Taking Food Public: Redefining Foodways In A Changing World, 2013

Many forms of impairments and disabilities decrease capacity to access healthy and affordable food and increase reliance on other household, material and contextual resources to overcome these limitations. An impairment or disability may decrease consumer agency when faced with structural forces that affect food access and its availability. Overall, we need food to build good health, but also, our level of health and disability can play a critical role in acquiring food for a healthy diet.

So dogged.

Recommendations to “eat butter” that have appeared in the media the last few years have at their foundation research influenced by the National Dairy Council.

It’s a shame that the smoking gun for conflicts-of-interest in nutrition research ended up focusing on how the sugar industry used fat as the fall guy. People are reflexively coming to the defense of fat now. That’s not a good idea because the fat industry does the same thing – it influences research to cast doubt on fat and blame sugar instead.

Here are some links about the sugar story:

• News Story: How The Sugar Industry Shifted Blame To Fat, New York Times, 12 September 2016
• Study: Sugar Industry And Coronary Heart Disease Research, A Historical Analysis Of Internal Industry Documents, JAMA Internal Medicine, 12 September 2016
• Marion Nestle’s accompanying editorial: Food Industry Funding of Nutrition Research, JAMA Internal Medicine, 12 September 2016

In this issue of JAMA Internal Medicine, Kearns and colleagues report on having found a smoking gun. From a deep dive into archival documents from the 1950s and 1960s, they have produced compelling evidence that a sugar trade association not only paid for but also initiated and influenced research expressly to exonerate sugar as a major risk factor for coronary heart disease (CHD).

People are saying … “I knew it! Fat doesn’t make you fat, give you heart disease, diabetes, etc. It’s the sugar!”

It’s not the sugar. That is, it’s not only the sugar. It’s the fat too. It may very well be more the fat than the sugar. As I wrote in June, 2014:

There is an abundance of research that implicates consumption of saturated fat in the development of heart disease. One particular study, paid for by the National Dairy Council, is often cited to justify the “eat butter” proclamation:

Meta-Analysis Of Prospective Cohort Studies Evaluating The Association Of Saturated Fat With Cardiovascular Disease, American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, March 2010

The sponsored? conclusion of this study …

There is no significant evidence for concluding that dietary saturated fat is associated with an increased risk of CHD or CVD.

… was refuted by the renowned cardiologist, Dr. Stamler, in the same issue where the study was published. He said there was a vast array of multidisciplinary research at the foundation of recommendations to eat a low-fat, low-saturated-fat diet – a diet that “deemphasizes red and processed meats, cheeses, ice cream, and egg yolks.”

There really is no shortage of articles and studies out there that raise a red flag over animal food consumption. Here’s another one:

Full article, no pay wall –> Potential Health Hazards Of Eating Red Meat, Journal of Internal Medicine, Online 6 September 2016

There has been growing evidence that high consumption of red meat, especially of processed meat, may be associated with an increased risk of several major chronic diseases. Here, a comprehensive summary is provided of the accumulated evidence based on prospective cohort studies regarding the potential adverse health effects of red meat consumption on major chronic diseases, such as diabetes, coronary heart disease, heart failure, stroke and cancer at several sites, and mortality.
…
The evidence-based integrated message is that it is plausible to conclude that high consumption of red meat, and especially processed meat, is associated with an increased risk of several major chronic diseases and preterm mortality. Production of red meat involves an environmental burden. Therefore, some European countries have already integrated these two issues, human health and the ‘health of the planet’, into new dietary guidelines and recommended limiting consumption of red meat.

50 grams is hardly anything, just 1.76 ounces. A typical serving is 3 ounces which is the size of a small hamburger.

You can read about the mechanisms. I’ve discussed them over the years … heme iron, cholesterol, saturated fat, sodium, nitrites and nitrates, additives, preservatives, chemicals arising from cooking (heterocyclic amines, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, advanced glycation end-products), hormones, environmental pollutants, e.g. endocrine disruptors, that bioaccumulate in animal tissue.

Take note of that last sentence in my excerpt above:

Some European countries have already integrated these two issues, human health and the ‘health of the planet’, into new dietary guidelines and recommended limiting consumption of red meat.

When the USDA released their Dietary Guidelines late last year, they chose to leave out any impact on environment. USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack said:

We do not believe that the 2015 DGAs are the appropriate vehicle for this important policy conversation about sustainability.

Europe is ahead of us again. Both human health and ‘health of the planet’ should absolutely be integrated into the Dietary Guidelines. Our meat industry won that one.

To anyone who may visit me here. This is just a back-up site for now. My up-to-date site is at fanaticcook.com. Thank you for visiting!

The increased health risks from eating meat were not counterbalanced by eating lots of fruits and vegetables. Photo: Stuck On Sweet

High Red Meat Intake And All-Cause Cardiovascular And Cancer Mortality: Is The Risk Modified By Fruit And Vegetable Intake?, American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, Online 24 August 2016

The answer to the question in their title is “no.”

Background: High red meat consumption is associated with a shorter survival and higher risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD), cancer, and all-cause mortality. Fruit and vegetable (FV) consumption is associated with a longer survival and lower mortality risk. Whether high FV consumption can counterbalance the negative impact of high red meat consumption is unknown.

Objective: We evaluated 2 large prospective cohorts of Swedish men and women (the Swedish Mammography Cohort and the Cohort of Swedish Men) to determine whether the association between red meat consumption and the risk of all-cause, CVD, and cancer-specific mortality differs across amounts of FV intake.

Conclusion: High intakes of red meat were associated with a higher risk of all-cause and CVD mortality. The increased risks were consistently observed in participants with low, medium, and high FV consumption.

Another big, prospective study (2 large Swedish cohorts, 74,645 men and women). Those who consumed the most meat had a 29% higher risk of CVD death compared to those who ate the least. It didn’t matter how many fruits and vegetables they ate.

The first regular episode of Star Trek aired on Thursday, September 8, 1966.

I want to share with you a few excerpts from John Robbins’ book, “Diet For A New America.”

In Lancet, Dr. Inder Singh reported a remarkable study in which 80 diabetic patients were restricted to very low-fat diets – 20 to 30 grams a day. … Within six weeks, over 60% of the patients no longer required insulin. In the weeks that followed, the figure rose to over 70%.¹
…
The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition reported a study in which 20 diabetic, all of whom needed insulin, were put on a high-fiber very lowfat diet. After only 16 days, 45% of these patients were able to discontinue the insulin injections.²

Other studies have produced similar results.

Lowfat diets, particularly those without any saturated fat, have demonstrated a remarkable success rate in allowing diabetics to dispense with their pills, shots and pumps.

Robbins published this book in 1987. He wrote it, and the studies he cited were conducted, prior to that. (By the way, he wrote his book at a time before the internet, before the World Wide Web. He had to go to a library to access these studies. His research was more laborious than what it would have been today. You have to have your heart in your work, to believe in what you’re doing, to make this effort.) So, we’ve known for at least 30 years, 60 years by the looks of that 1955 Lancet study, that low-fat diets could arrest the symptoms of diabetes or prevent the disease altogether.

Robbins’ “Diet For A New America” was a popular lay-person’s book (1st edition sold over a million copies), not a medical tome. It was in the social realm. Why isn’t its low-fat advice common knowledge? I’ll tell you … It’s for reasons that induce stores like Natural Grocers to ban Dr. Greger’s plant-based book. It’s because having people eat a low-fat, high-fiber diet would hurt sales of animal food: beef, pork, chicken, fish, eggs, and all manner of dairy food – cheese, yogurt, milk, butter, cream. That’s why. And you know how the meat and dairy industries keep a lid on the science that could really help people? They come out with their own studies, often meta-analyses which go back in time and cherry pick studies that defend their position.

Robbins says that type 2 diabetes “is especially tragic because it is so needless.” He is right.

¹ Low-Fat Diet And Therapeutic Doses Of Insulin In Diabetes Mellitus, Lancet, February 1955
² High-Carbohydrate, High-Fiber Diets For Insulin-Treated Men With Diabetes Mellitus, American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, November 1979