and it will serve the American people well in their fight against obesity.
I wonder. It's been noted that in the US, anyway, the poor are more prone to obesity than the wealthy. Is it just that the rich can afford gym memberships and personal trainers? Maybe. But there's increasing evidence that the diet recommended by the government since the '70s is bad for you. It's also rich in the carbohydrates that poor people tend to eat.
I'm currently reading Good Calories, Bad Calories, by Gary Taubes. It sounds like a diet book, but it really isn't. Rather, as you would expect from Taubes, it's a science book. In particular, it's about the "science" that led the government, the American Heart Association, etc., to recommend a low-fat diet.
I put "science" in quotation marks, because there's very little research that actually supports the idea that eating meat and fat is bad for you. Instead, it looks more and more like the real killer is carbohydrates. That it's carbs, especially refined carbohydrates like sugar and white flour, that cause obesity, diabetes, heart disease, and cancer.
Leanan, my dear, you miss the intent in my post which was merely to add a little irony to the TOD diet, but as you are on the subject of diet in the less than broad sense I would suggest the book 'End of Food by Thomas Pawlick'. He puts figures and facts to a hypothosis I have been babbling about for more years than I care to consider, that the food we eat has been so degraded that one has to eat greater amounts of calories in order to obtain the necessary vitamins minerals etc that the body needs.
"Eat drink and be merry for tomorrow we cut bait." -anon
Authorial intent is dead. Especially in an Internet forum. ;-)
Anyway, I didn't miss it, and my comment was not addressed to you in particular. This was just a convenient jumping-off point. I've been thinking about this topic a lot, since hearing of OilManBob's untimely passing from the complications of diabetes.
I quite liked, when it comes to books on diets, the Kurzweil book Fantastic Voyage. It is wonderfully (naively) titled how to live long enough to live forever. The main aim of it is to wrap up a whole bunch of interesting recent science on food and diet to help people make dietary changes that will help them live longer and healthier, so they will still be around at that point in time where we beat death by aging.
Of course the latter isn't going to happen... I once thought it might... I once thought we'd see the technological singularity and staggering rate of technological change. Now I think we'll never get there and it'll be one more near miss because of our greedy short sightedness overpopulating ourselves before we make the sort of future breakthroughs that might have helped us manage some of our growing pains.
But I digress... point is I thought there were many interesting dietary points in there if you are reading on diet.
What we eat is not really food - at least not things that humans would have consumed for the vast majority of our existence. And the idea that we know what effect this will have is absurd.
I have not had time too study, but someone told me that Vitamin C had been bred out of oranges to make way for supplements. I am sure it is possible, but is there any evidence for that kind of tactic?
I wonder, that's really interesting. I wouldn't put it past agribusiness to do that. Another scenario is the switch to N-P-K fertilizer reduced the variety of nutrients and bacteria in the soil, reducing the overall nutrition of the oranges.
That's just too much of a conspiracy. The fact is that sugar content in fruits has been going up through breeding to make them better sellers. In this process to reduce the acidity, vitamin C has probably been reduced as well.
I just finished GCBC, and I think it's one of the better pieces of science journalism I've read recently. I knew most of the sad history of the "Ancel Keys/AHA/McGovern hearings" low-fat ideology juggernaut and the damage it has caused from my days on the low-carb newsgroups, but it was uplifting to see the veil of respectability stripped away from that branch of "science" to reveal the rot within. For me the most edifying portions of the book were the last few chapters on carbohydrate metabolism. I now understand much more about the mechanics of the process than I ever did before.
The book raises a couple of ironic issues that are pertinent given all the discussions we've had here recently about the global food supply. The first issue is that the best diet for humans (meat) turns out to be the worst for the planet. The second is that the only way we can keep everybody alive is by increasing cereal consumption at the expense of meat, which will make us all progressively less healthy.
Perhaps a healthier "transition diet" of long pig will be a post-peak feature of some regions.
The book raises a couple of ironic issues that are pertinent given all the discussions we've had here recently about the global food supply. The first issue is that the best diet for humans (meat) turns out to be the worst for the planet. The second is that the only way we can keep everybody alive is by increasing cereal consumption at the expense of meat, which will make us all progressively less healthy.
Yes, that occurred to me, too.
Though there's the possibility of sustainable farms, with cows, chickens, goats, rabbits, etc., as well as vegetables.
And less refined carbohydrates aren't as bad for you.
One of the ironies of our modern food system is that less refined carbs can be more expensive. In my grocery store, brown rice costs twice what white rice does.
My great-grandmother, who was an born an Italian peasant so she knew some stuff about living off the land, lived to 98 never suffered any debilitating disease and could still thread a needle after she turned 90.
My mom tells me she always kept a chicken coop and vegetable garden in her city backyard her whole life and ate an egg every morning and raised a couple of chicks. Once the chickens got too old she took them to a butcher.
My mom said she hardly fed the chickens as they found worms and other bugs in the backyard that would try to get at the fruit in the fruit trees.
My great-grandmother did the same. Her small front yard was filled with a vegetable garden, with a chicken coop along one edge. I thought it was so cool.
Only she butchered the chickens herself. My mom sometimes had to help, and she hated it. Blood everywhere, and all those feathers to pluck.
If we returned to more traditional farming methods, where meat was raised on fallow fields and land not suitable for crops, we could still eat meat, and with the animals exercising and eating their natural diet, it would be much healthier. It would just be less available and more expensive, so we'd be eating less of it.
Pollan, in "The Omnivores Dilemma," says it's the "carbs" added to the animal diet that's at root. When combined with the info from "All Flesh is Grass," I'm very inclined to agree that corn-fed beef, and to a lesser degree overly corn-fed hogs, are quite bad for human health.
But there's increasing evidence that the diet recommended by the government since the '70s is bad for you.
I'm not sure how important that point is. Not many people actually base their diet on the government recommendations. Do you really think Americans have low-fat diet? I sure don't. I think we have both a high fat and a high carb diet.
I don't have the book with me right now, but it lays out the statistics. Americans have cut back on red meat since the government starting telling us to, and we're eating more carbs and less fat.
And we're fatter than ever. So yeah, I think it matters.
A common trend has been to make food more "healthy" by removing the fat and substituting more sugar. I went to the store yesterday to buy yoghurt (which I haven't done for a while). The "standard" yoghurt (i.e. not the "light") had 0 grams of fat and 28(!) grams of sugar in a 6oz container. The "light" yoghurt had Splenda added, which cut the sugar to 7 grams; it still had no fat.
Overweight people are drawn to these so-called healthy foods and wind up eating huge amounts of sugar. More recently it has been high-fructose corn syrup, which I assume will get a big boost with from the corn-based ethanol mandates.
Recent evidence is that certain fats are positively healthy. The reduction of fat in our regular food has, I believe, caused people to go in search of fat in junk food, effictively substituting bad fats for good fats, coupled with a big increase in sugar in both regular food and junk food. Add to that a sophisticated mass marketing campaign that starts with pre-schoolers and never lets up, and it is no wonder that Americans are obese. The rest of the world shouldn't be too smug, either. If/when American mass market consumerism comes to your country, the same thing will happen to you.
One of the points Taubes makes is that there has never been any evidence that fats were bad for us in the first place. According to Taubes in every study that pilloried fat consumption the results are better explained by the consumption of refined carbohydrates. Fat consumption is metabolically neutral, carbohydrate consumption is not.
One of the grimly amusing connections he makes is that the whole whole "fat is bad" mantra may have started with the counterculture in the '60s, when excessive consumption was identified as one of Western society's great evils. A high-fat diet as consumed by the rich became emblematic of decadence and moral failure. A great example of displacement that may have coloured a whole generation of science.
Exactly. And when you realize that, a lot of the "paradoxes" start making sense. The French Paradox (why do they have healthier hearts when they eat all that cream and butter?). The Eskimo, who don't get heart attacks on the traditional diet of meat and fat. (And I suspect it's not because of fish oil.)
There's also the isssue of eating foods that are complimentary to each other and make the combined whole greater than the sum of the parts. This is the beans, corn, squash, and quelites (initially uncultivated greens that were a part of Meso-American diets, which the Spanish called weeds and forced the natives to go without ["Food's Frontier" by Manning]) diet. Essential trace elements are added to the diet by consuming grass/natural diet fed meat and dairy products.
I spent 25+ years as a chef, restaurant manager, and Food Service Director at LTC facilities where a nutritional education was mandated. And since I retired, I've read more books about food and nutrition over the last five years than in all previous years combined. Now I've come full circle to my youth growing up the son of a UC Davis agronomist by now growing, processing and cooking my own foods.
If there is any fat that is bad, it is the hydrogenised stuff. Back in 1972 I had a Biology professor who was also a nutritionist who preached that natural fats, many of which contained lecithin, were not that bad for you. Margarine on the other hand was evil stuff to be avoided. I took his lecturing to heart I never intentionally ate margarine after that day (in fact always ordered anything I ate in a restaurant without butter, but butter on the side so I could guarantee what was in my food). My suspicions are that part of the rise of heart disease corresponds to the rise in margarine use and hydrogenated oils. I avoid the stuff like the plague. I’d rather use lard or bacon fat than the hydrogenated crap. The fat is bad mantra actually started with autopsies of young men from the Korean war. It was discovered may had early signs of heart disease and fatty deposits in their arteries.
Although I never personally checked it out, that study was a military study circa 1954 and should still be available. The comparison was between 18 to 20 year olds who died in the field. It showed that the hearts started to develop lesions on the arterial walls which damaged the cilia that prevent plaque adhering and causing a buildup. The combination of what was probably a viral damage brought on by stress with hydrogenated fat which is not 'native' to the system produced the beginnings of serious buildup problems even at such an early age. Hydrogenation has the effect of preventing the process of rancidity; i.e. nothing [except humans] seems to be in a hurry to work on it. There's a message here.
While the viral component of the plot is still, maybe, under investigation, I'm pretty sure that TPTB are well aware of how and why altered fats are a big part of the problem. The legal implications are colossal, so they'll ban the lot and then make the discovery - who could have known.....? Oh well, it was over a half century ago. When you consider the amount of this stuff that was/is put in your cookies and such over the years, you had to be a monk in Mongolia to miss it.
I've learned to make my own yogurt - easy as can be if you get a yogurt maker and use professional dairy culture. I use whole organic milk, none of that low fat stuff. The bacteria eat all of the lactose, so there are zero carbs. I put a little fruit into it, but there is no sugar, no preservatives, no artificial flavors and colors, no guar gum or whatever junk the supermarket stuff has - just the pure thing. And yes, it is very good to eat.
I'm starting to realize just how much junk we've been putting up with in this stuff they've been selling us, and I've had enough of it. I'm starting to think about other stuff I could make myself rather than buying the processed junk.
I eat quite a bit of the "homemade" cottage cheese from my corner grocery store, Zara's. I known when they make it, always best the day made. It is edible for a while, but dries out and is not as good in about 3-4 days (but they make it at least twice a week). Borden's et al are NOT the same !
None of my avocados were ripe for lunch, so I took yesterday's cottage cheese and mixed it with 3 cut up Roma tomatoes (only decent tomatoes this time of year) plus salt & pepper (red & black).
I do understand the need for fat in the diet, and avocados are one of my main sources. Olive oil is another (I will even add a few drops of olive oil to a soup).
Research has shown that vegetarians are 50 percent less likely to develop heart disease, and they have 40 percent of the cancer rate of meat-eaters.3,4 Plus, meat-eaters are nine times more likely to be obese than vegans are.5
The consumption of meat, eggs, and dairy products has also been strongly linked to osteoporosis, Alzheimer's, asthma, and male impotence. Scientists have also found that vegetarians have stronger immune systems than their meat-eating friends; this means that they are less susceptible to everyday illnesses like the flu.7 Vegetarians and vegans live, on average, six to 10 years longer than meat-eaters.8
A large British study, with more than 2000 male and close to 9000 female participants, examined the risk of hypertension in meat eaters, fish eaters, vegetarians, and vegans. People with hypertension are at increased risk for both heart disease and stroke. Meat eaters were most likely to report that they had been diagnosed with hypertension (15% of men and 12% of women studied). Vegans were least likely to report being diagnosed with hypertension (close to 6% of men and 8% of women). Self-reported hypertension in fish eaters and vegetarians was between that of meat eaters and vegans. However, there was no significant difference in its occurrence between fish eaters and vegetarians.
In addition to examining whether people had been told they had hypertension, this study also measured blood pressures of the four groups. Meat eaters had the highest measured blood pressure, while vegans had the lowest values. Again, fish eaters and vegetarians had similar blood pressures that were between those of meat eaters and vegans. The main explanation for the differences between the groups was that non-meat eaters, especially vegans, were leaner. The results of this study suggest that a vegan diet may reduce risk of hypertension and that it is not necessary to eat fish to control blood pressure. (This has been recommended by some groups.) Vegans in this study appear to have lower risk of heart disease and stroke due to their lower blood pressure.
The Adventist Health Study is the only major study on the general health and mortality of vegetarians in the U.S. Many members of the Seventh-day Adventist Church are vegetarian. Here are some details:
Data collected from 1976-1988
34,192 participants, members of the Seventh-day Adventist church
29% were vegetarian
7-10% of the vegetarians were vegan.
Compared to the non-vegetarians, vegetarians had about:
1/2 the high blood pressure and diabetes
1/2 the colon cancer
2/3 the rheumatoid arthritis and prostate cancer
Breast, lung, and uterine cancers tended to be lower in vegetarians but could have been due to random chance.
Thanks for posting that information. I personally have become a "convenient" vegetarian about a year ago. Essentially, unlike some who decide to be jerks or hard-arses in regards to their vegetarian diet, I do it as long as I can do so without causing an inconvenience upon my host or a severe inconvenience upon myself. As a result, if given the choice between a Burger King and McDonalds, I'll choose Burger King as I can get a veggie burger. If McDonalds is the ONLY choice, I'll get a fish sandwich. At Thanksgiving, I'm eating only vegetables, but I won't complain about the turkey broth in the stuffing.
I don't give a rat's rear-end about the "welfare of the animals" it's purely a global warming, land use, health, antibiotics, fossil fuel use, fertilizer runoff, etc issue for me. :)
I like animals, some of them more then people, and yet think that if the DOG's hadn't meant for people to eat animals they wouldn't have made them out of meat.
If 8% of the calories in human breast milk are protein, why do adults need, say, 35-40% of their calories from protein? Until contrary evidence is presented, I think such an amount of protein would be injurious to human health.
I wonder. It's been noted that in the US, anyway, the poor are more prone to obesity than the wealthy. Is it just that the rich can afford gym memberships and personal trainers? Maybe. But there's increasing evidence that the diet recommended by the government since the '70s is bad for you. It's also rich in the carbohydrates that poor people tend to eat.
I'm currently reading Good Calories, Bad Calories, by Gary Taubes. It sounds like a diet book, but it really isn't. Rather, as you would expect from Taubes, it's a science book. In particular, it's about the "science" that led the government, the American Heart Association, etc., to recommend a low-fat diet.
I put "science" in quotation marks, because there's very little research that actually supports the idea that eating meat and fat is bad for you. Instead, it looks more and more like the real killer is carbohydrates. That it's carbs, especially refined carbohydrates like sugar and white flour, that cause obesity, diabetes, heart disease, and cancer.
Leanan, my dear, you miss the intent in my post which was merely to add a little irony to the TOD diet, but as you are on the subject of diet in the less than broad sense I would suggest the book 'End of Food by Thomas Pawlick'. He puts figures and facts to a hypothosis I have been babbling about for more years than I care to consider, that the food we eat has been so degraded that one has to eat greater amounts of calories in order to obtain the necessary vitamins minerals etc that the body needs.
"Eat drink and be merry for tomorrow we cut bait." -anon
Authorial intent is dead. Especially in an Internet forum. ;-)
Anyway, I didn't miss it, and my comment was not addressed to you in particular. This was just a convenient jumping-off point. I've been thinking about this topic a lot, since hearing of OilManBob's untimely passing from the complications of diabetes.
I thought that the most interesting part of Taubes' book was the historical aspect.
I quite liked, when it comes to books on diets, the Kurzweil book Fantastic Voyage. It is wonderfully (naively) titled how to live long enough to live forever. The main aim of it is to wrap up a whole bunch of interesting recent science on food and diet to help people make dietary changes that will help them live longer and healthier, so they will still be around at that point in time where we beat death by aging.
Of course the latter isn't going to happen... I once thought it might... I once thought we'd see the technological singularity and staggering rate of technological change. Now I think we'll never get there and it'll be one more near miss because of our greedy short sightedness overpopulating ourselves before we make the sort of future breakthroughs that might have helped us manage some of our growing pains.
But I digress... point is I thought there were many interesting dietary points in there if you are reading on diet.
Oh gosh... I missed the far bigger point.
I don't pop in every day to the Oil Drum. I didn't know that OilManBob had passed. That is sad to hear.
Hi responsible,
me, too...just heard. How sad.
This is one of my favorite posts of Bob's, and one we corresponded about:
http://www.theoildrum.com/node/3005#comment-241682
What we eat is not really food - at least not things that humans would have consumed for the vast majority of our existence. And the idea that we know what effect this will have is absurd.
I have not had time too study, but someone told me that Vitamin C had been bred out of oranges to make way for supplements. I am sure it is possible, but is there any evidence for that kind of tactic?
I wonder, that's really interesting. I wouldn't put it past agribusiness to do that. Another scenario is the switch to N-P-K fertilizer reduced the variety of nutrients and bacteria in the soil, reducing the overall nutrition of the oranges.
So? Just eat sauerkraut.
That's just too much of a conspiracy. The fact is that sugar content in fruits has been going up through breeding to make them better sellers. In this process to reduce the acidity, vitamin C has probably been reduced as well.
I just finished GCBC, and I think it's one of the better pieces of science journalism I've read recently. I knew most of the sad history of the "Ancel Keys/AHA/McGovern hearings" low-fat ideology juggernaut and the damage it has caused from my days on the low-carb newsgroups, but it was uplifting to see the veil of respectability stripped away from that branch of "science" to reveal the rot within. For me the most edifying portions of the book were the last few chapters on carbohydrate metabolism. I now understand much more about the mechanics of the process than I ever did before.
The book raises a couple of ironic issues that are pertinent given all the discussions we've had here recently about the global food supply. The first issue is that the best diet for humans (meat) turns out to be the worst for the planet. The second is that the only way we can keep everybody alive is by increasing cereal consumption at the expense of meat, which will make us all progressively less healthy.
Perhaps a healthier "transition diet" of long pig will be a post-peak feature of some regions.
Yes, that occurred to me, too.
Though there's the possibility of sustainable farms, with cows, chickens, goats, rabbits, etc., as well as vegetables.
And less refined carbohydrates aren't as bad for you.
One of the ironies of our modern food system is that less refined carbs can be more expensive. In my grocery store, brown rice costs twice what white rice does.
My great-grandmother, who was an born an Italian peasant so she knew some stuff about living off the land, lived to 98 never suffered any debilitating disease and could still thread a needle after she turned 90.
My mom tells me she always kept a chicken coop and vegetable garden in her city backyard her whole life and ate an egg every morning and raised a couple of chicks. Once the chickens got too old she took them to a butcher.
My mom said she hardly fed the chickens as they found worms and other bugs in the backyard that would try to get at the fruit in the fruit trees.
My great-grandmother did the same. Her small front yard was filled with a vegetable garden, with a chicken coop along one edge. I thought it was so cool.
Only she butchered the chickens herself. My mom sometimes had to help, and she hated it. Blood everywhere, and all those feathers to pluck.
The best diet for us isn't bad for the planet as long as we're hunter-gatherers with a low worldwide population compared to now.
If we returned to more traditional farming methods, where meat was raised on fallow fields and land not suitable for crops, we could still eat meat, and with the animals exercising and eating their natural diet, it would be much healthier. It would just be less available and more expensive, so we'd be eating less of it.
Pollan, in "The Omnivores Dilemma," says it's the "carbs" added to the animal diet that's at root. When combined with the info from "All Flesh is Grass," I'm very inclined to agree that corn-fed beef, and to a lesser degree overly corn-fed hogs, are quite bad for human health.
I'm not sure how important that point is. Not many people actually base their diet on the government recommendations. Do you really think Americans have low-fat diet? I sure don't. I think we have both a high fat and a high carb diet.
I don't have the book with me right now, but it lays out the statistics. Americans have cut back on red meat since the government starting telling us to, and we're eating more carbs and less fat.
And we're fatter than ever. So yeah, I think it matters.
A common trend has been to make food more "healthy" by removing the fat and substituting more sugar. I went to the store yesterday to buy yoghurt (which I haven't done for a while). The "standard" yoghurt (i.e. not the "light") had 0 grams of fat and 28(!) grams of sugar in a 6oz container. The "light" yoghurt had Splenda added, which cut the sugar to 7 grams; it still had no fat.
Overweight people are drawn to these so-called healthy foods and wind up eating huge amounts of sugar. More recently it has been high-fructose corn syrup, which I assume will get a big boost with from the corn-based ethanol mandates.
Recent evidence is that certain fats are positively healthy. The reduction of fat in our regular food has, I believe, caused people to go in search of fat in junk food, effictively substituting bad fats for good fats, coupled with a big increase in sugar in both regular food and junk food. Add to that a sophisticated mass marketing campaign that starts with pre-schoolers and never lets up, and it is no wonder that Americans are obese. The rest of the world shouldn't be too smug, either. If/when American mass market consumerism comes to your country, the same thing will happen to you.
One of the points Taubes makes is that there has never been any evidence that fats were bad for us in the first place. According to Taubes in every study that pilloried fat consumption the results are better explained by the consumption of refined carbohydrates. Fat consumption is metabolically neutral, carbohydrate consumption is not.
One of the grimly amusing connections he makes is that the whole whole "fat is bad" mantra may have started with the counterculture in the '60s, when excessive consumption was identified as one of Western society's great evils. A high-fat diet as consumed by the rich became emblematic of decadence and moral failure. A great example of displacement that may have coloured a whole generation of science.
Exactly. And when you realize that, a lot of the "paradoxes" start making sense. The French Paradox (why do they have healthier hearts when they eat all that cream and butter?). The Eskimo, who don't get heart attacks on the traditional diet of meat and fat. (And I suspect it's not because of fish oil.)
There's also the isssue of eating foods that are complimentary to each other and make the combined whole greater than the sum of the parts. This is the beans, corn, squash, and quelites (initially uncultivated greens that were a part of Meso-American diets, which the Spanish called weeds and forced the natives to go without ["Food's Frontier" by Manning]) diet. Essential trace elements are added to the diet by consuming grass/natural diet fed meat and dairy products.
I spent 25+ years as a chef, restaurant manager, and Food Service Director at LTC facilities where a nutritional education was mandated. And since I retired, I've read more books about food and nutrition over the last five years than in all previous years combined. Now I've come full circle to my youth growing up the son of a UC Davis agronomist by now growing, processing and cooking my own foods.
LTC - Lakeland Tech College?
Long Term Care, specifically retirement communities with small SNF (Skilled Nursing Facilities) capabilities.
If there is any fat that is bad, it is the hydrogenised stuff. Back in 1972 I had a Biology professor who was also a nutritionist who preached that natural fats, many of which contained lecithin, were not that bad for you. Margarine on the other hand was evil stuff to be avoided. I took his lecturing to heart I never intentionally ate margarine after that day (in fact always ordered anything I ate in a restaurant without butter, but butter on the side so I could guarantee what was in my food). My suspicions are that part of the rise of heart disease corresponds to the rise in margarine use and hydrogenated oils. I avoid the stuff like the plague. I’d rather use lard or bacon fat than the hydrogenated crap. The fat is bad mantra actually started with autopsies of young men from the Korean war. It was discovered may had early signs of heart disease and fatty deposits in their arteries.
Yeah, there was at least one study that found margarine was worse for you than butter.
Yes, but the leaps to eating fat causing the fatty deposits, and the fatty deposits causing heart disease, were not justified.
I totally agree.
Although I never personally checked it out, that study was a military study circa 1954 and should still be available. The comparison was between 18 to 20 year olds who died in the field. It showed that the hearts started to develop lesions on the arterial walls which damaged the cilia that prevent plaque adhering and causing a buildup. The combination of what was probably a viral damage brought on by stress with hydrogenated fat which is not 'native' to the system produced the beginnings of serious buildup problems even at such an early age. Hydrogenation has the effect of preventing the process of rancidity; i.e. nothing [except humans] seems to be in a hurry to work on it. There's a message here.
While the viral component of the plot is still, maybe, under investigation, I'm pretty sure that TPTB are well aware of how and why altered fats are a big part of the problem. The legal implications are colossal, so they'll ban the lot and then make the discovery - who could have known.....? Oh well, it was over a half century ago. When you consider the amount of this stuff that was/is put in your cookies and such over the years, you had to be a monk in Mongolia to miss it.
Quite the opposite, as the corn sugars are fermented to make ethanol.
[deleted] The Wikipedia answered my questions. :)
I've learned to make my own yogurt - easy as can be if you get a yogurt maker and use professional dairy culture. I use whole organic milk, none of that low fat stuff. The bacteria eat all of the lactose, so there are zero carbs. I put a little fruit into it, but there is no sugar, no preservatives, no artificial flavors and colors, no guar gum or whatever junk the supermarket stuff has - just the pure thing. And yes, it is very good to eat.
I'm starting to realize just how much junk we've been putting up with in this stuff they've been selling us, and I've had enough of it. I'm starting to think about other stuff I could make myself rather than buying the processed junk.
I eat quite a bit of the "homemade" cottage cheese from my corner grocery store, Zara's. I known when they make it, always best the day made. It is edible for a while, but dries out and is not as good in about 3-4 days (but they make it at least twice a week). Borden's et al are NOT the same !
None of my avocados were ripe for lunch, so I took yesterday's cottage cheese and mixed it with 3 cut up Roma tomatoes (only decent tomatoes this time of year) plus salt & pepper (red & black).
I do understand the need for fat in the diet, and avocados are one of my main sources. Olive oil is another (I will even add a few drops of olive oil to a soup).
Best Hopes for Minimally Processed & GOOD Food,
Alan
Hmm, really?
http://www.goveg.com/healthConcerns.asp :
http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Non-meat+eaters+have+lower+rates+of+hypert... :
http://www.veganhealth.org/articles/research :
Google it. The research is quite extensive.
Thanks for posting that information. I personally have become a "convenient" vegetarian about a year ago. Essentially, unlike some who decide to be jerks or hard-arses in regards to their vegetarian diet, I do it as long as I can do so without causing an inconvenience upon my host or a severe inconvenience upon myself. As a result, if given the choice between a Burger King and McDonalds, I'll choose Burger King as I can get a veggie burger. If McDonalds is the ONLY choice, I'll get a fish sandwich. At Thanksgiving, I'm eating only vegetables, but I won't complain about the turkey broth in the stuffing.
I don't give a rat's rear-end about the "welfare of the animals" it's purely a global warming, land use, health, antibiotics, fossil fuel use, fertilizer runoff, etc issue for me. :)
I like animals, some of them more then people, and yet think that if the DOG's hadn't meant for people to eat animals they wouldn't have made them out of meat.
Haha. You're made of meat... *grins* For some reason I'm not allowed to eat people, though.
The trick is to drink plenty of wine with it. It breaks down the fat or something.
Like Alan would say
Best wishes for BBQ in Valhalla.
If 8% of the calories in human breast milk are protein, why do adults need, say, 35-40% of their calories from protein? Until contrary evidence is presented, I think such an amount of protein would be injurious to human health.
I don't think that makes any sense. Babies have different nutritional needs than adults.
Over half the calories in breast milk come from fat. Does that mean adults should eat that much fat? If not, what should it be replaced with?