NU's Quest for Carnivory!

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Today’s news 13/3/12 RED MEAT = DEATH, the facts…
03/13/2012
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So today we see more information presented in the news surrounding red meat/processed meat and an increased risk of cancer and heart disease. If you haven’t seen the recent news story you can view it here in science daily: Red meat consumption linked to increased risk of total, cardiovascular, and cancer mortality

For the full scientific paper you can find that here: Arch Intern Med -- Red Meat Consumption and Mortality: Results From 2 Prospective Cohort Studies, March 12, 2012, Pan et al. 0 (2012): archinternmed.2011.2287v1

So I have read the full paper and analyzed the facts, here is my take. This post might not be 100% structured as I will write the facts as I read them, papers are not always the easiest to read and interpret:

1. The read meat was quantified as pork, beef or lamb

2. The processed meat was sausage, bacon, bolonga, salami etc

3. Medical, lifestyle, smoking, body weight, supplements, total calorie intake, disease state, exercise level were accounted for in bi-annual follow ups

4. Variables were no longer updated if participants developed a disease as this would inherently change diet to account for the disease or issue

Now it starts to get interesting....

5. The people that consumed the least amount of meat did the most exercise, so there was a correlation that the people already looking after themselves presented less disease risk and thus ate less red meat anyway

6. Smoking in the high meat group was almost double

7. % rate of current diabetes was almost double in high meat group

8. The people that consumed the least meat actually had higher cholesterol levels

9. More "healthy" participants consumed a multi-vitamin

10. High bad meat consumers drank 1.5x more alcohol

11. High bad meat consumers consumed nearly 1/2 as much fish indicating 80% lower levels of omega 3 fats

12. Both men and women with high processed meat intake were less likely to exercise, more likely to smoke, have more body fat, eat more calories good and bad in general, eat less fruit and vegetables and drink more, a catch 22 bad lifestyle making you more prone to disease

13. The study showed a correlation that red meat consumption is declining in general, but we are seeing higher rates of disease, so is it the red meat or a multitude of factors that is effecting the rate of disease?

14. So in light of the above the study focused on red meat but reported the people eating the most red meat also had all the other lifestyle factors that lead to disease in the bag!

15. If you consume more processed meat like hot dogs you will be at a high risk of disease

16. The review understands that one of the two pooled studies didn't differentiate between red meat and processed meat..... epic fail!

17. They appreciate that cuts of meat were hard to quantify and left room for error in terms of things like ham, red meat, rate of processing as it was up to the participant to quantify and tick a box ... Hmmm

18. They were unable to assess the impact of fat content in the meat and disease correlation as there were too many variables

19. People consuming processed meats have higher chance of impaired insulin response - a key marker of diseases like diabetes linked to a multitude of other diseases

20. The link to red meat and cancer ACTUALLY seems to come from high temperature cooking which causes carcinogenic materials to be released! So it's not just red meat but how we cook it

21. The conclusion they made: replace red and processed meat with fruits, vegetables, whole grains etc - so what they are really saying is be healthier. No mention of all the other lifestyle factors that they correlated like exercise, smoking etc etc

So as ever...... "the devil is in the details" - red meat that is grass fed free range (or from a healthy source like any meat) is not going to cause a problem in the context of a diet rich in fruits and vegetables, lots of fish, some sources of starch, with moderate exercise and alcohol.

from bencoomber.com blog

[NU_nutrition_TS]

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saw this nu?

Arch Intern Med -- Red Meat Consumption and Mortality: Results From 2 Prospective Cohort Studies, March 12, 2012, Pan et al. 0 (2012): archinternmed.2011.2287v1

facepalm.

I think I just heard a 'shock, horror' radio news report about it while I was at a colleague's house doing some minor electrical work - I just wanted to throw my tools at the radio!

I may comment further in one of the other threads.

[NU_nutrition_TS]

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still reading this thread 2hrs later, and noticed a quote from 2008 by Ripped Barbarian posted from a guy called The Bear...

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the body is totally unable to directly burn carbohydrates for energy, but must first convert them to fatty acids. (Guess where most of this fatty acid winds up!)

is this true?

I think I originally replied that this was the most dubious and least supportable of his claims.

[badly_dubbed]

yea i eventually got to that reply

[NU_nutrition_TS]

As an appendix to this post: NU's Quest for Carnivory!

I want to add some additional detail to my overview of the (possible/probable?) exact nature of the Kitavans' so-called 'high carb' diet.

PRE-AMBLE
In my previous post, I hopefully showed that many of the traditional processing techniques for indigenous high-starch foods are likely to reduce a good deal of their carbohydrate content.

I linked to studies done on indigenous starch sources that were subject to various traditional fermentation techniques which resulted in the overall carbohydrate content of those foods being reduced, starch content being reduced and/or simple sugar content being reduced. Some of these techniques also increased the fat and protein content (concentration or bioavailability) of these foods. Taken together, this is a good indication that even superficially high carbohydrate foods, when traditionally prepared, can become lower carb, higher protein and fat foods once eaten, digested and absorbed.

I also linked to a blog post by Stephan Guyenet in which he 'interviewed' a native Kitavan and got some first-hand details about Kitavan traditional food processing techniques that included fermentation.

Now I want to expand on another starch processing technique mentioned in the Kitavan interview (edited for brevity and clarity - see link in original post for full version):

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...apart from drying food over the fire, we also use this method like the Hawaiians do with taro...we bury a special kind of fruit [collected from [a] tree] in the ground to ripen, which takes about 2 - 3 days.

There's also a certain nut, when it falls from the tree, women collect them and peel off the rotten skin, then mumu [earth oven] them in the ground covered with leaves to protect them from burning from the extreme heat of the fire, both from the open fire on top and hot stones underneath.

After a day, the nuts are removed from the mumu.

...sometimes we run out of food only if there is a drought and the sea is useless... [then] we tend to use the preserved or fermented foods on the dryer in the kitchen.

What I wanted to clarify here is the use of heat and extended cooking times (added to the cooling/quenching process that may occur prior to the start of the fermentation process mentioned in the previous post) and the re-heating of these dried/preserved foods.

Now that the pre-amble is out of the way, here is the 'meat' of the post!

Starch can come in a multitude of forms and may have varying ratios of the two prime constituents, amylose and amylopectin. There may also be varying amounts of 'resistant starches'.

Resistant starches are resistant to the normal digestive processes, so do not liberate glucose but travel undigested to the lower gut where they are fermented by bacteria liberating short-chain fatty acids instead. These fatty acids can be absorbed through the lower gut wall and enter the system as an energy substrate.

There are four classifications of resistant starch but only three are naturally occurring. The fourth is a starch that is chemically treated to resist digestion. For what follows, it is necessary to list the three types of naturally occurring starch:

• RS1 Physically inaccessible or digestible resistant starch, such as that found in seeds or legumes and unprocessed whole grains
• RS2 Resistant starch that occurs in its natural granular form, such as uncooked potato, green banana flour and high amylose corn
• RS3 Resistant starch that is formed when starch-containing foods are cooked and cooled such as in bread, cornflakes and cooked-and-chilled potatoes or retrograded high amylose corn

Hopefully, you can already see that many traditional foods already have some resistant starch content but RS3 is also crucial here because it is 'created' when normal starch undergoes heating and cooling.

When starch is heated, gelatinization occurs which can make some forms of starch more digestible. However, when that heated starch is allowed to cool down again, retrogradation occurs and the gelatinized starch re-crystallizes to form a resistant starch (RS3).

Therefore, if traditional cultures routinely heat their starch sources and then cool them before eating (especially if this is done repeatedly), then they are potentially decreasing the readily digestible glucose-liberating carbohydrate content while increasing the indigestible fatty acid-liberating carbohydrates.

Finally, there is one last wrinkle: A study has shown that ingestion of even a modest amount of resistant starch has startling effects on the body's use of energy substrates.

Normally the body will use available carbohydrate (glucose) first before switching to fatty acids. This is in line with the substrate hierarchy: alcohol>amino acids>glucose>fatty acids. If the diet provides us with a surfeit of these, they are potentially toxic and must be cleared - either by storage or by oxidation.

However, the study by Higgins et al, published in October 2004 issue of Nutrition and Metabolism, showed that substituting just 5.4% of a meal's carbohydrate content with resistant starch increased fat oxidation by 23%, which was sustained throughout the day, even if only one meal contained RS. This could be further sustained by eating at least one RS containing meal on a daily basis. It appeared that, under the influence of dietary RS, dietary fat was preferentially oxidised (over glucose) before it had a chance of being stored as body fat.

It seems to me that this could easily explain the apparent paradox of certain cultures who at least appear to eat a diet high in carbohydrates but do not seem to suffer the same diseases of Western Civilisation. The foods may be high in total carbohydrate at first blush but, when you factor in the ratio of fibre, resistant starch (both naturally occurring in the food's raw state and induced by various cooking/heating and cooling practices) and the reductions in starch and sugars caused by traditional fermentation techniques, you begin to see that, as digested and absorbed, it may not constitute such a high carb diet after all. Add to that the additional protein and fat that results from fermentation, the assimilable fat that is liberated by the gut-bacterial fermentation of fibre and resistant starch and the preferential fat burning that they induce in the body and that helps explain the lack of disease symptoms in them but which are increasing in people in the 'modern world'.

I think the erroneous view that a high carb diet - as eaten in the west - is not a likely root cause of diseases of civilisation based on the observation that certain indigenous cultures eat high carb diets with seeming impunity is clouding the issue. I also think that adopting the types of foods these indigenous people's eat without taking into account the preparation methods they use, believing you can avoid high-carb health pitfalls as they do, is also dangerously misguided.

In short, I don't think any of the observations in these particular cultures negate the carb-insulin-disease hypothesis - it just demonstrates that you can make the inedible edible (and/or less toxic/unhealthy) if you know and put into practice certain traditional preparation techniques.

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Nu,

What are your thoughts on jimmy moores massive rebound weight gain?

Saw a picture of him attending pfx12 and he's gotten pretty chunky despite insisting only eating a vlc diet...

Is he bs'ing or what?

[NU_nutrition_TS]

I haven't kept up-to-date with Jimmy's personal story. Last I read, he had a series of personal consultations (and tests) with a 'low-carb friendly' physician, who specialises in metabolic testing, who told him he may still have a profound metabolic dysregulation problem, which has led to his recent regain of body weight.

Jimmy has been really open about this and mooted that he may revert to a higher carb intake (he was going to experiment with Paul Jaminet's 'Safe Starches' but changed his mind after various 'experts' pitched in with their own views on that topic on his blog) but, as far as I know, still maintains a low carb diet.

I don't think he is BS-ing and I don't really know what is at the root of his weight re-gain. I'll have to see if he has posted anything more recent on his blog. I hope he manages to sort things out to his satisfaction.

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small speil on Daybreak this morning about the "caveman diet"

dunno if you saw it?

calling it a very french diet thats hard to stick to <-- that bit lost me too.

[James]

I HAD to turn the TV off before I raged, HARD. More idiots trying to cash in, by putting a 'name' on something.

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annoying eh?

yet nothing much is said about the utter crap people eat daily.