Diet

Another break from the kitchen today. This time, it's to talk about diet, nutrition, and my personal opinions on a few parts of the health culture. Personally, I think almost everything we know about "proper nutrition" is wrong, for the sole reason that there is too much contradicting evidence.

Look at the movie Super Size Me - Morgan Spurlock ate nothing but McD's for 30 days and gained a ton of weight, and became quite unhealthy by the end of it. Now look at a similar movie, Fat Head. In Fat Head, Tom Naughton eats nothing but McDonalds for 30 days and he loses weight, lowers his bad cholesterol, and raises his good cholesterol. That's right, he gets healthier. How? He doesn't overeat. Simple as that.

A lot of people think that eating meat is what makes you fat and unhealthy, because of the lipid hypothesis. The lipid hypothesis states that Saturated Fat raises your Cholesterol, and high Cholesterol causes Heart Disease, therefore Saturated Fat causes Heart Disease. The study that supports this theory compared the saturated fat intake of 6 countries with their rate of heart disease, and sure enough the data supports the theory. Japan had a very low saturated fat intake and a low rate of heart disease, while the UK and the USA had high amounts of both. However, there were 16 other countries in that study that did not support the theory, such as Norway and Denmark, where the saturated fat intake was higher than that of the US and UK, but heart disease rates that were similar to that of Japan. Study doesn't look so good when you include those data points.

Here's a fun quote for you. It's paraphrased, but it says the same thing - You have a little over a teaspoon of sugar in your blood, when you have normal blood sugar levels. The FDA recommends eating 300 grams of carbs each day - that converts to a cup and a half of sugar in your blood

Personally, I don't think it matters what your diet is, provided you eat everything in moderation. When it comes right down to it, no matter what you're eating, we're all consuming the same important things - minerals, vitamins, carbs, protein, fat, and water. So eat whatever you want - just not too much of it.

Cheers!