, and a 'natural' preservative.
Big whoop.
Surely the savvy consumer of natural products--who for the most part ought to be consumers seeking better quality foods--won't be fooled. There's nothing much up with new 7UP. Course, consumers seeking better quality food probably wouldn't be seeking 7UP to begin with.
Posted by mreades at 9:30 AM | Comments (10)
April 13, 2006
Peas, Peas Me, Oh Yeah
There's something about the arrival of spring that whets my appetite for green peas. Although they aren't the lowest carb of green vegetable choices, they are enough of a bargain at 8.4 grams to enjoy a half-cup as a side dish with ham or lamb for Easter brunch--especially when you can get them fresh.
I confess that I love the tender, delicate flavor of fresh early spring peas almost any way you serve them. My main problem is that it's very easy, loving them as I do, for the half-cup to grow into a portion not quite as carb friendly. That's not to say that it would be so terrible to blow your carb budget on all the early spring peas you can stuff in, but why tempt fate? Since in my case, relying solely on self-discipline in the face of a serving bowl filled with tender spring peas, touched ever so lightly with butter, salt, and pepper, might prove problematic.
A better option might be to approach portion control a slightly different way: turn the peas into a delicious soup, instead. That way, you can stretch 10 ounces of peas to feed 6 people (not even 2 ounces per person) by combining them with carb-friendly broth and cream. Not to mention that soup is filling, which is why it's a good way to start a meal.
Here's one of my favorite recipes for green pea soup. It's extra delicious made with fresh green peas, but works almost as well with frozen; that way, you can serve it any time of the year.
So, no matter where you live--even if the crocuses and daffodils haven't quite yet broken through and a harvest of early peas are farther off still, you can add a little bit of spring green to your table this weekend! Enjoy.
Creamy Green Pea Soup
Serves 6
10 ounces fresh green peas (or one 10-ounce package frozen peas)
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 small shallot, peeled and minced
1/2 teaspoon salt (divided use)
1/2 teaspoon white pepper (divided for use)
3 cups vegetable broth
2 tablespoons ThickenThin not/Starch
1 cup half-and-half (at room temperature)
1 tablespoon chopped chives
4 tablespoons crème fraiche (or sour cream)
1. Thaw the frozen peas and reserve 1/8 cup for garnish.
2. Melt the butter in a 2-quart saucepan over medium heat until it foams. Add the shallot and sauté until translucent. Add the peas (except the reserved 1/8 cup), season with a pinch of salt and pepper, and saute for a minute or two.
3. Transfer the sautéed peas and shallot to a blender or food processor. Add the vegetable broth, ThickenThin, and remaining salt and pepper. Puree until smooth. (At this point, the soup can be held, covered and refrigerated, for up to a day before proceeding.)
4. Return soup to the saucepan, bring it to a boil, and reduce the heat to simmer. Just before serving, stir in the half-and-half and let it come up to temperature. At the last moment before serving stir in the chives.
5. Ladel the soup into bowls; place a dollop of crème fraiche or sour cream into the center of each bowl and garnish the cream with a few of the reserved fresh peas.
Protein per serving: 5.4 grams
Effective carb per serving: 8.7 grams
Posted by mdeades at 11:50 AM | Comments (2)
April 11, 2006
Egg-stra Special Egg Salad
Spring has sprung, Easter is just around the corner, and soon, you may find yourself awash in left over brightly colored eggs and wondering what to do with them.
Kids love to decorate eggs at Easter and it makes for a wonderful and entertaining family activity. My own childhood Easter memories are a kaliedoscopic swirl of green, purple, and pink fingertips and the sharp smell of vinegar. Egg coloring in my day was fraught with difficulty. Fortunately, nowadays, a bazillion different sorts of less messy and far less stinky egg coloring and decorating kits have flooded the market that make it easier even for little ones to get into the act.
Still, no matter which method you choose, most of them involve coloring and hiding real hard boiled eggs, which carries some degree of risk. If you intend to eat the eggs after the hunt, there's the obvious, real danger of food poisoning. Eating eggs left hidden by the E.B. in the 'wild' on a warm spring day and found later by some happy little egg hunter, dropped in the dirt, dusted off, plopped into a pretty basket, and carted around in the warm Spring sunshine for another period of time is not the healthiest, safest idea. Then there's the other risk--that the happy little hunter won't find all the eggs, which will sit, safely hidden, as the warm spring turns to hot summer for someone's sandal-shod foot to discover about the 4th of July!
Pheewwww!
To my way of thinking, it's fine, in fact wonderful, to color eggs with the kids, but don't hide them. Instead, keep them in the fridge until you're to ready to eat them with your Easter picnic, brunch, or feast. A bowl of brightly-colored eggs on the table makes for a beautiful centerpiece and they'll be safe for diners to peel and eat.
Hide plastic eggs or homemade cascarones instead; just as much fun, but you'll risk no stinky, ugly surprises come mid-summer.
Now, for those left over hard boiled eggs, here's a recipe for my sister's delicious Egg Salad, first published in Mike's book, Thin So Fast. It's great stuffed into a tomato, wrapped in a low carb tortilla, or scooped up onto celery sticks or jicama slices. Just be sure to make it with eggs that haven't visited the backyard recently. Making it with their (safely refrigerated) Easter eggs will make it so egg-stra special that kids may even eat it!
Egg Salad
Serves 4
8 hardboiled eggs
2 tablespoons chopped black olives
1 teaspoon minced onion
1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
1 tablespoon chopped dill pickle
2 tablespoons mayonnaise (preferably homemade from good oil)
1 tablespoon Dijon-style mustard
Peel and chop the eggs, mix in all remaining ingredients until well combined.
Protein per serving: 12.4 grams
Effective carbohydrate per serving: 1.5 grams
And to all: Happy Easter! Happy Passover! Happy Spring!
Posted by mdeades at 9:54 AM | Comments (0)
April 8, 2006
A Better Treatment for Sleep Apnea
The title of a little blurb by Susan T. Lennon in the USA Weekend supplement to our paper last week caught my eye:
Blood Pressure: Your snoring may keep it high
Ms. Lennon described a study done at the University of Alabama at Birmingham which showed that 85% of people with resistant hypertension (meaning hasn't responded to medications, exercise, and a low-fat, low-salt diet) also suffered from obstructive sleep apnea. The researchers also added that treating the apnea improved the blood pressure.
Ms. Lennon has got it wrong in the title, however. The snoring doesn't keep blood pressure up, if it did, you could control resistant high blood pressure with Breathe Right strips. Granted, the stress of lower oxygen from the apnea could maybe contribute to elevating the blood pressure, but a more reasonable explanation is that the snoring and the blood pressure are caused by the same thing.
Sleep apnea is a potentially lethal condition in which the sufferer quits breathing for sustained periods during sleep. In most instances, the periods of apnea (lack of breathing) are interrupted by loud snoring and often thrashing about. Sometimes, however, the lack of oxygen during the stretches of apnea trigger heart rhythm disturbances that can prove fatal. For this reason, identifying and treating sleep apnea is of critical importance. To learn more about it, click here.
Anyone who snores loudly, thrashes about when sleeping, particularly if overweight, should be examined with sleep studies for apnea. It can truly be a matter of life and death.
Traditional treatment for sleep apnea usually involves the strict use of a CPAP (continuous positive airway pressure) machine when sleeping to keep the air moving in and out. It's an effective, if not especially convenient, therapy. And it may be necessary in the short term, but, in the long term, there's an easier way.
Interstingly, both sleep apnea and high blood pressure are components of the metabolic syndrome--i.e., they're diseases of insulin-resistance. Consequently, solving the underlying metabolic disorder--the insulin resistance--will usually solve both of the problems. In our medical practice over the years, we had numbers of patients who, after having been tethered to their CPAP machine for years were able to discontinue its use by losing weight on a low carb diet. People with high blood pressure were usually able to control it and discontinue their medications on a low carb diet. And, as the U of Alabama researchers discovered, there's a lot of overlap in these two groups.
I recall one of our patients (about whom we wrote in Protein Power) who had logged over 18,000 hours on his CPAP machine and whose blood pressure was barely controlled on two medications, a high-carb low-fat diet, and lots of exercise. In the course of roughly 6 months on low carb, he was able to lose about 100 pounds, discontinue his meds, and liberate himself from his machine.
No more CPAP tether, no more pills, just a sensible eating regimen. As we've always said: give the body the correct food to eat and, in most cases, it will heal itself.
The low carb diet is a potent therapy for these disorders, but with one caveat, and it's a BIGGIE.
If you currently take medications for blood pressure or blood sugar or use a CPAP machine for apnea, ask your physician to help you adjust your medications or therapies when you're ready to begin low carb.
If you suffer from high blood pressure and adopt a low carb diet while taking medications to lower blood pressure, your pressure could fall dangerously low. Put less delicately, you could fall over on your face with low blood pressure. (The same is true for blood sugar lowering medications, but that's another story.)
And the flip side is also true. Don't just decide to discontinue your own blood pressure medicines, either. It's not safe to do on your own, because some blood pressure medications have to be discontinued slowly--tapered off--or will cause potentially dangerous blood pressure spikes.
Approached properly--that means with a doctor's knowledge and supervision--there is no more effective remedy for these two disorders than a low carb diet. It's powerful stuff! It's a shame Ms. Lennon didn't bother to mention it.
Posted by mdeades at 1:25 PM | Comments (1)
April 5, 2006
Arsenic and Old Legs... Chicken Legs, That Is
Today's New York Times contained an article by food writer Marian Burros entitled "Chicken With Arsenic? Is that O.K?" that points up yet another reason for eating natural or organic poultry, if you can get it.
The piece concerns renewed reports that arsenic (yes, that would be the same deadly poison sometimes used to exterminate rats and errant husbands) may be present in greater than allowable amounts in chicken. Not in all chicken--but some kinds of it. For decades and with the government's stamp of approval, the toxic mineral has been added to some commercial chicken feed to kill parasites and promote greater appetite in the chickens to enhance their growth.
Chickens raised according to organic or natural methods aren't fed arsenic-laced grain and, fortunately, the outing of the problem has recently prodded even some of the big boys to give up using it, although many producers still do. As Ms. Burros correctly points out,
Tyson Foods, the nation's largest chicken producer, has stopped using arsenic in its chicken feed. In addition, Bell & Evans and Eberly chickens are arsenic-free
I was really pleased to see that Tyson, headquartered in the Northwest corner of my home state of Arkansas, has sworn off. And according to Ms. Burros, even McDonald's has proclaimed that it will no longer use chicken fed arsenic. As for chicken from sources that haven't taken the 'no arsenic' pledge, it's caveat emptor, buyer beware!
When it is used, the chickens eat the mildly poisonous feed, the arsenic finds its way into chicken meat, we eat the chicken, and thereby some additional quantity of a deadly poison gets into us...albeit, in usually very small amounts.
What's minute? Well in people eating chicken regularly--and more people are eating more chicken than ever before--that could mean 1.5 - 5 micrograms (that's 1/100th of a milligram) of arsenic per day. Should we be worried? We probably shouldn't panic, but even little amounts add up, and we must bear in mind that tainted chicken isn't the only source of arsenic we might consume.
Arsenic also occurs in minute quanitites in most ground water and therefore in unfiltered drinking water. It's especially plentiful in the water of areas of great geothermal intensity, such as those that are loaded with natural hot springs. The water in places, such as Yellowstone National Park, with its geyers and bubbling hot mud springs or Hot Springs National Park, Arkansas, where I grew up, has reputedly got a bit more arsenic than its fair share.
Centuries ago, when Hernando Desoto passed through the area that is now Hot Springs, the indigenous peoples (and afterward, presumably the Spaniards, too) relied on the natural pools of thermal waters to heal their ills. In its hey day, people came from all over to Hot Springs to "take the waters," by which they meant both bathe in and drink the naturally hot water from the mineral springs.
In the 19th and early 20th century, in the time before antibiotics came into being, treatment for most every malady consisted of the judicious application of hot or cold. And for this reason, medical spas and sanitariums popped up in areas, like Hot Springs, blessed with natural thermal springs. In addition, physicians administered all manner of toxic substances from arsenic to mercury in controlled amounts to kill microbes--or perhaps patients, if they got carried away with their dosing. Taking the waters in Hot Springs was a two-fer; the water comes burbling from underground at an average temperature of 143 degrees F, already filled with minerals of every sort, including a little trace of arsenic.
I recall as a kid riding my bike to a friend's house along a route that took me across a pretty little burbling stream called Arsenic Springs. Even as a bike-riding adolescent, I'd heard of arsenic and knew it as something poisonous. Consequently, I always held my breath as I rode across the bridge over the spring, fearing, I suppose, that some sort of noxious vapor emanating from it might do me in. Then someone told me the word was pronounced Ar-SEEN-ic Springs, not AR-se-nic Springs, and that gave me some measure of relief. Not enough, however, to be willing to drink the water from it, although maybe that's why Tyson can swear off using feed with arsenic; they water the chickens with natural water from an arsenic spring. (Just kidding.)
In point of fact, I've been given to understand in later years that in the Arsenic Spring, the amount of arsenic in the water was actually so low as to be almost undetectable. So much for my fears of a poisonous miasma, however the name was actually pronounced. Even in the open hot springs that burble forth at the foot of the tufa outcroppings behind the city's famed Bath House Row, the levels or arsenic are minimal. And I have drunk my share of that water, both from the bath houses and the public drinking fountains along the street they line with, to the best of my knowledge, no ill effects.
Locals and visitors alike queue up with their milk jugs and sundry bottles to capture the waters flowing from the downtown fountains, but why go to all that bother when right up the street you could enjoy a delicious, cool glass of Mt. Valley Spring Water, one of America's first and best bottled waters, the one that I grew up drinking and that followed Bill Clinton to the White House. Clean of taste and so far as I know, pretty free of arsenic. Much to my delight, I've just recently learned that the favorite water of my childhood now comes in a lightly bubbly variation, soon to make its debut on shelves across the land. I tasted it last month at the Natural Foods Expo and like its (much) older 'still' sibling, it is dee-lish!
But I digress...
I can personally attest to the immediate (if temporary) restorative powers of sipping water from the hot mineral spring of the Arlington Hotel resort and Bath House, while enjoying a long hot soak in it, followed by a really good massage.
I guess the long and the short of it is that if I'm to be exposed to arsenic, I'd prefer soaking these old legs in a steaming tub of hot mineral water to eating a chicken leg laced with it any day!
Posted by mdeades at 12:11 PM | Comments (0)
April 3, 2006
The Corrected Low-down on Lamb Feeding
I stand corrected.
Many thanks to readers Anne Mark and Esther Hoff for notifying me of an error in my On The Lamb post of a few days ago. I had written that lamb was a healthier meat because it wasn't lot fed. Both ladies wrote in to correct me, noting that they had first-hand knowledge of large, awful lamb feed lots in Colorado.
Mea cupla! Mea culpa! Mea culpa!
I remembered having been told in some distant time that lamb was never lot fed, but obviously either I remembered wrong or I was told wrong. Perhaps the factoid I recalled pertained to only a specific type of lamb--say New Zealand lamb or something. In any event, that deficiency in my knowledge base has now been remedied, thanks to help from my ever-vigilant readership, and with this post, the blog corrected.
So, lovers of lamb chops, here's the low-down on the subject: just as with beef, pork, or poultry, to be sure you're getting the good stuff, ask for or look for the words "natural" or "organic" to be sure you're not getting a bunch of hormones, pesticides, or antibiotics and the words "pasture fed" to be sure you're not getting lot fed animals.
If such products aren't available at your local grocer or farmers' market, here's one online small family ranch source (with which we have no affiliation, whatsoever) that ships direct to individual consumers. I discovered the Sexton Ranches Stone Valley Natural Lamb and Beef website by googling 'natural lamb.' There are many others, I'm sure, and I make no representations about their product or their service, having never bought lamb from them. Still, it's heartening to see the photos on the site, not only of their products, but of the ranching couple themselves and their precious little children.
And the all-important words were emblazoned on their website: natural, pasture fed, no hormones or antibiotics. Looks to me like a place where one could get tasty, healthy, meat from contented animals.
Posted by mdeades at 4:31 PM | Comments (1)