Myths and truths....

Myths & Truths About Nutrition

Myth: Heart disease in America is caused by consumption of cholesterol and saturated fat from animal products.

Truth: During the period of rapid increase in heart disease (1920-1960), American consumption of animal fats declined but consumption of hydrogenated and industrially processed vegetable fats increased dramatically. (USDA-HNI)

Myth: Saturated fat clogs arteries.

Truth: The fatty acids found in artery clogs are mostly unsaturated (74%) of which 41% are polyunsaturated. (Lancet 1994 344:1195)

Myth: Vegetarianism is healthy.

Truth: The annual all-cause death rate of vegetarian men is slightly more than that of non-vegetarian men (.93% vs .89%); the annual death rate of vegetarian women is significantly more than that of non-vegetarian women (.86% vs .54%) (Am J Clin Nutr 1982 36:873)

Myth: Vitamin B₁₂ can be obtained from certain plant sources such as blue-green algae and soy products.

Truth: Vitamin B₁₂ is not absorbed from plant sources. Modern soy products increase the body's need for B₁₂. (Soybeans: Chemistry & Technology Vol 1 1972)

Myth: For good health, serum cholesterol should be less than 180 mg/dl.

Truth: The all-cause death rate is higher in individuals with cholesterol levels lower than 180 mg/dl. (Circulation 1992 86:3:1026-1029)

Myth: Animal fats cause cancer and heart disease.

Truth: Animal fats contain many nutrients that protect against cancer and heart disease; elevated rates of cancer and heart disease are associated with consumption of large amounts of vegetable oils. (Fed Proc July 1978 37:2215)

Myth: Children benefit from a low-fat diet.

Truth: Children on low-fat diets suffer from growth problems, failure to thrive & learning disabilities. (Food Chem News 10/3/94)

Myth: A low-fat diet will make you "feel better . . . and increase your joy of living."

Truth: Low-fat diets are associated with increased rates of depression, psychological problems, fatigue, violence and suicide. (Lancet 3/21/92 v339)

Myth: To avoid heart disease, we should use margarine instead of butter.

Truth: Margarine eaters have twice the rate of heart disease as butter eaters. (Nutrition Week 3/22/91 21:12)

Myth: Americans do not consume enough essential fatty acids.

Truth: Americans consume far too much of one kind of EFA (omega-6 EFAs found in most polyunsaturated vegetable oils) but not enough of another kind of EFA (omega-3 EFAs found in fish, fish oils, eggs from properly fed chickens, dark green vegetables and herbs, and oils from certain seeds such as flax and chia, nuts such as walnuts and in small amounts in all whole grains.) (Am J Clin Nutr 1991 54:438-63)

Myth: A vegetarian diet will protect you against atherosclerosis.

Truth: The International Atherosclerosis Project found that vegetarians had just as much atherosclerosis as meat eaters. (Lab Invest 1968 18:498)

Myth: Low-fat diets prevent breast cancer.

Truth: A recent study found that women on very low-fat diets (less than 20%) had the same rate of breast cancer as women who consumed large amounts of fat. (NEJM 2/8/96)

Myth: The "cave man diet" was low in fat.

Truth: Throughout the world, primitive peoples sought out and consumed fat from fish and shellfish, water fowl, sea mammals, land birds, insects, reptiles, rodents, bears, dogs, pigs, cattle, sheep, goats, game, eggs, nuts and milk products. (Abrams, Food & Evolution 1987)

Myth: Coconut oil causes heart disease.

Truth: When coconut oil was fed as 7% of energy to patients recovering from heart attacks, the patients had greater improvement compared to untreated controls, and no difference compared to patents treated with corn or safflower oils. Populations that consume coconut oil have low rates of heart disease. Coconut oil may also be one of the most useful oils to prevent heart disease because of its antiviral and antimicrobial characteristics. (JAMA 1967 202:1119-1123; Am J Clin Nutr 1981 34:1552)

Myth: Saturated fats inhibit production of anti-inflammatory prostaglandins.

Truth: Saturated fats actually improve the production of all prostaglandins by facilitating the conversion of essential fatty acids. (Price-Pottenger Nutrition Foundation Journal 20:3)

Myth: Arachidonic acid in foods like liver, butter and egg yolks causes production of "bad" inflammatory prostaglandins.

Truth: Series 2 prostaglandins that the body makes from arachidonic acid both encourage and inhibit inflammation under appropriate circumstances. Arachidonic acid is vital for the function of the brain and nervous system. (Price-Pottenger Nutrition Foundation Journal 20:3)

Myth: Beef causes colon cancer

Truth: Argentina, with higher beef consumption, has lower rates of colon cancer than the US. Mormons have lower rates of colon cancer than vegetarian Seventh Day Adventists (Cancer Res 35:3513 1975)

Source: Weston A Price

More debunking...

"Conclusions Despite the contribution of dairy products to the saturated fatty acid composition of the diet, and given the diversity of dairy foods of widely differing composition, there is no clear evidence that dairy food consumption is consistently associated with a higher risk of CVD. Thus, recommendations to reduce dairy food consumption irrespective of the nature of the dairy product should be made with caution"

Source

Something's wrong

Eat To Live

But......

Salad

2 Minute Salad from Mark Sisson on Vimeo.

Two articles to think about

From the Telegraph

From Time magazine...

Also read this....

From 3 men in a boat

I remember going to the British Museum one day to read up the treatment for some slight ailment of which I had a touch - hay fever, I fancy it was. I got down the book, and read all I came to read; and then, in an unthinking moment, I idly turned the leaves, and began to indolently study diseases, generally. I forget which was the first distemper I plunged into - some fearful, devastating scourge, I know - and, before I had glanced half down the list of "premonitory symptoms," it was borne in upon me that I had fairly got it.

I sat for awhile, frozen with horror; and then, in the listlessness of despair, I again turned over the pages. I came to typhoid fever - read the symptoms - discovered that I had typhoid fever, must have had it for months without knowing it - wondered what else I had got; turned up St. Vitus's Dance - found, as I expected, that I had that too, - began to get interested in my case, and determined to sift it to the bottom, and so started alphabetically - read up ague, and learnt that I was sickening for it, and that the acute stage would commence in about another fortnight. Bright's disease, I was relieved to find, I had only in a modified form, and, so far as that was concerned, I might live for years. Cholera I had, with severe complications; and diphtheria I seemed to have been born with. I plodded conscientiously through the twenty-six letters, and the only malady I could conclude I had not got was housemaid's knee.

I felt rather hurt about this at first; it seemed somehow to be a sort of slight. Why hadn't I got housemaid's knee? Why this invidious reservation? After a while, however, less grasping feelings prevailed. I reflected that I had every other known malady in the pharmacology, and I grew less selfish, and determined to do without housemaid's knee. Gout, in its most malignant stage, it would appear, had seized me without my being aware of it; and zymosis I had evidently been suffering with from boyhood. There were no more diseases after zymosis, so I concluded there was nothing else the matter with me.

I sat and pondered. I thought what an interesting case I must be from a medical point of view, what an acquisition I should be to a class! Students would have no need to "walk the hospitals," if they had me. I was a hospital in myself. All they need do would be to walk round me, and, after that, take their diploma.

Then I wondered how long I had to live. I tried to examine myself. I felt my pulse. I could not at first feel any pulse at all. Then, all of a sudden, it seemed to start off. I pulled out my watch and timed it. I made it a hundred and forty-seven to the minute. I tried to feel my heart. I could not feel my heart. It had stopped beating. I have since been induced to come to the opinion that it must have been there all the time, and must have been beating, but I cannot account for it. I patted myself all over my front, from what I call my waist up to my head, and I went a bit round each side, and a little way up the back. But I could not feel or hear anything. I tried to look at my tongue. I stuck it out as far as ever it would go, and I shut one eye, and tried to examine it with the other. I could only see the tip, and the only thing that I could gain from that was to feel more certain than before that I had scarlet fever.

I had walked into that reading-room a happy, healthy man. I crawled out a decrepit wreck.

I went to my medical man. He is an old chum of mine, and feels my pulse, and looks at my tongue, and talks about the weather, all for nothing, when I fancy I'm ill; so I thought I would do him a good turn by going to him now. "What a doctor wants," I said, "is practice. He shall have me. He will get more practice out of me than out of seventeen hundred of your ordinary, commonplace patients, with only one or two diseases each." So I went straight up and saw him, and he said:
"Well, what's the matter with you?"

I said:
"I will not take up your time, dear boy, with telling you what is the matter with me. Life is brief, and you might pass away before I had finished. But I will tell you what is NOT the matter with me. I have not got housemaid's knee. Why I have not got housemaid's knee, I cannot tell you; but the fact remains that I have not got it. Everything else, however, I HAVE got."

And I told him how I came to discover it all.

Then he opened me and looked down me, and clutched hold of my wrist, and then he hit me over the chest when I wasn't expecting it - a cowardly thing to do, I call it - and immediately afterwards butted me with the side of his head. After that, he sat down and wrote out a prescription, and folded it up and gave it me, and I put it in my pocket and went out.

I did not open it. I took it to the nearest chemist's, and handed it in. The man read it, and then handed it back.

He said he didn't keep it.

I said: "You are a chemist?"

He said: "I am a chemist. If I was a co-operative stores and family hotel combined, I might be able to oblige you. Being only a chemist hampers me."

I read the prescription. It ran:

"1 lb. beefsteak, with
1 pt. bitter beer every 6 hours.
1 ten-mile walk every morning.
1 bed at 11 sharp every night.
And don't stuff up your head with things you don't understand."

I followed the directions, with the happy result — speaking for myself — that my life was preserved, and is still going on.

Not everything is about fitness!

Some top websites...



drop.io

Drop.io is, put simply, the best file-sharing service we've seen. Just type in the URL you'd like to use, upload your files (up to 100MB), set a password and/or privacy setting, and choose how long the link should live (up to a year from the last page view). Sharing the files is then as easy as sending the URL around. There's no registration, no cost, and no limit to how many URLs you can use.



jott.com

Jott is one of the coolest applications of speech to text technologies we have seen. Once you sign up for a free account, call Jott on your phone and you can leave a message that will be converted to text and posted on your blog, twitter speed or to-do list. The conversion is surprisingly accurate.



www.pageonce.com

PageOnce collects your account info for just about any online account you might have and aggregates the info into a single page that looks good and is easy to keep track of. Keep tabs on your bank or investment accounts, see what's going on with your social-network profiles, check how many minutes you have left on your cell-phone plan, or even which Netflix movies are on the way.



purpletrail.com

This event-planning site will need to build a lot more momentum before it can challenge established services like Evite, or even the invite features built into Facebook and MySpace. But PurpleTrail has the features to give them a run for their money.



chimetv.com

There are plenty of aggregated video sites, but Chime.TV pulls from the best (Break.com, Dailymotion, Veoh, and others) to make editor-created channels filled with stuff you'll love. The channels feature the latest episodes of shows like "Will It Blend?" and "Chad Vader", as well as channels for news, cute stuff, extreme sports, technology, and about 20 more -- including stuff from the network TV sites. It might seem a little odd when you could just visit the sites, but think of Chime.TV as the site that provides the constant background video comfort we use TVs for.



www.groupcard.com

Group Card lets a group of people sign and send a free e-card, which works well for sharing a card with officemates, friends, or family members. The selection isn't much better than what you'd find in the card aisle at your local drugstore, but anything that saves us from spending $5 on a paper card is great with us.



www.someecards.com

Given our experience with greeting cards, both e- and real-world, it comes as quite a shock that one of the funniest sites on the Web is an e-card service. Browsing through the site's enormous collection of hilarious e-cards was enough to make us wish we had friends to send them to.



www.rulesofthumb.org

This helpful site presents user-submitted "rules of thumb," which the community can rate for their usefulness. Want to harness the collective wisdom on managing your money, finding the perfect mate, or getting rid of back pain? RulesofThumb is the place to be. Whether the collective wisdom is on target, however, is a call you'll have to make yourself.



play.typeracer.com

Put your typing skills to the test with TypeRacer, which pits you against other players for the chance to win money, fame, and a slot on TypeRacer's leaderboard! (You actually get only one of those.)



youtomb.mit.edu

There are millions of videos up on YouTube, but thousands have also been removed, and not always with the owner's permission. If any footage online can be accused of copyright violation YouTube will take it down, whether or not the accusation was justified. YouTomb, a research project by the MIT Free Culture student group, tracks the top videos removed from the service for copyright violation, and retains the metadata about the videos so we, the public, can make our own decision about whether the removal was justified or not.



www.atoptics.co.uk

Atmospheric Optics is a stunning collection of pictures that illustrate the strange and beautiful visual phenomena created by light, weather, and our atmosphere. Check out photos and explanations for everything from rainbows and ice halos to nacreous clouds and anti-crepuscular rays.



organizedwisdom.com

Looking for answers to your health-related questions? OrganizedWisdom takes a different approach to search by offering search results in the form of "WisdomCards," curated topics pages with the info and links you need. Find the WisdomCard that corresponds to your question, and rest assured that the health advice is legit.



www.criminalsearches.com

Criminal Searches provides the scary-but-useful data on how many criminals live in your neighborhood, what crimes they were convicted of, and, in some cases, their names and personal info. It's all culled from public records, and is presented as a Google Maps mashup. You can restrict your search to sex offenders, search on a specific name to get a criminal history, or do a general search for criminals by city or ZIP code. This kind of data is certainly not for the faint of heart but can be useful in assessing the safety of your neighborhood.



www.damninteresting.com

Did you know it's quite possible that a severed head may actually feel pain for a while, post-separation? I think that's damn interesting, and so do the editors at Damn Interesting, enough to write an 1,100-word article about it. Their goal is to "collect and dispense damn interesting facts and ideas, whether they appeared in the past, the present, or the (anticipated) future." For example, did you know a supercollider was almost built under the plains of central Texas? Or that New York almost had a subway system based on pneumatic tubes? If you find that damn interesting, visit Damn Interesting.



www.howtocleanstuff.net

Whatever you get dirty, this site can probably tell you how to clean it. Items include: dryers, white wall tires, LCD screens, paintings, golf balls, fake plants, cookies (the browser kind), furniture, venetian blinds, every kind of floor, and clothing (and specific kinds of spills, like Kool-Aid and gum), and pets and people. For example, there is a step-by-step on de-skunking both humans and dogs, neither of which involve that old wives' tale of tomato juice.



www.lovefoodhatewaste.com

Even those who don't care about the ethics of food wasting are thinking thrifty, thanks to skyrocketing food prices. LoveFoodHateWaste pitches in with recipes that help you make use of food that might otherwise go bad. Need to use up some parsnips? Got some cottage cheese you'll never finish? Tell LFHW what you've got on hand, and the site suggests recipes that'll help you clean out your fridge and save money at the same time. We especially like the Rescue Recipes for foods that are already a bit past their best, like veggies that are "on the turn" or bread that's gotten a bit stale.



www.songza.com

Songza is a search engine that gives you easy access to streamable MP3s across the Web. Enter a song, artist, or both and Songza serves it up free of charge -- you can even build playlists. Where does all this free music come from? Best not to ask.



www.thesixtyone.com

TheSixtyOne is one of our favorite places to discover new music. The Digg-like music-streaming service lets you vote songs up or down, and provides just the right amount of customizability. Those with adventurous musical tastes can listen to newly uploaded tracks, while mainstream listeners can stick to the tunes that have already risen to the top with lots of votes.



www.catalogchoice.org

Tired of your mailbox being stuffed with tons of annoying catalogs that you end up throwing away? Catalog Choice is a free service that lets you refuse catalogs you wish to no longer receive. The service cleans out your mailbox and saves a few trees at the same time.



www.wigix.com

Wigix exists for one reason: To give buyers and sellers a cheaper alternative to eBay. If you think eBay's fees are low enough as they are, then you've no need for Wigix. But if you're a disgruntled Power Seller or bidder, you might like its low fees and wealth of features like price histories and social-shopping options.



www.everyscape.com

The big online mapping services offer photograph-based street views that let you see what your destination looks like from the street, but newcomer EveryScape goes even further by letting you explore both the street view and the interiors of buildings, too. The service also helps users find hotels, restaurants, and popular tourist sites with reviews from Yelp.com. Photographers on the ground are shooting as many building interiors as they can as EveryScape continues to roll out to new cities.



farecast.live.com

Plane ticket prices go up and down seemingly at random; you could buy a ticket today only to see the price sink (or spike) tomorrow. Farecast makes sense of it all by tracking pricing trends to let you know when it's time to pull the trigger. Enter in your travel dates, and Farecast will give you a pricing chart going back several weeks, along with a recommendation of whether to buy or wait.



www.insidetrip.com

There are zillions of flight search engines that find the best flights for you based on travel dates, airports, and especially price. But InsideTrip takes it one step further by letting you add comfort level as a search parameter. Is legroom important to you? Aircraft type? Lost-bag or on-time percentages? InsideTrip has you covered.

Does Rodale think people interested in fitness are just idiots?

Apparently so!

Their latest lying email says this:

"Get the Body You've Always Wanted — In Just 28 Days!

J ust Published: The ONLY nutrition plan EXCLUSIVELY for men. Counted on by professional football and basketball teams, and backed by 142 medical and scientific studies, this plan is designed to help you use food to get the lean, well-muscled body you've always wanted, in just 28 days."

Note that:

JUST PUBLISHED.

"The POWER FOOD Nutrition Plan is the first nutrition plan ever published exclusively for men by Men's Health. You get a fully customized nutrition plan that empowers you to reach your own specific goals: shed fat, build muscle, boost your performance, improve your strength and endurance, look and feel younger...even rev up your metabolism to transform your body into a fat-burning furnace while eating up to 6 meals a day. "

Here's the link


So - how much are Rodale charging for this just published book?

If I decide to keep the book, I'll pay for it in 4 installments of just $7.99 each, plus shipping and handling. Otherwise, I'll return the book at the end of the trial period and owe absolutely nothing.

Now have a look at this

Recommended retail price: $19.95

Published....THREE YEARS AGO

• Paperback: 448 pages
• Publisher: Rodale Books (May 30, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1594862354
• ISBN-13: 978-1594862359

One review said:

"it has a lot of information but the diet menus are for only 185 lbs guys and there's no chart to calculate it for any other weight "

So buy from Rodale and you get a 'Just Published' book that is 3 years old....at a price that is 50% HIGHER than the recommended price and 150% higher than at Amazon!

RODALE : Six letters

RIP -OFF : Six letters

CON-MEN: Six letters

An easy way to make money in the fitness industry

Step 1: get a book that was published several years ago
Step 2: stress the word 'new' in the title
Step 3: design some advertisements
Step 4: Even though the CURRENT price is $21.95 and the Amazon price is much lower sell it for even more than the RRP - a huge 40% more than the RRP to your poor sad recipients of your emails!
Step 5: Then email people in the UK and charge $32 for something that is on Amazon UK for less than a tenner...

WHAT A RIP-OFF FROM RODALE

Here is just one of many crap reviews:

"Eight basic free weight exercises, one set each to failure, twice a week. Its about as effective as working out more. Why? Because overload, whether on the first set or the tenth set, is sufficient to stimulate muscle growth. Also the body takes a longer time to fully recover than people give it.

That paragraph covers the content of this book. The rest is a poorly written mix of fact and fiction filled with the following;

Useless anecodes of the sociopathic Arthur Jones insulting various people and making bizzare threats of violence. A quote from one of his lectures... "How would you feel if your were trapped on an island, and all of the inhabitants, apart from yourself, were retarded, malicious, chimpanzees? Don't laugh, because you are one of those retarded, malicious, chimpanzees."

Nostalgic musings about how the author and pals hung out on some ranch in speedo's and compared the roundness and firmness of their gluts... but in a man way.

Some instructions on how to do obscure exercises like... bench presses and barbell curls.

A ridiculous story about how a former marine, recruited to transform his body in just 66 days, loses 50 lbs of fat, and gains like 40 lbs of muscle. In nine weeks. Photos of him in his underwear too... one where he pushes his stomach out, and another where he sucks it in. These are called before and after photos of 50 lbs of weight loss. Then he apparently hits the roid's and injects his muscles with posing oil so that he can look real buff. This is called 30 lbs of muscle. It didn't look like it.

The author comments that this is more muscle than he has ever seen or heard of anyone building in such a short time. Ah.. but he cautions that this was a former marine, so that makes sense why he could gain so much. The author comments earlier that Arthur Jones, his mentor, said most body builders are so stupid they couldn't even spell the word 'muscle'.

He must think we are all retarded, malicious, chimpanzees to buy that story.

Pick another book on High Intensity Training. Any other book. "

And this is what the 2009 advertisement says about the 2005 book:

"The New
High Intensity Training
will help you discover how to:

• Benefit from the HIT philosophy- harder, but shorter, workouts
  
  
• Determine your genetic potential to develop large muscles
  
  
• Develop broader shoulders and a deeper chest in only 2 weeks.
  
  
• Follow a quick-gain nutrition plan for boosting and supporting mass."