The David Gillespie Blog

If you change nothing, nothing will change
February 22, 2016
4

How vegetable oils are stealing our future – Part 1 – Male Fertility

By | Vegetable Oils | 6 Comments

Part One – Male fertility is plummeting

Around one in six Australian couples meet the World Health Organisation definition of infertility (unable to conceive after 12 months of unprotected sex).  And in about half of those cases it is because the male is infertile. This is the first in a series of articles examining how seed oils affect our reproductive organs (and the disastrous potential consequences for our children).

A sperm count is an old fashioned, but still highly reliable way of measuring a man’s ability to produce children.  Anything over 100 million sperm cells per ml is considered a premium vintage and anything under 15 million means the man is very unlikely to reproduce.  The only trouble is that men with high octane semen are getting harder and harder to find.

In 1992 researchers from the University of Copenhagen published a study of sperm quality trends over the preceding half century.  After reviewing 61 trials, the scientists came to the shocking conclusion that average sperm count had halved in just 50 years (from 113 million in 1940 to 66 million in 1990).

An even more comprehensive analysis of almost 27,000 French men published in 2005 confirmed the trend is continuing.  In that study average sperm counts dropped from 74 million in 1989 to 50 million in 2005 (a rate of 1.9% a year).  If that rate of decline continues, there will be no French men capable of making babies by 2072.

French sperm count sm

 

Similar numbers and rates of decline are now being reported in all Western countries (although alarmingly at a decline of 3% a year, Australia is at the high end).   But in one country, the sperm count disaster makes the French look pretty damn virile.

Sperm banks in Israel are reporting that there is an alarming drop in sperm quality amongst Jewish inhabitants. Those that would have rejected about a third of applicants in the 1990s (because of low sperm count) are now turning away 80 to 90%.  With a measured rate of sperm count decline approximately twice that of any other Western country, experts are predicting that by 2030, average Jewish Israeli sperm counts will drop to a level where reproduction is likely to be impossible.

There are as many theories about why this is happening as there are scientists researching the problem.  Perhaps it is the increased levels of oestrogen in the diet, perhaps it is exposure to pesticides or perhaps it is the use of BPA plastics.  But only one has produced convincing evidence of causation – dietary omega-6 fat consumption.  And that evidence goes a lot further than noticing that Israel is the highest consumer of omega-6 fats in the world.

Omega-6 fat is the dominant fat in the ‘vegetable oils’ used in every processed food.  These oils are not made from vegetables at all.  Rather they come from seeds (like Canola or Rapeseed, Soybean, Sunflower, Safflower, Rice Bran and Grape).

Unlike other kinds of fat, humans cannot make Omega-6 oils.  We need them to properly run our immune system and (just like Omega-3 fats) must get them from plants that we eat.  Fortunately, we don’t need much and we are more than capable of getting everything we need from normal unprocessed food.

Less fortunately (a lot less fortunately), Omega-6 based seed oils are the fat of choice for the processed food industry (because they are a lot cheaper than fats from animals and exotic fruits like olives, avocados and coconuts), so Western consumption of Omega-6 fats has at least tripled in the last century.  And as a consequence, the ratio of Omega-6 fats to Omega-3 fats has soared from about 3:1 to 26:1.

PUFAsm

We’ve known for some time that in experimental animals, high omega-6 fat consumption lowers sperm count and significantly impairs the quality of those that remain.  But a 2009 study in humans has taken that research one step further.

In that study, 82 infertile men were compared with 78 (proven) fertile men.  Detailed profiles of the fatty acid makeup of each man’s semen were prepared.  The results were unequivocal.  Infertile men had a significantly higher ratio of Omega-6 to Omega-3  (15 to 1 versus 6 to 1 in fertile men).  And critically, the higher the omega-6, the lower the sperm count.   The amount and ratio of Omega-6 also dramatically and negatively affected the other two primary measures of sperm quality, the motility (ability to move) and morphology (the shape).

It is likely that the reason for the sperm cell destruction relates to rampant oxidation caused by the overconsumption of omega-6 fats.  Unfortunately, that kind of oxidation damage leads to the wholesale DNA destruction that can result in cancer.  That direct effect on testicular cancer rates is the subject of the next instalment in this series.

 

Get all the studies and articles mentioned in this series here.

 

Photo by Mobilus In Mobili. Distributed under the Creative Commons License.

February 1, 2016
0

How to get lung cancer from a frypan

By | Vegetable Oils | 10 Comments

Vegetable oils are highly unstable. When they interact with oxygen, they release neurotoxic, DNA mutating chemicals which are known to cause cancer (at least). Recent improvements in measurement technology have now thrown a spotlight on the quantity of these chemicals released by normal use. And the results are truly terrifying.

Vegetable oil made from seeds (Canola, Sunflower, Corn, Safflower, Grapeseed, Rice Bran and Soybean for example) -seed oils – are a relatively new addition to the human diet.  Unlike oils made from fruit (Olive, Avocado and Coconut) and animal fats, they are very high in something called an Omega-6 fat.

They are also incredibly cheap to make, which is why you will find them in just about every food on the supermarket shelf and in every deep fryer in the land.

These Omega-6 fats are known to cause oxidative stress in humans.  Oxidative stress occurs when the reactions between these fats and oxygen overwhelm our anti-oxidant defences and a chain reaction gets under way.

That chain reaction results in the production of some highly toxic chemicals which include MDA (Malondialdehyde) and 4-HNE (4-hydroxy-2-nonenal).  They are dangerous because they interact destructively with our DNA and cause cancer.

But that is, by no means the least of it. Because of their neurotoxic capabilities, they are likely to be heavily involved in Alzheimer’s disease, MND, Multiple Sclerosis and Parkinson’s disease.  They are also implicated in chronic inflammation, stroke and heart disease.

While the MDA and 4-HNE we make ourselves (from consuming too much Omega-6) is devastating enough, it is now becoming abundantly clear that we can make them even more dangerous than they already are.  All we need to do is heat them before we eat them.

A study released late last year found that when oils containing Omega-6 fats are heated at a normal cooking temperature (of 180⁰C), they create significant quantities of MDA and 4-HNE (amongst other highly toxic chemicals).  And each time the oil was re-used the concentration increased massively.  The study showed that by the fifth day of oil re-use it had 5 times the concentration of these chemicals that it had on the first (which was already alarmingly high).

These premade cancer bombs are directly ingested every time we eat a food which was cooked in those oils (for example, anything fried in seed oils) or which used heated seed oils in the recipe (for example baked goods).   They are even lurking in products which are sold cold but were made using heated seed oils (like margarines).

But worse than that, the researchers also made the point that all they could measure was the amount of these chemicals left in the oil. Since they are highly volatile, they are constantly escaping into the air around us when the food is being cooked and even when it is being eaten.  It is likely that this explains the stubbornly high rates of lung cancer among women in Asian countries (where smoking is rare among women, but wok frying with Canola oil is a daily task).

According to a 2014 report from the WHO (World Health Organisation), more than forty three thousand Australians died from cancer in 2012. And despite huge advances in treatment, it is now the single biggest cause of death in Australia.

The report reveals that in the nine years the report covers, cancer diagnosis in Australia increased by an alarming 14 per cent. In 2003, 274 Australians per day were diagnosed. In 2012, it was 312 people. Per Day! Worse than that, the authors of the report expect that number to almost double in the next twenty years.

In countries exposed to the Western Diet for most of the last five decades (such as Australia), the number of new cases of Multiple Sclerosis recorded per year (after adjusting for population increases) has quadrupled and the numbers of people with the other diseases associated with these lethal chemicals has also been pushing steadily higher.

Prevention is clearly the key to changing a future full of untimely death from horrible chronic disease. Unfortunately those charged with advising us are blind to the real cause of these lethal epidemics.

Worse that that they are frequently the people responsible for us consuming the oils in the first place. McDonald’s for example switched from frying in Beef Fat to Canola oil in 2004 after incessant pressure from the Heart Foundation. And KFC followed suit in 2012

Every day there are thousands of teenagers standing over vats of frying canola oil for 8 hour shifts at every fast food restaurant in this country.  Every day, there are people cooking with high temperature seed oils in woks (seasoned with seed oil). And every day there are industrial quantities of heated seed oil being poured into commercial baked and frozen foods.

And that is set against background of terrifying increases in cancer incidence in this country.  Today’s 312 new cancer sufferers are not theoretical.  They are your neighbour, your sister, the kid next door.

That this is allowed to continue when the science is so clear, is not merely a shame or an embarrassment.  It is an outrage and a tragedy.

You can’t stop the food processors putting these carcinogens in your food and you can’t stop the Heart Foundation and the Cancer Council encouraging them to do so, but you sure can stop that food being put in you.  Isn’t it time you did?

 

Photo courtesy of 2006 advertisement of the British Heart Foundation

October 19, 2015
5

No, it’s not your imagination. A lot more kids are being severely injured playing sport.

By | Sugar | 9 Comments

Many more kids than ever before are suffering permanently debilitating sporting injuries – the kinds of injuries that only hard-core sporting adults worried about in the past.  And the science says that bottle of blue goop the kids swill at half time is likely to be the cause.

The dreaded ACL injury is a tear in the anterior cruciate ligament, one of the four ligaments that hold our knee together.  The ACL is inside the knee joint connecting the bottom of the thigh bone (the femur) to the top of the lower leg bone (the tibia).  It is attached to the tibia by a little spit of bone called the tibial spine.

Twenty years ago kids didn’t tear their ACL, they broke the tibial spine.  This was because in growing children the bones are not at full strength, but the ligaments are.  In a stressed situation, where the ACL is yanking on the tibial spine, the bone gave way before the ligament, hence the fracture.

Orthopaedics textbooks from the nineties warned doctors to look for tibial spine fractures because children don’t tear their ACLs.  In essence, they thought they were immune to ACLs by virtue of being children.

But that has all changed swiftly, and not just in children.  The numbers of people suffering ACLs has been rapidly increasing in the last two decades.  The rate increased by a third between 1996 and 2004 (and almost doubled in women in that period).  The increase was even more dramatic in children under 17 years of age.

One recent detailed review at just one US hospital found ACL tears in children increased by 11% every year between 1999 and 2011.  In the same period the numbers of tibial spine fractures barely changed.

All of a sudden our kids are not making ligaments strong enough to break their developing tibial spine’s – the ligament tears instead.

Even after adjusting for increases in sports participation there is a very nasty (for the victims and the health system) trend developing at very high speed.

ACL’s can be repaired (by transplanting other ligaments) but even a well repaired ACL is likely to have severely debilitating long term consequences.  One recent study found that half of all adult Swedish soccer players who tore their ACL had developed severe arthritis of the injured knee within 14 years.

Apply that timeline to an 8 year old and it means they will spend most of their lives battling severe debilitation.  And that’s from an injury that 8 year olds are supposed to be ‘immune’ to.

Fortunately there is good science that tells us why our ACLs are suddenly failing.  Sugar.

The massive increase in our consumption of sugar is responsible for us producing substandard ligaments and cartilage.  If we make knees out of rubbish material its little wonder that they are suddenly not up to the job.

Sometimes sugars we eat are accidentally attached to proteins by our body. When that happens, the process is called glycation. Glycation can result in the formation of all sorts of unpredictable (and haphazard) molecules called AGE’s (Advanced Glycation End-products).

All sugars can form AGE’s but the fructose half of table sugar (sucrose) is ten times as likely to do so as glucose (the other half).

Our bodies are used to garden variety (glucose-produced) AGE’s. And we are pretty good at breaking them down and disposing of them. But even so, over time they accumulate in our organs and tissues and we, well, age (the acronym AGE is very much on purpose).

Unfortunately the AGE’s made with fructose molecules are resistant to our disposal system. So not only they made at 10 times the rate, they hang around.

AGE’s are dangerous because they bond easily (and randomly) to each other and to other proteins in a process called cross-linking. Cross-linking significantly degrades the quality of the protein.

Long-lived proteins such as collagen, elastin (both used in ligaments), lens crystallins (used in the eyes) and cartilage are much more susceptible to the effects of AGEs because once we make a bad batch, they’re part of us for an awfully long time.

Collagen degraded by AGEs makes less elastic ligaments.  And substandard ligaments, rather like rubber bands left in the sun, tear much more easily.

ACLs and other ligament and cartilage damage are now a standard part of sporting (and increasingly non-sporting – 30-40% occur while not playing sport) life because fructose is being consumed at unprecedented rates (ironically, particularly by those playing sport).

But here’s a tip, if you prefer to watch your kids on the sports field rather than in an ambulance, do what the NSW cricket team has just done and swap Gatorade for water.

 

Photo by Carolyn Tiry. Distributed under the Creative Commons License.

September 24, 2015
1

No, we don’t need a sugar tax

By | Sugar | 6 Comments

Sugar taxes are all the rage, but the evidence that they deliver better health is non-existent.  Fortunately there is a much easier way to get all the benefits (and more) without introducing a great big new tax.

Jamie Oliver and the Australian Heart Foundation are two prominent current advocates for a tax on sugary drinks.  Their reasoning is clear, sin taxes (like those on tobacco and alcohol) clearly change behaviour.  And sugar consumption is definitely a behaviour that needs to change.  The research is unequivocal – sugar is a primary player in the vast majority of chronic disease epidemics sweeping the world.

For every 10% increase in the price of a pack of ciggies, we can expect a 4% decrease in consumption (in high income countries and as part of a general package of actions against smoking). And we know that similar maths is at work when it comes to sugar water.  Mexico implemented a 10% ‘soda Tax in January 2014 and by the end of that year, consumption had decreased by 6%.

Smoking tobacco is the primary cause of lung cancer.  So convincing people not to smoke is likely to (and does) result in a measurable health outcome.  The substitute for cigarettes is nicotine patches and sprays.  They still deliver the addictive substance but without the health impacts of cigarettes.

Unfortunately the same cannot be said for sugar.  Sugar is the addictive substance and is also the substance causing the damage.  Taxing one source of sugar will certainly reduce consumption from that source but detailed studies have been so far unable to detect a significant health benefit.

This is likely to be because people simply find another source of sugar.  Or, as the author of one recent study put it people simply “find alternate ways to offset the added cost of the tax, by buying in bulk or choosing generic brands.”   I would add, or, get their sugar from the other 90% of the food supply containing sugar.

In recognition of that loophole, Sarah Wilson wants to tax more than just sugar water.  She is campaigning for a tax on “soft drinks, their artificially sweetened alternatives and all foods and beverages that contained hidden sugars.”

The good news for Sarah is that John Howard anticipated her call and implemented just such a tax in Australia on 1 July 2000.  The bad news is that it has failed to positively change behaviour or health outcomes in the 15 years since.

The GST applies a 10% tax to all food and beverages except:

  • all meats for human consumption (except prepared meals or savoury snacks)
  • fruit, vegetables, fish and soup (fresh, frozen, dried, canned or packaged)
  • bread and bread rolls without a sweet coating (such as icing) or filling
  • unflavoured milk, cream, cheese and eggs
  • tea and coffee (unless ready-to-drink)
  • bottled drinking water
  • baby food and infant formula
  • cooking ingredients, such as flour, sugar, pre-mixes and cake mixes
  • fats and oils for cooking
  • spreads for bread (such as honey, jam and peanut butter)
  • spices, sauces and condiments
  • fruit or vegetable juice (of at least 90% by volume of juice of fruit or vegetables)
  • breakfast cereals.

To make the GST a perfect sugar tax, we’d need to remove breakfast cereals (why are they even there? – I smell a lobbyist), sugar as an ingredient, cake mixes, juices, sauces, condiments and some spreads from the list of exemptions (and add unsweetened yoghurt). But it is otherwise pretty close and I suspect that tinkering would be (politically) significantly easier than convincing the public to swallow a whole new tax on everything.

The big question is, would it change behaviour?  Unfortunately based on evidence to date, the answer would have to be resounding no.  When everything in a food category contains sugar, taxing sugar gives the consumer no choice but to pay more tax (and buy sugar anyway).

Luckily there is a simple way for a government (that really cared about our health) to do something about sugar consumption.  Simply require our supermarkets to tell us the lowest sugar choice in any food category.  The label above is my amateur vision of what that might look like.

Shelf labels allow customers to vote with their wallet by buying the product that has the least sugar.  Companies who want part of that action will ‘reformulate’ quickly and the market driven race to the bottom should persistently drive down the sugar content of the food supply.

One other teeny tiny change would be necessary.  Foods which are not subject to the sugar tax (aka the GST) must pass that saving on to the consumer.  Shops would not be permitted to sell tax free bottled water at the same price as taxable coke (as they currently do).

We don’t need more tax, we need a way for the consumer to reward companies that make foods with less (or no) added sugar.  Shelf labels are simple, direct, inexpensive and likely to produce material long term change in our food supply and our health.  So let’s put the tax stick away and reach for the information carrot to get this mule moving.

Also published on RendezView

September 8, 2015
4

How much Imitation Food did you eat today?

By | Big Fat Lies, Sugar, Vegetable Oils | 9 Comments

In these days of regulated, well, everything, it is easy to forget that we are not far down the track from a time when food was regularly adulterated in search of profit.  Milk (and beer) was watered down.  Bread was padded out with Plaster of Paris and sawdust.  And jam was stretched with sugar and pectin to save on costly fruit.

Some of these changes were just plain dangerous.  Some were not likely to be immediately harmful, but did mean the consumer wasn’t getting what they paid for.  To deal with the grey area between adulteration (with, say, sawdust) and cheating (with, say, water or sugar), in 1938 US legislators introduced laws that required that ‘Imitation Foods’ be clearly labelled.

The FDA (Food and Drug Administration) was authorised to create legally binding ‘standards of identity’ based on “the time-honored standards employed by housewives and reputable manufacturers”.  These were recipes which specified what well recognised foods such as cheese, or milk or bread or jam (for example) must contain and in what quantities.  The FDA attacked the task with gusto and by 1950 about half of all food sold in the US had a standardised description.

This meant that if you wanted to make a jam with less fruit than the standard you could do so but it had to be clearly labelled as Imitation Jam.

It also meant that if you wanted to sell low fat milk it had to be labelled Imitation Milk.  If you wanted to sell cheese slices made with milk solids and vegetable fats, it was Imitation Cheese. Or if you wanted to sweeten yoghurt with fruit juice instead of sugar it had to be called Imitation Sweetened Yoghurt.

You don’t have to be a marketing genius to understand that your product might not fly off the shelves with ‘Imitation’ stamped on the front.

The food industry wasn’t a fan in the 1950s but they became even less of a fan by the 1970s as the market for low-fat food really took off.  And they weren’t alone.  The American Heart Foundation was keen to get Americans to switch from animal fats to vegetable oils (to avoid cholesterol) and generally lower the fat in their diet.  But vegetable oils were rarely part of the traditional descriptions of these foods and the amount of fat was specified by law anyway.

Sustained lobbying by the food industry and the Heart Foundation resulted in the laws being changed in 1973.  From then on a food did not have to use the word “Imitation” as long as it had the same level of nutrients as the original.  Calories and fat were excluded from the requirement.  So as long as your Cheese like substance wrapped in plastic had the same vitamins and minerals as the real deal, it could be labelled as Cheese.

One of the most obvious results of that twisted logic is now available in your local supermarket.  There you can purchase a substance which describes itself as having “The protein, energy and fibre of 2 Weet-Bix and milk”.  The actual ingredients of Up&Go are (in descending order by weight):

  • water,
  • skim milk powder,
  • cane sugar,
  • wheat maltodextrin,
  • soy protein,
  • vegetable oils (sunflower, canola),
  • inulin,
  • starch,
  • corn syrup solids,
  • fructose,
  • cocoa (0.5%),
  • oat flour,
  • mineral (calcium), food acid (332), flavours, vegetable gums (460, 466, 407), stabiliser (452), salt, vitamins (C, niacin, A, B12, B6, B2, B1, folate)

You might be tempted to call that ‘Imitation Weetbix and Milk’ but as no Weet-bix appear to be involved, ‘Imitation Sweetened Milk’ is probably closer to the mark.

I’m sure that does add up to the same amount of protein, energy and fibre as Weet-bix and milk but I suspect that an appropriate amount of sawdust and offal would too.

I say bring back the Imitation label.  If your Mayonnaise is made with sugar, emulsifier and water rather than eggs and olive oil, it should be labelled Imitation Mayonnaise.  If your chocolate is made with sugar and vegetable oil rather than sugar and cocoa butter, it should be labelled imitation chocolate.  If your bread has added Fructooligosaccharides, then it’s Imitation Bread.  And if your Weetbix and Milk is made from skim milk powder and sugar, it should be called Imitation Sweetened Milk.

Assuming anyone still wanted to sell food labelled that way, it would make the shopper’s task significantly easier.  There would be no chance you would accidentally buy food containing vegetable oils as they would all be labelled as Imitations.  It wouldn’t eliminate sugar but at least the foods which contained sugar would clearly list sugar as an ingredient (rather than things like juice concentrate or pear extract).  In fact all the ingredients would be recognisable and the list would be much shorter.

This kind of change would result in almost all the contents of a modern supermarket being labelled as Imitation Food.  Yes, I know there is no chance of this happening.  Industry would fight it tooth and nail.  Very real and very large amounts of money would be on the line.  And that just shows how much we have lost control of our food supply – in the space of less than one human lifetime.

The 20th century will go down as the century when mankind surrendered the ability to prepare their own food (or at least know the person who did).  We surrendered that right to corporations motivated by nothing other than profit.  And the result is mass epidemics of chronic disease, the likes of which humankind has never before experienced.  This is not a coincidence, it is a consequence.  And it will end badly for us and our kids.

Removing imitation labelling requirements did not cause the disaster but it certainly and massively accelerated it.  Don’t be a victim of the corporatisation of our food supply.  Eat Real Food, that is, food that is assembled from recognisable ingredients.  Oh, and ditch the sugar. It’ll kill you whether it’s labelled properly or not.

Also published on The Juice Daily

August 25, 2015
1

Oops, sorry ‘bout that – 5 Big Things Nutrition science got horribly wrong

By | Big Fat Lies, Sugar, Vegetable Oils | 10 Comments

Australia is in the midst of a chronic disease epidemic.  Kidney cancer, Melanoma, Prostate cancer and Anal cancer have all doubled since 1982, as has Chronic Kidney Disease since 1991. Type II Diabetes has tripled since 1989.  Multiple Sclerosis has done the same since 1961. Thyroid and Liver cancer has almost quadrupled since 1982.  And life threatening childhood allergic reactions (anaphylaxis) have almost quintupled since 1994.

In the same timeframe, we have become more health conscious than ever.  The science of Nutrition has moved from a back-room study of malnutrition to daily media coverage of what to eat.

The problem is most of what the nutrition profession has told us about food and its effect on disease has been horribly wrong.  So horribly wrong that, in many cases, we’d have been better off if we had done the opposite of what they said.

Here are 5 Big Things they’ve stuffed up.

  1. Fibre prevents bowel cancer

In 2002 the Cochrane Collaboration reviewed all high quality controlled trials (involving almost 5,000 patients).  They concluded that there was no evidence to suggest that increased dietary fibre would reduce Bowel Cancer.

That review was followed up in 2005 by a major evidence review by the Harvard School of Public Health.  The paper covered 13 studies which involved 725,628 people.  And again fibre drew a blank.  The authors concluded that high dietary fibre intake did not reduce the risk of Bowel Cancer.

Other recent research has also demolished many of the other claims around fibre.  It doesn’t prevent heart disease.  It doesn’t improve constipation (in fact it may be part of the cause).  And it likely increases our chances of getting diverticular disease.

  1. Cutting salt is good for the heart

When we consume salt, we retain more water.  More water means higher blood pressure.  A large Cochrane review conducted in 2004 showed that reducing salt intake does reduce blood pressure – but only slightly.

And while that’s nice, the real question is, does it prevent heart disease.  Unfortunately for the low salt brigade the answer (revealed in a 2011 Cochrane review) is a definite no.

There is no evidence that reducing salt reduces heart disease outcomes.  And worryingly one of the reviewed trials showed that reducing salt increase the risk of death in heart failure patients.

  1. Animal fat and Cholesterol are bad for the heart

Over the last five years a series of major reviews have all arrived at the same conclusion – Saturated Fat (the type which dominates fats from animals) does not cause heart disease.  The most recent review, published in August 2015, also adds that those fats are not associated with stroke, type II Diabetes or death from any other cause.

We’ve also been told for decades to avoid cholesterol.  It has been a major part of dietary warnings in the US (and eventually Australia) since 1961.  But this year the US government’s top nutrition advisory body released a review of the evidence which concludes dietary cholesterol is no longer a ‘nutrient of concern’.

No, we didn’t suddenly become immune to its evilness, the advice had been wrong all along.  And that dreadfully wrong advice stopped us consuming one of the most nutritionally perfect foods available – eggs (also vilified for their saturated fat content) – and had us falling victim to every marketer who wanted to plaster ‘low cholesterol’ on the front of a pack.

  1. ‘Vegetable Oil’ is good for the heart

One of the more recent demolitions of the ‘saturated fat’ is bad for the heart, myth also looked at whether vegetable is good for the heart.  We have, after all been told to replace butter with margarine for exactly that reason.

The study, sponsored by the British Heart Foundation, looked at trials involving over half a million people and concluded “Current evidence does not clearly support [heart health] guidelines that encourage high consumption of polyunsaturated [fats – the ones found in vegetable oils].”

But these vegetable fats are not benign additions to the diet.  Increasingly the science is demonstrating  that the fats contained in vegetable oils (like Canola, Sunflower, Soybean, Cottonseed, Grapeseed, Rice Bran and Safflower oil) are a significant part of the disease process for Motor Neuron Disease, Parkinson’s Disease, Macular Degeneration, Multiple Sclerosis (and other auto-immune diseases) all cancers and lethal allergic reactions.

  1. Sugar doesn’t cause Type II Diabetes

Most nutrition authorities still maintain that nothing about sugar (other than the calories) is associated with Type II Diabetes.  And perhaps that is why the Heart Foundation is happy to endorse high sugar foods like Milo and a low-fat Mayo that lists sugar as its primary ingredient.

In June 2015, the latest in a long line of research once again concluded that sugary drink consumption (yes, even juice) was associated with Type II Diabetes even after adjusting for the weight of the people involved.  In other words the calories weren’t the problem.  Something else about the sugar was causing the diabetes.

It turns out that ‘something else’ is the fructose half of sugar and it is not merely responsible for Type II Diabetes but for many of the other chronic diseases that now plague us, including Fatty Liver Disease and Chronic Kidney Disease.

When nutrition science was in its infancy (in the 1960s and 1970s) it made some bad guesses about what makes us sick.  It guessed that eggs and animal fat gave us heart disease.  It guessed that salt caused heart disease and stroke.  It guessed that sugar was harmless.  And it guessed fibre was good.

These guesses were not illogical.  They were just naïve.  And, as it turns out, wrong.  But science has moved a long way since then and guessing is no longer required.

We now know that Heart Disease is caused by chronic inflammation and cancer risk is significantly elevated by oxidative stress.  And we know that loading our diets with man-made fats (labelled vegetable oil) and sugar will ensure we have both.

We no longer need to speculate.  Science has provided the answers.  The sooner those in charge of our dietary recommendations put their pride behind them and admit that, the healthier we will all be. 

But don’t wait for the apology.  Take control of your own health and (at the very least) ignore the nonsense they tell you about Fibre, Animal Fat, Salt and Sugar.  Good Health.

August 7, 2015
24

4 Good Reasons not to add fibre to your diet.

By | Big Fat Lies, Conflicts of Interest | 43 Comments

Nutritionists have been telling us to pump up the fibre in our diet for 44 years.  But the evidence is now in.  Not only is that pointless.  In at least one case, it is very likely to be harmful.

In 1971, Dr Denis Burkitt, an Irish Surgeon, published a paper based on his observations of life in Uganda, where he lived at the time.  In it he hypothesised that a lack of dietary fibre was the cause of much that then ailed Western Society.  He thought it caused bowel cancer and probably also heart disease, Type II Diabetes, varicose veins, obesity, diverticular disease, appendicitis, gallstones, dental cavities, haemorrhoids, hernias and constipation.

Dr Burkitt had noticed that native Africans produced on average four times as much poop as English boarding school children and did so at three times the speed.  He felt that this was because of all the fibre they ate.  And he theorised that the, ah, high rate of flow meant that there was less time for cancer causing foods and impurities to be in contact with our insides.

It was an idea whose time had come and the good doctor quickly became ‘fibreman’, releasing a best-selling book on the topic (a page-turner called ‘Don’t forget Fibre in your Diet’) and crusading ceaselessly for the addition of fibre to the Western diet.  He is famously quoted as saying “America is a constipated nation…. If you pass small stools, you have to have large hospitals.”

His simplistic guess was swallowed whole by the medical and nutrition communities and heavily promoted by those who stood to gain the most from it (largely the Breakfast Cereal Manufacturers).

The shopping list of things fibre is supposed to prevent has gotten shorter as science has delivered better evidence on their real causes but it is still impressive.

To this day, the DAA (Dietitians Association of Australia) claims that eating ‘at least 25-30 grams of fibre a day’ will ‘reduce the risk of constipation, diverticular disease, haemorrhoids and bowel cancer.’ They also mention it will ‘lower the risk of [heart] disease.’

Unfortunately (as is often the case with claims made by the DAA) there is no credible evidence that any of that is true.

Bowel Cancer

In 2002 the highly respected Cochrane Collaboration reviewed five high quality randomized controlled trials involving 5,000 patients.  They concluded that there was no evidence to suggest that increased dietary fibre would reduce Bowel Cancer.

That review was followed up in 2005 by a major evidence review by the Harvard School of Public Health.  The paper covered 13 studies which involved 725,628 people.  And again fibre drew a blank.  The authors concluded that high dietary fibre intake did not reduce the risk of Bowel Cancer.

Heart Disease

The theory goes that fibre is supposed reduce heart disease risk by lowering our ‘bad’ cholesterol. Once again though the research community is being singularly unsupportive.

While oats do lower cholesterol, trials on other types of fibre show that it doesn’t, good, bad or otherwise.

And when it comes to the only thing that really matters, there is no evidence that fibre reduces the risk of dying from heart disease (or anything else).

Constipation and Haemorrhoids

Fibre is supposed to cure constipation (and all its travelling companions, including haemorrhoids, bloating, anal bleeding and abdominal pain).

Believe it or not, this is simply based on Fibreman’s observation of high-flow Ugandans.  They didn’t seem constipated so ramping up the fibre is sure to cure the Western blockage.  Once again though, the evidence has not been kind.

Studies have repeatedly failed to detect that patients with constipation eat less fibre than people without it.  Worse (for the Cereal Industry), those studies have observed that there is no benefit for constipation when fibre is added to the diet.

But something really interesting happens when you reverse the treatment.  A recent trial measured the effect of removing fibre from the diet of people with constipation, with spectacular results.

Six months after the added fibre was removed, ALL of the (initially) constipated patients no longer suffered from constipation, bloating, bleeding or pain.  In contrast the folks who stayed on high fibre diet still had all of those problems.

Diverticular Disease

The news is significantly worse when it comes to Diverticular Disease, an extremely common and painful condition affecting more than half of all people over 70.

As early as 1981, clinical trials were finding that fibre was no help at all.  One author even concluded that the suggestion it might was “simply a manifestation of western civilization’s obsession with the need for regular frequent defecation.”

But much more worryingly, one significant recent study concluded not only that fibre didn’t help but that it increased the likelihood of contracting the disease.

The evidence is now in.  Just like so much of the dietary nonsense we’ve been fed over the last half century, fibre for disease prevention turns out to be twaddle that benefits nobody except the people flogging us whole grain cereals.

A combination of ignorance, arrogance and negligence (with a sizable smattering of corporate profiteering) has kept the eat-more-fibre message front and centre for all nutritional advice.   But we didn’t need added fibre before 1971 and we still don’t need it.  Worse, it is likely to be adding to the burden of diverticular disease (at least).

An Irish doctor’s theory about prodigious Ugandan turds has ensured the rest of us have been fed crap for the last four decades.  But that needs to stop now.  The DAA needs to step up and change the message – even if that is likely to really annoy its cereal selling sponsors.

 

Image: DAA Corporate Partners (via the Grains and Legumes Nutrition Council)

July 15, 2015
4

Health Star or Death Star?

By | Conflicts of Interest, Sugar, Vegetable Oils | 13 Comments

The Federal Government’s Health Star Rating system (HSR to its friends) is being heavily promoted as a solution the nation’s out-of-control obesity and chronic disease problem.  But it has turned into a food industry marketing stunt that is part of the problem not part of the solution.

This week HSR turned 1.  And as any one year old might expect, it got some lovely presents.  The government committed to spending $2.1 million telling everybody what a jolly good idea it is.  And they also cut a cheque to the Heart Foundation to look after the little fella for the next 2-5 years.

It seems everybody has been celebrating.  Sanitarium has been spending up big telling us that Up&Go (20% sugar) has 4.5 out of 5 stars.  Uncle Toby’s have also had the ad makers working round the clock, reminding us that you don’t have to drink your breakfast or have boring old oats.  Your kids can have their terrific 4 star sugar-loaded (25% sugar) oats instead.

The new multi-million dollar ad campaign helpfully tells us the more stars there are (to a maximum of 5) the healthier the food.

The government must be using a different definition of healthy to the World Health Organisation, the Canadian Heart Association and the British Medical Association, (to name just a few), because I doubt any of them would be likely to describe a ‘food’ that is 25% added sugar as healthy.  And yet that is exactly the type of ‘food’ getting the 4 and 5 star ratings in Australia.

Meanwhile, food that has sustained humans for millennia, like butter, coconut oil or yoghurt is flat out breaking the one star barrier.  Even strawberry liquorice (42% sugar) does better than that (2.5 stars).

They all score badly because they contain saturated fat.  For decades that kind of fat has been painted by nutritionists as the dietary villain.  But recent reviews of the science conducted by the US Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics recommends dropping saturated fat (and cholesterol) from its list of nutrients of concern because there is no evidence connecting it with heart disease.

The HSR is a marketing program developed by and for the processed food industry (but paid for by the taxpayer).  Its development panel includes the Australian Beverages Council (whose members include Coca-cola and Pepsi) and the Australian Food and Grocery Council (whose membership list is the phone directory for the processed food industry).

It, like the Heart Foundation tick (which coincidentally appears on all the ‘healthy’ products I mention above) should be used as a guide to what foods to completely ignore.  The less stars a product has the less likely it is to do you harm.

But this isn’t an amusing little sideshow.  People are being actively told by their government to consume products that will unequivocally harm them.  They are being told that high sugar, high seed oil products like Up&Go are the best thing they can eat when the evidence says the exact opposite.

We wouldn’t tolerate a Government sponsored program that actively encouraged children to smoke (for their health) so let’s not tolerate our money being used to market sugar laced, seed oil as health food.

Don’t tolerate you and your family being treated like processed food dump sites.  Write to Sussan Ley (the Minister responsible for this abomination) and tell her you don’t want your money spent on a labelling system designed by Big Food’s marketing department.  And tell her you want your government to base its dietary advice on evidence, not what Big Food needs to sell this week.

May 26, 2015
0

Two things you can avoid to take yourself off the chronic disease treadmill

By | Sugar, Vegetable Oils | 3 Comments

Australians are sicker now than at any time in our history and it is getting worse unbelievably quickly.  We are almost four times as likely to have thyroid cancer than just three short decades ago.  We are more than three times as likely to have Liver Cancer or Type II Diabetes.  We are twice as likely to have Anal cancer, Chronic Kidney Disease, Melanoma, Kidney cancer and Motor Neuron Disease.  And Fatty Liver Disease, something that barely existed in the eighties, now affects 1 in 3 adults and 1 in 8 children.

Men are more than twice as likely to have prostate cancer and 60% more likely to have testicular cancer.  Women are 43% more likely to have breast cancer.  And children are more than four times(!) as likely to suffer from a life threatening allergic reaction.

These are not comparisons to the 50s or the turn of the 20th century.  These statistics are comparisons with 1982 (and in the case of allergies, with 1994).  The chronic disease tsunami is upon us. If we are not already affected by one of these diseases (or the many others steadily getting worse), we most certainly know someone who is.

So, when something happens that reminds us of this, we pay attention.  The Ice-Bucket Challenge for Motor Neuron Disease and the Beanie for Brain Cancer campaign strike a chord with us because, like never before in human history, we are likely to have a very personal connection with chronic disease inexplicably striking down those we love.

We are intensely interested in knowing all we can about these diseases.  We don’t believe they strike randomly, no matter how many times we are told they have no known cause.  Even if we don’t know the exact numbers we have a sense that we are a population in serious disease trouble. We desperately want to know if there is something we should be doing or not doing to avoid adding ourselves (and those we love) to the statistics.

The problem is, we are never told.  The organisations tasked with telling us about these diseases tell us nothing is known about their cause.  They offer us no hope.  They ask us for money for research and they leave us to live with our fingers crossed.

But we do know some important things about these diseases.  We know that sugar consumption causes Type II Diabetes Fatty Liver Disease and Chronic Kidney disease and is likely to be part of the disease process for Liver, Kidney and Pancreatic cancer.  We know that the fats contained in vegetable oils (like Canola, Sunflower, Soybean, Cottonseed, Grapeseed, Rice Bran and Safflower oil) are a significant part of the disease process for Motor Neuron Disease, Parkinson’s Disease, Macular Degeneration, Multiple Sclerosis (and other auto-immune diseases) all cancers and lethal allergic reactions.

Deleting sugar from your diet will not bring a destroyed pancreas, liver or kidney back.  Deleting vegetable oil will not reverse Parkinson’s, Motor Neuron Disease or cancer.  But removing those modern additions to our diet will take you off the high risk path for all of those diseases and more.

This is the message we should be given the next time our national attention is focused on a beanie, a ribbon or a bucket of ice-water.  We should be told what we can do to avoid the disease.  Those asking us for money should be doing their level best to ensure they never need it.

 

 

Photo by Kyle Nishioka. Distributed under the Creative Commons License.

May 2, 2015
0

Don’t fall for marketing spin when it comes to public v private education debate

By | Education, Media | 2 Comments

WHAT better way to frame the public vs private school debate, which is back on again thanks to recent research by the University of Queensland, than with a solid footy metaphor.

One of my sons plays AFL for a local suburban club in Brisbane. It’s a good club. They take masses of kids in every year and give them an excellent grounding in the game. Some take to it and some don’t but they all learn more about footy. Every few decades someone from the club even makes it to the AFL.

This pretty good club also has a senior team which wins the local Brisbane comp every so often. But I am reasonably certain that if they were to take on Collingwood or Geelong (or even the Brisbane Lions) they would be completely decimated.

Everybody knows this. Everybody accepts this. And nobody suggests that this means my local club is a bad club. We all know that the professional AFL club has (literally) spent millions recruiting a team full of A-List players. Did the AFL coaches make those players brilliant? No. They recruited players they already knew were brilliant from clubs like ours.

We quite happily accept that this is how sports work. But when it comes to another area of skill acquisition, suddenly we turn off our common sense and gullibly accept self-interested marketing.

In Australia some schools choose their student body. These schools are overwhelmingly fee-receiving ‘private’ schools and they target their marketing at high income parents (which, unfortunately in this country correlates with academic performance).  To egg the pudding they also top up the better-than-average kids with proven performers using academic scholarships. Then when these kids perform exactly the way their family income and results would predict they might (wherever they went to school), they use those results as marketing fodder for the next generation.

These schools are the education equivalent of Collingwood or Geelong (or even the Brisbane Lions). But when my local public school is compared to the Really Flash Grammar School in a league table suddenly RFGS is great school and my local is rubbish. The comparison is no more reasonable than comparing my local football club to a professional sports club, but it is what we do every time we look at a league table of schools arranged by average NAPLAN score.

The only reasonable way of comparing my local club with Collingwood is to measure the value it adds. Player A had these measurable proficiencies at the start of the season and improved them by this measurable margin by the end. It doesn’t matter whether the player is in the worst of the under 8s or the next Gary Ablett. A good coach should be able to get measurable improvement from every player.

This is no less true in schools. The performance which matters, the only criteria that should matter, is the measurable gain in student performance. This means measurable gain for every student. It means moving every child forward every year. It does not mean showering praise on schools whose only claim to fame was ensuring they selected the right kids in the first place.

Fortunately in Australia we have a public database of student gain (yep, it was news to me too). We can all visit a free government website (myschool.edu.au), plug in the name of any school and see whether students at that school have achieved more, less or the same as the rest of the nation between each NAPLAN test.

But be careful. You’re in for some surprises and might not like what you see. You might find that the local high school that everyone says is populated by yobs is adding value in significant leaps and bounds. You might find that RFGS is subtracting value for its $30k a year fees. And you might find the opposite.

What you will definitely find is that there is no correlation between how much people are (or aren’t) paying to attend the school and whether it is likely to add value. So do yourself a favour, don’t be a victim of slick marketing. Find the schools that are adding value and let student gain be your yardstick (not the number of BMWs in the parking lot). Do that, and you are sure to make an excellent choice for your children’s education.

Also published in The Courier Mail

Image courtesy of digitalart at FreeDigitalPhotos.net