Friday, July 29, 2011

Is Consumer Reports "onHealth" a Danger to Health?

I received an advertising flyer from Consumer Reports the other day.  It was promoting their “Expert * Independent * Nonprofit” newsletter onHealth.  On the front cover of the colorful flyer in lower right hand corner was a box with a nice picture of a flask of oil.  Here’s what it said:

Olive Oil is the best choice for a healthy heart, right?  Then in bold print: WRONG.  Then, I kid you not, it continued with this “analysis.”  Olive oil is fine if you like the taste, but it’s not the best oil for your health.  That’s because olive oil is low in omega-6.  Better-for-you fats, that are rich in omega-6's include canola, corn, soybean and sunflower oil.

I’m not joking!  My most recent posts on this blog emphasized how important the one to one balance of omega-6s to omega-3s is in the membranes of all cells for optimal body function.  I have explained that whenever knowledgeable nutritional scientists refer to the omega-3 deficiency, they do so based on its ratio to the omega-6s.  Most Americans have horrible ratios, somewhere in the neighborhood of 20 to one omega-6s to omega-3s.  That’s because we have a grain-base food system and grains are deficient in omega-3.  Now here comes Consumer Reports telling all Americans, in effect, they need more Omega-6s!

Here’s a table of popular oils.
                                                 1 Oz. Serv.    1 Oz. Serv.        1 Oz. Serv.
                                                  Omega-6      Omega-3      Mg of Omega-3
Oils                                               Mg                 Mg              Surplus/Deficit

Canola Oil                                 5,221.0          2,559.0              -2,662.0
Coconut Oil                                  504.0                  0.0                  -504.0
Corn Oil                                   14,983.0             325.0             -14,658.0
Fish oil (cod liver)                        262.0          5,526.0              +5,264.0
Fish oil (herring)                          322.0           3,321.0              +2,999.0
Fish oil (sardine)                         564.0           6,746.0              +6,182.0
Fish oil (salmon)                          432.0           9,887.0             +9,455.0
Olive Oil                                     2,734.0              213.0              -2,521.0
Palm Oil                                     2,548.0                56.0              -2,492.0
Peanut Oil                                  8,961.0                  0.0              -8,961.0
Soybean Oil                             14,118.0          1,901.0            -12,217.0
Sunflower, high oleic (70%+)   1,010.0                53.8                 -956.2
Sunflower, linoleic (65%)        18,397.0                  0.0           -18,397.0
Walnut Oil                                 14,810.0          2,912.0            -11,898.0

One of the goals for optimizing health is to achieve a one-to-one balance by weight of the essential fatty acids (EFAs which are primarily the omega-6 and omega-3 fatty acids) in our diet.  If our diet is properly balanced the membranes of the cells in our bodies will end up with the same balance.  But how can we do that with canola, corn, soybean, and sunflower oils?  It’s impossible.  That’s especially true since our bodies take in EFAs in a way that magnifies any imbalance.  In other words, if the diet is balanced eight to one, the cells will end up maybe 12 to one.

Consumer Reports did not differentiate between the “high oleic” Sunflower oil and the “linoleic” oil.  There is a huge difference.  From their recommendation I assume they prefer the “linoleic” oil because it is so incredibly high in Omega-6.  So, if you only consume one ounce per day of just one of their recommended oils, here is the milligrams of Omega-6 in excess of Omega-3 that you would consume.

Oil                                                   Milligrams
Canola Oil                                         2,662.0
Corn Oil                                           14,658.0
Soybean Oil                                    12,217.0
Sunflower, linoleic (65%)               18,397.0

None of the fundamental foods in the daily diet of man can provide enough milligrams of omega-3s to offset 18,397 mg of omega-6 per day.  Maybe if one ate nothing but seafood for every meal they could balance out the 2,662 mg of omega-6s.  But how many people are willing to do that?

What is most often missed by the mainstream, or should I say what is always missed by the mainstream, is that the EFAs must have a certain balance in order for bodies to function properly.  An imbalance is associated with nearly, if not every, chronic disease.  Unfortunately Consumer Report’s onHealth is serving up the same old improper message that has already brainwashed the masses and our job of communicating the truth becomes ever more difficult.  But that’s human nature.  The mob is slow to change, especially when it comes to our food.

The foods we eat and how they are prepared is at the heart of our culture.  That’s why suggesting change, even it’s to save lives, is so difficult.  Only individuals with strong wills can step away from the crowd and change to the Real Diet of Man.  When they do, their EFAs will come into perfect balance.  Their weight will plunge if they are overweight.  They will subdue and even cure their many chronic diseases which today have become so commonplace folks refer to them as epidemics rather than just incidences.  The acceptance of getting sick is so ingrained now people actually believe that getting sick is a natural occurrence of aging.

Oh, you ask, “Which oils are best?”  Well, it’s in the balance.  And for that one must think in terms of the daily diet.  Overall, everyday one’s intake of omega-6s and omega-3s must be in balance by weight.  So that means one must eat foods that are balanced because the alternative is to supplement.  When someone supplements with oils high in omega-3s to offset foods high in omega-6s, then the total fat content of the daily diet soars.  I do not believe this is a good thing to do.  That means one’s diet becomes a very high fat diet, way above what is normal.

The Real Diet of Man includes mostly foods that are relatively low in EFAs.  Take spinach for example.  In one ounce there is 7.3 mg of omega-6s and 38.6 mg of omega-3s.  Total EFAs weigh 45.6 mg.  If one eats two pounds of spinach per day they consume 1,459.2 mg of fat.  Compared to fat in oils, the fat content of spinach is incredibly low.  So you can see that none of the fundamental foods found in nature can offset a manmade oil.

Now we come back to olive oil, a relatively low fat oil.  Unfortunately it too is heavily weighted with omega-6s similar to canola oil making it an oil to avoid.

Wednesday, July 27, 2011

Return of the Skeptic

Ted:   Who the hell is Artemus?  No argument that we need it for good health.  There is general agreement in medical and scientific circles.

Dear Skeptic:

She just happens to be the world's leading authority of Omega-3 fatty acids.  She did much of the foundation work and most researchers are either in awe of her work or are so far back behind her that they still don't understand what it's all about.  She is recognized the world over.

You can find all kinds of so-called "experts" who are writing reports about Omega-3 fatty acids.  But all too often they are dancing on the hot stove top like a drop of water without the fundamentals.  The basic fundamental is that the measure for the Omega-3 deficiency is not in terms of absolute quantity in a body, but it's relative balance to the other equally important essential fatty acid family that's in the body which is the Omega-6 fatty acid.  Therefore, unless scientific reports work with the balance, they are not getting to the core of the problem or the solution.  Most reports do not discuss the balance!!!!  I've even spoken to the authors of some of those reports and they just plain don't have the basic understanding.  Why?  Because that is the way humans are.  Some are leaders and most are followers in the dark.

The fundamentals go back to the origin of life.  All oceanography books start with the birth of oceans which lead to the origin of life.  The first sustainable life form was a green one-celled plant.  Then animals evolved that ate the plants and other animals.  And so on.  Not even one animal on earth is sustainable as they are all totally dependent on the green plant at the bottom of their food chain.  The first animals did not have to make Omega-6 and Omega-3 fatty acids because they were always in the green leaf and nearly all animal bodies have followed in that form since.  Consequently, unless our food can be traced to the chemical composition of the green leaf, animal bodies are in trouble.  This is why eating the grain you love is damaging to your health.  Also the same with nuts.  Yes, both have some Omega-3s in them, but their balances are horrible and as a food they lead to body failure rather than better health.

Who is she?  That's like saying "Who the hell is George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, or John Adams?"  In comparison to how those men rank in U.S. history, that's how she ranks in global nutritional circles.  I have telephonic relationships with numerous scientists and researchers and they look up to her like some kind of Goddess.  Here's more:

Background from http://www.reachmd.com/

Dr. Artemis P. Simopoulos is the founder and president of the Center for Genetics, Nutrition and Health, a nonprofit educational organization in Washington, DC, since 1990. Dr. Simopoulos was a founding member of the International Society for the Study of Fatty Acids and Lipids (ISSFAL) in 1991, secretary/treasurer of ISSFAL from 1991 to 1998, and a member of the editorial board of the ISSFAL newsletter from 1994 to 2000. She is the founder and president of the International Society of Nutrigenetics/ Nutrigenomics (ISNN) and founder and chair of the World Council on Nutrition, Fitness and Health (WCNFH) since 2005.

A graduate of Barnard College in New York, with a major in chemistry, and a graduate of the Boston University School of Medicine, she is a physician and endocrinologist whose research at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) was on the nutritional aspects of genetic and endocrine disorders, evolutionary aspects of diet and fatty acids, and the importance of a balanced ratio of omega-6/omega-3 fatty acids in health and disease and in growth and development. She is the author of The Omega Diet (HarperCollins, 1999) and has edited numerous books and journal supplements, in addition to publishing over 300 scientific papers. She has been the editor of the Karger series World Review of Nutrition and Dietetics since 1989. She is the founder and president of the International Society on Nutrigenetics/Nutrigenomics (www.isnn.info).



http://www.isnn.info/

Tuesday, July 19, 2011

A Letter from a Skeptic

Ted, on further research, a minuscule amount of omega 3 fatty acids are present in beef brain tissue.  The top of the list is flax seed (a grain) followed by nuts and seafood - fish - mollusks.  Wild caught salmon is very high with about one fifth of the amount in flax seed.  The studies I have read use a 200 calorie standard as the base.

You are correct, of course, that Wikipedia is a very shallow source of information.  It does rank head and shoulders better than uninformed opinion however.



Dear Skeptic:

I started off learning about nutrition by reading scientific papers.  Even so, it took me a while to grasp what the scientists were saying because the words were foreign to me.

To understand my response one needs the following information provided by this link for Omega-3 data in foods.

Food Analysis:  GI, GL, Fat Ratio, and Inflammation.

The data on food in that link are basically derived from the government's data bases that it has collected over the years.  For another view look at Nutritiondata.com.  You will note that on their Web site the essential fatty acid (EFA) ratio is provided down in the lower left hand corner of the data.  You'll note that in the nutrition trade, EFAs are not measured in terms of calories, but in terms of relative weight.  For instance, in milligrams per ounce or per gram.

Unfortunately Nutrition Data's data is wrong on grass-fed meats.  How do I know, because there are hundreds of independent studies from universities and private labs that have been done plus I have paid for some reports myself and have even tested my body's own ratio!  Grass-fed meats range between 0.8 : 1 up to 2 : 1.  Unfortunately, there is some confusion surrounding what is actually grass-fed.  And in some early meat studies the food researchers didn't know the real difference.  The concept of raising cattle without any grain whatsoever seemed so foreign to some that they thought a critter raised on grass with grain supplementation is the same as grass only.  No, it's not.  But that's another long story.

When analyzing EFA balances don't look only at the absolute amounts of the EFAs.  The key is the balance between the EFAs by weight in ALL of the foods ingested during a day.  It only takes one way-out-of-balance food (i.e. some walnuts) to throw off the entire day's balance derived from properly balanced foods.  And then each day is a new day.  Note that the foods of man prior to the invention of grain farming and other agricultural pursuits are mostly balanced evenly.  That means every meal is balanced and the milligrams (mg) of Omega-6 fatty acids will be the same as the mg of omega-3 fatty acids consumed by the body.  When animals eat those foods their EFA balances will also be evenly balanced.  Then their immune systems operate optimally.  When the balance deteriorates to more than 4:1 omega-6 to omega-3 that is called the omega-3 deficiency and the occurrences of chronic diseases are measurable in laboratory mice.  Most Americans are up around 20:1.  That's why they are over weight, dependent of drugs and operations, and health care costs are so high.  It also explains why being "over weight" is now considered a chronic disease rather than merely a condition of eating more than the body can use.  I eat a lot and I weigh 150 pounds.

Think of the balance of EFAs to the body as similar to the balance between gas and air to an engine.  They don't have to be out of balance by much before the engine runs rough or even stops running.  EFAs are a small component of a body's entire chemical mass.  But the balance of the tiny EFA component impacts brain and body function immensely because the EFAs become permanent components of the membranes of all cells.  When the balance is wrong, the cells can misfire in their function over time.  Think cancer for one.  Studies substantiate that claim and they date way back!

The mob misinterprets the works of the scientific community about Omega-3 fatty acids.  Some of the foundation work is by Artemis Simopoulos, M.D.  She is a world authority on essential fatty acids and was nutritional adviser to the Office of Consumer Affairs at the White House.  She is the former editor in chief of World Review of Nutrition and Dietetics.  That's a scientific publication.  Her work is legendary in the scientific community.

Here is one of her peer-reviewed reports that explains the importance of balance.

http://www.ajcn.org/cgi/reprint/70/3/560S.pdf

I can send sources and more sources of the scientific works.  The science is well documented and has been on the same track since the late 1970s.  And if you look around, you'll see that there are literally thousands upon thousands of health studies that incorporate omega-3 fatty acids and indicate improvements in health because more omega-3 fatty acids are included in the diet.  But once again, it's the EFA ratio that counts which incorporates the omega-6 fatty acids, not just dumping in some Omega-3.

Not only have I experienced significant improvements in my health by eating like a caveman, but so have my customers -- at least the ones who follow the Real Diet of Man.  Anyone who has eaten that way for 12 months or more has a ratio that is better than 4 : 1.

Ted Slanker

P.S.  Flax seed is technically not a grain, but since it is a seed it is very similar.  By some design, nature saw to it that it was an anomaly when it comes to Omega-3 fatty acids.  Unlike all other grains, it is high in Omega-3 and low in Omega-6.  That does not mean other grains are good though.  So the point made is meaningless.  In the same light, nuts are a horrible source for omega-3 fatty acids because they are a much larger source for Omega-6 fatty acids.  It’s all in the balance.