Very Low Fat Diet is Inappropriate

The current nutritional paradigm for the prevention of heart disease often emphasise eating a low-fat diet.  Unfortunately new studies released recently show beyond any shadow of doubt that low fat diets are not the optimal dietary strategy for reducing heart disease.  In fact, the Mediterranean diet is quite promising for heart disease prevention.  Why?  Because this diet provides good quality dietary fats.

Good Dietary Fats Reduce Heart Disease Risk

According to Professor Jennie Brand Miller of Sydney University, the conventional low fat diets are inappropriate for reducing the risk of heart disease.  In fact, in 2009, Jakobsen et al. pooled the data from  11 observational studies involving 344, 696 subjects, over a 4-10 year follow up with 5249 cases of heart attack and they found that replacing saturated fat (from meat sources) with polyunsaturated fat (from plant sources like nuts and seeds) significantly reduced the risk of heart disease.  Here, we are talking about an amazing 26% reduction in heart disease risk which is very exciting!

Tables for Quality Dietary Fats

The tables below list the food items in order of decreasing density of each nutrient:

Specific Foods for Best Dietary Fats

As you can see from the table above, some of the most nutrient-dense plant sources of omega 6, omega 3 fatty acids and vitamin E, are found in walnuts, sunflower seeds and almonds!  Why not have a handful of them daily?  Just substitute saturated fats with nutrient-rich polyunsaturated dietary fats.

References

Commonwealth Department of Health and Aging (Aust), Ministry of Health (NZ) and National Health and Medical Research Council.  Nutrient Reference Values for Australia and New Zealand. 2006.

Shrapnel B, Baghurst K. Adequacy of essential fatty acid, vitamin D and vitamin E intake: implications for the ‘core’ and ‘extras’ food group concept of the Australian Guide to Healthy Eating. 2007; 64: 7885.

Shrapnel B.  The importance of nutrient density in implementing recommendations for fats.  Nutr Diet 2007; 64(Suppl.1): S40.

Jakobsen M U, Eilis J O, Heitmann B L, Pereira M A, Balter K B, Fraser G E, Goldbourt U, Hallmans G, Knekt P, Liu S, Pietinen P, Spiegelman D, Stevens J, Virtamo J, Willett W and Ascherio A.  Major Types of dietary fat and risk of coronary heart disease: a pooled analysis of 11 cohort studies.  American Journal of Clinical Nutrition 2009, 89 (5)

Delbridge E A, Prendergast L A, Pritchard J E and Proiette J.  One –year weight maintenance after significant weight loss i healthy overweight and obese subjects: does diet composition matter?  The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 2009; 90: no. 5: 1203 to 1214.

Apple Health Benefits

To answer this question, researchers from the Australian CSIRO have been reviewing the growing body of research that applies to health benefits of apples and the role they play in human health. In this post I summarise the key findings for you.

General Information

Nutritional Analysis

Apples are highly nutritious and a great source of fiber.
The peel of an apple has very high concentrations of anti-oxidants, with higher levels of antioxidant capacity generally found in darker, redder coloured apples. So do not peel your apples.

Another point of interest – According to principal component analysis, the lighter the colour of an apple’s flesh, the more nutritious it is.

Storage of Apples

Keep your apples in the fridge instead of the fruit bowl in order to retain their antioxidants and have them stay crisp for longer.

Specific Health Benefits of Apples

Heart Disease

There is ever increasing evidence of the role of fruits and vegetables (specifically including apples) on protecting you from cardiovascular diseases, such as heart attack and stroke.

Cholesterol

Apples have been shown to have a cholesterol lowering effect. In one study the researchers found that eating three apples resulted in the reduction of the cholesterol level of about 5-8%.
Incidentally, the consumption of apple juice showed no such effect. So skip the juice and get the real thing – you know, an apple a day…

Weight Loss

Consuming whole fruits has been shown to produce a more positive effect on satiety than the same energy from juice or puree.
In fact, a study found that the energy level from fruits, independent of the firbe amount may reduce energy consumption and body weight over time.
Research further suggests that the polyphenols found in apples may regulate the fat metabolism in healthy people with relatively high body mass index (BMI).

Type 2 Diabetes

A large study of nearly 38,000 women over nine years found that women who were consuming one apple a day had a 28% reduction in their risk of type 2 diabetes, compared to women who consumed no apples.
Apples also have a low GI (Glycaemic Index), in the range of 28-44, which may be a contributing factor to the prevention of diabetes.

Allergy

You guessed it – apples have been linked to reducing the incidence of atopic dermatitis. The health benefits of apples include that they may alleviate some of the symptoms of respiratory allergy such as sneezing.

Asthma

Your good apples have been reported to be associated with lower incidence of asthma and bronchial hyperactivity.
In fact, a related study found that pregnant women who consume apples (and fish) may provide their unborn babies protection against developing childhood asthma and allergic diseases.

Health Benefits of Apples for Cancer

While the evidence for the role of fruit and vegetables in generally reducing cancer risk is not as strong as it once appeared, this does not rule out the significant potential for specific fruits and vegetables.
Laboratory cell-based studies have shown that apple peel extract possesses strong anti-proliferative effects against cancer cells. So, make sure you do not peel your apples.

There is particularly strong evidence for the consumption of apples in preventing mouth, oesophagus, lung and stomach cancers.

So in conclusion, an apple a day will not just keep your doctor away, but also a multitude of specialists, surgeons, drug companies and intensive care units. Please do yourself a favour and consider having an apple today, and every day following – because the health benefits of apples are too great to ignore.

Not all fatness indicates disease risk. Not all leanness indicates lack of disease risk. So what is the one factor that is a potent indicator of disease risk? It is an inflammatory process called metaflammation, para-flammation or smouldering inflammation. This condition appears to be inextricably linked with individual lifestyle behaviours like:

1. poor diet
2. inactivity
3. excessive exercise (modern endurance events)
4. inadequate sleep (due to deprivation, insomnia or sleep disorders like sleep apnoea)
5. mental states like anxiety or depression
6. environmental stressors
7. excessive alcohol
8. smoking

Markers of inflammation are expressed through a range of immune mediators such as cytokines, chemokines, adipokines, myokines and transcription factors. Recently, C-reactive protein has gained more attention than NFkB, TNF alpha and Il-6 but overall, these are common markers used to identify unhealthy inducers of metaflammation. It seems, the lifestyle-related inducers listed above are associated with oxidative stress, insulin resistance and eventual development of disease states.
Regularly consuming high glycaemic foods or large quantities of highly processed carbohydrate foods leads to inflammation and aging of cells. As Professor Jennie Brand Miller, world leading authority on the glycaemic index puts it very simply, “High GI foods lead to high inflammatory markers due to oxidative stress. What happens is that the high glucose load overwhelms the power-house (mitochondria) in the cell causing lots of free radicals to be generated. This leads to death of the mitochondria and eventual cell death.” In essence, aspire to eat like traditional natives and regularly choose low GI foods.
Regular moderate level physical activity, approximately ½ to 1 hour per day most days of the week is anti-inflammatory. Getting 8 hours of good quality sleep daily is also vital. It appears that the “stress-like’’ effects of sleep deprivation and the accompanying hormonal changes are associated with obesity.
In an advanced society like ours, mental states associated with stress, anxiety and depression seem to generate acute inflammatory responses accompanied by elevated levels of cytokines. Smoking also elicits a parallel reaction. Both of which are linked to degenerative diseases.
In a nutshell, the maintenance of a disease-free state lies squarely in our hands. Health is about consistently choosing pro-life behaviours through good nutrition, exercise, good quality sleep, relaxation and powerfully choosing joy-filled states. What are your views? Please post you comments below.

Australians are among the fattest people in the world. This has caused a host of chronic diseases to develop. A cluster of some of the above-mentioned conditions is commonly called metabolic syndrome. It is often said that obesity is harder to cure than cancer! For over 10 years, it has been known that obesity is directly associated with inflammation.

More and more experts are seeing body weight or fat as potential ‘markers’ of other health problems, like cancer, heart disease and diabetes. Low grade form of inflammation commonly called metaflammation seems to result from certain lifestyle behaviours. Some of these behaviours are responsible for making us fat.

Certain food choices and lack of activity are now known to contribute notoriously to ‘metaflammation’. According to studies, merely changing or reducing weight without adopting all aspects of lifestyle changes aimed at reducing inflammation are doomed to fail in the long run. To achieve better overall health outcomes, all aspects of lifestyle that contribute to reducing inflammation should be adopted.
Sleep is a factor that is largely neglected in our modern society. We now know that less than 7 hours sleep a day has been shown to raise inflammatory makers. This is related to psychological stress which has been known to cause pro-inflammatory responses. Chronic stress causes a chronic rise in stress-related hormones like cortisol and the concurrent reduction in the ‘feel-good’ hormones – endorphins. Chronic stress and depression are directly associated with metaflammation. Metaflammation leads to numerous disease states as a result of insulin resistance! In other words, science has shown that you can sleep yourself and relax yourself slim! Wow, how awesome is that? If you did nothing else but get good quality sleep and adopt deep relaxation, you could be a few kilograms lighter than you are now! How is that for good news?

Hence the winning formula for keeping trim involves a complete lifestyle overhaul combining:
1. Good sleep
2. Stress management (so you have little or no stress in your life)
3. Plenty of exercise – take every opportunity to move!
4. Good solid ‘anti-inflammatory’ diet filled with back-to-basics ‘earth foods’
5. No smoking

All of these health-enhancing factors have not changed since the time of Hippocrates. How remarkable is that? These 5 simple factors make up the entire prevention armoury. They say the more things change the more they stay the same, this must be one of those things!

In this article I will show you what they are and give you some scientific background on how they were discovered and how they work.