You really are what you eat

Our obsession with 'nutrition' is making us sick. It's time we return to the love of eating real food.

"Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants." This message - central to Michael Pollan's latest, fascinating book In Defence Of Food - is beginning to sink in, in the wake of his recent visit to Sydney.

Pollan - a professor of science and environmental journalism at the University of California, Berkeley - argues that Western consumers are eating the wrong food and that we live in an era where nutrients have been elevated to ideology. He says instead of "worrying about nutrients, we should avoid any food that has been processed to such an extent that it is more the product of industry than nature".

In short, don't eat anything your great-grandmother wouldn't recognise as food.

Pollan's message is eat fresh, eat organically or eat food from farmers' markets, where you can question the growers about their farming methods. "You are what you eat eats, too," he maintains.

When it comes to vegetables, he says, plant a garden and grow your own food. Pollan is an avid gardener and the author of two of my favourite gardening books - Second Nature and The Botany Of Desire. During the recent Sydney Writers' Festival, Pollan told me that his work has actually been inspired by his gardening.

"You can learn everything you need to know about the human place and nature in the garden," he told me. "I think gardeners are more aware of where their food comes from and have more curiosity about the food chain. They don't simply accept the supermarket or fast-food version of reality that food comes in a package. They realise there is photosynthesis behind there somewhere, that there is a food chain and it leads back to the soil, which has an impact on the quality of the food. We know that because of our own gardening experiences."

Pollan emphasises that growing food isn't trivial, as it's an important part of the climate - change solution.

"If we are concerned about the carbon footprint of our food system - and we should be, as 20 per cent of the climate-change problem is the way we are feeding ourselves - then we should start to grow our own. Food we grow ourselves is ultimately the free lunch.

"With a little bit of time and some seeds, you can grow some percentage of your food with no carbon footprint whatsoever."

Pollan believes that there are important spiritual and philosophical reasons for home production.

"When we do something for ourselves - use our bodies to support our bodies in some way - we get out of the cheap energy mindset that has us using money as a proxy for everything we need done. We have specialised our lives to such an extraordinary extent - we have doctors take care of our health, chefs to cook for us, environmentalists to deal with the environment - everything is outsourced.

"I think that leaves us feeling rather helpless. We have forgotten the basics. If you are prepared to grow food and cook it for yourself, you realise you are not helpless ... that is the beginning of some of the very important changes that we need to make."

Pollan considers that using fossil fuel to replace labour and make us sedentary - then using fossil fuel when driving to the gym to get exercise - is one of modern life's great ironies. How absurd is that? As Pollan points out, gardening is good exercise and we can do a little bit every day.

In Defence Of Food argues that food is passed through families and cultures and when it comes to food, "culture is a fancy word for mother". Pollan claims that fresh, real food, which used to be passed down through the generations, has become confused with the notion of food used by nutritional scientists, food industry marketers and journalists - and this is making us sick.

According to Pollan, "lunch" should be taught in schools as an academic subject. "I think it is that important a life skill - to learn how to eat well, to grow food, cook it and eat it. This is as important as anything we teach in school right now. Because there are so many parents who don't know how to cook or garden, that chain has been broken and school is the place to intervene."

"The beauty about teaching 'lunch' as a subject is that you learn about so many different things," he says. "You can't learn about food without learning about ecology, without understanding co-evolution and Darwin, without understanding the carbon cycle and the energy cycles and what links us to the sun. You learn about chemistry, biology and you learn about physics, plus you learn about history and anthropology.

"Food is a brilliant vehicle for teaching a whole lot of other academic subjects. And it really hits home as it ends up on a plate in your house and you feel very connected to it."

Appendix explained

Some scientists think they have figured out the real job of the troublesome and seemingly useless appendix: It produces and protects good germs for the gut.

That is the theory from surgeons and immunologists at Duke University Medical School, published online in a scientific journal.



For generations the appendix has been dismissed as superfluous. Doctors could find no function for it. Surgeons removed them routinely. People live fine without them. But when infected the appendix can turn deadly. It becomes inflamed quickly, and some people die if it is not removed expeditiously.



The function of the appendix seems related to the massive amount of bacteria that populates the human digestive system, according to the study in the Journal of Theoretical Biology. More bacteria inhabit the typical body than human cells. Most of the bacteria are good and help digest food.


But sometimes the flora of bacteria in the intestines die or are purged. Diseases such as cholera or amoebic dysentery would clear the gut of useful bacteria. The appendix's job is to reboot the digestive system in that case.



The appendix "acts as a good safe house for bacteria," said Duke surgery professor Bill Parker, a study co-author. The location of the appendix, just below the normal one-way flow of food and germs in the large intestine in a sort of gut cul-de-sac, helps support the theory, he said.
Also, the worm-shaped organ outgrowth acts as a bacteria factory to cultivate the good germs, Parker said.



That use is not needed in a modern industrialised society, Parker said. If the gut flora dies, they usually can be repopulated easily with germs picked up from other people, he said. But before dense populations in modern times and during epidemics of cholera that affected a whole region, it was not as easy to grow back that bacteria, and the appendix came in handy.



In less developed countries, where the appendix may be still useful, the rate of appendicitis is lower than in the United States, other studies have shown, Parker said.



The appendix, which is about 6 to 10 centimetres long, may be another case of an overly hygienic society triggering an overreaction by the body's immune system, he said. Even though the appendix seems to have a function, people should still have them removed when they are inflamed because it could turn deadly, Parker said.



Five scientists not connected with the research said that the Duke theory makes sense and raises interesting questions. The idea "seems by far the most likely" explanation for the function of the appendix, said Brandeis University biochemistry professor Douglas Theobald. "It makes evolutionary sense." The theory led Gary Huffnagle, a University of Michigan internal medicine and microbiology professor, to wonder about the value of another body part that is often yanked: "I'll bet eventually we'll find the same sort of thing with the tonsils."

My question is, why the hell do males have nipples!

Sweetness and lies - dirty tricks in the breakfast food aisle

Was there ever some golden age of breakfast food when you could count on honesty in nutrition claims? If there was it's long gone. I was in the cereal aisle of the local supermarket when another shopper stopped me - could I help her figure out if her choice of breakfast cereal was high in sugar? On the face of it this product ticked lots of healthy boxes - 98 per cent fat free, high in calcium, iron and folate said the really big writing on the front of the pack. It was only the tiny print in the nutrition panel on the back that told you it had 23g of sugar per 100g - meaning it was almost 25 per cent sugar. I could have stopped there, giving it the benefit of the doubt - maybe all the sugar came from dried fruit. But a glance at the ingredient list (more fine print) listed sugar ahead of dried fruit, meaning the sugar content outstripped the fruit content!

But the real prize for misleading packaging went to the Abundant Earth organic children's cereal further up the aisle. Its tasteful brown pack declared its organic credientials and said 'eating organic makes you feel better'. The problem was it contained chocolate (organic, of course) and that hiding behind the organic label was lots of - organic - sugar. It contained 44g of sugar per 100 g - nudging 50 per cent sugar and making it more like birthday cake than breakfast.

When time is short, it's easy to be misled by packaging that spruiks half truths and uses words like 'light', 'preservative-free' and 'organic' to imply a health benefit. It's a good argument for a traffic light system of labelling that would tell us with a glance at the front of the pack whether a product has high, medium or low levels of sugar, sodium, and saturated fat - green for low, amber for medium and red for high.

It's a proposal put forward for consideration by political parties before the election by the Obesity Policy Coalition, an organisation established by Diabetes Australia Victoria, The Cancer Council Victoria and the WHO Collaborating Centre for Obesity Prevention at Deakin University, to lobby for policy and regulatory initiatives to tackle obesity.

"It's difficult for people to make their way through the maze of information - especially when the positive points of the product are highlighted in big print on the front of the pack and you have to search the fine print at the back to find out what's really in the product," points out Jane Martin, Senior Policy Advisor with the Coalition,

A similar traffic light system is already in use on some foods sold in the UK, though at this stage, it's only voluntary and manufacturers aren't compelled to use it - read about it on the UK's Food Standard Agency http://www.eatwell.gov.uk/foodlabels/trafficlights/.

In the meantime, if you need help to negotiate half truths in the supermarket, try this easy guide from the current issue of Smart Living, the Cancer Council NSW magazine which explains how to gauge from the nutrition panel whether or not a food is high or low in sugar, sodium, fat and fibre.

The quantities given are per 100g

Sugar: a little = 5g ; a lot = 15g

Total fat: a little = 3g ; a lot = 20g

Saturated fat: a little = 1g ; a lot = 5g

Dietary fibre: a little = 0. 5g ; a lot = 3g

Sodium (salt): a little = 0.1g ; a lot = 0.5g

Do you think a traffic light system of labelling on packaged foods would make shopping easier?

The circle of life

This is an article that was written for Australian Shooter magazine (ISSN-1442-7354) by columnist Warren McKay. I added the hyperlinks.

Page 8 – Around the campfire by Warren McKay

Every living thing has a beginning. It lives and sooner or later it dies. And all, including humans, end up feeding, in life or death, something else.

To try to stave off the inevitable, many cultures have employed some form of embalming in an attempt to forestall the eventual “indignation” of being consumed by some of Nature’s smallest creatures. For all of our existence, man has looked to an afterlife to avoid the finality of death. The spirit may live on but the body does not.

Those of us that live in developed countries are sheltered from a lot of the realities of this cycle. Go to a “Third World” country and it is right in your face. It can be very unsettling to see the conditions under which many people live. Birth, the daily necessity of obtaining food, survival and eventual death are there for all to see. We are so shielded that many lose contact with reality. For us, the biggest concern about food gathering is whether or not we make it to the shop before closing time.

Not that far back, though, we were observers, as well as participants, in the circle of life. Many births were in the home, not hidden by hospital walls. Infant mortality was a fact of life and a death was often in the home surrounded by the extended family. Now, we tend to shield our children from what we perceive as the unpleasant parts of reality. Back then, the circle of birth, life and death was part of everyone’s lives.

Again, not that far back, many households kept chickens. They supplied eggs and the roosters became the Sunday roast. People understood where their food came from. Chopping the head off the rooster was as normal as pulling carrots out of the garden. Imagine the outcry today if you carried out that act with someone less in touch with the realities of life watching.

Very few of our western population have the task of supplying their own food. Most of us work to make the money to pay someone else to do it for us. We are so divorced from the need or responsibility for hunting and gathering our own food that this has led to a loss of connection with the natural world and the understanding of man’s role in that system.

It is this loss of understanding of our place in the natural scheme of things, I propose, that has led to an illogical line of thinking and the resultant emergence of radical animal rights groups. They scream cruelty for just about everything to do with animals, yet are prepared to ignore the fact that the meat they eat was a living animal. When confronted with the hypocracity of her stance one activist that I “crossed swords with” could only put forward as a defence, “But that is different”.

Once our supermarket meat came on a white polystyrene tray with a white absorbent mat. Now you’ll notice the trays and mats are black. Why? The sensitivities of some people are upset by the sight of blood. It offends them in one of two ways: either it reminds them that the meat was once a living, breathing animal whose death they are responsible for by wanting meat to eat, or it reminds them of their own mortality. They don’t like the reality of either.

We are a living organism on this planet. We are just as much a part of the circle of life as every other living thing and like all animals, we have to eat to survive and that means something else dies so that we may live.

Thermodynamics and weight loss

The following is a post about thermodynamics on the Michael R. Eades blog. It makes for a great read and helps explain why a calorie in vs calorie out is not really the case.

Probably no laws of physics have been so over invoked and less understood than the laws of thermodynamics. Everyone it seems is using the laws of thermodynamics to justify every position imaginable in the field of weight loss. Journalists often throw out the laws of thermodynamics to prove or disprove dietary regimens they’re writing about. Authors of various blogs and other online sites rabbit on about how the laws of thermodynamics are aligned with their pet theories. And even worse, research scientists - who really should know better - more often than not misquote the laws of thermodynamics, especially when talking about the possibility of a dietary metabolic advantage. ‘It can’t be valid,’ they sniff, ‘it violates the laws of thermodynamics.’
So, I figured is was time to delve into these mysterious laws so that readers of this blog at least can know thermodynamic nonsense when they see it.
When you get a grasp of the laws of thermodynamics it becomes pretty easy to see how they can be confusing not only to the great unwashed masses but even to scientists who have never really taken the time to study them. Thermodynamics are seemingly simple at first glance, but the more you dig into them, the more complex they become. To see what I mean, take a look at the syllabus for the thermodynamics course at MIT and skim through a few of the lectures.
Before we jump into these laws, I want to show you why scientists typically heap scorn on anyone who claims to have somehow violated the laws of thermodynamics.
The author of a book of thermodynamics that I have writes the following:
No violation of any law of thermodynamics is known to have occurred in over 200 years of research in this area.
Most physicists consider the Second Law of Thermodynamics the most universal ‘governor’ of natural activity that has ever been revealed by scientific study.
Sir Arthur Eddington wrote in 1915
If someone points out to you that your pet theory of the universe is in disagreement with Maxwell’s equations — then so much the worse for Maxwell’s equations. If it is found to be contradicted by observation — well, these experimentalists do bungle things sometimes. But if your theory is found to be against the second law of thermodynamics I can give you no hope; there is nothing for it but to collapse in deepest humiliation.
And Ivan Bazarov wrote the following in a thermodynamics text from 1964:
The second law of thermodynamics is, without a doubt, one of the most perfect laws in physics. Any reproducible violation of it, however small, would bring the discoverer great riches as well as a trip to Stockholm. The world’s energy problems would be solved at one stroke. It is not possible to find any other law (except, perhaps, for super selection rules such as charge conservation) for which a proposed violation would bring more skepticism than this one. Not even Maxwell’s laws of electricity or Newton’s law of gravitation are so sacrosanct, for each has measurable corrections coming from quantum effects or general relativity. The law has caught the attention of poets and philosophers and has been called the greatest scientific achievement of the nineteenth century.
Now that you somewhat understand the strong feelings of those in the know about thermodynamics, you can see why they would disparage anyone purporting to break or repeal these laws. And it helps to understand the vituperation heaped on Robert Atkins who wrote one of the most hubristic and outright ignorant statements imaginable showing a total lack of understanding of the laws of thermodynamics when he said:
When I make this claim, that you can lose more weight on a higher number of calories, I seem to be breaking the law—one of the hallowed laws of thermodynamics. Many powers-that-be get terribly provoked when I repeal their laws. But the calorie theory is a false law that is meant to be broken, and ketosis/lipolysis is the instrument for breaking it.
As reported in Gary Taubes Good Calories, Bad Calories, this comment and others like it may have lead John Yudkin to say of Atkins’ book that its “chief consequence [may have been] to antagonize the medical and nutritional establishment.”
But, since Atkins wasn’t really a physicist, it’s easy to see how he could have become confused.
There are four laws of thermodynamics, but we’re going to concern ourselves in this post only with the first and second laws. The other two laws - the zeroth law and the fourth law involve temperature, are highly theoretical, and aren’t really relevant to the discussion at hand.
The first law of thermodynamics is the conservation of energy law and states that energy can neither be created nor destroyed. Another way of stating this law is to say that the energy of a system plus surroundings is constant in time. This first law is where the mistaken idea that ‘a calorie is a calorie’ that misguided people always want to parrot comes from. And on the surface it seems to make sense. If energy can’t be created or destroyed why wouldn’t a calorie always be a calorie? That’s where the second law comes in.
The second law of thermodynamics says that the entropy of the universe increases during any spontaneous process. What this means is that it is impossible for a system to turn a given amount of energy into an equivalent amount of work. It is this second law that is really the ‘a calorie is a calorie’ law, and, in fact, the second law shows, in terms of weight loss at least, that a calorie isn’t necessarily a calorie.
These two laws of thermodynamics can be summed up cleverly. The first law says you can’t get something for nothing, and the second law tells you that you can’t break even.
Since it’s the second law that applies to living, breathing animals, and since it is the one most often confused in the calorie issue, let’s look at it a little more closely. The second law is the law driving chemical reactions, and since we’re nothing but a bunch of walking chemical reactions it is the one that applies most to us.
The second law is a dissipation law in that it says that in any reaction that is irreversible (most of the chemical reactions that give us life) there is a loss or dissipation of energy in that reaction. If substance A converts to substance B via a chemical reaction in the body, then substance B has a lower energy than substance A. In other words energy is lost to the universe in that reaction. There is no reaction that doesn’t end up without a loss of some energy to the universe. This loss of energy is called entropy.
The second law can kind of be summed with this equation:
calories in = calories out + entropy
If we substitute numbers in the above equation it could look like this:
100 calories in = 70 calories out + entropy
If we solve this equation for entropy, we can see that entropy is 30 calories. Or, in this case, 30 calories of energy are lost.
The larger the number for entropy, the more inefficient the system is, i.e., more energy lost from the system forever.
For example, when you drive a car only about 10-12 percent of the energy contained in the gasoline actually is converted to the work of propelling the car - the rest is lost to heat (entropy). This irretrievable loss is the reason a perpetual motion machine can never be built although many have tried. No matter how efficiently such a machine might be designed it will ultimately run down because of these little energy (entropy) leaks here and there. (I’ve used entropy as if it is synonymous with energy when in technical terms it really isn’t, but it’s easier to think of it that way.)
How does this apply to weight loss?
Each of the many chemical reactions in the body end up dissipating energy. We get our energy in the form of calories from the food we eat. This energy gets consumed in all the countless chemical reactions that go on all the time. Just like an automobile, we are not all that efficient. We don’t convert calories to energy on a one to one basis because of the loss of energy to the universe described by the second law.
This is all basic stuff, but it gets interesting when we start to look at how the different macronutrients (fat, protein and carbohydrate) affect the process.
As I’ve discussed in this blog frequently, we need to maintain our blood sugar in a fairly narrow range. We need blood sugar to supply energy to certain cells that can’t use it in any other form (the red blood cells, some brain cells and others). We can get plenty of sugar into our blood and have no trouble keeping our blood sugar up if we eat carbohydrates. The carbohydrate-containing foods get broken down into their sugar molecules that are then absorbed from the intestines directly into the blood. In our high carb world our problem isn’t too little sugar but too much. But in the early years of our existence on the planet it wasn’t like this. We didn’t have access to the bounty of easily absorbed carbs that we do today, yet we still had the need for sugar in our blood. As a consequence we evolved mechanisms to convert other nutrients - primarily protein - into sugar.
If we have a diet containing plenty of carbohydrate, the carbohydrate goes into the blood as sugar. There are very few chemical reactions along the way, and there is a loss of energy to the universe with each of these reactions. But, since there aren’t many conversions, there isn’t a lot of energy loss.
If we have no carbohydrates (or few) in the diet, however, it’s a different story. In order to maintain the necessary sugar level in the blood the body is forced to make sugar out of protein, which isn’t a simple operation. Look in any basic biochemistry textbook and you can see all the reactions required to convert protein to sugar, and each one of these reactions consumes energy just to take place but loses energy to the universe in the process as well. It’s much less efficient for the body to convert protein to sugar than it is to simply take the sugar as it comes in already formed.
The second law of thermodynamics virtually mandates that there be a larger loss of energy when one has to convert protein to sugar instead of merely using the sugar as it comes in. Since there are 4 kcal of energy in a gram of sugar and 4 kcal of energy in a gram of protein, it should be apparent that less of the 4 kcal in a gram of sugar will be dissipated than will be the 4 kcal in a gram of protein if this gram of protein has to first be converted to sugar.
And, consequently, one would think that a diet low in carbohydrate and higher in protein and fat (both of which have to be converted to sugar) would bring about a greater weight loss than a diet of the same number of calories but with higher levels of carbohydrate. In fact, the second law of thermodynamics predicts this very phenomenon. But despite this rather obvious notion that complies perfectly with the second law, many ignorant people continue to cling to the idea that ‘a calorie is a calorie’ despite that idea flying in the face of the second law. I suppose these people discount the second law. If so, then they should spend their time putting together a perpetual motion machine, which, if they could, would garner them a lot more fame than their inane posturing on the inevitability of the second law might do.
A classic example of how the second law works is in the difference between regular and premium gasoline. Both regular and premium have the same exact number of calories per gallon, but premium burns more efficiently. In other words, the calories contained in the premium gas get ‘wasted’ at a lower percentage in propelling the car along the road than do the calories in the regular. A high-performance automobile designed to squeeze the most out of a gallon of gas will get better mileage on premium than on regular gasoline, yet the calories in are exactly the same.
In the human body this inefficiency can be measured as an increase in metabolic rate and an increase in body heat being produced under laboratory conditions. One would assume that since the second law is inviolable and always in operation that people eating a diet low in carbohydrates and high in protein would produce more heat than those consuming the same number of calories but composed of a much higher percentage of carbohydrates. And that is exactly what is found.
In a paper (full text here) published in the Journal of the American College of Nutrition researchers examined this effect in ten healthy young women who consumed either a high-protein, low-carbohydrate or a lower-protein, higher-carb diet of the same number of calories. The researchers used these women as their own controls, providing them with the first diet followed by measurements in the lab, then 54 days later with the second diet and lab evaluation.
Precise measurement of heat and metabolic rate showed that when the women followed the high-protein, low-carb diet they produced almost twice as much heat as they did when consuming the higher carb diet of the same calories. In the higher-carb diet the entropy was smaller than in the higher-protein diet, which would be expected from the second law.
As the authors of the paper put it:
These data demonstrate that meal-induced thermogenesis at 2.5 hours post-meal averages about twofold higher on a HP, low fat diet versus a HC, low-fat diet. Generally, postprandial thermogenesis has been associated with the protein content of a meal, and our data confirm this relationship. However, the difference in the energy cost of HP versus HC diets, particularly in the context of weight loss promotion, has not been addressed by healthcare professionals. Increased diet-induced thermogenesis, in association with the preservation of REE [resting energy expediture], may contribute to the reported weight loss success of diets high in protein with moderate levels of carbohydrate and lends credence to the observation that weight loss on HP diets is predominately body fat, not body water.
Bear all this in mind the next time you tell someone that it is possible to lose more weight on a greater number of calories as long as those calories are low-carb calories, and that someone pooh poohs you with the old ‘That can’t be possible. It violates the laws of thermodynamics. A calorie is after all a calorie.’ Ask them precisely which laws of thermodynamics it violates and ask them to tell you how. Then sit back and watch the fun.

History rewritten by skulls

THE discovery of two fossils has challenged the belief our ancestor homo erectus evolved from homo habilis, according to an article in the British magazine Nature.

The finds, on the eastern bank of Lake Turkana in Kenya, suggested the species may have co-existed for some 500,000 years in East Africa.

The team that found the remains was led by mother-daughter team Mary and Meave Leakey of the famed Kenyan anthropological family who have uncovered a host of critical human and hominid remains in east Africa.

One of the fossils was an upper jaw bone of homo habilis that dated back 1.44 million years.

It was nevertheless more recent than any of the previously found fossils of its kind.

The second was a remarkably well preserved skull of homo erectus, which, paradoxically dates back even further, to some 1.55 million years ago.

"What is truly striking about this fossil is its size," said Fred Spoor of London's University College, one of the paper's lead authors. "It's the smallest homo erectus found anywhere in the world."

This suggests male and female skulls were different sizes -- challenging current thinking.

The discoveries have created a stir among academics tracing humankind's roots, because it challenges the presumed evolutionary timeline of the species: homo habilis to homo erectus to homo sapiens.

"Their co-existence makes it unlikely that homo erectus evolved from homo habilis," said Meave Leakey, one of the lead authors of the paper.

"The fact that they stayed separate as individual species for a long time suggests that they had their own ecological niche, thus avoiding direct competition."

Homo habilis is thought to have lived from about 2.5 million to 1.8 million years ago.

Homo erectus is important because it is believed to be the first hominid to leave Africa.

Meat back on menu

Australian families are turning back to "meat and three veg" as staple fare, according to a new study published in the Nutrition and Dietetics journal.

The study, funded by Meat and Livestock Australia, reveals 88 per cent of Australian households eat red meat at least once a week, while 96 per cent put meat on the table every month.

Meat and Livestock Australia managing director David Thompson says the figure represents a small but significant change in eating habits, and there are a number of reasons behind it.

"People are becoming more aware of the health benefits of fresh food," Mr Thompson said.
"They're becoming disenchanted with processed food. They're responding by going back to more traditional food.

The study found that red meat plays a vital role in child development.

"The nutrients in red meat are so important for childhood development, particularly early childhood," Mr Thompson said.

"Red meat is the major deliverer of iron, zinc and vitamin B12 in our diets, and a little known fact is that it's also second only to seafood in omega-3."

Federal Health Minister Tony Abbott lent his support to the study. "I have always enjoyed red meat," Mr Abbott said. "It's important to rehabilitate red meat as part of the Australian diet. Apart from anything else, red meat is an important Australian industry."

Australians consume 35 per cent of domestic production of red meat.

Japan and the United States are our biggest meat export destinations.

Child obesity rate is 'likely to double'

Australia's obesity epidemic is reaching crisis point and the number of overweight children will rise to 60 per cent within 30 years unless the Government invests billions, according to a health expert.

Kevin Norton, professor of exercise science at Sport Knowledge Australia, accused state and federal governments of failing to stem rising obesity rates, which could cripple the national health system.

In the first study to look at the weight of Australian children over the last century, researchers found that obesity rates jumped from 4 per cent in 1901 to more than 30 per cent in 2003.

The study found that in 30 years' time the number of overweight or obese children will double, matching the current rate of adult obesity.

Professor Norton likened the seriousness of the problem to that of climate change and said failure to act now could have devastating consequences.

"We are going to need new money — in the same way we've done with the climate change issue — for interventions to tackle the problem," he said. "If we're going to have an impact we'll need hundreds of millions, if not billions … because we're running out of money and the health-care costs can't continue."

The report, published in the International Journal of Pediatric Obesity, took in data from 41 studies since 1901 that weighed 500,000 Australian children aged five to 15.

The figures reveal a low, steady rate of obesity until the 1970s when the rate increased.

Professor Norton said the spike coincided with a decline in physical education in schools, and called for compulsory classes from year 1 to year 12.

"It's got to be put in the same bracket as maths and English and reading and writing skills. If we do national testing for that surely we should educate our kids about their health through physical activity and nutrition programs in schools," he said.

"Last year's estimates of direct financial costs placed the obesity epidemic throughout Australia at somewhere around $3.5 billion."

The Age revealed last year that Australia has the fastest growing rate of childhood obesity in the world.

Professor Norton described recent Government prevention measures — such as a ban on soft drinks in Victorian state schools — as little more than "tinkering".

Professor Norton said policies such as adding half a cent per litre to the price of petrol could generate enough money to put one physical education teacher into every school in Australia for a year.

Chimp "Stone Age" finds are earliest nonhuman ape tools

Humans might not be as pioneering as we're cracked up to be.

That's one possible explanation for new evidence that West African chimpanzees learned to use stone tools on their own to crack nuts at least 4,300 years ago.

The research pushes back chimpanzee tool use thousands of years. It casts into doubt the long-standing theory that direct human ancestors were the only animals to independently develop tools—and that chimps learned to use stone tools by watching humans.

Instead both humans and chimps could have inherited the ability to crack nuts with rocks from a common ancestor, Julio Mercader of the University of Calgary in Canada and co-authors report in today's issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Or chimps may have developed the behavior on their own. In either case, it's no longer likely that chimps learned to use stones as tools only by imitating humans.

At 4,300 years old, the chimps' tools correspond to the late Stone Age of human history—before the advent of agriculture in West Africa.

"Until recently people used to say that among modern-day chimpanzees the behavior came from imitation of farmers," Mercader said. "That assumption is no longer valid. What we present predates the presence of farming."

Mercader and colleagues found subtly altered rocks in the Ivory Coast in Africa at a research site that houses the only known prehistoric chimpanzee settlement.

The excavated stones resemble those used by ancient humans and modern chimpanzees to smash nuts—showing evidence of flakes, chips, and worn edges.

Also, several types of starch grains were found on the stones, which the researchers say is residue from cracking local nuts.

Some experts had believed that the chimps at Mercader's study site learned to crack nuts by watching people break apart the seeds of African palm oil trees and other tropical species.

Agustín Fuentes, an anthropologist at Indiana's University of Notre Dame, said he's not surprised by the new research, but he's happy about it.

"It puts the nail in the coffin on those who say chimp tool use is atypical," he said.

"Most people have already bought into that. But now you can say, Look, you've got a 4,000-year-old tradition."

The most primitive human stone-tool sites are in Olduvai Gorge in East Africa. Tools there date back to 2.6 million years ago, when people were deliberately modifying stone tools by flaking rocks to create razorlike edges. Chimps today don't change the shapes of the stones they use as nutcrackers.

But the chimps' stones may be similar to stone tools used by humans before our ancestors began to chisel rocks for specific purposes.

Today in Côte d'Ivoire's Taï rain forest, mother chimpanzees still teach their infants the art of nut cracking.

It takes young chimps about seven years to master the technique. To split a nut without pulverizing it, the chimps must apply 2,200 pounds (1,000 kilograms) of force.

Fuentes said that Mercader and colleagues' work emphasizes that the difference between chimps and humans is not the ability to use tools, but the ability to modify the tools and share that information.

For Fuentes, the research "knocks humans off the pedestal of tool use," but it affirms our unique ability to communicate.

A chimp mother might teach her offspring to crack nuts, but chimps are not really communicating about how to use tools and where to get them, he said.

"Nothing," he said, "goes to the level of information-sharing and technology that humans are capable of."

The Paleo Diet Newsletter

I've been meaning to blog about Dr. Loren Cordain's website and free e-newsletter for a while now. Here are some valuable links for you, my Hunter-Gatherer friend.

Dr' Cordain's website, ThePaleoDiet.com

Newsletters:
Paleo Diet Newsletter Vol. 3 Issue 1

The Paleo Diet Newsletter Courier, Vol. 2, Issue 5

The Paleo Diet Newsletter, Vol. 2, Issue 4

The Paleo Diet Newsletter Courier, Vol. 2, Issue 3

The Paleo Diet Newsletter Courier, Vol. 2, Issue 2

The Paleo Diet Newsletter, Vol. 2, Issue 1

The Paleo Diet Newsletter, Vol. 1, Issue 3

The Paleo Diet Newsletter, Vol. 1, Issue 2

The Paleo Diet Newsletter, Vol. 1, Issue 1

Dr. Cordain is also the author of one of the better books on Paleo nutrition: The Paleo Diet. He has also written The Paleo Diet for athletes and The dietary cure for acne. I haven't read the latter two yet, but the first one was one of the texts that first opened my eyes to this way of life.

Fat Men Can't Hunt

One of the more interesting shows (potentially) for Paleo eaters is a new show on the BBC in Britain called "Fat men can't hunt". It's a four part series shot in the Kalahari Desert in Namibia. From the BBC website is the following:

If you can't kill it and cook it, you'll be going hungry...
Most of us love our convenient Western lifestyles - supermarket shelves groaning with every possible type of food known to man, takeaway deliveries only a phone call away, and handy fridges to keep everything fresh.

However, our Stone Age ancestors lived on a hunter/gatherer diet - and many of the health problems that we in the West currently face can be linked directly back to the change in the way we eat.

In some parts of the world, people still need to hunt, kill, prepare and cook all of their own foodstuffs. Just how would a group of overweight, out-of-condition Brits cope with having to search for their supper?

Fat Men Can't Hunt is a four-part series that follows a group of eight men and women to see if they can live among the San Bushmen of the Kalahari Desert in Namibia.

The men will have to join hunts, spending days at a time foraging for food. Meanwhile the women will have to stay in the camp, living their lives according to the strict social rules that govern local women.

Isolated in one of the world's harshest environments, will our brave volunteers adapt to their new lifestyle or end up begging to be airlifted to the nearest kebab shop?

It looks to me that it has the potential to be a "reality" show that's actually worth watching. I hope it come on the TV in Australia very soon. Perhaps channel 9 can do an Aussie version in the Aussie desert with some local indigenous people.

Dog's breakfast - so what's a dog really meant to eat?

If you thought human nutrition was a minefield of conflicting information, it's no easier if you're a pooch. At one extreme of the dog diet spectrum is the Biologically Appropriate Raw Food (or BARF diet) - this is the canine equivalent of the human Paleolithic diet which recommends a raw food diet that's as close as possible to what wild dogs evolved to eat - at the other are those who argue dogs do just fine on a vegetarian diet; and somewhere in the middle are the vets who recommend a healthy mixed diet.

If research into the effects of dog ownership on human health is to be believed, dogs deserve the right diet - whatever that might be. Owning a dog appears to be good for human health, helping lower blood pressure and cholesterol. But while they're busy protecting us from heart disease, living with a human is no guarantee for good canine health - otherwise why would vets be running weight-loss programs, or a canine anti-obesity drug be poised for release in the US? So what should - and shouldn't - go into a dog's dinner?

Off the menu for all dogs are foods known to be toxic to them. These include grapes, raisins, chocolate, macadamia nuts, tomatoes, onion and garlic (there goes garlic's reputation as a natural flea repellant). Cooked bones can splinter and injure the dog.

Raw bones are fine and don't feed salty foods to dogs who are overweight or have problems with their heart or blood pressure.

Like overweight humans, overweight dogs are prone to diseases like diabetes, arthritis and cancer - to keep them around longer, keep them active and don't overfeed.

I suggest a mixed diet that includes a good quality dried food, together with raw beef or lamb and vegetables. Dried food is a more concentrated source of nutrients (compared with canned food which can contain as much as 60 per cent water) - but provide lots of water.

Vegetables like raw broccoli and carrots are good to add extra nutrients and fibre. Raw chicken wings mimic a wild diet and provide calcium and other nutrients. As for fruit, not much is known about fruit and dog nutrition, though some dogs enjoy it. I know mine certainly does! She collects dropped apricots from the tree (they're too high to reach) and she actually picks peaches from the tree!

If beagles are anything to go by, a little fruit might be a good thing - a University of Toronto study found older dogs whose diet was supplemented with fruit and vegetables did better at learning new tasks.

Not everyone agrees with feeding dogs commercial dog food. The BARF diet, developed by Australian vet Dr Ian Billinghurst, recommends a diet based on raw muscle and organ meat and vegetables - and no grains. Meanwhile, many vegetarian organisations, including the Vegetarian Network Victoria, believe dogs can thrive on a plant-based diet.

So tell us what goes into your dog's bowl to keep them in good shape? Have you tried BARF or even a vegetarian diet?

BARF

Raw Meaty Bones

Previous posts on canine nutrition: 1,

Eat A Tasty Animal for PETA Day (EATAPETA)

Ingrid Newkirk's PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) claims to be an animal rights group, but their outrageous headline-grabbing tactics are rarely more than criminal thuggery laced with fits of blatant bloody-handed hypocrisy.

In response to the "Holocaust On Your Plate" media campaign that mocked the Holocaust, blogger Meryl Yourish responded with "Eat A Tasty Animal For PETA Day" (EATAPETA) campaign on March 15, 2003. Bloggers and non-bloggers are invited to revolt against PETA's ham-fisted tactics by eating animals on this day.

This year will be the Fifth Annual International Eat an Animal for Peta Day.

So, how can you join in the fun?

Sure, you can eat animal food products all by your lonesome, but you are encouraged to organize and promote your own gathering place to celebrate the carnivore side of your omnivorous nature.

I intend to organise a BBQ at home with some close friends. On the menu will be Prawns (Hey, I'm an Aussie so apparently I have to have crustaceans on the BBQ), lamb chops, Pork chops and rump steak. My wife will make up an egg salad.

That covers seafood, sheep, pigs, cows and chickens. I think I'll act like Noah and have two of every animal ..........

McHealthy meals win National Heart tick

FAST food giant McDonald's has secured the National Heart Foundation's tick of approval for several low-fat meals to be added to its menu this month.

But leading dietitian Rosemary Stanton says this may just encourage more people to buy McDonald's - and not necessarily the healthy meals.

The foundation gave nine new meals - switching the winning chips-and-soft drink combination for salad and juice - a tick.

Big Macs missed out, but McNuggets and Filet-o-Fish burgers can wear the tick when paired with the healthy side-dishes.

Foundation chief executive Lyn Roberts said the firm had spent a year reducing trans fats and sodium and adding vegetables to meal combinations.

McDonald's follows Qantas in tick-approval since the foundation introduced the scheme for meals eaten out. Ticks previously only went to supermarket foods meeting strict nutritional standards: companies paying for the privilege.

Tick scheme national manager Susan Anderson would not say how much McDonald's would pay but said it would only cover foundation expenses.

McDonald's was charged $330,000 for 12 Months of approval. In a forum I contribute to, another user (that claims to work at the National Heart Foundation) has this to say on the subject: (The post has been edited only to correct spelling mistakes)

Let me clarify this for everyone because I actually work at the Heart Foundation.

The license fee charged to manufacturers is based on a proportion of expected revenue. This money is used to cover costs only - the money stays inside the tick program and is not released to any other part of the Heart Foundation. In the case of McDonalds 2 restaraunts will be tested per week for 12 months to check their food is meeting the strict standards set by the Tick program, this includes clinical analysis, human resources etc. This is where the $330,000 is going. The Tick is granted only to the nine meals that will be released later in the month, and it does not apply to the whole of McDonalds. The meals are no longer tick certified if you change them in any way. Obviously if you buy fries with a Tick meal you are not eating according to Tick guidelines.

The Heart Foundation "Tick" of approval is nothing short of a pathetic joke. McDonald's can get the tick for a "heart healthy" meal, yet there is no tick of approval for fruit and vegetable growers or livestock producers.

The truth is, the Heart Foundation's "Tick of approval" is purely a revenue raiser for a pathetic government - it has nothing to do with the food being heart healthy.