A disease of malnutrition

I recently discovered a BBC show called You Are What You Eat, in which overweight people with bad eating habits meet with a nutritionist, then go on a "detoxification" and gut-healing diet for 2 months.  What's interesting is that these people lose huge amounts of weight in just 8 weeks, yet there is no focus on calories.  Yes, they wind up eating fewer calories because they fill up on fruits and veggies, but calorie restriction is not the goal.  They can snack freely, as long as what they eat is on their healthy foods list.  The goal is simply to eat food with more nutrient content.

"You're suffering from malnutrition," the host says to an overweight man in one episode.  He laughs, because right in front of them is a long buffet table piled with food, representing what he usually eats in a week.  But, as she points out, there are virtually no vegetables on the table, no fruits, no nuts, no legumes, no fresh fish, no whole grains, etc.  His body is starved for nutrients, which is why it's making him gorge himself, in a vain hope that vitamins, minerals, or omega-3's might slip in.  (He loses 56 pounds in 8 weeks, with not much exercise, either.)  In another episode a woman says she feels much more satisfied after eating, even though she is eating smaller portions.

The view that obesity is a response to malnutrition is also held over at the Weston A. Price website (my absolute favorite website for health information).  From their page on obesity:

The obesity epidemic of the past century has mirrored the rise in consumption of processed, devitalized foods.

In the category of "devitalized" foods, alas, we'd have to include most meat, poultry, milk, cheese, eggs, and fish currently sold in the United States.  Farmed salmon are fed corn, which means they come out of the water beige and have to be dyed pink.  I'm quite sure they don't have the omega-3 levels of wild-caught salmon.  Similarly, most US cows don't eat their normal food; they also eat corn.  Pastured, grass-eating beef have a substantial amount of omega-3's in their fat (which can be yellow, not white as in supermarket beef), and the omega-3's come through in their milk, as well.  Such beef also contains conjugated linoleic acid, which (among other things) prevents breast cancer.  Chickens allowed to roam freely, eating grasses and bugs, have very high levels of omega-3's in their eggs, along with vitamin E; chickens raised in 9-inch wire boxes have little of either.  My parents bought some 19th-century style chickens from a farm nearby, and their fat is a vivid yellow, not white; their meat is different than chickens fed corn.  (Also, oddly, when you lay them in a roasting pan their legs stick straight up.)

I'm reminded of an odd program Seth and I once saw on TV, featuring burger joints from across the country.  One in Texas was run by a traditional rancher who slaughtered his own long-horn cattle to make the burgers.  His burgers couldn't give you heart trouble, he said.  "My cattle have nice, yellow fat... that's healthy fat," he explained.  "It's that white fat that'll kill ya."

This is to say nothing of contaminants in our meat and poultry: the hormones, antibiotics, and concentrated pesticides accumulated from eating grain.  Our toxic environment means our livers have to spend a lot of time and energy eliminating those toxins.  And yet the liver is also expected to make up for dietary shortfalls in omega-3's, saturated fats, cholesterol, and other important nutrients.  (And yeah, I did mean to include cholesterol in that list!)  We expect our livers to handle the aluminum absorbed from our deodorant, the mercury inhaled from our fillings, the PCBs and metals in our fish, the pesticides in our milk, the prescription drugs and Tylenol-- AND make enough fat and cholesterol to compensate for our low-saturated-fat and low-cholesterol diets.  Those who follow mainstream dietary advice may easily be starved for healthy saturated fats, as are most people who eat a lot of processed and fast food, where soybeans and corn provide most of the fat.  It's no wonder that we crave greasy foods, if we're hungry for healthy fats.  The problem is, that urge may be satisfied by junk foods high in trans-fats, which create innumerable problems in the body, including liver damage, weight gain, mental problems (because trans-fats block omega-3's), and inflammation.  The liver sends out a signal ("For god's sake, eat some butter!") and we feed it McDonald's fries or soy cheese-- either way, not a good thing.  Our bodies just cannot catch a break here.

On another front, American farmland has lost about 75% of its mineral content compared with a century ago.  Vegetables such as dark leafy greens have only a quarter of the magnesium and calcium they should have, and anyway, we eat far fewer dark leafy greens than we used to.  Myocardial infarction can be caused by magnesium deficiency, as can weak bones, high blood pressure, anxiety and panic attacks.  Zinc deficiency can cause infertility problems or a weak immune system.  Copper deficiency can also weaken the immune system, and can interfere with your body's ability to process iron, resulting in iron-deficient anemia.  In the 19th century a person could increase mineral consumption just by eating more food generally.  Nowadays, with supermarkets chock full of stuff that is not actually food, you could double your calories and barely increase mineral intake.

As I wrote about in this post, organic fruits and veggies (a small minority of American produce) contain more nutrients than agribusiness produce.  Organic produce contains more minerals, phenols, antioxidants, and salicylic acid (an anti-inflammatory which is thought to be preventive against cancer and arterial plaque).  From my post:

[O]n average, the organic brands [of soup] contained nearly six times as much salicylic acid, a natural anti-inflammatory agent. One of the organic soups contained nearly 50 times the concentration of salicylic acid as the typical non-organic soup.

The "low fat" craze has also contributed to nutritional problems, because some vitamins cannot be absorbed in the absence of fat.  Your liver can make fats, but not very well; and in the meantime a fat-free meal means a complete lack of vitamins A, E, D, or K.  I really don't know how it's legal to label non-fat milk as "fortified with vitamins A and D," because how can you have fat-soluble vitamins in a substance which contains zero fat?  And even if the molecules are somehow in suspension, your body cannot absorb them in the absence of fat. 

People think vitamin A is in plant foods, most famously carrots.  Actually, you cannot get vitamin A by eating a cup of carrots; you get beta carotene, the precursor to vitamin A.  Your body then has to convert roughly 6 units of beta carotene into 1 unit of vitamin A, except that if you're diabetic or have any of a list of problems, you can barely manage this conversion at all.  Many of the elderly are getting virtually no vitamin A, not even in their multivitamins (often, only precursors to vitamin A are included).  The best source of vitamin A is in the fat of animals which were naturally raised (a source most Americans have no access to) or from fish liver oils.  A couple of teaspoons of cod liver oil per day (preferably in a capsule-- blech!) would do a lot of people a world of good.

Speaking of fish, we've so polluted the planet that people understandably eschew seafood.  Unfortunately, this contributes to a lack of omega-3 fatty acids.  Omega-3 fatty acids cannot be made by the body, but have to be consumed from food.  They are critically important, being necessary for brain growth in children, and proper brain functioning in everyone.  They prevent heart disease, arterial plaque, stroke, and high blood pressure.  They prevent inflammation and arthritis, aid in weight loss, improve oxygenation of muscles and other tissues, assist in blood sugar control, and play a key role in cell membranes, allowing cell biochemistry to function properly.  A lack of omega-3's can also cause depression, anxiety, violence, hyperactivity, learning disorders, and perhaps more serious illnesses such as bipolar disorder or even schizophrenia.  Clearly we are supposed to be eating a heck of a lot of fish and seafood generally, which for most of human history was no problem, because we built our cities and towns along seas, lakes, and rivers.

People will say you can eat flax or flaxseed oil and get omega-3's, but this is not entirely true.  There are three kinds of omega-3's, abbreviated ALA, DHA, and EPA.  By far, DHA and EPA are the most important to health, but plant sources such as seeds and nuts have mostly (entirely?) ALA.  One government panel estimated that 15% of ALA gets converted to EPA and 5% to DHA by the liver (source).  But, again, there is only just so much our overtaxed livers can do, and there are many things that inhibit this conversion.  You will not convert ALA into the more important omega-3's if you: eat a lot of corn or soybean oil, consume trans-fats, drink alcohol, are deficient in zinc or magnesium, are an infant, are elderly, use prescription drugs, use Tylenol, have diabetes, or are Asian, Irish, Scandinavian, or Native American (see previous link).  This is why food products labeled "High in Omega-3's," which turn out to be entirely ALA, really peeve me.

Seafoods also contain iodine.  Americans consume only half the iodine we did in the 70's, because our flours are now bleached by bromine instead of iodine.  Not only are we missing the iodine we used to get in baked goods, but on top of that, the bromine displaces iodine already stored in the body.  Fluoride is even better at displacing iodine (actually iodide, but you need both forms).  Fluoridated water and brominated flour are denying our thyroids the iodine and iodide they very much need.  So here's a case where a nutrient deficiency can directly cause obesity: the thyroid is starved, and metabolism slows.

I've painted a pretty grim picture, I know.  But with so many inadequacies in our food supply, how many people are gorging themselves because they just cannot get enough nutrients?  How many people's bodies are signaling them to go on a rampage of nutrient consumption, but the nutrients are not to be had in American food?

I'll end with a few excerpts from the Laura Ingalls Wilder book Farmer Boy.  Almanzo, at the time this book was set, was 9 years old.  I suspect he got more nutrition from an average dinner than many Americans get in a whole week!

Almanzo ate the sweet, mellow baked beans.  He ate the bit of salt pork that melted like cream in his mouth.  He ate mealy boiled potatoes, with brown ham-gravy.  He ate the ham.  He bit deep into velvety bread with sleek butter, and he ate the crisp golden crust.  He demolished a a tall heap of pale mashed turnips, and a hill of stewed yellow pumpkin.  Then he sighed, and tucked his napkin deeper into the neckband of his red waist.   And he ate plum preserves and strawberry jam, and grape jelly, and spiced watermelon-rind pickles.  He felt very comfortable inside.  Slowly he ate a large piece of pumpkin pie. [page 28]

Almanzo ate four large helpings of apples 'n' onions fried together.  He ate roast beef and brown gravy, and mashed potatoes and creamed carrots and boiled turnips, and countless slices of buttered bread with crab-apple jelly.  And [Mother] put a thick slice of birds' nest pudding on his bare plate, and handed him the pitcher of sweetened cream speckled with nutmeg.  [page 73.  Note: this was lunch]

Mother was frying pancakes and the big blue platter... was full of plump brown sausage cakes in their brown gravy.  There was oatmeal with plenty of thick cream and maple sugar.  There were fried potatoes, and the golden buckwheat cakes, as many as Almanzo wanted to eat, with sausages and gravy or with butter and maple syrup.  There were preserves and jams and jellies and doughnuts.  But best of all Almanzo liked the spicy apple pie with its thick, rich juice and its crumbly crust.  He ate two big wedges of the pie. [page 38]

Mother sliced the hot rye 'n' injun bread [made of rye, cornmeal, milk, and eggs] on the bread-board by her plate.  Father's spoon cut deep into the chicken-pie; he scooped out big pieces of thick crust and turned up their fluffy yellow under-sides on the plate.  He poured gravy over them; he dipped up big pieces of tender chicken, dark meat and white meat sliding from the bones.  He added a mound of baked beans and topped it with a quivering slice of fat pork.  At the edge of the plate he piled dark-red beet pickles.  And he handed the plate to Almanzo.  Silently Almanzo ate it all.  Then he ate a piece of pumpkin pie....  [H]e ate a piece of apple pie with cheese. [page 94]

Almanzo Wilder was born in 1857 and lived to be 92 years old.

Comments

[barbnocity]

With regards to the quote from the Laura Ingalls Wilder book, did you see the studies last year regarding obesity (or lack thereof) and the Amish? I believe the study actually focused more on how much walking/exercise the Amish get each day in general compared to the average American and how the Amish had a significantly less obesity rate even give their high fat diet, but I wonder if their diet in general also contributes to their good health considering they are most likely producing and making most if not all of their own food.

[freelearner]

Hi Barb! Sorry it took a few days for my reply....

I haven't seen the study of the Amish, but I'll Google it, it sounds interesting. I know they get more exercise, but they also don't eat MSG, aspartame, trans-fats, or high-fructose corn syrup (all of which mean more weight gain than can be explained from calories alone).

Also, fat from naturally raised animals is healthy fat... polyunsaturated plant-based fats will oxidize (go rancid) very quickly, and thus put a strain on the body. Saturated fat from naturally raised beef, pork, lamb, or chicken is healthier than a whole boatload of safflower oil... from what I understand from Dr. Enig and others at the Weston A. Price site. I doubt the Amish eat corn oil-- how much oil is really in corn, anyway?

A belated Happy Birthday to Gwen, and thanks for commenting over here at my blog.