ABC’s big meal propaganda
Applebee's Quesadilla Burger
One of my readers sent me a link to a segment on ABC News with Charlie Gibson showing just how disgustingly slanted and inaccurate mainstream media reports can be.
Gibson leads into the segment about two reporters who underwent self experimentation on the adverse effects of unhealthy eating. The reporters, ABC’s Yuji de Nies and Jon Garcia, set out to see what would happen if they consumed a giant meal containing over 6,000 calories. Here is the result as they reported it.
Pretty brutal, eh? But let’s shine the piercing light of good sense on what is going on here. As you might expect, the reality is vastly different from that portrayed by ABC.
First off, let’s look at the actual nutritional content of the food eaten. As reported in the piece, the total energy content of the meal was 6,190 calories, which included 187 grams of saturated fat. These were the only parameters reported. I took the time to go through the links in the article accompanying the video to find exactly where these foods came from. Here’s what I found.
The burger is an Applebee’s Quesadilla Burger (served with fries, of course); the snack is The Cheesecake Factory Fried Macaroni And Cheese; and the dessert is Uno Chicago Grill Mega-sized Deep Dish Sundae (listed as cookie below). How do I know these are the exact ones? These were the ones referenced in the CSPI’s List of Most Unhealthy High-Calorie, Fat and Salty Restaurant Foods That May Clog Your Arteries. After seeing the photos and comparing to what I saw on the video, these selections are the ones the reporters ate.
I then tracked down the Nutritional Facts for the foods involved (here, here, here and here) and put them into an Excel spreadsheet. Take a look.
The first thing you might notice is that the total calorie count is 5,708, which is considerable, but is actually 482 calories fewer than the 6,190 reported. Second, and this is a biggie, the saturated fat content of this meal is only 88 grams, not the 187 grams reported.
The reporters stretched the truth a little in that they reported as if the Mega-sized Deep Dish Sundae were a single treat to be consumed by one person at a sitting. I’m sure it could be so eaten, but it’s actually designed for four people to share. The Nutritional Facts list the calories per serving as 690 and the saturated fat as 17 grams. I’ve used the amounts in all four servings, i.e., one entire four-person dessert, in my spreadsheet.
As you may have noticed, the total carb content of the meal is 745 grams, which converts during digestion to a little over three cups (3.1 cups to be exact) of sugar. The ABC report, of course, failed to mention the carb content of the meal and ignored any immediate effect this huge intake of carb might cause. One of the reporters, Jon, claimed that he was ‘sluggish’ and ‘tired’; the implication being that this sluggishness resulted from his huge saturated fat intake. No mention, naturally, of the enormous amount of carbohydrate and the large increase in insulin release it might cause. From what I can see from the video, Jon looks to be sporting a little abdominal obesity, which would imply a degree of insulin resistance and hyperinsulinemia. People with this disorder tend to over secrete insulin in response to carb intake causing an overshoot and reactive hypoglycemia (low blood sugar), which will indeed result in sluggishness.
It’s pretty impressive when the lab tech holds up the tube of blood taken after the meal and compares it to the one taken before the meal. There is a lot of fat swimming in the serum, that’s for sure. What the producers of this piece (and, sadly, the doctors commenting although they should know better) want you to take away from all this by the way they set it up is that all that saturated fat went directly into the blood. And how can you argue with them? It’s there for all to see.
Problem is, that’s what blood samples look like after almost any meal, especially one that contains carbohydrates. The fat you see isn’t the fat the two reporters ate; it is the fat the liver has made from the carbohydrate. It’s the same picture a tube of blood would show after either of the two doctors had eaten a high-carb, low-fat lunch.
The blood samples were taken two hours after the meal. Dietary carbohydrate is absorbed directly into the blood and makes a pass through the liver where it stimulates the production of triglycerides, the fat you see in the blood. Fat, especially long-chain saturated fat digests very slowly, and doesn’t reach the blood until much later than the two hour mark. While carbs go directly into the blood, fats take a different route. The process that breaks down dietary fat into its component fatty acids is a lengthy process as compared to the breakdown of carbs. Once the fat has broken down, it has to combine with bile salts to make it into a form that is water soluble and can be taken up by the intestinal cells. Once taken up, unlike carbs, which are sent directly to the bloodstream, fats go into the lymphatic system, a much smaller and more static transport system than the vasculature. Once in the lymphatics, fats make their way to the thoracic duct, which empties into a large vein in the upper chest. The lymphatics are small vessels and take a long time to move their contents along since there is no heartbeat pushing them as there is with blood. As I say, the fat in the blood you see on the video didn’t come from the saturated fat in the diet, although that was definitely the implication.
But what about the ultrasound showing the blood vessels had changed? Wasn’t that because of the fat?
I’m afraid not. The fat from the diet wasn’t in the blood vessels yet, so it couldn’t be the dietary fat causing the change. So what was it?
How about a little normal physiology. Let me explain. The body gets blood where it needs to get it by opening certain blood vessels while closing others. Let me give you an example. Have you ever jumped into cold water to go swimming and noticed that not long after jumping in you have to urinate? What happened?
Your arms and legs have a radiator effect. Since these appendages have little padding the blood circulating there is exposed to the cold water, and if nothing is done, the cold water cools the blood creating a big problem. Your body compensates by shutting down the circulation to the skin and areas close to the surface in your arms and legs and shunts that blood to your core. Your core already has plenty of blood when this happens, so it has to get rid of some. It does so by sending it through the kidneys where the liquid portion is filtered out and becomes urine. Suddenly your bladder is full and you have to go.
The body has the ability to direct blood wherever it needs by its manipulation of blood vessel size. Where do you think blood is needed after an almost 6,000 calorie meal? That’s right. The digestive tract. It takes a lot of work to deal with 6,000 calories, and a lot of work requires a lot of oxygen, which comes from the blood. So after a heavy meal, the body shunts extra blood to the guts where the works is being done. It does this by opening or dilating the arteries carrying blood to the intestines and by narrowing the blood vessels in other parts of the body.
Now, think back to the video of the woman whose blood vessel (in her arm) is being examined by ultrasound. When it’s compared to the previous ultrasound, the one before she ate, notice how much faster the heart is beating. (The little swishing sounds you hear, each of which represents a heart beat, are spaced much closer together.) The heart is beating faster because the body is working to digest an enormous amount of food, and this work stresses the heart in the same way that running down the street would stress the heart. Work is work.
The digestive tract needs extra oxygen to do its work, this extra oxygen can get there only via the blood, so the intestines require more blood than normal. This extra blood gets shunted there by opening the arteries that feed the gut and narrowing those that go other places where a lot of blood isn’t needed at the moment. Such places as, say, a relaxed arm.
Anyone with a smattering of knowledge of normal physiology (and apparently an open mind) could predict that the artery in a relaxed arm would narrow after a heavy meal and that that artery would be back to normal six hours later (which it was so reported in this video).
What you’re seeing in this video is normal physiology at work interpreted as being abnormal by a couple of lipophobic doctors who should (and probably do) know better. It makes for dramatic theater, but their interpretation is nothing but prevarication or ignorance or both.
But had they reported the truth, there would have been no story. Kind of sad, isn’t it.
thx for the welcome. In a way, I’m on the front lines – watching people eat in my profession and following the capricious trends. I cast a critical eye on this socio-cultural experience, it’s just fun when my own misgivings are echoed in some fact. (I need to start my own blog). Where the gravy glows-
Go for it. Great title!
Except in rare cases (such as, yourself), my faith in typical medical doctors has just plummeted to zero. It was already as low as can be, but after seeing this…count me out.
Will admit I laughed a bit though when they mentioned saturated fat going straight to the arteries. It reminds me of those old cartoons we used to watch in school about government. Can just imagine one of them now
“see, you eat saturated fat, and then it magically goes to your heart, and kills you. Eat more grain =D”
Great blog btw, been seeing it a lot lately, will continue reading
-Anthony
Thanks. Glad you’re enjoying it.
Dr. Mike,
I wonder if you could weigh in on a dispute on Jimmy Moore’s forum going on about your assertions about fat from a meal being slow to get into the bloodstream. I cited your ABC post in response to Diane Kress (author, The Metabolism Miracle) saying in interview that sat fat should be restricted on a weight loss program because it goes straight into the blood and therefore the body has to burn it before it can burn stored body fat. In response to that, someone wrote:
“I wonder what Eades would say about this study: http://jn.nutrition.org/cgi/content/full/136/6/1498 ”
…and pointed out that “at the 2 hour mark the trigs are elevated around 50% above baseline levels. See Fig 1.” (The subjects in this study ate heavy whipping cream and then had their blood checked over an 11-hour period.)
The poster also wrote:
“Eades put his foot in his mouth here. It is he, not the doctors on the show, that should know better. He unequivocally states that the fats have not made it to the bloodstream in 2 hours which is demonstrably false. The study I posted demonstrates otherwise both by the rise in trig levels from JUST fat (e.g. the liver didn’t hurriedly convert carbs injested with the fat because there weren’t any) and the appearance of the radiolabel which confirms the source is from the dietary intake. The fat in the cloudy blood came from the fat in the meal. Indeed this effect is only seen after fat intake except where fat absorption is impaired, and it is not seen after meals that do not contain fat: http://books.google.com/books?id=sxACAAA…q=&f=false ”
Here’s the thread:
http://www.livinlowcarbdiscussion.com/showthread.php?tid=3813&pid=87220#pid87220
I really would like to hear your take on this. Thanks.
Thanks for the great report and ramification of ABC’s facts on kcal’s and stuff.
TO THE FIRST POSTER. JESUS SAID ‘ EAT MY FLESH & DRINK MY BLOOD.’ SO YOU WERE PROBABLY BEING FACETIOUS WHEN YOU SAID HE WAS PROMOTING GRAINS.
Fat absoprtion…in this post you said saturated fat traveled through the lymph system and wouldn’t hit the blood stream until several hours after the 2 hour mark. Yet Dr. Davis, over on the Heart Scan Blog recently posted this statement: “In other words, eat fat, whether it’s saturated, hydrogenated, polyunsaturated, or monounsaturated, and blood levels of triglycerides will go up over the next 6 hours. This remains true if there are carbohydrates in the meal, or if there are NO carbohydrates in the meal. It also remains true if you chronically consume fats.
While fats are the primary determinant of postprandial (after-eating) triglycerides, carbohydrates are the primary determinant of fasting triglycerides.” (and here)
He credits FAT with postprandial triglyceride increases. This seems a pretty fundamental point to be in dispute. What’s your supporting evidence for the lymph path?
My supporting evidence is every medical physiology text in print. Eating fat will increase the triglycerides in the blood after the meal over several hours, but a high intake of carbohydrates keep the fasting triglycerides up. There is nothing I wrote that is in conflict with what Dr. Davis wrote.
great post and great video
i guess many people are not aware of how bad these foods. it is said to see people eating junks everyday
Dr. Eades, you wrote: “Problem is, that’s what blood samples look like after almost any meal, especially one that contains carbohydrates. The fat you see isn’t the fat the two reporters ate; it is the fat the liver has made from the carbohydrate. It’s the same picture a tube of blood would show after either of the two doctors had eaten a high-carb, low-fat lunch.
The blood samples were taken two hours after the meal. Dietary carbohydrate is absorbed directly into the blood and makes a pass through the liver where it stimulates the production of triglycerides, the fat you see in the blood.”
Dr. Davis wrote here Blood glucose makes a striking peak at 200 mg/dl after the low-fat breakfast of pasta and rice, in contrast to the low-carb breakfast. Triglycerides behaved very differently from the low-carb experiment: While there was no initial postprandial surge, there was a late surge developing 6-24 hours later.”
Perhaps it is a molehill but the picture I had, e.g. the high carb levels in this meal ABC reported on were what drove the “fat swimming in the test tube” is suddenly not so clear. Now it seems that it was in fact both the fat and the carbs that muddied the test tube, and perhaps the fat even had a more significant effect (though had they done a fasting test next morning, a high TG number there would have been blamed on the carbs).
I think author of the article is not advocating low-cab/high-fat diet, but it seems some comments suggest that. I’m diagnosed with insulin resistance and I’m switching to a low-fat/high-carb diet after encountering subjoined websites.
Himsworth, a British scientist in 1936 distinguish two types of diabetes. He uses two concepts:
- insulin sensitive (today – type 1 diabetes)
- insulin resistant (today – type 2 diabetes).
He conducted studies wether two groups respond differently to high carbohydrate diet. The evidence indicated that insulin resistant type gets better on high carbohydrate/low fat diet and requires less insulin or is completely cured while insulin sensitive type ( type 1 diabetes)response is negative.
http://www.jci.org/articles/view/100810/version/1/files/pdf
http://jp.physoc.org/content/81/1/29.full.pdf
Food that diabetics really need to restrict is fat. When fat enters the bloodstream after a fatty meal, it interferes with insulin’s action, preventing it from lowering blood sugar. So blood sugar begins to rise – and then the trouble starts. On the other hand carbohydrates, especially complex ones, help insulin function normally. J. Shirley Sweeny demonstrated this back in 1927.
Dr Sweney gave healthy volunteers a high-fat diet for two days, then tested their blood-sugar response. In all cases temporary diabetes developed. When Dr Sweeney put these same volunteers on a high-carbohydrate diet, their blood-sugar levels decreased.
http://www.newstarthealthcare.com/article.php?id=94
Dr. Sweeny said that, “If you want a quick case of diabetes, just eliminate the carbohydrates from your diet for a couple of days and then take the test. It will demonstrate diabetes.”
Could I ask your opinion on a cardiologist diagnosis of narrowing of the artery to the heart — suddenly requiring lipitor, aspirin, pulse reducer metaprolol, nitroglycerin — for a menopausal, hypothyroid, type II carbcontrolled, with high cholesterol, chronic fatigue-fibromyalgia, esophagal spasms, digestive spasms, migraines caused by any hormones, sensitive to all drugs/supplements/foods. I think adding any drug will make my health worse. I’m trying bioidential hormones (estradiol, DHEA, progesterone, desiccated).
[...] autor ksiązki pt. Proteinpower, wykazał wiele nieprawidłowości w materiale ABC. W swoim tekście dokonał analizy tego telewizyjnego „eksperymentu” pod kątem rzeczywistego składu i wartości [...]
[...] source. I originally saw this as part of a post by Dr. Eades in a post he did called, “ABC Big Meal Propaganda” Â … I urge you to read it… GREAT [...]
[...] Reactive hypoglycemia? Reply With Quote + Reply to Thread « Previous Thread | [...]
[...] Posted by ShannonPA-S I'm assuming it's insulin resistance, but I'm not sure that's correct. The Blog of Michael R. Eades, M.D. » ABC’s big meal propaganda No mention, naturally, of the enormous amount of carbohydrate and the large increase in insulin [...]
[...] time, Dr. Eades does the deconstructing. It's a bit long, but I Bleg you to go read it. As a quick overview, however, what did Dr. [...]