The low carb movement did not evaporate as suggested above. Just Google “low-carb” and visit some blogs and forums.

You’ll find that there is a vigorous discussion taking place among numerous participants.

While many [people] seem to thrive on the low-fat diet that Tom Blogical is so enthusiastic about, a significant portion of the population cannot tolerate high carbohydrate intake no matter how much exercise they get.

These are the ones that Gary Taubes’ book was wrote his book for.

So, to suggest that Taubes recommends the same low-carb approach for everyone seriously misrepresents his message.

– David Brown
Via the blog

Keep in mind that a “low fat” diet can include up to 30 percent of a day’s calories purely from fat.

Thereby, if you consume 2,000 calories a day, you can consume approximately 65 grams on a daily basis (roughly 600 calories’ worth).

I understand that, due to a variety of reasons, one particular style of eating can not be applied universally.

In fact, this is precisely why I find Gary Taubes’ ideas to be particularly narrow-minded and a product of tunnel vision.

He doesn’t beat around the bush. In his mind, carbs are evil and they cause weight gain. Simple as that.

This is a man who places refined white flour and potatoes in the same category.

As I have mentioned in the past, potatoes can be eaten in many different ways. Peel off the skin and deep fry them and, sure, you’re not getting much nutrition.

Leave the skin on, pop it in the microwave, and top it off with a teaspoon or two of olive oil and you have a nutritious side dish containing fiber, potassium, and vitamin C.

I am not sure what you refer to when mentioning that “a significant portion of the population not being able to tolerate” a high carbohydrate intake.

How many people are we talking about, and how is their intolerance defined?

As far as Gary Taubes not recommending a low-carb approach for everyone, I’ll let his quotes speak for himself.

From a December 12, 2007 interview with AlterNet:

“Atkins almost assuredly had it right — that we get fat because of the quantity and quality of the carbohydrates in the diet.“

When asked what he believed were the three biggest myths about obesity, his response was:

“That the difference between calories consumed and calories expended tells us anything meaningful about why we get fat. That eating less or exercising more are viable treatments for obesity and overweight. That all nutrients — fat, carbohydrates and proteins — have equal effects on our propensity to gain weight — in other words, that a calorie is a calorie is a calorie, as nutritionists are always telling us.“

There still are — and always will be — followers of low-carb diets.

From a business and popularity standpoint, however, the low-carb movement has significantly tumbled from its 2003-2004 peak.

Let me make something very clear. I do not advocate that people subsist on refined grains and added sugars. I also do not think drinking two liters of soda a day is “harmless.”

However, I am not going to oversimplify things and blame one single nutrient for rising obesity rates. That shallow tunnel vision does absolutely nothing but keep everyone in the dark.

3 Comments calories, carbohydrates, fat, Gary Taubes, low-carb, low-fat, obesity, overweight, You Ask/I Answer

The January 2008 issue of trade publication Restaurant Startup & Growth Distributor reprints a March 2004 feature titled “Good Restaurateurs Are Always Learning,” which discusses successful strategies and business models.

One sidebar — with the header “SevenBasic Menu Design Tips You Can Take to the Bank” — begins with the following bullet point: “You Own a Restaurant, Not A Health Club.”

“Be aware that people talk about healthy eating, but pursue food that is tasty,” reads the explanation.

It is unfortunate that so many people view these two concepts — healthy eating and great-tasting food — as mutually exclusive. Nutritious eating is not relegated to salt-free rice crackers and steamed carrots.

In this blog, I have highlighted several delicious, healthy recipes.

Even mainstream great-tasting fare like a whole wheat burrito with black beans, vegetables, guacamole, and salsa falls under the health umbrella. Restaurants should not look at offering healthy options as a reinvention of the wheel.

According to this article, “focus groups tells us that a menu speckled with ‘heart-healthy’ icons is not well-received. In fact, if you want to sell less of an item, put a ‘heart’ on it.”

Interesting. I wasn’t aware of this statistic. The reasoning here is that people go to restaurants as a treat and do not want to be reminded of dietary restrictions.

Fair enough, but this should not give chefs a free pass to drown vegetables in half a stick of butter, smother pasta in Alfredo sauce, or rely on sugary sauces to make meats taste good.

Fat and sugar can make anything taste good. A true culinary talent can bring out the naturally delicious flavor of food with healthy items like spices, herbs, olive oil, and lemon juice.

Lastly, readers are encouraged to “place healthy items in their own category.”

While I can see how this helps customers (someone looking for low-calorie options knows what their choices are), it could very well dissuade many from selecting that menu item.

I have learned that whenever I make a healthy variety of something (one of my tried and true classics is a whole grain pizza with salt-free tomato sauce, which I then spice the heck out of), it is best to remain silent until people taste it and comment on how great it tastes.

Everyone who has tried my vegan chili, for example has told me it is the best chili they have ever tasted. Even the most hardcore carnivores are surprised they are eating — and liking! — a meal that is devoid of animal flesh.

I once made the mistake of telling a few people the ingredients before they tasted it. They immediately grimaced and stated “Am I going to be hungry ten minutes after I eat it?”

The psychology of food is quite interesting. Some people, sadly, automatically relate nutritious meals to tasteless cardboard, and might be discouraged from trying something simply because it is under the “heart healthy,” “low calorie,” or “low fat” category.

Then there’s the gender politics of food. You know, like the belief that “real men” eat a pound of semi-raw steak for breakfast and avoid anything that is naturally green and has leaves?

It saddens me to think that the restaurant industry typically views nutrition as a liability to their business.

In the meantime, here are some tips I published last year on how to enjoy restaurant fare while still tending to your health.

3 Comments business, calories, eating out, In The News, low-fat, restaurants

I’d love to hear your thoughts on cheese. I’m pretty sure that having it for breakfast about 4 days a week and enjoy cheese plates about twice a week in addition to that might be overdoing it. What are your thoughts about cheeses to avoid in large quantities, and which to have occassionally?

–Antonella Montagna
Key Largo, FL

Cheese sure is delicious, but its high fat content also results provides a large number of calories in a small package. Remember, each gram of fat contains nine calories, while a gram of protein or carbohydrates contributes four calories.

Additionally, the kind of fat found in cheese is the saturated kind — the type associated with raising our bad cholesterol, risk of heart disease, and contributing to atherosclerosis.

This is not to say you should cut cheese out of your diet. However, being aware of your portions is very important here.

If you are at a party, for instance, you should know that four cheese cubes count as one serving (containing anywhere from 85 to 130 calories, depending on the specific type you are eating).

As a rule of thumb, soft, creamy cheeses contain less fat (and, thus, less calories) than harder types. The reason? Simple — soft cheeses contain more water, wherehas the hard varieties have their fat more concentrated.

So, if your three favorite cheeses are Swiss, cheddar, and manchego, I would suggest introducing some softer ones to your breakfast and cheese plates.

I should point out, though, that even soft cheeses have considerable amounts of saturated fat.

For instance, while an ounce of cheddar (just four little cubes!) provides 30 percent of our daily recommended saturated fat limit, an ounce of whole milk mozzarella still contributes 20 percent.

Here are my suggestions to you.

On the days you start off your morning with cheese, be mindful of your portions, especially if you are consuming hard cheeses. You can be a little more lenient if you are having a caprese salad containing part-skim mozzarella, though, which contains half the saturated fat found in its whole milk counterpart.

Similarly, on days when you have cheese for breakfast, make food choices for lunch, snacks, and dinner that are low in saturated fat (i.e.: have shrimp instead of steak, pour skim milk into your latte in place of whole milk, and replace butter with vegetable oils in your cooking).

As you may have noticed, I make no mention of fat-free cheese. The reason? That entire concept is blasphemy! Cheese is naturally meant to have fat in it. Whereas I find that skim milk adds flavor to coffee or cereal, fat-free cheese is yellow cardboard.

That being said, Cabot makes a tasty reduced-fat cheddar cheese that I often enjoy.

2 Comments calories, dairy, fat, low-fat, saturated fat, You Ask/I Answer

This marks the first installment of “Diets, Deconstructed”, where NYU clinical nutrition professor Lisa Sasson gives Small Bites the lowdown on today’s best-selling diets.

Today, representing the gentlemen, we have The Abs Diet, created and co-written by David Zinczenko, editor of Men’s Health magazine.

The premise of the Abs Diet is rather simple. Eat mostly foods from the following groups:

Almonds and other nuts
Beans and other legumes
Spinach and other green vegetables

Dairy (fat-free/low-fat milk, yogurt, cheese)
Instant Oatmeal (unsweetened, unflavored)
Eggs
Turkey and other lean meats

Peanut butter
Olive oil
Whole grains
Extra whey protein powder
Raspberries and other berries

The book also asks readers to incorporate weight-lifting routines to their day with a special focus on exercises targeting the abdominal muscles.

Here is Professor Sasson’s take on this best-selling diet:

What I liked:

“I think the focus on exercise and fitness is really good, because a lot of diet books sometimes forget to stress the importance of adding physical activity to a healthy way of eating. This diet is also not unnecessarily restrictive. At no point are you told to completely cut out an entire food group.”

What I’m not so sure of:

“I do feel, though, that dedicating so much of the book to abs exercises is just part of the “abs” gimmick. I would have liked to see some more emphasis on aerobic activity. Someone who hasn’t done a sit-up in ten years can easily get discouraged by all this heavy fitness talk. Also, there’s too much emphasis on the glycemic index. A healthy meal does not lose this property if it’s accompanied by white rice instead of brown rice.”

What I don’t like:

“This book suggests men need to have whey protein shakes every day, which is ridiculous since the average American gets more than enough protein. I don’t like the focus on one nutrient — protein — as if it is the magic answer to weight loss. Also, some of the studies the book cites are just preliminary research, but they are presented as tried and true facts. I especially took issue with one passage that makes a link between carbohydrate intake and the development of diabetes!“

My take? I think the Abs Diet has a solid idea behind it. I like the “groups” of food it recommends people make staples of their diet, and am glad they explain why low-calories, low-carb and low-fat diets are not effective for weight loss.

Also, as Professor Sasson says, this is not a restricted diet. Eating dessert once in a while is fine, and enjoying the occassional junk food is not seen as weakness or a breaking of the rules.

I also appreciated the miscellaneous tips sprinkled throughout (ie: “Five Ways to Add More Fiber To Your Diet”).

I have a few issues with it, though:

1) It makes no mention of portions or amount of food eaten. Yes, almonds and olive oil are healthy. But, adding four tablespoons of olive oil to your salad add up to 480 extra calories, and two ounces of almonds contribute 330 calories to your day. Unless you are working out heavily, these extra calories will contribute to weight gain.

2) I absolutely agree with Professor Sasson that the emphasis on extra protein powder is overkill. As I explained in the sixth installment of the Small Bites newsletter, bulking up and adding mass to your frame is about eating more calories, not protein.

3) Branding calcium a “fat fighter” is a bit of a stretch.

4) The chapter titled “A Six-pack in Six Weeks” is too optimistic. I have a feeling most of the people who follow this diet might certainly shed pounds and eat in a more healthful way, but will not be displaying a six-pack in a month and a half. The fitness model shown on the very last page is obviously a man who has devoted much of his life to looking as buff and cut as he does, not a regular person who did the Abs diet for two weeks.

I would certainly not refer to the Abs Diet as a ridiculous or unhealthy one. I think its intentions are good and, for the most part, it dispenses practical and healthy advice. However, in order for it to make the grade, it needs to rely less on preliminary research (as Professor Sasson noted) and protein as the key to weight loss.

In my grade book, The Abs Diet receives a solid B.

No Comments Abs Diet, calories, diabetes, dieting, exercise, glycemic index, junk food, low-carb, low-fat, portions, protein, weight loss, whole grains

Welcome to yet another new section of the Small Bites blog. “Simply Said” will help you understand confusing or overwhelming nutrition topics.

We begin with cholesterol. Our livers and cells produce about 80% of our body’s cholesterol, a precursor to hormones like estrogen and testosterone and necessary for producing vitamin D out of the sunlight that hits our skin. That being said, cholesterol is not essential (meaning it is not necessary to get additional amounts from our diet).

There are four types of cholesterol, but the two you want to think about are low density (LDL) and high density (HDL). The four variations combined make up what is known as your total cholesterol.

LDL is the bad (or “lame”) cholesterol. What’s so bad about it? Well, the higher your LDL cholesterol, the higher your risk of strokes, heart attacks, and blood clots.

Why is this? LDL cholesterol ends up being deposited on the walls of our arteries, where it turns into hard plaque and restricts bloodflow.

HDL is the good (or “healthy”) cholesterol that helps prevent plaque deposits by taking them to the liver for processing and removal when it spots them.

If your body were a town, LDL would be the litterbugs and HDL would be the sanitation workers.

Now, it is true that genes play a somewhat significant role in this. Some people — no matter how healthy they eat — have high levels of LDL, while others can go through life eating junk and still boast high HDL numbers.

Although the drug companies would love for all us to be on statins (cholesterol-lowering medication), the majority of us are in that middle area where our cholesterol profiles can be modified by diet.

Let’s get this straight once and for all. It is not cholesterol in foods that raises our bad cholesterol, but saturated fat, found only in animal products (except those that are non-fat). So, when a package of bread boasts a “cholesterol-free” label on it, you can reply back, “well, duh!” and dismiss it as semi-dishonest marketing rather than groundbreaking nutritional information.

So how do you lower cholesterol? Physical activity is a must, but when it comes to food, your best weapon is soluble fiber (found in fruits, vegetables, nuts, and oatmeal), which bundles up and flushes out excess cholesterol.

(Note: physical activity does not have to mean a busy gym or loud spinning class. Simply increasing the distance you walk every day is enough to have an effect on your cholesterol levels).

Back to the nutrition factor. Going low-fat is NOT the answer to lowering your cholesterol. Rather, you want to go smart-fat. Monounsaturated fats (found in olive oil, walnuts, almonds, hazelnuts, sunflower seeds, avocados, and flaxseed) are helpful at maintaining our good cholesterol levels (a low-fat diet can actually lower it). Remember, the goal isn’t just to lower bad cholesterol, but to increase the good one, too.

Tomorrow we’ll finish up this segment with some numbers to help you make sense of your next blood lab results.

1 Comment cholesterol, HDL, LDL, low-fat, monounsaturated fat, physical activity, simply said, vitamin D