Dietary Doublespeak

I haven't written about my diet in a long time even though it was one of the reasons for my starting this blog. But there are so many good blogs on low-carb diets out there now, which explain things so much better than I could, that I stopped putting my two cents in. But rest assured, I am still following the diet and after four years, I can say that not only has it helped me tremendously, it has become routine. It's only when I get invited out to eat or travel that I remember that most of the world doesn't eat the way I do and doesn't understand why either.

The Drs. Eades continue to be my main source of information and this morning's blog entry by Dr. Mike is really good. He has blogged many times about how difficult it is to get people to change their minds about the benefits of low-carb eating and to realize that many "facts" of dietary wisdom—no salt, fiber is good, whole grains are good, eat lots of fruit and vegetables, limit protein and especially red meat—are based on unproven suppositions. People, including researchers and doctors, are almost paranoid about fats in general, and saturated fats in particular, as the study that is the subject of his post demonstrates. I have just about given up reading the standard news reports, news articles, and other health news letters because they always toe the line and repeat the same wrong assumptions over and over. "Everybody knows...." is the tip-off. Or worse, they come to conclusions that would be laughable if they weren't so important to people's health.

This morning's LA Times Health section gave another prime example. In a rather lengthy article about people going on a gluten-free diet even if they have not been diagnosed with celiac disease, (I am on a no-grain diet, so gluten is just not a problem) they list the drawbacks of this way of eating:

For one thing it's difficult to diagnose celiac disease in a person who has been on a strict gluten-free diet for a long time. ... The diet can make the small intestinal inflammation less obvious on biopsy.

Well, duh! The "cure" for celiac is to never eat gluten. So if I don't eat gluten, I will never know if I would have become celiac if I had. (Did you follow that?) Then they go on to say that people avoiding gluten (think grains) need to watch their B vitamins. I always thought that the main and best source of B vitamins is from meat. As for folic acid, which grains and cereals are supplemented with, it is not a natural component of them, read Eades' blog entry on that subject. You can have too much of a good thing. BTW, I try to eat liver once a week.

Another case concerns eating low-carb to lose weight and/or control diabetes. People complain that when they go off the diet, they gain the weight back. So the diet doesn't work. This is another duh! Low-carbing is a life-style. Not something you do for some short period of time to solve health issues and then abandon once your goal has been reached. Here is a recent blog entry by Eades on the comments that have been written in to Amazon regarding his Protein Power book that touches on this subject.

But enough ranting, here are some links to those terrific blogs I was talking about.

I found this blog entry over at Modern Forager very interesting. I have been avoiding, but not completely eliminating nightshades for less than a year now, but whenever I try going back to eating them regularly (tomatoes, eggplant, etc.) I have an arthritis flare-up. Could be just a coincidence, but I am doing just fine without them.

Robb Wolf posted a very interesting article about the Paleo Diet and Multiple Sclerosis. Click on the link to the video of Loren Cordain explaining the Paleo Diet and how it can help those suffering from MS. Actually, it's a seven-part series, so it will take awhile to view it all.

Like the Eades, William Davis over at Heart Scan Blog is a doctor, a cardiologist in fact, who always has something interesting to say. Since I mentioned eating a gluten-free diet above, check out this entry from Dr. Davis.

Mark's Daily Apple has just posted some great breakfast recipes, especially for people on the go.

And finally, MizFit shows how to get your exercise while watching your kids at the park.