I just returned from Jimmy Moore's Low-carb Cruise, a 7-day excursion to Jamaica, Grand Cayman Island, and Cozumel aboard the Carnival Magic. During our 7 wonderful days, a number of authors and experts spoke, each offering their unique perspective on the low-carb world. The focus was the science, experience, and practical application of low-carbohydrate diets.
The event kicked off with a roast by Tom Naughton of Fat Head fame, who entertained with his insightful low-carb humor and predictions of my demise at the hands of Monsanto!
Among the most important lessons provided:
Dr. Andreas Eenfeldt of the Diet Doctor blog discussed how Sweden is leading the world as the nation with the most vigorous low-carbohydrate following, witnessing incredible weight loss and reversal of carbohydrate-related diseases way ahead of the U.S. experience. I spent several hours with Dr. Eenfeldt who, besides being an engaging speaker, is a new father and an all-around gentleman. At 6 ft, 7 inches, he also towered high above all of us.
Dr. Eric Westman of Duke University and author of The New Atkins for a New You, debunked low-carbohydrate myths, such as "low-carb diets are high-protein diets that make your kidneys explode."
Dr. John Briffa, creator of the popular blog, Dr. John Briffa: A Good Look at Good Health, and author of the wonderfully straightforward primer to low-carbohydrate eating, Escape the Diet Trap, stressed the importance of never allowing hunger to rule behavior. Dr. Briffa's serious writing tone conceals an incredible charm and wit that took me by surprise, having spent several thoroughly engaging hours over breakfast, lunch, and dinner with him over the week.
Dr. Chris Masterjohn of The Daily Lipid and supporter of the Weston A. Price Foundation program, provided a comprehensive overview of the data that fails to link saturated fat with heart disease. He also helped me understand the analytical techniques used in studies of advanced glycation end-products.
Denise Minger, brilliant young usurper of China Study dogma and blogger at Raw Foods SOS, proved an engaging speaker and a truly real person (since some critics of her analyses have actually questioned whether there was even such a person!). She also proved every bit as likable as she seems in her captivating blog discussions.
Dr. Jeff Volek, prolific researcher from University of Connecticut, author of over 200 studies validating low-carbohydrate diet effects, and author of the recently released book with Dr. Stephen Phinney, The Art and Science of Low Carbohydrate Living, debunked myths behind carbohydrate dependence and "loading" by athletes. He also talked about how assessing blood ketones may be the gold standard method to ensure low-grade ketosis on a long-term low-carb effort.
Over a bottle of wine, Jimmy Moore and I reminisced over how his modest start with no experience in blogging or media has now ballooned to an audience of over 100,000 readers/viewers.
All in all, Jimmy's Low-carb Cruise experience was worth every minute, with many wonderful lessons and memories!
These chili sesame crackers are perfect for dipping into hummus or salsa. As written, the recipe yields a moderately spicy cracker that you can modify readily by increasing or decreasing quantities of cayenne pepper and Tabasco sauce.
This recipe uses sesame seeds as the "flour." Either brown sesame seeds or the lighter version work, though the lighter seeds yield a slightly less bitter flavor with the spices.
For ease of baking, a shallow baking pan measuring 11 x 17 inches works best, as it allows the batter to fill the pan and spread to a cracker thickness. With a smaller pan, you may have to bake in two batches.
Makes approximately 30 chips
2 cups raw sesame seeds 1 cup shredded Parmesan cheese 2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil 1 tablespoon chili powder ½ teaspoon cayenne pepper 2 teaspoons onion powder 1 teaspoon garlic powder 1 teaspoon dry mustard 1 teaspoon sea salt 1 teaspoon Tabasco sauce 1¼ cups water
Preheat oven to 350º F.
In food chopper or food processor, grind 1¼ cups sesame seeds to fine meal. Remove and place in large bowl.
Place shredded Parmesan cheese in food chopper or food processor and pulse briefly until reduced to granular consistency. Add to sesame seed meal and mix. Stir in olive oil.
Add remaining (unground) sesame seeds, chili powder, cayenne pepper, onion and garlic powder, mustard, sea salt and mix thoroughly. Add Tabasco sauce and water and mix. Add additional water, if necessary, one tablespoon at a time, to obtain a consistency similar to pancake batter.
Pour mixture into baking pan and smooth to fill pan and obtain a thickness of a cracker. If too thick, remove some batter and re-smooth. Optionally, roll a clean cylindrical glass or bottle over top to smooth and yield a consistent thickness.
Bake for 30 minutes or until edges browned and center firm. If a dry, extra crunchy cracker is designed, bake an additional 10-15 minutes at 250 degrees F.
Remove and allow to cool. Cut with pizza cutter to desired size.
Although it is a central premise of the whole Wheat Belly argument and the starting strategy in the New Track Your Plaque Diet, I fear that some people haven't fully gotten the message:
Modern wheat is an opiate.
And, of course, I don't mean that wheat is an opiate in the sense that you like it so much that you feel you are addicted. Wheat is truly addictive.
Wheat is addictive in the sense that it comes to dominate thoughts and behaviors. Wheat is addictive in the sense that, if you don't have any for several hours, you start to get nervous, foggy, tremulous, and start desperately seeking out another "hit" of crackers, bagels, or bread, even if it's the few stale 3-month old crackers at the bottom of the box. Wheat is addictive in the sense that there is a distinct withdrawal syndrome characterized by overwhelming fatigue, mental "fog," inability to exercise, even depression that lasts several days, occasionally several weeks. Wheat is addictive in the sense that the withdrawal process can be provoked by administering an opiate-blocking drug such as naloxone or naltrexone.
But the "high" of wheat is not like the high of heroine, morphine, or Oxycontin. This opiate, while it binds to the opiate receptors of the brain, doesn't make us high. It makes us hungry.
This is the effect exerted by gliadin, the protein in wheat that was inadvertently altered by geneticists in the 1970s during efforts to increase yield. Just a few shifts in amino acids and gliadin in modern high-yield, semi-dwarf wheat became a potent appetite stimulant.
Wheat stimulates appetite. Wheat stimulates calorie consumption: 440 more calories per day, 365 days per year, for every man, woman, and child. (440 calories per person per day is the average.) We experience this, sense the weight gain that is coming and we push our plate away, settle for smaller portions, increase exercise more and more . . . yet continue to gain, and gain, and gain. Ask your friends and neighbors who try to include more "healthy whole grains" in their diet. They exercise, eat a "well-balanced diet" . . . yet gained 10, 20, 30, 70 pounds over the past several years. Accuse your friends of drinking too much Coca Cola by the liter bottle, or being gluttonous at the all-you-can-eat buffet and you will likely receive a black eye. Many of these people are actually trying quite hard to control impulse, appetite, portion control, and weight, but are losing the battle with this appetite-stimulating opiate in wheat.
Ignorance of the gliadin effect of wheat is responsible for the idiocy that emits from the mouths of gastroenterologists like Dr. Peter Green of Columbia University who declares:
"We tell people we don't think a gluten-free diet is a very healthy diet . . . Gluten-free substitutes for food with gluten have added fat and sugar. Celiac patients often gain weight and their cholesterol levels go up. The bulk of the world is eating wheat. The bulk of people who are eating this are doing perfectly well unless they have celiac disease."
In the simple minded thinking of the gastroenterology and celiac world, if you don't have celiac disease, you should eat all the wheat you want . . . and never mind about the appetite-stimulating effects of gliadin, not to mention the intestinal disruption and leakiness generated by wheat lectins, or the high blood sugars and insulin of the amylopectin A of wheat, or the new allergies being generated by the new alpha amylases of modern wheat.
What if I said: "Eliminate all wheat from your diet and replace it with all the jelly beans and ice cream you want."
That would be stupid, wouldn't it? Eliminate one rotten thing in diet--modern high-yield, semi-dwarf wheat products that stimulate appetite (via gliadin), send blood sugar through the roof (via amylopectin A), and disrupt the normal intestinal barriers to foreign substances (via the lectin, wheat germ agglutinin)--and replace it with something else that has its own set of problems, in this case sugary foods. How about a few other stupid replacements: Replace your drunken, foul-mouthed binges with wife beating? Replace cigarette smoking with excessive bourbon?
Sugary carbohydrate-rich foods like jelly beans and ice cream are not good for us because:
1) High blood sugar causes endogenous glycation, i.e, glucose modification of long-lived proteins in the body. Glycate the proteins in the lenses of your eyes, you get cataracts. Glycate cartilage proteins in the cartilage of your hips and knees, you get brittle cartilage that erodes and causes arthritis. Glycate structural proteins in your arteries and you get hypertension (stiff arteries) and atherosclerosis. Small LDL particles--the #1 cause of heart disease in the U.S. today--are both triggered by blood sugar rises and are 8-fold more prone to glycation (and thereby oxidation).
2) High blood sugar is inevitably accompanied by high blood insulin. Repetitive surges in insulin lead to <em>insulin resistance</em>, i.e., muscles, liver, and fat cells unresponsive to insulin. This forces your poor tired pancreas to produce even more insulin, which causes even more insulin resistance, and round and round in a vicious cycle. This leads to visceral fat accumulation (Jelly Bean Belly!), which is highly inflammatory, further worsening insulin resistance via various inflammatory mediators like tumor necrosis factor.
3) Sugary foods, i.e., sucrose- or high-fructose corn syrup-sweetened, are sources of fructose, a truly very, very bad sugar that is metabolized via a completely separate pathway from glucose. Fructose is 10-fold more likely to induce glycation of proteins than glucose. It also provokes a (delayed) rise in insulin resistance, accumulation of triglycerides, marked increase in formation of small LDL particles, and delayed postprandial (after-eating) clearance of the lipoprotein byproducts of meals, all of which leads to diabetes, hypertension, and atherosclerosis.
I think we can all agree that replacing wheat with jelly beans and ice cream is not a good solution. And, no, we shouldn't have drunken binges, wife beating, smoking or bourbon to excess. So why does the "gluten-free" community advocate replacing wheat with products made with:
rice starch, tapioca starch, potato starch, and cornstarch?
These powdered starches are among the few foods that increase blood sugar (and thereby provoke glycation and insulin) higher than even the amylopectin A of wheat! For instance, two slices of whole wheat bread typically increase blood sugar in a slender, non-diabetic person to around 170 mg/dl. Two slices of gluten-free, multigrain bread will increase blood sugar typically to 180-190 mg/dl.
The fatal flaw in thinking surrounding gluten-free junk carbohydrates is this: If a food lacks some undesirable ingredient, then it must be good. This is the same fatally flawed thinking that led people to believe, for instance, that Snack Well low-fat cookies were healthy: because they lacked fat. Or processed foods made with hydrogenated oils were healthy because they lacked saturated fat.
So gluten-free foods made with junk carbohydrates are good because they lack gluten? No. Gluten-free foods made with rice starch, tapioca starch, potato starch, and cornstarch are destructive foods that NOBODY should be eating.
This is why the recipes for muffins, cupcakes, cookies, etc. in this blog, the Track Your Plaque website, and the Track Your Plaque Cookbook are wheat- and gluten-free and free of gluten-free junk carbohydrates. And put that bottle of Jim Beam down!
Conventional notions of heart healthy diets, such as that advocated by the American Heart Association, are largely based on observations of total and LDL cholesterol.
So, cut the saturated fat in the diet, cut the overall fat content, and replace them with polyunsaturated oils like safflower, corn, and vegetable oils and increase consumption of whole grains and total and LDL cholesterol show a modest downturn. Thus, diets like the American Heart Association Total Lifestyle Change approach advocate limiting total fat to no more 25 to 35% of calories and saturated fat to no more than 7% of calories.
If you loved Creamsicles as a kid, you'll love these Orange Cream Cookies. (Sorry, no photo: We ate them up before I realized we hadn't taken the photo. And, worse, we did it twice!)
Ingredients: 2 cups almond meal 2 tablespoons coconut flour 1 teaspoon baking soda ½ teaspoon sea salt ¼ cup golden raisins ½ cup chopped pecans Sweetener equivalent to 1 cup sugar 2 tablespoons finely-grated orange rind 1 large egg 2 tablespoons coconut oil, melted ½ cup whipping cream (or coconut milk) 1 tablespoon vanilla extract
Preheat oven to 350º F.
Combine almond meal, coconut flour, baking soda, salt, raisins, pecans, sweetener and orange zest in bowl and mix.
In separate bowl, whisk egg, then add coconut oil, whipping cream, vanilla extract and mix together. Pour wet mix into dry and blend by hand thoroughly.
Spoon onto parchment paper-lined baking pan (or oiled pan) and flatten with spoon to ½-¾ inch thickness. Bake for 20-25 minutes or until toothpick withdraws dry.
I'm a cardiologist. I see patients with heart disease in the form of coronary artery disease every day.
These are people who have undergone bypass surgery, received one or more stents or undergone other forms of angioplasty, have survived heart attacks or sudden cardiac death, or have high heart scan scores. In short, I see patients every day who are at high-risk for heart attack and death from heart disease.
But I see virtually no heart attacks. And nobody is dying from heart disease. (I'm referring to the people who follow the strategies I advocate, not the guy who thinks that smoking a pack of cigarettes a day is still okay, or the woman who thinks the diet is unnecessary because she's slender.)
Two high-profile deaths from heart attacks occurred this week:
Davy Jones--The iconic singer from the 1960s pop group, the Monkees, suffered sudden cardiac death after a large heart attack, just hours after experiencing chest pain.
Andrew Breitbart--The conservative blogger and controversy-generating media personality suffered what was believed to be sudden cardiac death while walking.
It's a darn shame and it shouldn't happen. The tools to identify the potential for heart attack are available, inexpensive, and simple. The strategies to reduce, even eliminate, risk are likewise available, inexpensive, and cultivate overall health.
The followers of the Track Your Plaque program who
1) get a heart scan that yields a coronary calcium score (for long-term tracking purposes) 2) identify the causes such as small LDL particles, lipoprotein(a), vitamin D deficiency, and thyroid dysfunction 3) correct the causes
This represents progress. Progress in understanding of wheat-related illnesses, as well as progress in spreading the word that there is a lot more to wheat-intolerance than celiac disease. But, as I mention in the letter, it falls desperately short on several crucial issues.
Ms. Beck--
Thank you for writing the wonderful article on gluten sensitivity.
I'd like to bring several issues to your attention, as they are often neglected in discussions of "gluten sensitivity":
1) The gliadin protein of wheat has been modified by geneticists through their work to increase yield. This work, performed mostly in the 1970s, yielded a form of gliadin that is several amino acids different, but increased the appetite-stimulating properties of wheat. Modern wheat, a high-yield, semi-dwarf strain (not the 4 1/2-foot tall "amber waves of grain" everyone thinks of) is now, in effect, an appetite-stimulant that increases calorie intake 400 calories per day. This form of gliadin is also the likely explanation for the surge in behavioral struggles in children with autism and ADHD. 2) The amylopectin A of wheat is the underlying explanation for why two slices of whole wheat bread raise blood sugar higher than 6 teaspoons of table sugar or many candy bars. It is unique and highly digestible by the enzyme amylase. Incredibly, the high glycemic index of whole wheat is simply ignored, despite being listed at the top of all tables of glycemic index. 3) The lectins of wheat may underlie the increase in multiple autoimmune and inflammatory diseases in Americans, especially rheumatoid arthritis and inflammatory bowel diseases (ulcerative colitis, Crohn's).
In other words, if someone is not gluten-sensitive, they may still remain sensitive to the many non-gluten aspects of modern high-yield semi-dwarf wheat, such as appetite-stimulation and mental "fog," joint pains in the hands, leg edema, or the many rashes and skin disorders. This represents one of the most important examples of the widespread unintended effects of modern agricultural genetics and agribusiness.
William Davis, MD Author: Wheat Belly: Lose the wheat, lose the weight and find your path back to health