Accidental Hedonist

I wanted to write about this last week, when I first read about it, but it somehow got pushed into my story queue.

A report issued this week examined several recent studies by food scientists, nutritionists, growers and plant breeders. It found clear evidence that as the produce we eat gets larger, its vitamins, minerals and beneficial chemical compounds significantly diminish, as do taste and aroma.

Growing bigger tomatoes and ears of corn leads to a bigger yield for the producer, but the trade-off is the lower nutritional value.

(snip)

Donald Davis, a senior researcher at the University of Texas, did some of the most illuminating research into the disappearing nutrients.

He compared Agriculture Department figures on nutrient content for 43 common fruits and vegetables.

Davis says historical data spanning 50 to 70 years show apparent declines of 5 percent to 40 percent or more in minerals, vitamins and proteins in groups of foods, especially vegetables.

Part of me is not really shocked that this is occurring. However, it is kind of a big deal that there is now mounting scientific evidence to support something that many of us have suspected for years (just ask the Washington Apple industry).

The next time someone points at that there is no nutritional benefit to eating organic, I’ll point them to these studies.

Via the New York Times, an ex-Vegan Speaks:

Indigenous cuisines offer clues about what humans, naturally omnivorous, need to survive, reproduce and grow: traditional vegetarian diets, as in India, invariably include dairy and eggs for complete protein, essential fats and vitamins. There are no vegan societies for a simple reason: a vegan diet is not adequate in the long run.

While my views on Veganism are not as…ah…pointed as Michael Ruhlman‘s, I do belive that the weakest part of the vegan stance was in regard to nutrition. But as I live in a very large glass house when it comes to nutrition, I try to toss as few stones as possible.

At any rate, the Op-ed by Nina Plank is a thought provoking read.

As I am writing this, I am sitting at a Coffeehouse called Verite Coffee. Their coffee is good, their cupcakes are even better. I visit here often because it’s convenient, and the product they sell (coffee, cupcakes) are quite good. I have a fair amount of faith that if I hand over my six dollars, I’m going to be rewarded with a pleasant experience.

The key word in the above paragraph is the word “faith”. I didn’t blindly give it to the proprietors of Verite. They had earned it through a fair amount of repetition of experience.

It’s this word “faith” that I latched onto when I was reading Michael Pollan’s piece Unhappy Meals in the most recent New York Time Magazine. My mind acknowledged the major thesis of his article, but still found it lacking a decent foundation from which the thesis is based.

The overall idea in the article is that “nutritionism” (a word coined by a sociologist) has played a large factor in the over processing of processed food.

In the case of nutritionism, the widely shared but unexamined assumption is that the key to understanding food is indeed the nutrient. From this basic premise flow several others. Since nutrients, as compared with foods, are invisible and therefore slightly mysterious, it falls to the scientists (and to the journalists through whom the scientists speak) to explain the hidden reality of foods to us. To enter a world in which you dine on unseen nutrients, you need lots of expert help.

But expert help to do what, exactly? This brings us to another unexamined assumption: that the whole point of eating is to maintain and promote bodily health.

It’s an interesting idea, and one that sounds correct at it’s core. But the nutritionism is an effect, not a cause.

The key time frame that nutritionism entered into the industrial food world is roughly between 1975 and the late 1980′s/early 1990′s. This era roughly coincides with the rise of two very major socio-economic trends – single parent households and dual income households. And what’s the one resource in demand in both of these types of families?

Time.

The “nutritional” food explosion of the era in question didn’t happen in a vacuum. It happened as a result of the marketplace not knowing what was in their food anymore, and not having the time (nor inclination) to find out. And as such, they turned their faith and trust over to food producers, in hopes that the food they purchased would be healthy, delicious, and convenient. And if two of those three properties aren’t available, please oh please let the food be convenient above anything else. One can see this in the rise of fast food, pizza delivery and single serving packaging.

The question on the table is now, did some industrial food companies abuse that trust? Of course they did, often by giving an allusion towards healthiness or deliciousness where none truly existed. The “All Natural 7up” and the low-fat ice cream are all the same strategy from the same playbook that has been around since Coca-Cola was sold as a health tonic.

Pollan does address this in his article.

The sheer novelty and glamour of the Western diet, with its 17,000 new food products introduced every year, and the marketing muscle used to sell these products, has overwhelmed the force of tradition and left us where we now find ourselves: relying on science and journalism and marketing to help us decide questions about what to eat. Nutritionism, which arose to help us better deal with the problems of the Western diet, has largely been co-opted by it, used by the industry to sell more food and to undermine the authority of traditional ways of eating. You would not have read this far into this article if your food culture were intact and healthy; you would simply eat the way your parents and grandparents and great-grandparents taught you to eat. The question is, Are we better off with these new authorities than we were with the traditional authorities they supplanted? The answer by now should be clear.

With so much riding on diets, there’s only one person you should trust in your food decisions – yourself. If you find yourself lacking in information, find the time in your week to do the necessary research. It doesn’t matter if your primary choices are based on convenience, taste or health – it is you that has to live with the consequences of your choices. Faith in faceless institutions, especially in food companies whose primary goal is to increase their stock prices, is always an iffy proposition.

Fat is somewhat misunderstood when it comes to nutrition. A person needs fat in order for their body to function properly. It is an energy source, it helps regulate blood pressure, heart rate, blood vessel constriction and blood clotting. It also is the way that various vitamins are delivered into our blood stream.

There are two ways one needs to look at fat. First, in a high level overview of fat as a whole, then a lower level look at the various types of fat. I believe this is important, because fat, at its base level, is a means in which energy is delivered to our bodies.

The issue surrounding fats is not whether it’s good or bad, but rather how much is too much. Much like everything else in life, fat is best taken in moderation. Being rather high in calories, it’s easy to overindulge. 5 grams of fat contains 45 calories. As a point of comparison, 5 grams of either proteins and carbohydrates contains only 20 calories. Fat is a very efficient means in delivering calories. Foods high in fat are probably not the best items to eat when you wish to feel “full”.

At the lower level, fats molecules can be divided into various categories -

• Monounsaturated
• Polyunsaturated
• Saturated

Each of these fats provides a specific nutritional function and have both pros and cons, some more than others.

Unsaturated Fat – An unsaturated fat is a fat or fatty acid in which there is one or more double bond in the fatty acid chain. What exactly is it missing to be “un”-saturated? That’d be hydrogen atoms, some of which are eliminated when the double bonds are formed in the chain.

There are two types of unsaturated fats:

• Monounsaturated Fat – A fat molecule is monounsaturated if it contains only one double bond. A good way to remember which fats are monosaturated is that they remain liquid at room temperature but may start to solidify in the refrigerator. Olives and olive oils, avocados, nuts and various nut oils all are good examples of monosaturated fats.
• Polyunsaturated Fat – A fat molecule is polyunsaturated if it contains more than one double bond. Polyunsaturated fats are typically liquid at room temperature and when refrigerated. Polyunsaturated fats are considered the healthiest, and include the Omega oils (Omega 3, Omega 6)

Not all unsaturated fats are considered “healthy”. The trans fats we’ve heard so much about of late is an unsaturated fat, but deserves its own subcategory in the unsaturated fats field. I’ll discuss trans fats in a later post.

Saturated Fat – Saturated fatty acids have no double bonds between the carbon atoms of the fatty acid chain. Thus, since no hydrogen atoms are “exterminated”, they are “saturated” with hydrogen. You can recognize most saturated fats as they remain solid a room temperature. Think of bacon fat, butter, vegetable shortening, etc, etc.

This is a basic overview of fats, and I’ll discuss each individual fat in its own post later on.

Technorati Tags: Food, Fats, Nutrition

Typically when one begins to look at losing weight, the first thing they start looking at is the reduction of the intake of calories. But the question is – what exactly are calories?

At its basic, a calories is essentially a unit of measurement, along the lines of inches, feet, gallons, hertz, etc, etc. What it measures is energy contained within an item that can increase the temperature of 1 g of water by 1 °C.

In the context of food, a calorie is actually a kilocalorie, the amount of energy that can increase the temperature of 1 kilogram of water by one degree celcius. But I’m not going to worry too much about the hardcore science behind the calorie. What’s important is that a calorie is the measure of energy supplied by the foods we eat and drink.

We get the energy through digestion, and use this energy in several ways, including the beating of our hearts. We convert the calories into amino acids, glucose and other sugars, and glycerol and fatty acids. Each of these supply various items we need in order to survive.

The point I’m getting at here is that calories are not my enemy. They are a necessity. I’m not going to fear them. What I am going to try to do is to limit them. Because if I do not use all of them in a given time period, my body will store them for later use. But I’ll cover that when I write about fat in a future post.

How many calories a person needs differs from individual to individual. A persons gender, family history, height, weight, and activity level all play a part. I am currently a very sedentary person, in the throes of middle age. My calorie needs are very low. So my goals are to lower my calorie input.

How I’m going to go about that is a different story.

In the course of discussing milk, it’s prudent to bring up the fact that there is a fair percentage of the world’s population who cannot drink milk without a certain amount of physical discomfort. This condition, brought on by the lack of the enzyme lactase in a person’s biological make-up, is called Lactose Intolerance.

Lactase helps a person metabolize lactose into galactose and glucose, both of which are types of sugar. These sugars are easily broken down in the small intestine. If there is no or limited lactase available to break down the lactose, the milk molecule will ferment and release carbon dioxide. I’ll let you figure out what happens next.

A typical human is born with the ability to create a fair amount of lactase. This makes sense when realizing that mothers breast feed their children after their birth. As a child is weaned off of motherâ??s milk, the need for lactase decreases. As a person grows older, they produce less lactase, making digesting lactose more difficult and thereby making drinking milk a less desirable proposition. However for some people on this planet, this is not an issue as they have lactase persistence.

What makes Lactase Persistence so interesting to me is that it’s a dietary genetic mutation that has occurred in homo sapiens that has created a clear delineation within the world population. Sometime between 4500 and 4000 BCE, a group or groups of people adapted to their diet of milk, even after weaning off of motherâ??s milk. This adaptation allowed their bodies to process lactose long into adulthood. If you can drink milk without difficulty, it’s reasonably safe to assume you can trace your ancestry to Western Eurasia and/or parts of the Mediterranean. If you can’t drink milk as an adult, some of your ancestors come from elsewhere in the world.

The fact that’s often lost upon most of us Western Eurasian Descendants is that Lactose Intolerance is the de facto baseline of homo sapiens. It’s us adult milk drinkers who are the anomaly amongst the world population.

Technorati Tags: food, drink, milk, Lactose Intolerance

File this in the “Obvious” file…Cancer researchers are stating that Americans like their meat more than their vegetables.

Really…what do you expect from a country where they think that a healthy diet includes eating bacon cheeseburgers (sans bun of course), and a fast food restaurant goes around stating that we can all lose weight by eating hoagies?

We’re AMERICANS! Of course we eat poorly! We’re the home of McDonald’s, Chef-boy-Ardee, and Conagra. Bad eating is in our blood.