Welcome to “FitnessMantra Weekend”, your once-a-week health news update. As always you can also stay updated with the latest in fitness news by subscribing separately to the Fitness Mantra del.icio.us feed.
The best any person can do is to make the seemingly right choices based on the most current information available at the time those choices have to be made. Simply put, if the person you are is defined by the choices you have made, then you are nothing more than a physical (and mental) representation of all the information you have with you right now. Seems a strange way to think about yourself, but it does make sense.
All that is well and good, but I think what is even more important is that one should continue to seek current and correct information so that one’s perceptions and convictions on various matters can be constantly challenged and modified to be in line with the latest knowledge. Stop doing this and you have essentially stopped evolving.
Nowhere is all of this “perception-modification-based-on-current-knowledge” more prevalent than in the area of fitness. Just think about it: fat is bad, carbs are bad, sugar is bad, only saturated fat is bad, some carbs are good …. with every new theory comes a wave of books, products and celebrity endorsements. As consumers and fitness enthusiasts it’s upto us to (1) always be aware of the latest research studies, (2) differentiate fact from hype and most important … (3) separate fact from pure myth.
The book I am currently engrossed in, “Good Calories, Bad Calories” by Gary Taubes, is doing more myth-busting than I think I can handle, and is attempting (with more than 550 pages of reading materials, 100 of which are references alone) to challenge the very foundations of nutrition-knowledge that we all tend to think is common-sense (if only because we have heard these “facts” being repeated so often in all forms of media, that we take them for granted)
One such “fact”? “Consumption of saturated fat can lead to heart-disease”. I know, I know: I have been guilty of saying that very thing about a year back (it’s that old “convictions- based- on- current- knowledge” thing again). This week, “What if bad fat isn’t so bad?” in the health pages of MSNBC is questioning the veracity of the saturated-fat-is-bad theory (as does Gary Taubes’ book).
What do you do when something you thought was pretty basic (saturated fat = bad, unsaturated fat = good) is now being questioned? You pay much closer attention to the facts, that’s what. It all started to get pretty “conclusive” when Ancel Keys, a physiologist from the University of Minnesota published his landmark “Seven Countries Study”, in which he studied almost 13000 middle age men across Italy, Yugoslavia, Greece, Finland, the Netherlands, Japan and the U.S. Based on the different diets and mortality, the results convinced Keys that saturated fat consumption led to higher mortality while the presence of mono-unsaturated fats in diets seemed to have a protective effect.
The biggest problem with the above derivation was that Keys had used only those countries in his study that he knew would support his already pre-conceived conclusions about saturated fat being unhealthy. As Taubes’ book points out, if Keys had used France or Switzerland in his study, he would have been in big trouble because the French consume a lot of saturated fat with less heart-disease incidence when compared to other countries. The Seven Country study was preceded by a Six Country study which also seemed to yield similar results but which suffered from similar fallacies:
At the time, plenty of scientists were skeptical of Keys’s assertions. One such critic was Jacob Yerushalmy, Ph.D., founder of the biostatistics graduate program at the University of California at Berkeley. In a 1957 paper, Yerushalmy pointed out that while data from the six countries Keys examined seemed to support the diet-heart hypothesis, statistics were actually available for 22 countries. And when all 22 were analyzed, the apparent link between fat consumption and heart disease disappeared. For example, the death rate from heart disease in Finland was 24 times that of Mexico, even though fat-consumption rates in the two nations were similar.
Infact even within the chosen countries, the correlation wasn’t rock solid (eastern Finland has 5 times as much heart-related problems as western Finland although they share a similar diet). I strongly urge you to read the article in its entirety (and Gary Taubes’ book, too, if possible). If anything, it’s sure to spur you on to do some research of your own as you begin to question some of the basic tenets of health and nutrition. For example did you know that while saturated fat raises your LDL (so-called “bad”) cholesterol, it also raises your HDL (good)? Many scientists call this a wash because what ultimately matters is the ratio of HDL/LDL as far as predictions for heart-disease go.
Dariush Mozaffarian, a Ph D student at Harvard, probably said it best when he faced resistance to his publishing a study that found that saturated-fat consumption actually helped women with heart-disease to control their symptoms:
“In the nutrition field, it’s very difficult to get something published that goes against established dogma. The dogma says that saturated fat is harmful, but that is not based, to me, on unequivocal evidence. Our finding was surprising to us. And when there’s a discovery that goes against what’s established, it shouldn’t be suppressed but rather disseminated and explored as much as possible.”
Enjoy a foundation-shattering day while you read through the past week’s top health and fitness stories:
- Enough with the food guilt: Berate yourself for not doing better and you could trigger emotional overeating.
- Can junk food ever be good for you?: … it would be sad if someone eating these chips thinks they’re getting the same benefit as from a fruit or vegetable.
- Scaled Down: It’s virtually impossible to look at Mike Huckabee without thinking: 100 pounds.
- Senate Drops Measure to Greatly Reduce Sugar and Fat in Food at Schools: The amendment would have banned most candy, cakes and cookies, staples of today’s school snack bars. Sugary beverages, considered one of the main causes of teenage obesity, would also have been restricted.
- Smoking ‘raises risk of diabetes’: Smoking is linked to a significantly increased risk of developing type 2 diabetes
- Waist-To-Hip Ratio May Predict Heart Risk: Get out the measuring tape. Your waist-to-hip ratio may beat the scale at predicting heart disease, a British study shows.
- Indiana teens: We’re shaping up with exercise, better diets: Indiana’s youths are heeding messages to exercise more and eat healthily, a survey of the state’s teenagers shows.
- Presents that pack a healthy punch: Fitness gifts can be a great way to motivate someone on your Christmas list to ring in the New Year right.
- Exercise shortcuts: 4 ways that less is more: Here are some [...] favorite ways to accomplish more in less time.
- 10 ‘Healthy’ Foods That Aren’t So Healthy: Ever wonder why you can’t lose weight even though you’re eating healthy?Â
- A steady diet of blubbering about fat: 2007 was another banner year for misinformation, swamp remedies, idiocy, and plain outright lies about diet and weight
- What if bad fat isn’t so bad?: Eating saturated fat leads to heart disease [...] isn’t a fact at all. It is, more accurately, a hypothesis from the 1950s that’s never been proved.
- Fertility falls with weight gain: An overweight woman’s chance of getting pregnant steadily falls as her weight increases, a major study has found.
- Products with good bacteria get popular: Experts say probiotics are generally safe, and in some cases might be helpful.
- 16 secrets restaurants don’t want you to know: Through scientific testing, consultations with nutrition experts, and good old-fashioned snooping, we uncovered some of the secrets these mega-restaurateurs have been keeping.
- Mediterranean diet may lengthen U.S. lives: Eating the Mediterranean way could help you live longer, according to the first study to look at how the dietary pattern relates to mortality in a U.S. population.
- The Whole Truth About Grains: Bulgur Can Trim Your Bulges and Spelt Can Make You Svelte: Whether you start the day with piping-hot oatmeal or end it by dining on whole wheat pasta, the whole-grain fiber can help cut your risk of Type 2 diabetes and heart disease.
- Most Airports Serve Up Healthful Meal Options: For the second year in a row, the group said that nearly all the airports it surveyed had one or more restaurants that offered at least one low-fat, low-cholesterol vegetarian entree.
Get the best health and fitness stories of the week in your RSS inbox.
Have a great weekend!
