Cingque: I read the article. It’s enough to make your head spin! Right now I am subscribing to the idea of eating clean and eating Mediterranen! Thanks for the article!

It doesn’t just interfere with the burning of fats, it stimulates my appetite so that I eat more of them.

An issue I have with the discussion that’s been going on for years on whether fats are healthy or not, is that there isn’t enough attention paid to the form those fats are consumed in. Almost all the claims made about whether a fat is healthy applies to consuming that fat cold. What do most people do with their bottle of polyunsaturated oil, do they drink it cold or do they cook with it? (Speaking for myself, most of the oil I buy is heated and cooked in, although high flavour oils like EVO and sesame I usually add cold at the end of cooking as a garnish.) Consuming a cold pressed oil in a salad dressing may have a completely different effect than heating it to smoking point and then cooking food in it. One TMIAD episode looked at whether heating fats for cooking changed them from a healthy fat to a harmful fat. They tested for aldehydes (specifically those aldehydes associated with heart disease and cancer risks). They tested the cold fat, the heated fat and the fat that had food cooked in it. They found that not only do some oils (especially the polyunsaturates) produce aldehydes when heated, even more chemicals are produced when food is then cooked in that hot fat. The fats that had the least aldehydes heated or with food cooking in it were butter and lard. Some of the aldehydes that they found after food had been cooked in the oils they couldn’t identify, so need to do more research to determine whether what they are and if they are harmful. The worst oils when heated were sunflower and corn oils. They did say it was OK to cook in olive oil, because although they did produce aldehydes, they were the less dangerous ones.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/3t902pqt3C7nGN99hVRFc1y/which-oils-are-best-to-cook-with In this article they name coconut oil as another stable oil for cooking, but it wasn’t mentioned in the actual TV docco.
Personally I use minimal fat for cooking and it’s usually butter or olive oil.

I would love to know my real biological age and how to alter it. My passport says 73 but I don’t believe it. I quite fancy being 45.

I saw that “How to stay young” series. There is a whole raft of such food, exercise and health programmes at the moment – another two on the main channels tonight and several being repeated on Freeview. People being taught to eat properly and encouraged to exercise, thus losing massive amounts of weight and waist size in quite short periods of time. Unfortunately it is more important for the programmes to be entertaining and glossy than scientific and realistic. There is some good stuff in there but it does tend to buried amongst the entertainment. and the silly diets we thought had been discredited a generation back.

There’s a BBC iWonder What is my body age? test you can do online. It gives huge benefits for regular fasting, eating plenty of fruit & veg and moderate exercise. Probably over simplistic but very motivating! I can’t paste the link for some reason but it is easy to find by search.

I am interested in the health measuring so many of you do at home or through clinics. I just take what is offered by the NHS and i have a blood pressure monitor at home. But i think i may get body fat scales and at least blood sugar and ketone strips. What do you recommend?

Cornish-jane. OH and I have just done that BBC body age test. OH comes up with a biological age 15 years less than actual. If I claim that I have never smoked – twenty-five years ago I smoked a pipe and they are fixed on cigarettes – I am twenty years younger. If I admit that I smoked I am still six years younger. We are not sure we believe it.

cornish-jane. Not sure about the lipids/sugar tests – I did them the morning after I had returned my grandchildren. The evening before I had a grandson type meal – double cheeseburger and whilst they were with us we ate far too much chocolate. Quite enjoying fasting to get back to normal. I expect to be offered statins again. It is a conversation I have with my GP every few years. He knows I will say no but his rules require him to suggest them.

New survey from the Office for National Statistics. The average Brit eats 50% more calories than they realise. Men eat 1000 calories more than they estimate every day, women 800 more. The more people eat, the less reliable their estimates. Two thirds of adults are obese and one third of children by the time they leave primary school.

You lead, we follow. Our culture and our language get more like yours every day.

The big franchise stuff you exported doesn’t really count as food but it doesn’t have to be like that. The last time I was in San Francisco I went across the bay to a place I can unfortunately not remember the name of and watched the man make a burger from scratch. It was very nearly as fast as queuing in MacDonald’s but the best I have ever eaten – good food whichever way you look at it.

Eating at a leisurely pace may be good for you. Japanese research found slowing down the speed at which we eat and not snacking after dinner may help us lose weight.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/health/2018-02-17/slow-eating-linked-to-health-benefits/9455868?section=health
– Slow eaters also had a lower BMI and smaller waist circumference, on average
– Those who ate at a normal speed were 29 per cent less likely to be obese than those who ate quickly.
– Not snacking after dinner or before bed was also strongly associated with lower obesity, reduced BMI, and smaller weight circumference
– The study had its limitations: participants’ eating speeds were based on subjective assessment, and researchers did not assess energy intake or physical activity levels.

I have a history of binge eating and I noticed that the worse my food choice, the faster I tended to eat it. My dietitian says this is a common pattern – as if we need to make that cake/pizza etc disappear quickly so that we aren’t confronted with our guilt for any longer than necessary. This leads me to question whether it’s as simple as eating slower, perhaps there are other correlations between eating disorders at those who eat quickly that also have an effect on this type of research.

Interesting study over 12 months of healthy low fat v healthy low carb diets. BOTH had impressive (IMO) weight loss sustained over the 12 months. Not a huge difference between low fat v low carb. No calorie counting or portion control.

https://www.ajc.com/lifestyles/health/counting-calories-isn-the-key-weight-loss-study-finds/VXPSjdzV5GylGrvyft0AzH/

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/2673150?redirect=true

Suggests:

* Counting calories, and/or portion control, NOT the way to lose weight (the death of the ailing calories in / calories out theory?)

* Macronutrient type (eg fat v carb) NOT the key factor in weight loss

* Cutting out added sugars, highly processed foods and refined grains, whilst increasing vegetables and whole foods IS central to the significant weight losses.

Hi Onel:

There is usually more than one way to get to the same result. I remember around 2000 a large scale study was begun comparing the DASH diet with, of all things, the induction phase of the original Atkins diet (max of 20 g. of carb. daily). The DASH diet is still the ‘gold standard’ diet among nutritionists, and, of course, the Atkins diet, especially back then, was a dangerous fad diet. The study was designed to blow the Atkins diet out of the water and bury it once and for all.

The poor researchers were astounded to find that the Atkins diet yielded the same or better results than did the DASH diet on all fronts, from weight loss and weight maintenance to blood results. I have not read your links yet, but it seems they once again confirm the fact that you can do just fine on properly designed low fat or low carb diets.

The only real problem with the low fat diet that was pounded into people for about four decades was that it failed to recognize that not all carbs are the same. Sugar was treated just like green beans – have all you want, because as it isn’t fat, it is OK. There are still bags of candy that proudly proclaim they contain no fat! Of course we now know (and really knew back then) that the body processes sugar differently than it processes green beans, and eating sugar causes people to eat many more calories and thus gain weight, among other bad things.

Research has now identified two diet components that lead to higher levels of disease and quicker aging – sugar, of course, and excessive amounts of protein, a surprise to some. It will be interesting to see the results of future research to see what else in our diets either help or hurt us!

Cinque, an eye opening article! Thank you for posting the link. Within the article is a link to a paper further defining ultra processed foods: https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Maria_Laura_Louzada/publication/315497241_The_UN_Decade_of_Nutrition_the_NOVA_food_classification_and_the_trouble_with_ultra-processing/links/59ede280aca27250fe79c6eb/The-UN-Decade-of-Nutrition-the-NOVA-food-classification-and-the-trouble-with-ultra-processing.pdf?origin=publication_detail
Interesting to note that almost every packaged diet food falls into the category of “ultra processed food products”.

Cinque et al
I hope everyone reads the comments to the right of the article written by Jane Brody in the New York Times article you refer to above.

The AHA and Ms Brody are compromised by conflicts of interest. Clearly the best reporting and analysis of the science on these subjects is referred to in the comments section: see Gary Taubes. If anyone is unclear on any of these issues around the various fats and what is healthy and what is not, please read his book “good calories bad calories” and you will be able to see through the corporate PR spin that is often passed as the truth in these articles, supported by what sound like very credible people, often doctors and famous organisations that have high credibility.

Alas, it is evident that these people and organisations are often compromised by conflicts of interest that people should study very carefully before taking their advice.

Your health is in your own hands: do not believe the profit driven agendas. If in doubt follow the money and think.

Cinque, I saw that article and it makes sense to me. Since we need to give our bodies to recognize we are full, eating more slowly give us the time to do this. Great article! Thanks!

Hi:

Here is a link initially posted by Fatfingers that reviews the current literature on eating breakfast, meal timing, meal frequency and intermittent fasting: http://circ.ahajournals.org/content/early/2017/01/30/CIR.0000000000000476 It is a goldmine of information for anyone willing to slog through it.

In short, eating breakfast is good, skipping breakfast is bad (and breakfast is not the first meal you eat each day, regardless of time, but is a substantial meal eaten shortly after you get up in the morning):

“On the basis of the combined epidemiological and clinical intervention data, daily breakfast consumption among US adults may decrease the risk of adverse effects related to glucose and insulin metabolism. In addition, comprehensive dietary counseling that supports daily breakfast consumption may be helpful in promoting healthy dietary habits throughout the day.”

Intermittent fasting (ADF & 5:2) is good for weight loss and otherwise shows some promise:

“There is evidence that both alternate-day fasting and periodic fasting may be effective for weight loss, although there are no data that indicate whether the weight loss can be sustained long term. In addition, both eating patterns may be useful for lowering triglyceride concentrations but have little or no effect on total, LDL, or HDL cholesterol concentrations. These protocols may also be beneficial for lowering blood pressure, but a minimum weight loss of 6% may be required to see an effect. Intermittent fasting may also be effective for decreasing fasting insulin and IR, but fasting glucose remains largely unchanged.”

Meal timing seems important – just as eating early is good, there is some evidence that eating late in the day may be bad. Additionally, meal frequency seems to impact important markers. For instance, people studied eating 17 times a day showed significantly lowered cholesterol, while those eating once a day showed both increased levels of cholesterol and higher blood pressures. While no studies were definitive, it appears the benefits of time restricted eating (like 16:8 or 23:1 – the Warrior Diet) are questionable and there may be some risks involved if following them:

“The impact of meal timing, particularly related to the evening meal, deserves further study. Epidemiological findings suggest a potential detrimental effect of late meals on cardiometabolic health, but clinical intervention studies, which would address causality, have been limited in scope and too diverse to draw definitive conclusions and make recommendations. Moreover, the potential benefit of increased meal frequency should be evaluated in the context of timing and duration of the daily prandial period.”

Enjoy!

simcoeluv, great info thanks for posting. Based on chronobiology alone eating breakfast and not eating late at night is a no brainer. Nice to see that studies bear this out.

As for fasting also great news. Fantastic to see that it lowers triglycerides since they are the strongest link to cardiovascular disease, not cholesterol.

ccco USA FD Day 1

I thought I would celebrate the beginning of the new challenge months with a FD and yippee. I believe I succeeded. One day at a time, I think, is the way I will be doing this and I have a great start! I am with you diverdog and penguin! I don’t regard myself as skipping breakfast but rather listening to my body. I will eat when I get up when my body tells me I am hungry. Sometimes that is as late as noon or 1 pm. I regard this WOL as a way of learning to listen to my own body. Have a great evening! I just finished putting away my furniture to protect against the Nor’easter damage!

diverdog, I do understand. That’s why I started eating breakfast, although when I lose control, it’s usually because I am emotionally eating. I try to eat dinner between between 5 and 6 pm, so I have a good fasting experience of at least 16 hours overnight because I want the autophy experience(probably didn’t spell that right! LOL) but I know what you mean.

Something that pleases me about the diabetes research that I just posted. They didn’t measure results in relation to initial weight loss. They measured results against maintained weight loss – we all know that’s a much harder achievement. But when it comes to remission of disease it’s really the only relevant measure.

For a lot of weight loss related research that I read, they measure too early and we don’t know if the changes are sustained. An immediate improvement in disease or illness is not much use if it isn’t maintained. It’s reassuring to see research that’s designed to measure change sustained for 12 months.