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SMART FUEL
You’re still here? Go eat these foods!
Okay, we cringe a little bit at the word “superfood”. No food wears a cape. Still, there are foods that pack major nutritional punch.
A few of our top picks:
1. Berries, because…
- Blueberries are best, but blackberries, raspberries, cranberries, strawberries and bilberries are all excellent
- They contain antioxidants called anthocyanins
- They fight infections (especially urinary tract infections)
- How much: 1/2 cup whenever you like
2. Fish, because…
- Choose deep-’n-cold-water fish like salmon and red tuna
- Northern Pacific is better than Atlantic (less pollution)
- You can’t get enough Omega-3 fatty acids
- How much: twice a week, or more, plus an Omega supplement
- Remember: Don’t fry or bread it!
3. Dark, Leafy Greens, because…
- Pick spinach, kale, bok choy, chard, dark lettuce
- Greens contain beta-carotene, C, folate, iron, magnesium, carotenoids, phytochemicals, and antioxidants.
- Greens reduce your risk of diabetes because they’re easy on your insulin response mechanism. In other words, they won’t give you a sugar rush, jelly belly, or mood swing.
Look for more heroic foods soon. No spandex tights – we promise.
Technorati Tags: greens, spinach, kale, bok choy, chard, vitamins, antioxidants, phytochemicals, nutrients, magnesium, iron, folate, beta-carotene, omega-3’s, fish, salmon, red tuna, berries, anthocyanins, superfoods
Posted By: Worker Bee
Until we make it stop. If you’re interested in learning more about just how cozy-cousin Congress and drug lords lobbyists are, check out this article. While not hot off the presses, it’s completely relevant and still accurate. 2006 numbers aren’t in just yet.
Technorati Tags: drug lobbies, Congress, pharmaceutical industry
Posted By: Mark Sisson
Lying, Twisting and Manipulating: The Statistics Game Drug Companies Play
Faced with high insurance rates, long hours, endless paperwork, and high-pressure demands, doctors don’t have an easy time of it. If you’re blessed enough to have a thoughtful, proactive, cautious M.D., let them know, by all means. Doctors are inundated with free drug samples, bonuses and perks from Big Pharma, and even the most well-intentioned practitioner can face dilemmas.
Case in point: even the most careful doctors are getting misleading information from many medical journals.
It’s one of the most serious problems facing healthcare and medicine today. Scientists and medical experts are expressing increasingly loud concerns about the ethical standards of medical publications. Some journals and publications have essentially become an extended limb of advertising for drug companies.
The problem isn’t just in the expensive pharmaceutical ads that provide a means of financial survival for scientific and medical news publications.
Many of the studies themselves are funded directly by pharmaceutical companies, making the journals de facto supporters of such companies. Or, doctors participating in the studies also serve positions in various companies.
It’s troubling enough that independent news sources, supposedly impartial and peer-reviewed by other scientists and medical experts, are vulnerable. But even government agencies aren’t immune. The CDC, FDA and NIH have all faced huge criticism in recent years for obvious conflicts of interest.
How is Big Pharma getting away with this? Simple: we let them.
Here is what frequently occurs:
For starters, when companies fund studies of their own drugs – big shock – there are almost never unfavorable results.
When there are, they’re simply omitted, or a new study is funded. A fairly recent review found that when a study is funded by the company producing the drug, positive results happen four times more often than when impartial studies by independent researchers are conducted.
According to the Public Library of Science, an impartial public access resource (check it out in my Daily Reads at right), “between two-thirds and three-quarters” of the studies reported in the top journals are paid for by pharmaceutical companies.
According to the Library, companies aren’t bold enough (or unwitting enough) to skew the results. They simply ask questions they know will yield the “right” results. How convenient.
Another problem: even though journals are usually reviewed by colleagues, if companies are using the same study again and again, but presenting it in different ways, editors have no way of knowing. Editors try to maintain strict ethical integrity, but it can be next to impossible to know the origin, conflicts or “right questions” involved in some studies.
Before I started Primal Nutrition, I served a stint as an editor of a large national health magazine, and I certainly empathize with editors – as my staff knows all too well, information is always changing and getting to the truth is a ceaseless quest that demands constant vigilance. Of course, the truth is worth it. The stakes – Americans’ health – are too high.
Clearly, this is frustrating for anyone who’s even remotely health-minded and trying to arm themselves with the right information about health. If drug companies are paying for studies in order to get certain results, how safe, really, are these drugs? (Yet stevia must be sold as a skin-care treatment.)
There are several ways pharmaceutical companies get around the suspicions of journals and experts:
- They often test their new drug against an old one already proven to be useless or inferior.
- They test their drug against a weaker dose of the competitor’s drug (or a stronger dose, if there are side effects).
- They sponsor ongoing trials and pick information at points where results are most favorable.
- They sponsor tiny trials that only study a few people or a specific group of people.
My biggest contention is what I call the Statistics Game. Crass manipulation of statistics happens more than any of us wants to know. For example, a drug company will study 1,000 people with a particular illness or disease. Let’s say 6 of the 1,000 died. The company then creates a drug that reduces that number to 3. You can guess what the headline will say (because the company will provide the media with it): “Deaths cut by 50% with new drug!” when the real headline should say: “.3% die instead of .6%” or, better yet, no headline at all, because three people out of 1,000 is not even close to being statistically significant. Statistical significance is a benchmark standard in all science. In medicine, 15% is typically what’s required to be considered worthy of any attention, funding or recommendation. You can see where the Statistics Game gets manipulated here.
In other words, using my example (which, unfortunately, is all too real), what doctors should say is:
“If you don’t take this drug, you will be among the 994 of 1,000 that still live regardless. If you do take this drug, you will suffer a loss in quality of life, put up with side effects and complications and will be among 997 of 1,000 that live.”
What can you do?
First and foremost, seek a preventive lifestyle that avoids the need for possibly harmful medications. Vitamins, antioxidants, a fiber-rich diet, and daily exercise are proven, in hundreds upon hundreds of ethically-conducted studies, to be the best course in your journey towards good health.
Every month, new research from prevention-minded resources like the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition and the Public Library of Science reveal that simple lifestyle changes like exercise, diet, supplements and stress management are the true keys to unlocking great health.
Simply losing weight can halve your risk of diabetes, heart disease and other common health concerns. Doctors say the majority of arthritis sufferers would benefit if they just exercised on a daily basis. The vast majority of heart attack victims could help avoid these life-threatening incidents by simply reducing inflammation. (Ways to do this include taking Omega-3 fish oil supplements and exercising, in addition to cutting out alcohol, stress, smoking and high salt intake.)
Of course, I’m on a relentless mission to help you get started in the right direction. One way I can do that is to share my knowledge of studies with you. Here’s what I personally look for: studies that are reasonably controlled, have a variety of patients, and examine a large enough number of individuals over a long enough time period. I watch for drug company sponsorships in the hundreds of studies published every month, and my goal is always to separate the health from the hype. (One of my favorites: the big dairy campaign that claims three daily servings of milk or cheese will help you lose weight. Want to know what that was based on? A University of Tennessee study, funded by the Dairy Industry. The results? Even with Big Dairy backing the study, the average difference in weight loss between dairy-dieters and non-dairy participants was two pounds. Yes, two whole lb’s, folks. Unless you’re a five-year-old, I think many of us could lose that by skipping a dinner or two.)
Finally, you are your own best judge. Only you can decide what is best for your health. If something seems too good to be true, or appears to be a band-aid solution, it probably is. There’s no short-cut, drug or device that can give you good health. On the other hand, good health isn’t about deprivation or misery, either. It’s about smart daily decisions over a lifetime.
To do this, you don’t need to be a scientist or doctor – as this post shows, even the experts are vulnerable to biased influence. Let common sense be your guide and a positive, preventative lifestyle, your approach. And tell me what you think.
Technorati Tags: Big Pharma, pharmaceutical, medical journals, medical studies, medicine, FDA, pharmacology, reduce risk, diabetes, heart disease, arthritis, prevention, inflammation, obesity, CDC, Public Library of Science, PLoS
Posted By: Mark Sisson
The Quote of the Day, from Pizza Hut’s website:
“Pizza can be a part of a well-balanced meal. Ingredients in our pizzas include protein, complex carbohydrates, Vitamin A and calcium. And, depending on the toppings you choose, our pizzas have items from all of the four major food groups – meat, dairy products, fruits and vegetables, and grains!”
And for dessert, have some Pop Tarts, because they’re fortified with iron and niacin!
Even better, have a slice of their cockroach-topped pizza for an extra protein boost:
Feeling some clickativity?
Technorati Tags: Pizza Hut, Pop Tarts, well-balanced meal, fast food, food groups, quote of the day, cockroach pizza, bugs in food
Posted By: Mark Sisson
CARB CONCERNS
Apples are asking what I think about bread. The short answer: not very much. But this is an ongoing issue worthy of some debate, so let’s get it started:
In general, the best source of carbohydrates is a vegetable, not a grain (unless you are an athlete, in which case, you’re probably just trying to consume as many calories as possible).
Among other things, grains contain lectins, a mild toxin (is there such a thing as a mild toxin?). Technically, grains don’t “want” to be your next meal. They didn’t really evolve to be our food source – we humans exploited them when we figured out how easy they were to grow. Consequently, they’re in everything – especially processed foods – because they’re cheap and can be made into just about anything, from sauces to syrups to candies to side dishes.
The occasional slice of whole-grain-only toast (especially those sprouted-grain types that aren’t really flour at all) is fine. And a little pasta – if it’s loaded with veggies and tomato sauce and lean protein – is okay, too. But most Americans get way too many calories from bread and other carbs, especially the refined kind.
It’s not for nothing that our ancestors ate only flesh (meat and fish), nuts, roots, fruits and berries, and grabbed at wild greens for fiber. In fact, there’s a whole dietary movement – sometimes called the Caveman diet, sometimes the Paleo diet – we cautiously subscribe to (I’m uncomfortable with extreme diets, though I also am uncomfortable with how we define “extreme”!) Why? Grains are a relatively new thing for humans, and the evidence increasingly points to the notion that this isn’t a good development. If you’re into learning more, check out our Carbs category.
I recommend that you stick to just one or two servings of grains a day. A reader asked what kinds of carbs I eat. For breakfast, I sometimes eat a slice of sprouted-grain toast with organic nut spread (like almond butter). A few times a week, I enjoy brown rice or whole-grain pasta with my dinner vegetable plate. I favor squashes and legumes over grains. But on the whole, I stick to vegetables and protein – I just don’t really “do” carbs. Vegetables have far more vitamins, fiber and minerals than grain-sourced carbohydrates, and they are much lower in calories, giving you room for protein and vital fat. Vegetables also keep your blood sugar levels at a healthy, low level, so you don’t start pumping your pancreas to death.
Scientists point out that the human body was designed to subsist on a mixture of fresh vegetables, good fats (from nuts, fish, oils, and meats), and protein (from fresh meats, beans, a little dairy, and fish). Add in plenty of water, occasional fruit, and you’re set. On the whole, avoid the processed, unnatural, refined, sugary stuff. Try it for just one week and you’ll notice a big difference – really.
Technorati Tags: caveman diet, paleolithic diet, paleo diet, no-grain diet, sugar, blood sugar, grains, fiber, paleodan, anthropology
Posted By: Mark Sisson
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