For the sake of convenience: Commercial sources of prebiotic fibers

3. May 2015 William Davis (0)
Our efforts to obtain prebiotic fibers/resistant starches, as discussed in the Cureality Digestive Health Track, to cultivate healthy bowel flora means recreating the eating behavior of primitive humans who dug in the dirt with sticks and bone fragments for underground roots and tubers, behaviors you can still observe in extant hunter-gatherer groups, such as the Hadza and Yanomamo. But, because this practice is inconvenient for us modern folk accustomed to sleek grocery stores, because many of us live in climates where the ground is frozen much of the year, and because we lack the wisdom passed from generation to generation that helps identify which roots and tubers are safe to eat and which are not, we rely on modern equivalents of primitive sources. Thus, green, unripe bananas, raw potatoes and other such fiber sources in the Cureality lifestyle.

There is therefore no need to purchase prebiotic fibers outside of your daily effort at including an unripe green banana, say, or inulin and fructooligosaccharides (FOS), or small servings of legumes as a means of cultivating healthy bowel flora. These are powerful strategies that change the number and species of bowel flora over time, thereby leading to beneficial health effects that include reduced blood sugar and blood pressure, reduction in triglycerides, reduced anxiety and improved sleep, and reduced colon cancer risk.

HOWEVER, convenience can be a struggle. Traveling by plane, for example, makes lugging around green bananas or raw potatoes inconvenient. Inulin and FOS already come as powders or capsules and they are among the options for a convenient, portable prebiotic fiber strategy. But there are others that can be purchased. This is a more costly way to get your prebiotic fibers and you do not need to purchase these products in order to succeed in your bowel flora management program. These products are therefore listed strictly as a strategy for convenience.

Most perspectives on the quality of human bowel flora composition suggest that diversity is an important feature, i.e., the greater the number of species, the better the health of the host. There may therefore be advantage in varying your prebiotic routine, e.g., green banana on Monday, inulin on Tuesday, PGX (below) on Wednesday, etc. Beyond providing convenience, these products may introduce an added level of diversity, as well.

Among the preparations available to us that can be used as prebiotic fibers:

PGX

While it is billed as a weight management and blood sugar-reducing product, the naturally occurring fiber--α-D-glucurono-α-D-manno-β-D-manno- β-D-gluco, α-L-gulurono-β-D mannurono, β-D-gluco-β- D-mannan--in PGX also exerts prebiotic effects (evidenced by increased fecal butyrate, the beneficial end-product of bacterial metabolism). PGX is available as capsules or granules. It also seems to exert prebiotic effects at lower doses than other prebiotic fibers. While I usually advise reaching 20 grams per day of fiber, PGX appears to exert substantial effects at a daily dose of half that quantity. As with all prebiotic fibers, it is best to build up slowly over weeks, e.g., start at 1.5 grams twice per day. It is also best taken in two or three divided doses. (Avoid the PGX bars, as they are too carb-rich for those of us trying to achieve ideal metaobolic health.)

Prebiotin

A combination of inulin and FOS available as powders and in portable Stick Pacs (2 gram and 4 gram packs). This preparation is quite costly, however, given the generally low cost of purchasing chicory inulin and FOS separately.

Acacia

Acacia fiber is another form of prebiotic fiber.  RenewLife and NOW are two reputable brands.

Isomalto-oligosaccharides

This fiber is used in Quest bars and in Paleo Protein Bars. With Quest bars, choose the flavors without sucralose, since it has been associated with undesirable changes in bowel flora.

There you go. It means that there are fewer and fewer reasons to not purposefully cultivate healthy bowel flora and obtain all the wonderful health benefits of doing so, from reduced blood pressure, to reduced triglycerides, to deeper sleep.

Disclaimer: I am not compensated in any way by discussing these products.

How Not To Have An Autoimmune Condition

20. April 2015 William Davis (0)

Autoimmune conditions are becoming increasingly common. Estimates vary, but it appears that at least 8-9% of the population in North America and Western Europe have one of these conditions, with The American Autoimmune Related Diseases Association estimating that it’s even higher at 14% of the population.

The 200 or so autoimmune diseases that afflict modern people are conditions that involve an abnormal immune response directed against one or more organs of the body. If the misguided attack is against the thyroid gland, it can result in Hashimoto’s thyroiditis. If it is directed against pancreatic beta cells that produce insulin, it can result in type 1 diabetes or latent autoimmune diabetes of adults (LADA). If it involves tissue encasing joints (synovium) like the fingers or wrists, it can result in rheumatoid arthritis. It if involves the liver, it can result in autoimmune hepatitis, and so on. Nearly every organ of the body can be the target of such a misguided immune response.

While it requires a genetic predisposition towards autoimmunity that we have no control over (e.g., the HLA-B27 gene for ankylosing spondylitis), there are numerous environmental triggers of these diseases that we can do something about. Identifying and correcting these factors stacks the odds in your favor of reducing autoimmune inflammation, swelling, pain, organ dysfunction, and can even reverse an autoimmune condition altogether.

Among the most important factors to correct in order to minimize or reverse autoimmunity are:

Wheat and grain elimination

If you are reading this, you likely already know that the gliadin protein of wheat and related proteins in other grains (especially the secalin of rye, the hordein of barley, zein of corn, perhaps the avenin of oats) initiate the intestinal “leakiness” that begins the autoimmune process, an effect that occurs in over 90% of people who consume wheat and grains. The flood of foreign peptides/proteins, bacterial lipopolysaccharide, and grain proteins themselves cause immune responses to be launched against these foreign factors. If, for instance, an autoimmune response is triggered against wheat gliadin, the same antibodies can be aimed at the synapsin protein of the central nervous system/brain, resulting in dementia or cerebellar ataxia (destruction of the cerebellum resulting in incoordination and loss of bladder and bowel control). Wheat and grain elimination is by far the most important item on this list to reverse autoimmunity.

Correct vitamin D deficiency

It is clear that, across a spectrum of autoimmune diseases, vitamin D deficiency serves a permissive, not necessarily causative, role in allowing an autoimmune process to proceed. It is clear, for instance, that autoimmune conditions such as type 1 diabetes in children, rheumatoid arthritis, and Hashimoto’s thyroiditis are more common in those with low vitamin D status, much less common in those with higher vitamin D levels. For this and other reasons, I aim to achieve a blood level of 25-hydroxy vitamin D level of 60-70 ng/ml, a level that usually requires around 4000-8000 units per day of D3 (cholecalciferol) in gelcap or liquid form (never tablet due to poor or erratic absorption). In view of the serious nature of autoimmune diseases, it is well worth tracking occasional blood levels.

Supplement omega-3 fatty acids

While omega-3 fatty acids, EPA and DHA, from fish oil have proven only modestly helpful by themselves, when cast onto the background of wheat/grain elimination and vitamin D, omega-3 fatty acids compound anti-inflammatory benefits, such as those exerted via cyclooxygenase-2. This requires a daily EPA + DHA dose of around 3600 mg per day, divided in two. Don’t confuse EPA and DHA omega-3s with linolenic acid, another form of omega-3 obtained from meats, flaxseed, chia, and walnuts that does not not yield the same benefits. Nor can you use krill oil with its relatively trivial content of omega-3s.

Eliminate dairy

This is true in North America and most of Western Europe, less true in New Zealand and Australia. Autoimmunity can be triggered by the casein beta A1 form of casein widely expressed in dairy products, but not by casein beta A2 and other forms. Because it is so prevalent in North America and Western Europe, the most confident way to avoid this immunogenic form of casein is to avoid dairy altogether. You might be able to consume cheese, given the fermentation process that alters proteins and sugar, but that has not been fully explored.

Cultivate healthy bowel flora

People with autoimmune conditions have massively screwed up bowel flora with reduced species diversity and dominance of unhealthy species. We restore a healthier anti-inflammatory panel of bacterial species by “seeding” the colon with high-potency probiotics, then nourishing them with prebiotic fibers/resistant starches, a collection of strategies summarized in the Cureality Digestive Health discussions. People sometimes view bowel flora management as optional, just “fluff”–it is anything but. Properly managing bowel flora can be a make-it-or-break-it advantage; don’t neglect it.

There you go: a basic list to get started on if your interest is to begin a process of unraveling the processes of autoimmunity. In some conditions, such as rheumatoid arthritis and polymyalgia rheumatica, full recovery is possible. In other conditions, such as Hashimoto’s thyroiditis and the pancreatic beta cell destruction leading to type 1 diabetes, reversing the autoimmune inflammation does not restore organ function: hypothyroidism results after thyroiditis quiets down and type 1 diabetes and need for insulin persists after pancreatic beta cell damage. But note that the most powerful risk factor for an autoimmune disease is another autoimmune disease–this is why so many people have more than one autoimmune condition. People with Hashimoto’s, for instance, can develop rheumatoid arthritis or psoriasis. So the above menu is still worth following even if you cannot hope for full organ recovery

Five Powerful Ways to Reduce Blood Sugar

4. April 2015 William Davis (0)
Left to conventional advice on diet and you will, more than likely, succumb to type 2 diabetes sooner or later. Follow your doctor’s advice to cut fat and eat more “healthy whole grains” and oral diabetes medication and insulin are almost certainly in your future. Despite this, had this scenario played out, you would be accused of laziness and gluttony, a weak specimen of human being who just gave into excess.

If you turn elsewhere for advice, however, and ignore the awful advice from “official” sources with cozy relationships with Big Pharma, you can reduce blood sugars sufficient to never become diabetic or to reverse an established diagnosis, and you can create a powerful collection of strategies that handily trump the worthless advice being passed off by the USDA, American Diabetes Association, the American Heart Association, or the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics.

Among the most powerful and effective strategies to reduce blood sugar:

1) Eat no wheat nor grains

Recall that amylopectin A, the complex carbohydrate of grains, is highly digestible, unlike most of the other components of the seeds of grasses AKA “grains,” subject to digestion by the enzyme, amylase, in saliva and stomach. This explains why, ounce for ounce, grains raise blood sugar higher than table sugar. Eat no grains = remove the exceptional glycemic potential of amylopectin A.

2) Add no sugars, avoid high-fructose corn syrup

This should be pretty obvious, but note that the majority of processed foods contain sweeteners such as sucrose or high-fructose corn syrup, tailored to please the increased desire for sweetness among grain-consuming people. While fructose does not raise blood sugar acutely, it does so in delayed fashion, along with triggering other metabolic distortions such as increased triglycerides and fatty liver.

3) Vitamin D

Because vitamin D restores the body’s normal responsiveness to insulin, getting vitamin D right helps reduce blood sugar naturally while providing a range of other health benefits.

4) Restore bowel flora

As cultivation of several Lactobacillus and Bifidobacteria species in bowel flora yields fatty acids that restore insulin responsiveness, this leads to reductions in blood sugar over time. Minus the bowel flora-disrupting effects of grains and sugars, a purposeful program of bowel flora restoration is required (discussed at length in the Cureality Digestive Health section.)

5) Exercise

Blood sugar is reduced during and immediately following exercise, with the effect continuing for many hours afterwards, even into the next day.

Note that, aside from exercise, none of these powerful strategies are advocated by the American Diabetes Association or any other “official” agency purporting to provide dietary advice. As is happening more and more often as the tide of health information rises and is accessible to all, the best advice on health does not come from such agencies nor from your doctor but from your efforts to better understand the truths in health. This is our core mission in Cureality. A nice side benefit: information from Cureality is not accompanied by advertisements from Merck, Pfizer, Kelloggs, Kraft, or Cadbury Schweppes.

Cureality App Review: Breathe Sync

7. March 2015 William Davis (0)


Biofeedback is a wonderful, natural way to gain control over multiple physiological phenomena, a means of tapping into your body’s internal resources. You can, for instance, use biofeedback to reduce anxiety, heart rate, and blood pressure, and achieve a sense of well-being that does not involve drugs, side-effects, or even much cost.

Biofeedback simply means that you are tracking some observable physiologic phenomenon—heart rate, skin temperature, blood pressure—and trying to consciously access control over it. One very successful method is that of bringing the beat-to-beat variation in heart rate into synchrony with the respiratory cycle. In day-to-day life, the heart beat is usually completely out of sync with respiration. Bring it into synchrony and interesting things happen: you experience a feeling of peace and calm, while many healthy phenomena develop.

A company called HeartMath has applied this principle through their personal computer-driven device that plugs into the USB port of your computer and monitors your heart rate with a device clipped on your earlobe. You then regulate breathing and follow the instructions provided and feedback is obtained on whether you are achieving synchrony, or what they call “coherence.” As the user becomes more effective in achieving coherence over time, positive physiological and emotional effects develop. HeartMath has been shown, for instance, to reduce systolic and diastolic blood pressure, morning cortisol levels (a stress hormone), and helps people deal with chronic pain. Downside of the HeartMath process: a $249 price tag for the earlobe-USB device.

But this is the age of emerging smartphone apps, including those applied to health. Smartphone apps are perfect for health monitoring. They are especially changing how we engage in biofeedback. An app called Breathe Sync is available that tracks heart rate using the camera’s flash on the phone. By tracking heart rate and providing visual instruction on breathing pattern, the program generates a Wellness Quotient, WQ, similar to HeartMath’s coherence scoring system. Difference: Breathe Sync is portable and a heck of a lot less costly. I paid $9.99, more than I’ve paid for any other mainstream smartphone application, but a bargain compared to the HeartMath device cost.

One glitch is that you need to not be running any other programs in the background, such as your GPS, else you will have pauses in the Breathe Sync program, negating the value of your WQ. Beyond this, the app functions reliably and can help you achieve the health goals of biofeedback with so much less hassle and greater effectiveness than the older methods.

If you are looking for a biofeedback system that provides advantage in gaining control over metabolic health, while also providing a wonderful method of relaxation, Breathe Sync, I believe, is the go-to app right now.

Amber’s Top 35 Health and Fitness Tips

7. November 2014 Amber B (0)
This year I joined the 35 club!  And in honor of being fabulous and 35, I want to share 35 health and fitness tips with you! 

1.  Foam rolling is for everyone and should be done daily. 
2.  Cold showers are the best way to wake up and burn more body fat. 
3.  Stop locking your knees.  This will lead to lower back pain. 
4.  Avoid eating gluten at all costs. 
5.  Breath deep so that you can feel the sides or your lower back expand. 
6.  Swing a kettlebell for a stronger and great looking backside. 
7.  Fat is where it’s at!  Enjoy butter, ghee, coconut oil, palm oil, duck fat and many other fabulous saturated fats. 
8.  Don’t let your grip strength fade with age.  Farmer carries, kettlebells and hanging from a bar will help with that. 
9.  Runners, keep your long runs slow and easy and keep your interval runs hard.  Don’t fall in the chronic cardio range. 
10.  Drink high quality spring or reverse osmosis water. 
11.  Use high quality sea salt season food and as a mineral supplement. 
12.  Work your squat so that your butt can get down to the ground.  Can you sit in this position? How long?
13.  Lift heavy weights!  We were made for manual work,.   Simulate heavy labor in the weight room. 
14.  Meditate daily.  If you don’t go within, you will go with out.  We need quiet restorative time to balance the stress in our life. 
15.  Stand up and move for 10 minutes for every hour your sit at your computer. 
16. Eat a variety of whole, real foods. 
17.  Sleep 7 to 9 hours every night. 
18.  Pull ups are my favorite exercise.  Get a home pull up bar to practice. 
19.  Get out and spend a few minutes in nature.  Appreciate the world around you while taking in fresh air and natural beauty. 
20.  We all need to pull more in our workouts.  Add more pulling movements horizontally and vertically. 
21. Surround yourself with health minded people. 
22. Keep your room dark for deep sound sleep.  A sleep mask is great for that! 
23. Use chemical free cosmetics.  Your skin is the largest organ of your body and all chemicals will absorb into your blood stream. 
24. Unilateral movements will help improve symmetrical strength. 
25. Become more playful.  We take life too seriously, becoming stress and overwhelmed.  How can you play, smile and laugh more often?
26.  Choose foods that have one ingredient.  Keep your diet simple and clean. 
27.  Keep your joints mobile as you age.  Do exercises that take joints through a full range of motion. 
28. Go to sleep no later than 10:30pm.  This allows your body and brain to repair through the night. 
29. Take care of your health and needs before others.  This allows you to be the best spouse, parent, coworker, and person on the planet. 
30.  Always start your daily with a high fat, high protein meal.  This will encourage less sugar cravings later in the day. 
31. Approach the day with positive thinking!  Stinkin’ thinkin’ only leads to more stress and frustration. 
32. You are never “too old” to do something.  Stay young at heart and keep fitness a priority as the years go by. 
33. Dream big and go for it. 
34.  Lift weights 2 to 4 times every week.  Strong is the new sexy. 
35.  Love.  Love yourself unconditionally.  Love your life and live it to the fullest.  Love others compassionately. 

Amber B.
Cureality Exercise and Fitness Coach

To Change, You Need to Get Uncomfortable

25. September 2014 Amber B (0)
Sitting on the couch is comfortable.  Going through the drive thru to pick up dinner is comfortable.  But when you notice that you’re out-of-shape, tired, sick and your clothes no longer fit, you realize that what makes you comfortable is not in align with what would make you happy.   

You want to see something different when you look in the mirror.  You want to fit into a certain size of jeans or just experience your day with more energy and excitement.  The current condition of your life causes you pain, be it physical, mental or emotional.  To escape the pain you are feeling, you know that you need to make changes to your habits that keep you stuck in your current state.  But why is it so hard to make the changes you know that will help you achieve what you want?  

I want to lose weight but….

I want a six pack but…

I want more energy but….

The statement that follows the “but” is often a situation or habit you are comfortable with.  You want to lose weight but don’t have time to cook healthy meals.  So it’s much more comfortable to go through the drive thru instead of trying some new recipes.   New habits often require a learning curve and a bit of extra time in the beginning.  It also takes courage and energy to establish new routines or seek out help.  

Setting out to achieve your goals requires change.  Making changes to establish new habits that support your goals and dreams can be uncomfortable.  Life, as you know it, will be different.  Knowing that fact can be scary, but so can staying in your current condition.  So I’m asking you to take a risk and get uncomfortable so that you can achieve your goals.  

Realize that it takes 21 days to develop a new habit.  I believe it takes triple that amount of time to really make a new habit stick for the long haul.  So for 21 days, you’ll experience some discomfort while you make changes to your old routine and habits.  Depending on what you are changing, discomfort could mean feeling tired, moody, or even withdrawal symptoms.  However, the longer you stick to your new habits the less uncomfortable you start to feel.  The first week is always the worst, but then it gets easier.

Making it through the uncomfortable times requires staying focused on your goals and not caving to your immediate feelings or desires.  I encourage clients to focus on why their goals important to them.  This reason or burning desire to change will help when old habits, cravings, or situations call you back to your old ways.
Use a tracking and a reward system to stay on track.  Grab a calendar, journal or index card to check off or note your daily successes.  Shoot for consistency and not perfection when trying to make changes.  I encourage my clients to use the 90/10 principle of change and apply that to their goal tracking system.  New clothes, a massage, or a day me-retreat are just a few examples of rewards you can use to sticking to your tracking system.  Pick something that really gets you excited.  

Getting support system in place can help you feel more comfortable with being uncomfortable.  Hiring a coach, joining an online support group, or recruiting family and friends can be very helpful when making big changes.  With a support system in place you are not alone in your discomfort.  You’re network is there for you to reach out for help, knowledge, accountability or camaraderie when you feel frustrated and isolated.  

I’ve helped hundreds of people change their bodies, health and lives of the eleven years I’ve worked as a trainer and coach.  I know it’s hard, but I also know that if they can do it, so can you.  You just need to step outside of your comfort zone and take a risk. Don’t let fear create uncomfortable feelings that keep you stuck in your old ways.  Take that first step and enjoy the journey of reaching your goals and dreams.  

Amber Budahn, B.S., CSCS, ACE PT, USATF 1, CHEK HLC 1, REIKI 1
Cureality Exercise Specialist

The 3 Best Grain Free Food Swaps to Boost Fat Burning

25. September 2014 Lisa G (0)
You can join others enjoying substantial improvements in their health, energy and pant size by making a few key, delicious substitutions to your eating habits.  This is possible with the Cureality nutrition approach, which rejects the idea that grains should form the cornerstone of the human diet.  

Grain products, which are seeds of grasses, are incompatible with human digestion.  Contrary to what we have been told for years, eating healthy whole grain is not the answer to whittle away our waists.  Consumption of all grain-based carbohydrates results in increased production of the fat storage hormone insulin.  Increased insulin levels create the perfect recipe for weight gain. By swapping out high carbohydrate grain foods that cause spikes in insulin with much lower carbohydrate foods, insulin release is subdued and allows the body to release fat.

1. Swap wheat-based flour with almond flour/meal

  • One of the most dubious grain offenders is modern wheat. Replace wheat flour with naturally wheat-free, lower carbohydrate almond flour.  
  • Almond flour contains a mere 12 net carbs per cup (carbohydrate minus the fiber) with 50% more filling protein than all-purpose flour.
  • Almond flour and almond meal also offer vitamin E, an important antioxidant to support immune function.

2. Swap potatoes and rice for cauliflower

  • Replace high carb potatoes and pasta with vitamin C packed cauliflower, which has an inconsequential 3 carbs per cup.  
  • Try this food swap: blend raw cauliflower in food processor to make “rice”. (A hand held grater can also be used).  Sautee the “riced” cauliflower in olive or coconut oil for 5 minutes with seasoning to taste.
  • Another food swap: enjoy mashed cauliflower in place of potatoes.  Cook cauliflower. Place in food processor with ½ a stick organic, grass-fed butter, ½ a package full-fat cream cheese and blend until smooth. Add optional minced garlic, chives or other herbs such as rosemary.
3. Swap pasta for shirataki noodles and zucchini

  • Swap out carb-rich white pasta containing 43 carbs per cup with Shirataki noodles that contain a few carbs per package. Shirataki noodles are made from konjac or yam root and are found in refrigerated section of supermarkets.
  • Another swap: zucchini contains about 4 carbs per cup. Make your own grain free, low-carb noodles from zucchini using a julienne peeler, mandolin or one of the various noodle tools on the market.  

Lisa Grudzielanek, MS,RDN,CD,CDE
Cureality Nutrition Specialist

Not so fast. Don’t make this mistake when going gluten free!

25. September 2014 Lisa G (0)
Beginning last month, the Food and Drug Administration began implementing its definition of “gluten-free” on packaged food labels.  The FDA determined that packaged food labeled gluten free (or similar claims such as "free of gluten") cannot contain more than 20 parts per million of gluten.

It has been years in the making for the FDA to define what “gluten free” means and hold food manufactures accountable, with respect to food labeling.  However, the story does not end there.

Yes, finding gluten-free food, that is now properly labeled, has become easier. So much so the market for gluten-free foods tops $6 billion last year.   However, finding truly healthy, commercially prepared, grain-free foods is still challenging.

A very common mistake made when jumping into the gluten-free lifestyle is piling everything labeled gluten-free in the shopping cart.  We don’t want to replace a problem: wheat, with another problem: gluten free products.

Typically gluten free products are made with rice flour (and brown rice flour), tapioca starch, cornstarch, and potato flour.  Of the few foods that raise blood sugar higher than wheat, these dried, powdered starches top the list.

 They provide a large surface area for digestion, thereby leading to sky-high blood sugar and all the consequences such as diabetes, hypertension, cataracts, arthritis, and heart disease. These products should be consumed very rarely consumed, if at all.  As Dr. Davis has stated, “100% gluten-free usually means 100% awful!”

There is an ugly side to the gluten-free boom taking place.  The Cureality approach to wellness recommends selecting gluten-free products wisely.  Do not making this misguided mistake and instead aim for elimination of ALL grains, as all seeds of grasses are related to wheat and therefore overlap in many effects.

Lisa Grudzielanek MS, RDN, CD, CDE
Cureality Health & Nutrition Coach

3 Foods to Add to Your Next Grocery List

25. September 2014 Lisa G (0)
Looking for some new foods to add to your diet? Look no further. Reach for these three mealtime superstars to encourage a leaner, healthier body.

Microgreens

Microgreens are simply the shoots of salad greens and herbs that are harvested just after the first leaves have developed, or in about 2 weeks.  Microgreen are not sprouts. Sprouts are germinated, in other words, sprouted seeds produced entirely in water. Microgreens are grown in soil, thereby absorbing the nutrients from the soil.

The nutritional profile of each microgreen depends greatly on the type of microgreen you are eating. Researchers found red cabbage microgreens had 40 times more vitamin E and six times more vitamin C than mature red cabbage. Cilantro microgreens had three times more beta-carotene than mature cilantro.

A few popular varieties of microgreens are arugula, kale, radish, pea, and watercress. Flavor can vary from mild to a more intense or spicy mix depending on the microgreens.  They can be added to salads, soup, omelets, stir fry and in place of lettuce.  

Cacao Powder

Cocoa and cacao are close enough in flavor not to make any difference. However, raw cacao powder has 3.6 times the antioxidant activity of roasted cocoa powder.  In short, raw cacao powder is definitely the healthiest, most beneficial of the powders, followed by 100% unsweetened cocoa.

Cacao has more antioxidant flavonoids than blueberries, red wine and black and green teas.  Cacao is one of the highest sources of magnesium, a great source of iron and vitamin C, as well as a good source of fiber for healthy bowel function.
Add cacao powder to milk for chocolate milk or real hot chocolate.  Consider adding to coffee for a little mocha magic or sprinkle on berries and yogurt.




Shallots

Shallots have a better nutrition profile than onions. On a weight per weight basis, they have more anti-oxidants, minerals, and vitamins than onions. Shallots have a milder, less pungent taste than onions, so people who do not care for onions may enjoy shallots.

Like onions, sulfur compounds in shallot are necessary for liver detoxification pathways.  The sulfur compound, allicin has been shown to be beneficial in reducing cholesterol.  Allicin is also noted to have anti-bacterial, anti-viral, and anti-fungal activities.

Diced then up and add to salads, on top of a bun less hamburger, soups, stews, or sauces.  Toss in an omelet or sauté to enhance a piece of chicken or steak, really the possibilities are endless.  

Lisa Grudzielanek,MS,RDN,CD,CDE
Cureality Nutrition & Health Coach

3 Band Exercises for Great Glutes

15. August 2014 Amber B (0)
Bands and buns are a great combination.  (When I talk about glutes or a butt, I use the word buns)  When it comes to sculpting better buns, grab a band.   Bands are great for home workouts, at gym or when you travel.  Check out these 3 amazing exercises that will have your buns burning. 

Band Step Out

Grab a band and place it under the arch of each foot.  Then cross the band and rest your hands in your hip sockets.  The exercise starts with your feet hip width apart and weight in the heels.  Slightly bend the knees and step your right foot out to the side.  Step back in so that your foot is back in the starting position.  With each step, make sure your toes point straight ahead.  The tighter you pull the band, the more resistance you will have.    You will feel this exercise on the outside of your hips. 

Start with one set of 15 repetitions with each foot.  Work on increasing to 25 repetitions on each side and doing two to three sets.



Band Kick Back

This exercise is performed in the quadruped position with your knees under hips and hands under your shoulders.    Take the loop end of the band and put it around your right foot and place the two handles or ends of the band under your hands.  Without moving your body, kick your right leg straight back.  Return to the starting quadruped position.  Adjust the tension of the band to increase or decrease the difficulty of this exercise. 

Start with one set of 10 repetitions with each foot.  Work on increasing to 20 repetitions on each side and doing two to three sets. 



Band Resisted Hip Bridge

Start lying on your back with feet hip distance apart and knees bent at about a 45-degree angle.  Adjust your hips to a neutral position to alleviate any arching in your lower back.  Place the band across your hipbones.  Hold the band down with hands along the sides of your body.  Contract your abs and squeeze your glutes to lift your hips up off the ground.  Stop when your thighs, hips and stomach are in a straight line.  Lower you hips back down to the ground. 

Start with one set of 15 repetitions.  Work on increasing to 25 repetitions and doing two to three.  Another variation of this exercise is to hold the hip bridge position.  Start with a 30 second hold and work up to holding for 60 seconds.

Butter: Just because it's low-carb doesn't mean it's good

Butter: Just because it's low-carb doesn't mean it's good

21. October 2010 William Davis (59)
The diet I advocate in the Track Your Plaque program to gain control over the factors that lead us to coronary plaque and heart attack is a low-carbohydrate diet. We begin with elimination of wheat, cornstarch, oats, and sugars in the context of an overall carbohydrate-reduced diet. We refine the program by monitoring postprandial (after-meal) glucoses.

But not everything low-carb is good for you. Fried sausages, for instance, are exceptionally unhealthy, despite having little to no carbohydrates.

An emerging but potentially very powerful issue is that of Advanced Glycation End-products, or AGEs. There are two general varieties of AGEs: endogenous (formed within the body) and exogenous (formed in food that is consumed).

Endogenous AGEs form in the body as a result of high blood glucose, i.e., glycation. When exposed to any blood glucose level of 100 mg/dl or greater, some measure of glycation will develop due to a reaction between glucose and various proteins, e.g., proteins in the lens of the eye, forming cataracts over time.

Exogenous AGEs form in food, generally as a result of heating to high-temperature. (AGEs is really a catch-all term; there are actually a number of reactions that occur in foods, not all of them involving sugars. However, the "AGE" label is used to signify all the various related compounds. The values quoted here are from Dr. Helen Vlassara's Mt. Sinai Hospital laboratory; reference below.)

Beef cooked to high-temperature yields plentiful AGEs. One gram of roast beef, for instance, contains 306,238 units. This means that an 8-oz serving yields 13.8 million units AGEs. Compare this to a boiled egg with 573 units per gram, raw tomato with 234 units per gram.

Butter contains an impressive 264,873 units AGEs per gram, the highest content per gram in the entire list of 250 foods tested in the Mt. Sinai study. A couple pats of butter (10 g) therefore contains 2.64 million units. A stick of butter that you might add to cake batter to make a cake therefore yields 30 million units of AGEs.

So there's nothing wrong with the fat of butter. It's AGEs that appear to be responsible for the endothelial dysfunction/artery-constricting, insulin-blocking, oxidation and inflammation reactions that are triggered. Among all of our food choices, butter is among the worst from this viewpoint.

Throw in the peculiar "insulinotrophic" effect of butter, and you have potent distortion of metabolic pathways, courtesy of the butter on your lobster.

(AGE data from Goldberg 2004. In this analysis, carboxymethyllysine was the marker used for AGE content.)

Incidentally, the new Track Your Plaque diet will soon be released as chapter 9 of the new Track Your Plaque book on the website.
Tags :

Comments (59) -

  • rhc

    10/20/2010 10:15:00 PM |

    Are you talking about cold butter consumed without heating?

  • GK

    10/20/2010 10:20:53 PM |

    And do exogenous AGEs make it into systemic circulation, or are they broken down into simpler forms on digestion?  That would be the crucial thing to know.

  • Anonymous

    10/20/2010 10:28:55 PM |

    food gone and water gone... we are to survive on air? no wait thats polluted too..

  • Anonymous

    10/20/2010 10:34:19 PM |

    Is there a way to mitigate potential damage caused by exogenous AGEs?

  • Tuck

    10/20/2010 11:20:34 PM |

    "The results indicate that diet can be a significant environmental source of AGEs, which may constitute a chronic risk factor for cardiovascular and kidney damage."

    I'll start worrying when they can do a little better than "may".

    We're back to the "Eating fat makes you fat" mindset here...

  • Cameron

    10/20/2010 11:29:46 PM |

    I'd echo the question about whether or not this issue is limited to over-heated butter or butter in general.

    Also, is there enough information in the source data to indicate whether or not clarifying the butter into ghee would offer any improvement?

  • Bill

    10/20/2010 11:50:56 PM |

    Funny.
    You promote soy, which is known to be bad for you, but dump on butter which is known to be good for you....
    Strange?

  • Anonymous

    10/21/2010 12:22:02 AM |

    From the article:
    "...(AGEs), the derivatives of glucose-protein or glucose-lipid interactions"

    Can anyone explain the glucose-lipid interactions in ...butter?! Sheesh! Talk about bad science, those people did not follow the DEFINITION, never mind the protocols!

  • Daniel

    10/21/2010 12:55:44 AM |

    Exogenous AGEs are handily dealt with my people with healthy metabolims.  

    I know that's not many of your patients, so if you consider this a patient blog, ignore my comment.  

    Many people think of this blog as a "paleo blog" or a "low-carb blog" but in recent months, you've been basing many of your posts (and thinking) on the metabolically impaired.

    I can eat a plain mashed potato for breafast without seeing my blood glucose go over 100.  Are potatoes bad for me?  I really don't think so.  2 million years of evolution suggests otherwise.  Are potatoes bad for your patients that have been poisoned by years of fructose and PUFA induced metabolic carnage?  Yes.

    Same for butter.  It's a convenient and healthy source of good quality fat.  It has a lot of AGEs, but you have presented ZERO evidence that dietary AGES are unhealthy for otherwise healthy PEOPLE.    In fact, such evidence doesn't exist.  

    So, Doctor, are you treating sick patients or trying to remain a figure in the world of the super healthy?

  • Jared M Johnson

    10/21/2010 1:25:41 AM |

    Is the high level of AGEs in butter due to pasteurization?

  • Anonymous

    10/21/2010 3:15:43 AM |

    not buyin' it

  • Robin

    10/21/2010 4:02:41 AM |

    You are slowly hacking away at all I hold dear. Sausages! Butter! Sigh.

  • Joel

    10/21/2010 4:30:49 AM |

    Dr. Eades addressed this issue in 2008 and came to a different conclusion:

    http://www.proteinpower.com/drmike/low-carb-library/low-carb-diets-reduce-oxidative-stress/

    He specifically addresses the Goldberg 2004 study in the first comment:

    "I agree that there are vastly more AGEs in cooked foods, especially meats. What I’m not so sure about is whether or not the AGEs we eat end up as AGEs in us. The transit through the extreme acidity of the stomach would, I imagine, reduce the AGEs to their components, which we would absorb. The healthy human GI tract doesn’t have the ability to absorb large molecules. Even diglycerides (sugars composed of two other sugars, sucrose, for example) must be broken down to monoglycerides before being absorbed, so I seriously doubt that complex molecules such as AGEs could be absorbed in there native state. As a consequence, I’m not particularly worried about the AGEs I eat – I much more worried about the AGEs I create within."

    He also cites studies indicating that ketogenic diets reduce oxidative stress, despite butter and fried sausage being very common components of a ketogenic diet.

  • Joel

    10/21/2010 4:41:56 AM |

    Another one showing how vegetarians have higher levels of AGEs than omnivores:

    http://www.proteinpower.com/drmike/sugar-and-sweeteners/vegetarians-age-faster-2/

    Most likely due to a high fructose intake.

  • Anonymous

    10/21/2010 6:20:16 AM |

    What about butter from grass-few cows, ghee, goat's butter, or high vitamin butter oil? Do you relate to them in the same way?

  • Hans Keer

    10/21/2010 7:17:02 AM |

    Are we talking about heated butter here? Dietary AGEs should not be a problem; unless you have a leaky gut, they don't make it into the bloodstream. The problem with butter is that it, like all dairy, raises insulin and it still contains growth hormones and dangerous proteins.

  • D.M.

    10/21/2010 7:53:04 AM |

    Couple of points.
    First, that very paper says that only about 10% of exogenous AGEs actually make it into circulation, so that automatically takes butter down to 26.5KU/g. Of course if a patient has advanced kidney failure then worry about exogenous AGEs should be a concern, but so should protein, potassium etc etc.

    Secondly, the focus on exogenous AGEs in this table is obviously one-sided. Saying that butter contains more AGEs than a bowl of fructose, ignores the fact that once inside the body, the carbohydrate will cause immeasurably more glycation than the fat. These researchers are quite obviously pushing an lipophobic agenda here and I wouldn't fall for it.

    Third, it's not just butter apparently, but olive oil is also 120KU/ml or about 900 times more than an apple. But it would surely be absurb to think that apples will glycate less then olive oil?

    Fourtly, there something extremely suspect about the fact that whole milk contains 5300 times less AGE than butter. This should make us think twice before thinking that there's something uniquely bad about dairy fat that this study has discovered.

  • medeldist

    10/21/2010 8:03:21 AM |

    I find it hard to believe that butter (you do mean butter made from cow-milk, not margarine?) and red meat, two natural products, could be unhealthy for you. Anecdotal evidence says otherwise.

  • JLL

    10/21/2010 9:20:08 AM |

    The studies on AGEs are most often done on animals that have problems to begin with (e.g. diabetes). It's not clear at all whether consuming (a reasonable amount of) AGEs is harmful for healthy individuals.

    I've also reported about the AGE content of butter (see the list of AGEs in various foods) and I don't quite understand how they got such a high reading for butter. Did they heat it up? The processing of butter doesn't seem like it should result in much AGEs since milk is pretty low in AGEs.

    Like most commenters, I'm more worried about AGEs produced inside the body than AGEs from foods. And I'm even more worried about ALEs (Advanced Lipid peroxidation End-products) than AGEs.

    See my blog for more posts on glycation and lipid peroxidation (and how to avoid them).

  • Greensmu

    10/21/2010 12:05:28 PM |

    With the combination of A1 beta casein and AGEs in typical butter I think clarified butter/ghee with the cholesterol, lactose, and casein removed should be an improvement.

    But I second D.M. on the milk/butter thing, even though (like everyone else apparently =p) I have not checked the study referenced. It would follow that if they are both pasteurized they should be similarly high in AGEs.

  • Peter

    10/21/2010 12:06:22 PM |

    How do we know that eating more AGE's damages our cardiovascular system?

  • Stephen

    10/21/2010 1:08:00 PM |

    This sounds rather similar to "eating cholesterol results in an increase in cholesterol in the blood which causes heart disease and thus death."

    And butter is bad while soy is good? I'm not buying it.

    As others have mentioned - what population are we talking about here?

  • Alfredo E.

    10/21/2010 1:39:40 PM |

    Very illuminating post. I had no idea that butter had all those AGEs, I use it liberally in my cooking. I wonder what to use now instead of butter, lard?

    It would be very illustrative to educate us in ways to cook meat at low temperature.

    Thanks for the wonderful information.

  • Anna Delin

    10/21/2010 2:02:45 PM |

    Would a measurement of CRP reveal the inflammation potentially caused by the AGEs i eat? If I maintain an ideal CRP for years on a butter-rich diet, should I still worry?

  • Anand Srivastava

    10/21/2010 2:54:41 PM |

    I wonder why we love the taste of roasted meat when it is supposedly so unhealthy.

    It makes sense that the AGEs will not reach the blood stream if you have a good digestive system. If not well everything is a poison.

    Still Meat and Fat would be less of a poison than lectins from grains and legumes or even vegetables.

  • Martin Levac

    10/21/2010 3:34:39 PM |

    Dr. Davis, I'm confused. It's all your fault. If I just stick to low carb, it's all fine. But as soon as you start blaming butter, this low carb idea stops making any sense. Why would a low carb diet return me to good health when this very same low carb diet is blamed for disease?

    Clean slate. Start over. Fact, a  low carb diet returns me, and pretty much everybody else, to good health. Fact, a low carb diet contains lots of fat especially saturated animal fat. Fact, butter is one such fat and now we find that it contains lots of AGEs. Fact, in spite of this butter returns me to good health because it's part of a low carb diet. Logical conclusion, whatever I find in butter must be why I am now in good health.

    So why are you saying that butter is now bad for me?

  • Diana

    10/21/2010 4:41:17 PM |

    WoW great blog good to know since i love butter... but i totaly dont understand the whole Can anyone explain the glucose-lipid interaction thing.... thanks!

  • zach

    10/21/2010 6:13:00 PM |

    Butter is better for normal humans under normal circumstances than any plant food in existence. Butter: Food of the gods.

  • Eric

    10/21/2010 8:13:50 PM |

    I would also wonder if it's due to pasteurization.

  • Jack

    10/21/2010 8:38:18 PM |

    well dr davis, clearly you are ruffling the feathers of your readers with this one. nothing wrong with that in particular, except for when, as in this case, the information presented ruffles feathers because we all know it's just not possible. people have been eating (and studying the effects of) butter for a reaaallly long time. pretty much all whole food health gurus (meaning the awesome new wave of nutrionist/doctor bloggers that has sprung up this past decade) agree that full fat butter is very healthy to consume even in fairly substantial amounts. in fact, they ARE consuming it, and living very well while doing so. grass fed butter in particular, as you are well aware, has been tested and studied extensively, and the fat soluable vitamins and nutrients are so rich its astounding.

    just because something is found to have high AGEs before consumption, doesn't mean that particular item is causing the problems that you blame butter for here. be careful not to attack one of the most hallowed health foods unless you have have absolutely rock solid information that people can stand on.

    i only say this because i know you run a well articulated blog here and your name gets around on many other similar minded blog sites. i have read many of your articles, but reading articles like this make me (and many of your other 'faithfuls') cringe, because we really cannot agree with this.

  • Dr. William Davis

    10/21/2010 10:37:41 PM |

    Unfortunately, the data do not specify how or what was done to the butter, if anything. I suspect it was just off-the-shelf butter.

  • Dr. William Davis

    10/21/2010 10:44:27 PM |

    There seems to be a lot of misunderstandings here about what Vlassara et al's data are showing. This one perspective reported here does not do justice to this fascinating topic, which is clearly worth pursuing further.

    It's not my role to indulge anyone's low-carb fantasies. I am trying to interpret observations and data to employ in as effective a diet approach as possible.

    The data stand: Butter has some problems, despite fitting into most people's conception of low-carb.

  • Anonymous

    10/21/2010 11:31:39 PM |

    This can be interesting news, apparently not all paleo people had a paleodiet
    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1321844/Stone-Age-man-ate-bread-just-meat.html

  • Joel

    10/22/2010 12:56:48 AM |

    Somebody correct me if I'm wrong, but every study on AGEs I've managed to dig up involves feeding humans or rats a lab "preparation" of AGEs, rather than actual real food.

    Some of the earliest arguments against a high protein diet came from  experiments with feedings of pure casein or liquid protein powders. When these experiments are repeated with whole food, the results are markedly different.

    "It's not my role to indulge anyone's low-carb fantasies."

    You're shunning of butter seems to follow this chain of association:

    1) Certain AGEs in the body are  bad.
    2) Butter contains significant AGEs (type of butter? type of AGEs?).
    3) Feeding pure AGE solutions to humans increases AGEs in the body.
    4) Ergo, eating butter increases AGEs in the body.

    However, certain AGEs such as pyrraline (commonly found in milk products) have been shown NOT to be metabolized in the body:

    http://www.biochemsoctrans.org/bst/031/1383/0311383.pdf

    Are we getting the full picture here? Until a study shows that feeding butter significantly increases AGEs in the body, I think we're in the land of speculation.

  • Martin Levac

    10/22/2010 2:09:15 AM |

    Dr. Davis, the kind of data you presented in your "case against butter" is merely the sort that explains how it works and what it's made of, not the sort that tells us whether butter is good or bad. We can figure out if something's good or bad without knowing how it works, we just feed it to somebody and wait for a result. We can also learn how it works without knowing if it's good or bad. We just feed it to somebody and draw some blood.

    The data you rely on here is the latter kind. It doesn't tell us whether butter is good or bad, it merely tells us how butter works and what it's made of. Now you believe that some of what it's made of, and some ways it works, is bad for us and you conclude that because of this butter is also bad for us. But in order to fully believe this you must also ignore the data that says that butter is good for us.

    Dr. Davis, you of all people should know health is not merely a measure of what's in the blood, let alone the measure of a single blood parameter.

    What we should conclude instead is that our understanding of the data regarding butter has problems.

  • Anonymous

    10/22/2010 3:20:12 AM |

    diglycerides (sugars composed of two other sugars, sucrose, for example)

    Eades really wrote that??? LOL. He should go back and study some Biochem 101 to find out the difference between diglycerides and disaccharides.

  • escee

    10/22/2010 3:30:15 AM |

    I might have seen this article referenced at this site previously, but I think it is worth revisiting in view of the topic.

    Food Choices and Coronary Heart Disease: A Population Based Cohort Study of Rural Swedish Men with 12 Years of Follow-up

    Abstract: Coronary heart disease is associated with diet. Nutritional recommendations are frequently provided, but few long term studies on the effect of food choices on heart disease are available. We followed coronary heart disease morbidity and mortality in a cohort of rural men (N = 1,752) participating in a prospective observational study. Dietary choices were assessed at baseline with a 15-item food questionnaire. 138 men were hospitalized or deceased owing to coronary heart disease during the 12 year follow-up. Daily intake of fruit and vegetables was associated with a lower risk of coronary heart disease when combined with a high dairy fat consumption (odds ratio 0.39, 95% CI 0.21-0.73), but not when combined with a low dairy fat consumption (odds ratio 1.70, 95% CI 0.97-2.98). Choosing wholemeal bread or eating fish at least twice a week showed no association with the outcome.
    Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2009, 6, 2626-2638;

  • greensmu

    10/22/2010 2:11:29 PM |

    @Martin levac

    It doesn't tell us what butter is made of because we don't know if it was pasteurized or heated/cooked. My guess would be heated since that's what the study in question is looking at, heated foods. It's also known that butter has a very low smoking point.

  • Anonymous

    10/22/2010 3:46:00 PM |

    This is very interseting about butter. I have avoided butter because it is a non paleo food. It always seems that there are problems with these "new foods"

    Some things that I wonder though, are has this AGE content be measured accurately? Are there other studies that confirm this high level of AGEs in butter? Could butter from  pasteurized milk be higher in AGEs? Also could the level of freshness and the time it was frozen have some impact? These are some of the questions to consider.

    So far as the contention by some here that these chemicals don't pass into your system through your digestive system. The literature that I have seen clearly shows that they do pass through into your system.

  • Chuck

    10/22/2010 6:00:48 PM |

    questions about butter.  first as many have asked, was the butter heated for patuerization? my guess is yes.  second, what were the cows feed?  standard grain feed would probably lead to ore endogenous AGE in cows compared to a diet of grass.  as for now, i am sticking with my grass fed, non pasteurized butter.

  • Anonymous

    10/24/2010 7:21:18 AM |

    Nothing wrong with saying "Whoops.  My bad.  Thanks for correcting me with your comments guys and gals".

  • Anonymous

    10/24/2010 6:10:30 PM |

    Sorry Doc,

    This has been one of your least helpful, and nearly destructive blogs, I've ever seen. If you truly believe butter is not good, why not research how it could be 'better', such as clarifying it into ghee, or buying only grass-fed butter.

    So then what do YOU suggest instead as the best possible source of dietary fat???

    You must realize that the majority of people buy that horrible slow-poison known as margarine, because it has been billed as 'healthier', and your blog will only strengthen that perception.

    It seems like occasionally you go on vacation, and let the TYP committee post an article for you. This one stunk.

    The 6-year old study you quoted sounds like it was paid for by the vegetable oil industry.
    Anything we swallow gets nearly destroyed by our stomach acids, and who says that carboxymethyllysine (prior to digestion) is a proper marker for eventual AGE cell damage? Wouldn't Uric Acid have an even greater role? OR Hydrogen Peroxide induced in the blood or tissues? Doesn't Glucose, by far, cause the greatest destruction? Remind me what the G in AGE stands for?

    Weakly researched or justified blogs like this one make us lose faith in you as an expert.

  • Dr. William Davis

    10/25/2010 2:45:23 AM |

    No apologies from me.

    Just because you wish it weren't true, or that the data should be better sorted out, doesn't make it so.

    Until we obtain more clarification, butter remains on my list of "watch out."

    Wheat is unquestionably bad. Some foods, like spinach and kale, are unquestionably good. Other foods, like butter and other dairy products, have mixed effects.

    I'm talking butter here. I'm not insulting your aunt.

  • Anonymous

    10/25/2010 7:54:06 AM |

    I'm not that much of a fan of butter since I've got an autoimmune disorder which seems to get slightly worse with dairy, but, wouldn't ghee/clarified butter remove all/most of the AGEs throught seperation and physical removal of the sugars and proteins, leaving only the pure fat?
    Even AGEs from super-heated pasturized butter would be removed...
    Unless the fat itself gets glycated
    (this is the first time I've heard of this but it seems plausible, and ghee won't get rid of oxidized unsaturated fats from pasturized butter)

    Here's something else I don't understand: what makes butter so special in regard to external A.G.E.s as opposed to other low-carb, high-fat foods that it would warrant special attention?
    If butter can be filled with A.G.E.s, wouldn't a bunch of other low-carb foods considered healthy now become suspect?
    Or is the heating process itself that makes the pasteurized butter they likely tested on the culprit?
    (In the same way canola and soybean oils are hot-pressed to reduce toxins and therefore are highly oxidized)

  • Stephen

    10/25/2010 7:51:35 PM |

    I thought that the butter used in that study was whipped butter. If so, the measured AGE content might be drastically different from normal butter.

  • travis t

    10/26/2010 7:37:57 PM |

    Am I missing something, I thought AGEs were a combination of sugars and proteins. The label of my butter says zero carbs and zero protein. So what is glycated ?

  • Jack

    10/27/2010 4:59:46 PM |

    "No apologies from me."

    “It's not my role to indulge anyone's low-carb fantasies.”

    “I'm not insulting your aunt.”

    interesting attitude. i'm not real certain that an apology is in order specifically for your article, but perhaps a more in depth look at the 'data' is. the type of people who come here have a veracious appetite to find the real truth, and you are ignoring a host of excellent replies that directly negate the 'data' and 'facts' that you are standing on.

    i am not seeing "i love justifying my high fat foods because i am hopelessly addicted to butter" kind of replies here. i am seeing well researched, well articulated points about why the 'data' you presented here (and in your other previous article where you do state as a fact that "butter makes you fat") are not holding up well. And therefore, the quotes from you that I point out above do actually seem to be a bit insulting to your readers. your reply is quite pompous as well.

    please keep in mind that we (meaning the collective group of caring folk who frequent your blog) are only making noise on this one for everyone’s good. you may not want to be so hasty in shunning good responses that question your findings, but, uh, it's your call doc, and your reputation.

    as always, i appreciate the work you do. even with my disagreement about an article like this, i believe you do a great service to the health community and i sincerely thank you for it.

  • Sebastien

    10/28/2010 9:34:50 AM |

    It's funny you mentioned that spinach and kale are unquestionably good. I can easily find plenty of bad in those two vegetables. High levels of oxalates is one. Kale is also highly goitrogenic. Those two vegetables are also some the most pesticide laden. On top of the pesticides, spinach is often irradiated.

    I'll stick with occasional greens and frequent butter consumption.

  • Olga

    10/28/2010 5:32:11 PM |

    Hi Dr. Davis:

    Please take a look at the daily lipid's post from today, on AGE's.  Here is the link:
    http://blog.cholesterol-and-health.com/2010/10/is-butter-high-in-ages.html

  • blogblog

    10/31/2010 12:59:32 AM |

    To paraphrase Henry Ford "nutrition is bunk". No statistically valid long term dietary clinical trial has ever been performed on humans. So we have no statistically valid evidence-based science on what constitutes a healthy diet. In particular the recommendations for eating fruit and vegetables is totally irrational. All vegetables are full of toxins and contain large quantities of known carcinogens. In fact the EPA would be required by law to ban the consumption and sale all vegetables if they were man made.

    Nutrition 'science' consists entirely of extremely dubious experiments on rats, meaningless population studies and irrelevant test tube experiments.

  • Anonymous

    11/3/2010 9:23:11 PM |

    @blogblog

    What you say is ridicolous.
    Consumption of vegetables has always been found to have nothing but extremely positive effects and not even one negative effect, except for people with Chrons.

    Not even one evidence of cangerous or toxic effect.

  • Ed

    11/16/2010 5:23:50 AM |

    The source of the butter data is this paper: "Advanced Glycoxidation End Products in Commonly Consumed Foods" (2004, Journal of the American Dietetic Association, via Google Scholar cache).

    Here are some numbers from Table 1:

    Milk, cow, whole .... 0.05 kU/mL
    Butter .............. 265 kU/g

    The table caption refers to "foods prepared by standard cooking methods" (these include frying). Expecting high AGEs in uncooked butter -- over 5000 times the level in milk! -- would make little sense. There's every reason to think that this butter had been exposed to high temperatures.

  • Jack

    11/17/2010 6:27:41 PM |

    @anonymous (Nov 3 comment)
    Actually, what you say is ridiculous too. I'd be careful not to make blanket statements like that. Built-in defense mechanisms are not reserved for Venus Fly-traps only. Vegetables, like many other plants, have them too.

    PLANTS BITE BACK

  • Joe

    12/7/2010 1:22:29 PM |

    What do you think about this from Dr Mercola?

    Good-old-fashioned butter, when made from grass-fed cows, is a rich in a substance called conjugated linoleic acid (CLA). CLA is not only known to help fight cancer and diabetes, it may even help you to lose weight, which cannot be said for its trans-fat substitutes.

    http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2010/12/07/why-is-butter-better.aspx

  • Anonymous

    12/7/2010 6:32:42 PM |

    According to the chart, a frankfurter or a serving of roast beef is quite a bit worse than a serving of butter.
    http://inhumanexperiment.blogspot.com/2009/09/age-content-of-foods.html

  • jpatti

    6/18/2011 9:42:06 PM |

    Butter is not good because it's low carb.  Butter is good because it's butter.  

    Before I ever heard of low-carb, or vitamins or minerals or any of that, when ALL I knew about nutrition was that sugar was bad and veggies good cause mom said so, butter was good.  Butter made me WANT to eat an artichoke.  And... it still works today!

    If there were no other benefit to butter than it made vegetables palatable, butter would be an unqualified good.  I would not eat 1/10th the veggies I do if not for butter.  

    Since I am stubbornly of the opinion that eating at least half the diet (by volume) as nonstarchy vegetables is the main thing anyone can do for health, butter is an unqualified good in my world.  

    If it makes people voluntarily eat their veggies, it's good.  

    *********************************************************************

    While just the veggie intake with butter in the diet is a HUGE good; butter is better than just the vegetables that go with it.  

    Butter is the number one source of butyric acid, a fatty acid that is a major constituent of the GI tract and often deficient in folks with GI disturbances like celiac and Chron's and systemic Candida.  IMO, the number one thing anyone with GI issues can do is eat lots of butter.  If you want to heal even faster, don't just eat it, but take it in both ends, so to speak.  

    Butyric acid also counteracts inflammation, the main underlying issue with heart disease as I understand, and the apparent underlying issue with the epidemic of autoimmune disorders we're seeing.

    My grandmother's generation ate GOBS of bread, wheat was a mainstay of their diet.  But they didn't have all the gluten-intolerance this generation has.  IMO, the reason is cause they slathered butter on their bread.  

    Anyways, she lived to 102, so must've done SOMeTHING right.  And she never believed the hype about margarine, always overate butter like crazy.

    Butyric acid has other interesting effects... it lowers total cholesterol 25%, serum triglycerides 50%, fasting insulin 25%, and increases insulin sensitivity 300% - there's a bunch of pubmed references listed here: http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2009/12/butyric-acid-ancient-controller-of.html

    Note that "metabolic syndrome," the precursor to T2 diabetes, is pretty much insulin resistance and high triglycerides.  When metabolic syndrome is the question, apparently, butter is the answer.

    *********************************************************************

    Butter is particularly good from pasture-raised animals, which maximizes the vitamins A, D3 and K2 in it.  

    Very few of us get enough vitamin A.  Many of us, diabetics being an example I'm terrifically familair with, do not convert beta-carotene to vitamin A well at all.  In general, omnivores and carnivores don't do this efficiently, even the healthy ones with good genes.  

    Herbivores do it wonderfully.  All the gorgeous colors of the pasture convert into lots of real vitamin A for us to eat.  You can take nasty cod liver oil, or you can just melt yummy butter on your veggies.

    I do not spend 16 hours in the sun in summer.  But I rent a small house on a farm and am surrounded by cattle, and they do.  They walk about, eating pasture, chewing cud and the calves frolicking across the fields, in the sunshine all day, where they also are making loads of vitamin D3 - the real stuff, not the crappy D2 they "fortify" factory farmed milk with.

    Butter from cows eating rapidly growing grass is also the best known source of K2 other than natto.  Just like Vitamin A, we are not good at making K2, but cows are.

    *********************************************************************

    IMO, butter is a near-miraculous food, one of the true health foods.  

    I buy from a farm that makes butter from cream from cows on pasture, with no ingredients except cream.  When the beta-carotene content is highest, it turns darker, which is also when the vitamin A, D3 and K2 is highest.  When it gets like that, I buy 40 lbs and stick it in my freezer for consumption over the next year.  When I run out, I just buy it weekly again until it gets dark again.

    I eat between 1/2 - 1 lb butter every week. It's yummy.  As noted, it's wonderful on vegetables.  But it's also nice just melted over some over-easy eggs, or a pat melted on a burger or steak.  

    Also, pasture-raised butter tastes better.  The stuff I buy comes in tubs, not sticks, but hubby being a truck driver finds sticks more convenient.  He buttered a dish with his butter recently before he served it to me and... well, I added the real butter.  His butter just wasn't... buttery enough.  

    Butter is... just awesome stuff.  And for those who REALLY disagree, my advice is to heed Julia Child who said, "If you're afraid of butter, use cream."

  • Florent Berthet

    2/7/2012 6:04:57 PM |

    Like Olga, I''d be very interested to hear your opinion on this daily lipid''s post:
    http://blog.cholesterol-and-health.com/2010/10/is-butter-high-in-ages.html

    Also, what about ghee?

  • Alex Tahti

    11/5/2012 7:21:42 PM |

    Apparently the AGEs in the study cited by Dr. Davis were measured using anti-body immunoassay which is an indirect method that is susceptible to distortions.   A mass spectrometer, a direct measurement, was used to analysis AGE in butter in this study http://biomedgerontology.oxfordjournals.org/content/65A/9/963.full and found: "The CML concentrations of various foods vary widely from about 0.35–0.37 mg CML/kg food for pasteurized skimmed milk and butter to about 11 mg CML/kg food for fried minced beef and 37 mg CML/kg food for white bread crust".

    So wheat in the form of white bread crust is a factor of 100 more than butter in CML AGE.

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