More pep, no pangs
It is now eight weeks since I began the anti-inflammatory diet. That is not to say that I haven’t occasionally fallen off the wagon. For the most part I’ve stuck with it because the result has been amazing.
Most of the aches and pains from old injuries have miraculously abated and I’ve lost nine pounds, though that wasn’t the point of this exercise. My daughter is pursuing dietary change for a different reason, but her results are similar. We both have much more energy. We went cross-country skiing together last week and felt no pain. She and her husband skied downhill yesterday and he said she was awesome.
Meanwhile, we have been sharing recipes and reading the same books, all of which tout the benefits of a whole food, plant-based diet (read vegan) with some minor variations in emphasis.
In “The pH Miracle,” Robert O. Young, Ph.D., and Shelley Redford Young focus on the acidification caused by animal protein and fat, sugars, including most fruits, refined foods and most starches. They also devote a chapter to the improper combining of foods. The human digestive system is not designed for complex meals, they say. That we are capable of digesting many different kinds of foods doesn’t mean we can do so all at once.
This would seem to fly in the face of the “balanced meal” highly favored by mothers and nutritionists of old. “Protein digestion requires a highly acid environment and takes place in the stomach,” Young says. Well, duh, that’s where the hydrochloric acid is. Starch, on the other hand, requires a mildly alkaline environment, in the mouth and small intestine. Ditto vegetables and fat. Combining sugar with starch or protein may create a similar problem. Death to the peanut butter and jelly sandwich.
But in “Healing Cancer From Inside Out” Mike Anderson blasts the Glycemic Index as a “simple minded, single-variable analysis.” The GI was designed to measure the effect of a single food on blood sugar levels and is of dubious value because people simply don’t eat that way.
This is the problem I have with Young’s prohibition on food combinations. During the days when I had hypoglycemia (low blood sugar), I learned to combine high GI foods with protein to avoid blood sugar spikes and dips. It worked.
Anderson favors the RAVE Diet. RAVE is the acronym for: No Refined foods; No Animal foods; No Vegetable oils; No Exceptions & Exercise. Well, olive and canola oils are permitted in very small amounts. And Betty and I are using a locally produced, light and lovely camelina oil with balsamic vinegar for salad dressings.
Here again, Young disagrees with Anderson in that he eschews all fermented and malted products including vinegar and any kind of alcohol. Also yeast and fungus. Come on. One can give up meat, poultry, dairy and eggs, but not if mushrooms and bread are also verboten.
The best of the newer books is “The China Study” by T. Colin Campbell, Ph.D., published in 2006. Campbell directed the most comprehensive study of diet, lifestyle and disease ever done with humans in the history of biomedical research. It was jointly arranged through Cornell University, Oxford University and the Chinese Academy of Preventive Medicine. The project produced more than 8,000 statistically significant associations between various dietary factors and disease. “People who ate the most animal-based food got the most chronic disease and people who ate the most plant-based foods were the healthiest and tended to avoid chronic disease. Sounds simple, but is it?
The last third of “The China Study” is devoted to the influence of industry groups whose mission is to grow their market. Food business interests need to claim that their product is good for you, or, at least, that it’s not bad for you, Campbell says. In this process, the “science” of nutrition becomes the “business” of marketing.
It isn’t that government scientists don’t know the American diet is killing us; they’re bullied and beholden to industry groups that stop at nothing to protect their market share.
Campbell himself was spied upon by a committee of seven research scientists retained by the animal-based foods industry (the National Dairy Council and American Meat Institute) to root out and discredit “dangerous” science.
But of all the foodies writing today, Michael Pollan is still my favorite. After reading the hugely popular “Omnivore’s Dilemma,” I picked up his older books and the subsequent “In Defense of Food.” Pollan apparently hasn’t been subjected to the pressure scientific researchers have. I guess they don’t waste their efforts on journalists.
In “Defense” he quotes renowned Berkeley biochemist Bruce Ames: Deficiency of certain vitamins appear to mimic radiation by causing single- and double-strand DNA breaks, oxidative lesions, or both (precursors to cancer).
This might explain why genes don’t tell the whole story. Some people carry genes that are precursors for cancer but are never expressed. It may take environmental damage, including diet, to trigger disease. This news is comforting since I’ve passed some dodgy genes along to my children.
Anyhow, the basic whole foods, plant-based diet is not a drag. We can eat as much as we want and never feel hungry. We’re even losing our taste for sugary baked things. And with all that energy, who needs a hot fudge sundae?