The evidence against sugar continues to mount– now there’s good evidence that sugar in the diet may contribute to heart disease risk.

Researchers looked at the diets of over 6,000 people over the course of 7 years (from 1999-2006) and put each person in one of 5 groups depending on the percentage of added sugars in their diets.

Those who consumed less than 5% of total calories as added sugars were the reference group; the second group consumed between 5-10% of total calories as added sugars, the third group 10%-17.5%, the fourth group 17.5% to just under 25%, and the fifth group consumed a whopping 25% or more of total calories as added sugars.

Next the researchers looked at measures in the blood known to be associated with heart disease. Among other things they looked at HDL (“good”) cholesterol levels, triglycerides and ratio of triglycerides to HDL (a low ratio means very low risk for heart disease).

There’s good news for chocolate lovers!

Consuming as little as a square of chocolate per day could help reduce the risk of hypertension and heart disease, according to a new study in the European Heart Journal.

Researchers analyzed data from over 19,000 middle-aged men and women in a study called the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer (EPIC).

The subjects were followed for an average of 8 years. Measurements- including blood pressure- were taken upon enrollment, and the participants were given dietary questionnaires.  They also completed questionnaires every two to three years reporting information about chronic disease and the incidence of both heart attack and stroke.

The data revealed some very good news for chocolate lovers.

Participants whose chocolate intake ranked among the highest 25 percent (an average of 7.5 grams per day of chocolate) had lower blood pressure and a significantly reduced risk of heart attack or stroke compared to subjects whose intake was lowest (average of 1.7 grams per day).

As you may know my new book, ‘The Most Effective Ways to Live Longer” is out, and I’ve been doing a round of TV and radio appearances to promote it. Recently I appeared on KTLA in Los Angeles, where the moderator asked me for my five top tips for living longer.

The challenge- for me- is always to narrow a list like this down to so few items.

I came up with 14 tips but whittled it down to five for the KTLA appearance. But I thought I’d share all 14 with you, in a two-parter here in the newsletter. (For a full list of strategies for living longer and healthier, please see read my book!)

Here’s part one:

1. Drink green tea every day
   

   Catechins in green tea help fight cancer; they’re also effective for boosting your metabolism and helping fight weight gain



2. Eat five ounces of nuts a week
   

   A 14-year study of more than 86,000 women in the Nurses Health Study showed that people who ate more than five ounces of nuts weekly had a 35% lower risk of cardiovascular disease than those who ate less than 1 oz of nuts a month.

I am not now, and have never been, a vegetarian.

OK, that’s not entirely true, I flirted with vegetarianism briefly a few decades ago, right around the time I was also experimenting with sideburns and dashikis. But for most of my adult life- and certainly for all the time I’ve been a nutritionist- I’ve been an unrepentant consumer of animal products.

It’s not that I’m not sympathetic to the animal welfare folks- in fact, I count myself among them (it’s a big tent, folks!) I belong to just about every animal activist group on the planet and care deeply about animal welfare. But while I share with my vegan friends a deep concern for all sentient beings, I happen to believe that we humans do better with some animal products in our diet.

Of course, God is in the details, so let me be a little more specific.

Despite arguments to the contrary, the fact remains that we humans are omnivores. We can eat- and thrive- on most anything edible. And for all of the 2.4 million years the human genus has been on the planet, we have eaten from what I call the “Jonny Bowden Four Food Groups”—food we could have hunted, fished, gathered or plucked. The exact proportions of animal vs. vegetable food that we consumed varied widely depending on where we lived. The Inuit, for example, thrived on a diet largely consisting of seal meat and whale blubber (very few vegetables grow in the freezing cold) while the Bantu of South Africa thrived on a diet very high in carbohydrates and the Masai did quite well on a diet rich with cow’s blood.

But it’s almost impossible to point to a society or a culture that has thrived and prospered without eating any animal products. (The only group I can think of that does it successfully is Tibetian monks, and they don’t reproduce.) When Dan Buettner did his landmark research on the areas of the globe where there are the greatest numbers of healthy centenarians (areas known as “The Blue Zones”) he found that three of the four societies studied did indeed eat meat (albeit not that much of it). The only exception was the Seventh Day Adventists in Loma Linda.

What if there was a widely accepted theory that guided government policy and affected your life in all sorts of ways- and what if it were absolutely, boneheadedly wrong?

You’d be pretty mad, right?

That’s how I- and many of my colleagues- have felt for years about the theory that saturated fat causes heart disease.

And finally, we’re getting some vindication.

According to a new study in the prestigious Journal of Clinical Nutrition in which researchers examined data from 21 different studies from across the world involving over 350,000 subjects, there isn’t a shred of evidence that saturated fat is associated with an increase in the risk of either coronary heart disease (CHD) or cardiovascular disease (CVD).

You read that right.

“Our meta-analysis showed that there is insufficient evidence from prospective epidemiologic studies to conclude that dietary saturated fat is associated with an increased risk of CHD, stroke, or CVD,” wrote the researchers, led by Dr Ronald Krauss from the Children’s Hospital Oakland Research Institute in California.

Yet avoiding saturated fat has been the cornerstone of “official” dietary advice for years, based on the assumptions that it increases the risk for heart disease, (not true), that it raises cholesterol (sometimes true but fairly irrelevant) and that cholesterol itself is a solid marker for the risk of heart disease (very far from true).

You really can’t say enough good things about berries, though goodness knows I never stop trying. I’ve written extensively about blueberries, but truth be told all berries are phenomenal and strawberries are no exception. It’s time to take a look at the special properties of strawberries that make them such a nutritional powerhouse.

Let’s start with something called anthocyanins, a class of plant pigments that give berries their particular colors. These anthocyanins are powerful antioxidants that help plants (like berries) defend themselves against both sun damage and attacks from free radicals; they do similar duty in your body, protecting your cells and DNA. Strawberries are loaded with ‘em.

Anthocyanins have another great benefit- they help fight inflammation.  They’re natural inhibitors of the COX-2 enzyme, which means they pretty much do what drugs like Vioox and Celebrex do- but without any side effects except good ones!

Then there’s a compound called ellagitannin, which breaks down in the body to a remarkable substance called ellagic acid. Ellagic acid- also found in raspberries, cranberries, a couple of nuts and pomegrantes- is an amazing compound that causes cell death of cancer cells in the lab, with no change to healthy normal cells. The American Cancer Society’s “Guide to Complementary and Alternative Cancer Methods” calls ellagic acid a “very promising natural supplement”, and research going back to 1968 shows that ellagic acid has anticarcinogenic and antimutagenic activity. Extracts from the strawberry leaf- which by the way is perfectly edible—were found to have significant cancer-killing activity on leukemia cells, and freeze-dried strawberries have been shown to slow the growth of two types of cervical cancer cells.

No matter how you slice it, osteoarthritis is a pain. Osteoarthritis (OA), which most of us think of as “arthritis,” is very common. It affects upwards of 20 million Americans. From moms, to retirees, to students, to business people, to athletes…arthritis does not discriminate. Virtually anyone could be at risk.

In the general population, an unbelievable 2% to 6% of all people are affected by OA. This is just the tip of the iceberg, however. These figures refer only to people with officially diagnosed OA.

Tens of millions more Americans have OA. They feel its pain daily and they hate the limitations it places on them. Yet these people, young and old, aren’t counted because they haven’t received an official OA diagnosis from a doctor.

Not a Pretty Picture

OA is characterized by progressive loss of cartilage, pain, and, in advanced stages, joint deformity. OA hits the knees, hips, and spine, among other joints. It’s not a pretty picture. Anyone who enjoys being active, from the recreational runner, to the mom chasing her toddler, to the hard-hitting, intense athlete, may be at higher-than-average risk of developing OA.

Joint injury, knee bending, heavy lifting, and participation in high-impact recreational activities all may up the odds of later developing OA.

Unfortunately, when we are young and feel invincible, arthritis is the last thing on our minds. But it is at precisely these early stages that we may be able to head off and limit the damage that leads to future OA.

New Research: AppleBoost Improves Joint Health

The thing about “spin” is that we expect it from politicians. We don’t expect it from science writers. Yet more often than not, spin is exactly what we get from them, especially when they’re writing about vitamins.

A recent article in Slate Magazine (entitled “The Vita Myth: Do Supplements Really Do Any Good?”) is a perfect case in point.

But before we get into that- and we will- it’s important to explain a few basic notions about research.

Non-scientists tend to think that scientific research is “objective” and that results are clear and unequivocal. After all, it’s science, for goodness sake. It’s supposed to be free of opinion or bias. We have images of dedicated men and women in white lab coats laboring with test tubes in the hallowed halls of academia trying to find a cure for cancer, or acne, or working tirelessly to discover the molecular actions of vitamin B12.

But the truth- as always- is just a bit more complicated.

See, facts are neutral. There are zillions of them. What makes a difference is how you organize them, which ones you choose to report, which ones you imagine are important (and which ones you think are insignificant). And of course, what experts you interview to bolster your story. ‘

Which brings us to the Slate Magazine article, which basically concluded that vitamins are worthless.

“During the past few years, study after study has raised doubts about what, if any, good vitamins actually do a body”, writes Emily Anthes, adding ominously, “They could even pose some real medical risks”

I came across a very interesting piece of info the other day, which I’ve since verified with my veterinary sources: The average cat needs about 200-400 calories a day.

Why should you care?

Let’s look at the evidence…

If you happen to be the guardian (I hate the word “owner”) of an animal, go to your kitchen and check the calories on the nutrition facts label for his food. I’ll wait.

Back already? Surprise: there was no such nutrition facts label, was there?

In fact, manufacturers never put the caloric content on the label of dog food or cat food.

They do, however, tell you how many cups or cans to feed your animal companion, and guess what- it’s always more than they need.

I think the exact same thing is going on with us two-legged folks.

For decades now, the conventional advice from trainers and weight loss specialists has been this: “Eat three meals a day plus two snacks.”
The big question is whether or not it’s true.

And the answer…. (drum roll and envelope please).. is..

Sometimes. But not always. Many people do absolutely great on three meals a day with no snacks, and sometimes, on some days- (gasp)- even two.

See, the conventional advice was built upon the “truth” that “grazing” is always a better eating strategy for weight loss than eating three (or, god forbid, two) “solid” meals a day. Eating three meals and two snacks was supposed to keep your blood sugar even throughout the day, keeping cravings at bay.

Well, maybe. But the truth of the matter is that people are far more variable and individual than we often acknowledge. And there’s a downside to the “five meals a day” theory, a downside that may affect some people more than others.

For one thing, eating every two hours guarantees that your insulin is going to go up five times a day instead of, say, three. For many people, that means more hunger not less. Insulin is not only the “fat storage” hormone, it’s also the “hunger” hormone. In fact, the whole “Carbohydrate Addicts Diet” got started when one of its creators, a then very-overweight Rachel Heller, found that she experienced a lot less hunger on one particularly busy day when she “forgot” to eat.

Like most animal lovers, I learn a lot from my dogs. (Don’t stop reading if you’re not a dog lover- I promise this will apply to you as well!)

A couple of years ago Emily- a 6 month old pit bull- left the Bark Avenue Rescue Facility in Los Angeles and joined my family, which at the time consisted of me and Woodstock, a 12 year old male pit-lab mix.

Immediately something interesting happened.

Woodstock- who was at the time, to put it diplomatically, a senior citizen- got a new lease on life. He started running again, like he used to do when he was a puppy. Emily got him to chase her everywhere. They played constantly. Woodstock spent less and less time sleepily contemplating life, and more and more time actively involved in it.

He literally got younger.

I was thinking about this recently while reading Ellen Langer’s brilliant book “Counter Clockwise: Mindful Health and the Power of Possibility”.

A recently published study in the journal Circulation found that every hour spent watching television actually increases your risk of dying.

Yes, you did read that correctly.

We’ve known for a while that there’s a relationship between television watching and obesity, though we’re not 100 percent sure why. One theory holds that the more time you spend in front of the tube, the less time you have for exercise (which assumes you’d be exercising if you weren’t watching reruns of Friends). Another is that watching TV leads to mindless eating (no kidding). And some researchers have floated the theory that staring passively at the screen in some way changes brain waves and lowers metabolism.

Agave nectar/ syrup is basically high-fructose corn syrup masquerading as a health food.

It’s easy to understand how agave syrup got its great reputation. Even the word “Agave” has a fine pedigree, coming from the Greek word for noble. The blue agave species- considered the best for the making agave nectar- flourishes in rich volcanic soil— (it’s also the only variety permitted to be used for the making of tequila). And extracts from the agave plant have been shown to have anti-inflammatory and antioxidant properties. (Unfortunately there’s zero evidence that any of those compounds are present in the commercially made syrup.)

Agave nectar is an amber-colored liquid that pours more easily than honey and is considerably sweeter than sugar. The health-food crowd loves it because it is gluten-free and suitable for vegan diets- and, most especially, because it’s low glycemic (we’ll get to that in a moment). Largely because of its very low glycemic impact, Agave nectar is marketed as “diabetic friendly”. What’s not to like?

As it turns out, quite a lot.

Agave nectar has a low-glycemic index for one reason only: it’s largely made of fructose, which although it has a low-glycemic index, is now known to be a very damaging form of sugar when used as a sweetener. Agave nectar has the highest fructose content of any commercial sweetener (with the exception of pure liquid fructose).

Ever tried to cut back- or even eliminate- sugar? It’s not so easy.

Nature gave us a sweet tooth for a reason- and it wasn’t just to frustrate our diet efforts!

We humans – unlike other animals- don’t make our own vitamin C. Vitamin C is most abundant in fruits. So nature gave us taste buds that would make these relatively sweet tasting foods desirable.

Unfortunately the whole system has become deregulated since just about everything you buy now has sugar in it, and there’s a huge disconnect between the purpose of our original wiring- to make sure we got enough vitamin C- and the way that wiring is used today (to make sure we get enough Krispy Kreme donuts!)

Giving up- or cutting back- on sugar is no picnic. But the rewards are tremendous. Eliminating (or even reducing) sugar can benefit your health in more ways than you can imagine.

Here’s a list of my Top Ten Ways to Start Reducing Sugar, taken directly from page 126 of the http://dietbootcampsystem.com workbook:

1. Don’t add it to foods. This is the easiest and most basic way to immediately reduce the amount of sugar you’re eating. Biggest targets: cereal, coffee and tea.
    


2. Don’t be fooled by “healthy sugar” disguises. Brown sugar, turbinado sugar, raw sugar … it’s all pretty much the same thing as far as your body is concerned.  

When you have something as massive and scary as the obesity epidemic, it’s hard to point the finger at one single element and say, “that’s why it happened”.  But however you slice it, the low-fat movement played a huge part in the epidemic.

After World War ll, heart disease rates had begun to rise precipitously. In the 1970’s a committee led by Senator George McGovern issued a report advising Americans to lower their risk of heart disease by eating less fat.

This recommendation was based on evidence that linked diet to heart disease. Unfortunately the report wrongly singled out saturated fat as the wicked element in our diet responsible for all our problems. This was the beginning of the low-fat movement.

And of the obesity epidemic.