Consider skipping that steak for dinner...

[audreyh1]

I have a rack of ribs smoking all day, should be done in about an hour. I put a couple of baking potatoes in there about a half hour ago, and DW just got some corn bread ready to pop into the oven.

In any event, I tune out all these health scares and just live with "all things in moderation." I think the reduced stress about what you are putting into your bodies has to offset some of the "badness" of some of what you are eating.

Don't eat those baked potatoes!! They'll give you diabetes!

 

[Amethyst]

I'm tellin' ya! Thank heavens we are still able to find Internet postings proving that chocolate is good for a body, or I'd just have to stop eating all together:

Heart-Health Benefits of Chocolate Unveiled

Don't eat those baked potatoes!! They'll give you diabetes!

 

[donheff]

Whistling past the graveyard.

It isn't whistling past the graveyard to question conventional dietary guidelines and take a skeptical view of the latest horror story linking one type of food or another to heart disease, cancer, whatever. What is whistling past the graveyard is to blindly ride the low fat bandwagon while gaining a reliable one pound per year for thirty years which was my experience and that of a lot of people around me. After reading a boat load of material pro and con I tried a low carb diet and lost 30 pounds which I have kept off for a year. That loss, and the concommitant improvement of my lab numbers, as far as I can find from everything I read, will have a huge impact on my health both with respect to heart disease and type 2 diabetes. The potential negative impact of various practices highlighted by these linkage studies are vanishingly small in comparison - assuming the studies' conclusions are warranted in the first place. So I plan to stick with the approach I am on for now. Nevertheless, the fact that I am doing well doesn't prove to me that the theories surrounding low carb are themselves true, or that the approach will work the same way for everybody. My wife lost some weight on the same approach but not nearly as much as I did. I am the cook and watched what she ate so I know she wasn't fooling herself. She is now experimenting with alternatives, including lower fat than I thrive on.

I follow as much of this stuff as I can including reading reports of the steak study in this thread and the rebuttal articles that RAE linked. I plan to experiment around the edges as I gain information that makes some sense to me. For example, I have added back moderate amounts of so called "safe starches" (potatoes and rice) with no ill effect over the past two months. The one thing I am not going to do is eliminate major portions of my diet that I love and thrive on based on negative health correlations that appear exceedingly small when viewed in the context. I will drop anything that studies show to substantially harmful to a degree that I find to be compelling. Unfortunately sugar was one of those things. Red meat and saturated fat are not isn't even close at this point.

 

[RonBoyd]

... "safe starches" (potatoes and rice)...

Safe? In what way?

 

[RonBoyd]

And speaking of Sugar, here's an interesting thought:

Fat Head » Sugars and Cancer

A reader asked me for some information on cancer and sugar, so I pulled up some items from my research database. As long as I had the articles in front of me, I thought I’d share them.

Nothing listed here proves absolutely that sugars drive cancer or that a ketogenic diet will prevent cancer, but taken together, the articles do paint a picture.

 

[donheff]

Safe? In what way?

A book by Paul Jaminet titled, The Perfect health Diet, argues that rigid low carb diets that treat all carbs the same overreach. His conclusions (once again, backed up by lots of studies ) is that some starches (examples being potates - preferably boiled, not roasted - and rice) do not have a dramatic effect on blood sugar and are helpful in moderate amounts. I found the book pretty compelling, but I found books that argue that virtually all carbs are bad to be pretty compelling too. that is why I experiment with myself.

And speaking of Sugar, here's an interesting thought:

Fat Head » Sugars and Cancer (dont cause cancer)

My conclusion that sugar is bad doesn't have to do with cancer, just insulin and weight.

 

[HFWR]

Dinner yesterday evening...

 

[Chuckanut]

Safe? In what way?

N=1. If he can eat some potatoes and rice without negative effects on health who are we to argue?

This is not religion, it informed individuals doing what is best for them.

 

[photoguy]

Everything in moderation. I try not to eat too much of a particular meat though I favor chicken and fish most of the time.

The question I always struggle with is what's moderation? If we go by US standards, the average is something like 100+ KG meat/year (I think about 50% red meat). So maybe if we cut back by a third we be fine at 60-70KG of meat/year.

On the other hand Japan is about half that -- roughly 45 kg of meat/year (and probably a big chunk is fish/seafood). So if we wanted to go in moderation by Japanese standards we might be 30kg meat/year.

And then there are graphs like the following (from Oncogene - Diet and cancer prevention ) which suggests that various cancer risks keep decreasing all the way to zero meat consumption. (this was from an older study where japan is only at ~14kg/meat/year)

 

[braumeister]

I don't want to beat a dead horse but I know a lot of people were concerned about this recent study purporting to show the dangers of eating read meat because of the carnitine it contains.

If that includes you, you might feel a bit of skepticism after looking at another recent study that coincidentally came out shortly after the first.

New Mayo Clinic Meta-Analysis: Carnitine Improves Outcomes in Heart Attack Patients

... a new meta-analysis of the research on carnitine and heart health was published by researchers from Mayo Clinic. This large systematic review provides strong evidence for carnitine's benefits in heart health.

 

[Nodak]

I don't want to beat a dead horse but I know a lot of people were concerned about this recent study purporting to show the dangers of eating read meat because of the carnitine it contains.

If that includes you, you might feel a bit of skepticism after looking at another recent study that coincidentally came out shortly after the first.

New Mayo Clinic Meta-Analysis: Carnitine Improves Outcomes in Heart Attack Patients

That's the problem. Too many scientists have abandoned science for advocacy and will tailor a study to find whatever the party paying the bills wants found.

 

[RonBoyd]

That's the problem. Too many scientists have abandoned science for advocacy and will tailor a study to find whatever the party paying the bills wants found.

+1

And a much bigger problem than words can describe... and not just in the area of healthcare. And almost all these are of the life-threatening nature.

(To the Mods: Please don't take what I just said as a Political statement... it is certainly not that.)