Yosemite National Park - More Blood Sugar Capers

The Great Cake Porn Tour
New York - Limited Cake Porn but Plenty of Sugar Pushers
New York Part 2 – Another Sugar Pusher and Cake Security Threat
Las Vegas - Supreme Cake Porn and Absurd Food Labelling
Yosemite National Park - More Blood Sugar Capers
San Francisco Part 1: Stretching the Definitions of Natural and Healthy
San Francisco Part 2 - My Proxy Cheesecake Shame

If what you're looking for is cheesecakes big enough to stop a charging bull elephant Yosemite National Park is not for you. Likewise, if you seek shops who pupport to sell healthy food but instead secrete sugar-laden products about their shelves to coax the weak into buying them, go elsewhere.

Yosemite is the penultimate stop on the The Great Cake Porn Tour and in the absence of cake porn or Sugar Pushers I have instead been reflecting on the reasons why Mrs Methuselah - whose sugar guzzling activities I have been documenting during the course of this series - has been doing the things she has.

Mrs M had always intended to 'treat' herself on this holiday by consuming sugary food, something she normally avoids. In New York she devoured a slab of cheesecake and was the worse for wear not long afterwards and a couple of days later in Las Vegas she succumbed to the siren call of the buffet counter for breakfast then lunch and was practically unable to stand in the queue for the evening buffet, requiring periodic, smug support from me.

So here's what I think, or rather what someone else suggested and I agree with. I can't find the reference but I believe it originated from Dr Eades' blog...

We are not programmed to regulate our appetite when it comes to sweet things. We did not have to do it for the majority of the time we were evolving, so we are not very good at it. We did not have to do it because there was a perennial scarcity of sweet foods. Fruit and berries were the only things around and we would rarely have been able to get our hands on enough for gorging to be a problem.

So in fact it was in our interest to eat as much sweet food as we could get our hands on because it was a vitamin-rich food source, naturally scarce, and not in the intense and unhealthy form that sweet food takes today. The only thing that would have come close to the intensity of the confectionery we have unlimited access to today would have been honey - and our access to that would surely have been regulated by its owners.

So as I watched Mrs M tuck into a king-sized Milky Way bar on the drive from Vegas to Yosemite, it dawned on me that her apparently forgetting the unpleasantness of the day before could be a result of baser instincts conflicting with commons sense - her innate craving for vitamin-rich sweetness overriding what her modern brain knew to be a bad idea; and as if to drive the point home, yesterday, 4 hours after she troughed her way though a medley of muffin-like, pancake based, maple smothered carbage (carbohydrate + garbage - geddit?), I found myself in the car, once again battling her hypoglycemic sarcasm with the simple sword of well-managed blood sugar...

Final stop: San Francisco on Tuesday.

The Series:
The Great Cake Porn Tour
New York - Limited Cake Porn but Plenty of Sugar Pushers
New York Part 2 – Another Sugar Pusher and Cake Security Threat
Las Vegas - Supreme Cake Porn and Absurd Food Labelling
Yosemite National Park - More Blood Sugar Capers
San Francisco Part 1: Stretching the Definitions of Natural and Healthy
San Francisco Part 2 - My Proxy Cheesecake Shame

See Also:
The Worst Sugar Pushers of all: Health Food Stores... Read more

(More) About Me

If you have seen the About Me page and wondered what the story is behind the pictures, you may be interested in reading this post on Fitness Spotlight...... Read more

Las Vegas - Supreme Cake Porn and Absurd Food Labelling

The Great Cake Porn Tour
New York - Limited Cake Porn but Plenty of Sugar Pushers
New York Part 2 – Another Sugar Pusher and Cake Security Threat
Las Vegas - Supreme Cake Porn and Absurd Food Labelling
Yosemite National Park - More Blood Sugar Capers
San Francisco Part 1: Stretching the Definitions of Natural and Healthy
San Francisco Part 2 - My Proxy Cheesecake Shame

Vegas was always going to be the Great Cake Porn Tour's finest hour, so I was not surprised to find this set of beauties at the Cheesecake factory in Caesar’s Palace shopping centre. Following the security problems I had with cakes in New York part 2, I was not so surprised to find I had to talk my way past the front-of-house person before getting access to these.

Yesterday at breakfast I discovered a new phenomenon. Mrs Methuselah was adding what I thought was milk to her coffee, when I noticed that the small tubs were actually labelled ‘Non Dairy Product.’ This is about as vague as you can possibly get, suggesting to a literal minded sort like myself that this could be absolutely anything - just not dairy. A quick squint at the ingredients revealed 'Partially hydrogenated soybean oil' to be the top ingredient. When I informed Mrs M she was basically adding trans fat to her drink she adopted a expression of disgust and pushed her cup away. When I had stopped laughing and explained the likely ingredients of the waffles, pancakes, muffins and cream cheese she had been devouring for the past 10 minutes, she realised that she may as well enjoy the coffee to and it was grudgingly allowed to rejoin her dining area.

I am considering releasing a food range myself, called 'Non Engine Oil'. It seems like this would give me even more scope ingredients-wise than the makers of 'Non Dairy Product' have. Imagine the cost savings and flexibility when apparently I can make it out of literally anything that's not engine oil!

I should point out that Mrs Methuselah had always intended to stray from her normally healthy diet for the duration of this holiday. What is interesting to watch is how short-lived the honeymoon period of her binge-fest has been. Yesterday, after the breakfast waffles, pancakes, jam, muffins and (pre-sweetened) coffee she wandered round in a wired haze for a couple of hours, complaining that she should not have eaten what she did.

At lunch, faced once again with a spectacular array of desserts at the buffet counter she was unable to resist, the discomfort of 4 hours previously seeming to be distant dream. She returned with not one, but 3 desserts - creme brulee, apple crumble and some kind of banana pudding which looked a lot like non dairy product to me. Needless to say, she heroically cleared the plate as I looked on, both appalled and envious.

By 7pm I was listening to the same rueful whining of 9 hours before, except this time far more accute. Mrs M's blood sugar had apparently taken a turn for the worst. In the queue for buffet number 3 I found myself needing to prop her up and talk her down from being sick. When we finally got seated she returned with a sparsely populated plate of vegetables and white fish. She ordered water.

I have not encountered any health food stores yet so no more sugar pushers to report.

The Series:
The Great Cake Porn Tour
New York - Limited Cake Porn but Plenty of Sugar Pushers
New York Part 2 – Another Sugar Pusher and Cake Security Threat
Las Vegas - Supreme Cake Porn and Absurd Food Labelling
Yosemite National Park - More Blood Sugar Capers
San Francisco Part 1: Stretching the Definitions of Natural and Healthy
San Francisco Part 2 - My Proxy Cheesecake Shame

See Also:
Why (Refined) Sugar is Bad: Some References
The Worst Sugar Pushers of all: Health Food Stores
... Read more

New York Part 2 – Another Sugar Pusher and Cake Security Threat

The Great Cake Porn Tour
New York - Limited Cake Porn but Plenty of Sugar Pushers
New York Part 2 – Another Sugar Pusher and Cake Security Threat
Las Vegas - Supreme Cake Porn and Absurd Food Labelling
Yosemite National Park - More Blood Sugar Capers
San Francisco Part 1: Stretching the Definitions of Natural and Healthy
San Francisco Part 2 - My Proxy Cheesecake Shame

Before we left New York, I discovered another sugar pusher – The Vitamin Shoppe. On sale in their 3rd Avenue store were two offending items. First, chocolate-covered goji berries, whose top ingredient is chocolate which in turn has its constituent parts listed to include sugar. Second, fruit lollipops, the top ingredient of which is organic evaporated cane juice. As discussed in New York part 1, consuming this ‘alternative’ version of sugar is unlikely to mitigate the reasons it’s bad for you.

Certainly The Vitamin Shoppe ticks the boxes to qualify them for membership of the 'health food stores, worst sugar pushers of all' club. With a name like that it would test the bounds of rationality to suggest they are not positioning themselves as a health food store and they are indeed selling sugar-laden products.

These two products did appear to be an afterthought, though. Other than a few, much less offensive trail-mix offerings, the shelves were populated entirely by – get this - vitamins. Okay, they did have a healthy stock of bodybuilding products too, no doubt riddled with artificial sweeteners – but that’s for another post entirely. So whilst The Vitamin Shoppe does get membership of the club, I question their commitment to the cause. If they are going to sell garbage masquerading as health food then they should either do a decent job of it or not do it at all.

In the meantime, on the great cake porn tour we found some superb cheese cakes at a deli on Wall Street but were not allowed to photograph them. The reason, we were told, was “No photographs,” which we had to conclude was for security reasons. This seemed plausible to me because I’d have been pretty upset to see such a fine set of cakes destroyed by an attack of some sort.

In any case, Mrs Methuselah was so taken by the marble chocolate cheesecake that she was driven to buy a large slab, which I then had to watch her consume in maddeningly small forkfuls. Needless to say I fought hard to disguise my schadenfreude on the subway ride back to the hotel as she battled the post-sugar sea-sickness.

The good news is that the restaurant in Terminal C at Newark Airport still sells the impossibly large cheesecake I mentioned in New York part 1, as you can see from the photo. You know you have found a real cake when its concrete equivalent would ruin the suspension on an SUV.

The Series:
The Great Cake Porn Tour
New York - Limited Cake Porn but Plenty of Sugar Pushers
New York Part 2 – Another Sugar Pusher and Cake Security Threat
Las Vegas - Supreme Cake Porn and Absurd Food Labelling
Yosemite National Park - More Blood Sugar Capers
San Francisco Part 1: Stretching the Definitions of Natural and Healthy
San Francisco Part 2 - My Proxy Cheesecake Shame

See Also:
Why (Refined) Sugar is Bad: Some References
The Worst Sugar Pushers of all: Health Food Stores
Julian Graves Responds to 'Sugar Pushers' Post (Worst Sugar Pushers Part 2)
The Worst Sugar Pushers of All Part 3 - Holland and Barrett Takes Centre Stage... Read more

New York - Limited Cake Porn but Plenty of Sugar Pushers

The Great Cake Porn Tour
New York - Limited Cake Porn but Plenty of Sugar Pushers
New York Part 2 – Another Sugar Pusher and Cake Security Threat
Las Vegas - Supreme Cake Porn and Absurd Food Labelling
Yosemite National Park - More Blood Sugar Capers
San Francisco Part 1: Stretching the Definitions of Natural and Healthy
San Francisco Part 2 - My Proxy Cheesecake Shame

I have been disappointed by the cakes in New York so far. Last year I spotted an impossibly deep gateau at Newark airport, so if they are still selling the same sort of thing on Tuesday when we fly to Vegas, I’ll get a snapshot. In the meantime, this was the best I could do – I found these cakes in a deli in the financial district.

Meanwhile, I had more luck looking for health food stores selling junk food. First, I browsed what is on offer in GNC on 57^th street. There I found exactly the same sort of rubbish I reported here is being peddled in UK health food stores like Julian Graves and Holland and Barrett. After Julian Graves’ claims not to be a health food store I thought it would be prudent to check with the assistant in GMC whether they are indeed a health food store.

"You’re a health food store, right?" I asked, as I entered.

"Right," confirmed the assistant.

Two items worth mentioning are their chocolate-covered nuts and yogurt-coated nuts. These contain, of course, sugar as one of the top ingredients and also partially hydrogenated oil of one sort or another. Naturally, these products were being sold alongside regular, healthy products like unsalted nuts.

I also called into the mighty Wholefoods on the North East corner of Central Park, where I was surprised and disappointed to find precisely the same kinds of products. However, instead of 'sugar' on the list of ingredients, I found ‘Evaporated cane juice’, 'Naturally Milled Sugar' or 'Cane Sugar'.

I can see how Wholefoods might put forward their case. One of their core values relates to the 'nutritive value' of the food, but the word health is not mentioned anywhere. They would argue that by ensuring their products use sugar in a form that has been minimally tampered with, it contains more nutrients. Certainly this is true of milled sugar according to this web site.

However, I am sceptical. I do not believe that just because their pseudo-candy is full of naturally milled cane sugar instead of normal refined sugar, the detrimental impact on health of eating them is materially reduced. Having a few extra vitamins there is unlikely to mitigate the ill-effects of sugar consumption much, if at all. I have no direct evidence for this and none may exist, but I feel there is a commonsense case that strongly supports the idea.

I wonder whether Wholefoods would also try to claim they are not positioned as a 'health food store'. If so, then I would refer them to the response I gave to Julian Graves - that however much they refer to their stated core values, what counts is the perception of its customers: if people think they are a health food store then this is almost certainly result of their marketing strategy, regardless of what they state explicitly.

Don't get me wrong - I like Wholefoods. I suspect they have more ethics in their little pinkie than most companies have in total; but if people see them as a health food store and if they are selling unhealthy products like yogurt (sugar)-coated nuts alongside regular nuts, then they are just as guilty as the other health food stores and should be called to account.

More from Vegas. I hope to bring you some proper cake porn from there.

The Series:
The Great Cake Porn Tour
New York - Limited Cake Porn but Plenty of Sugar Pushers
New York Part 2 – Another Sugar Pusher and Cake Security Threat
Las Vegas - Supreme Cake Porn and Absurd Food Labelling
Yosemite National Park - More Blood Sugar Capers
San Francisco Part 1: Stretching the Definitions of Natural and Healthy
San Francisco Part 2 - My Proxy Cheesecake Shame

See Also:
The Worst Sugar Pushers of all: Health Food Stores
Julian Graves Responds to 'Sugar Pushers' Post (Worst Sugar Pushers Part 2)
The Worst Sugar Pushers of All Part 3 - Holland and Barrett Takes Centre Stage
Why (Refined) Sugar is Bad: Some References
We're all Junkies... Read more

The Great Cake Porn Tour

The Great Cake Porn Tour
New York - Limited Cake Porn but Plenty of Sugar Pushers
New York Part 2 – Another Sugar Pusher and Cake Security Threat
Las Vegas - Supreme Cake Porn and Absurd Food Labelling
Yosemite National Park - More Blood Sugar Capers
San Francisco Part 1: Stretching the Definitions of Natural and Healthy

If you are a regular to this blog you will have gathered that I am not in favour of sugar as food ingredient; however, I reserve most of my wrath for food manufacturers who pollute healthy foods with sugar or use it to disguise otherwise bland and nutritionally barren products; but I can't help feeling less animosity towards cake-makers. Say what you like about drug dealers - they don't usually pretend that what they are selling is good for you.

As a former cake and chocolate fiend I find it hard not to admire the beauty of well-made cakes; and as with a number of things, they just do cake better in the US. Okay, the subtle ornamentation of the finest French patisserie might not be there, but for me, that is not what cake is about. It’s about cream-smothered slabs of cheesecake and vast wedges of gateau.

Since the US is where Mrs Methuselah and I will be taking our holiday for the next two weeks, this presents an opportunity. I have not eaten cake since 2006 and don’t intend to start now; but to celebrate the fact I can look but not touch and because I just know we will encounter some great cakes on our travels, I plan to post photos of the best ones. Don't worry - all photos will be tastefully done and the cakes will in no way be exploited.

It won't all be frivolity though - your comments suggest that the problem with 'health' food stores selling sugar-laden products is as common in the US as in the UK, so I'll be looking out for this too.

The Series:
The Great Cake Porn Tour
New York - Limited Cake Porn but Plenty of Sugar Pushers
New York Part 2 – Another Sugar Pusher and Cake Security Threat
Las Vegas - Supreme Cake Porn and Absurd Food Labelling
Yosemite National Park - More Blood Sugar Capers
San Francisco Part 1: Stretching the Definitions of Natural and Healthy

See Also:
The Worst Sugar Pushers of all: Health Food Stores
We're all Junkies
Why (Refined) Sugar is Bad: Some References... Read more

Julian Graves Responds to 'Sugar Pushers' Post (Worst Sugar Pushers Part 2)

The Worst Sugar Pushers of all: Health Food Stores
Julian Graves Responds to 'Sugar Pushers' Post (Worst Sugar Pushers Part 2)
The Worst Sugar Pushers of All Part 3 - Holland and Barrett Takes Centre Stage

I was pleased to receive an email from a representative of Julian Graves yesterday in response to my post The Worst Sugar Pushers of all: Health Food Stores. Here is what they said:

First of all, we are not a health food store and have never positioned ourselves as such. We market ourselves as a specialist food retailer.

Secondly, we believe very strongly in the 80:20 rule – ie eat healthily 80% of the time and allow yourself ‘a bit of what you fancy’ treats 20% of the time. (Gillian McKeith advocates 90:10 but many people find this is too rigid).

Thirdly, we do not market to children, our customer profile is 50+ who are probably well aware of the effects of eating sugar in their diet. We also do not promote our confectionery range in our instore literature except at Christmas, when we believe that if you can’t indulge yourself at Christmas, then when can you?

Fourthly, if people eat sugar in a sensible way, ie not all day, in small amounts and ensure they clean their teeth after eating sugary food, they should be ok.

Fifthly, all our products have the ingredients listed on the packaging so people know whether they contain sugar or not. We do not live in a police state (yet) where consumers’ purchases are monitored and censored. People have the right to make up their own mind about what they eat or don’t eat.

And finally, we do not sell alcohol, cigarettes or cigars which, to my mind, are far worse for you than a few sweets a day.

I will first say that I am grateful that they responded – they could easily have ignored me. So out of deference, I will try to exercise restraint.

Here are my responses:

First of all, we are not a health food store and have never positioned ourselves as such. We market ourselves as a specialist food retailer.
On your website’s About Us page you describe yourselves as '...the UK's largest independent specialist natural food and ingredients retailer…’ I don’t intend to get into a debate about semantics, but the term ‘natural food’ surely implies ‘health food’; and whilst you may say you do not position yourselves as a health food retailer, I believe most people see you as such. It would be rather snide of you to suggest this is pure accident. One more point - refined sugar has been highly processed, so I think most people would agree that foods containing it are therefore not natural. Even if we ignore my previous points and define your positioning by literal interpretation of your own website, you are selling products which fall outside the claimed scope.

Secondly, we believe very strongly in the 80:20 rule – ie eat healthily 80% of the time and allow yourself ‘a bit of what you fancy’ treats 20% of the time. (Gillian McKeith advocates 90:10 but many people find this is too rigid).
The fundamental problem with this approach is that sugar is an addictive substance. There is evidence in scientific literature (such as here), but more importantly many testimonies from people (such as here) to support this notion. You would not say to a smoker ‘only smoke 20% of the time’ and you will be fine, because you know they would not be able to do this. For many people, once their palate has been affected by sugary food, it is very hard to restrict its consumption to 80% of the time.

Thirdly, we do not market to children, our customer profile is 50+ who are probably well aware of the effects of eating sugar in their diet. We also do not promote our confectionery range in our instore literature except at Christmas, when we believe that if you can’t indulge yourself at Christmas, then when can you?
See my response to the final point.

Fourthly, if people eat sugar in a sensible way, ie not all day, in small amounts and ensure they clean their teeth after eating sugary food, they should be ok.
See my response to the second point – it’s addictive, so being sensible is a problem. Also, just so you know, cleaning your teeth straight after eating sugary food may be a bad idea. My dentist recently told me not to do it and the advice on the British Dental Health Foundation website says “It is best not to brush your teeth until at least one hour after eating.”

Fifthly, all our products have the ingredients listed on the packaging so people know whether they contain sugar or not. We do not live in a police state (yet) where consumers’ purchases are monitored and censored. People have the right to make up their own mind about what they eat or don’t eat.
See my point in the post about ingredients – not all people read or understand them. Since my central argument is that you are selling unhealthy food when people see you as a health food shop, I see little point in getting into a debate about consumer choice vs. state intervention.

And finally, we do not sell alcohol, cigarettes or cigars which, to my mind, are far worse for you than a few sweets a day.
I had to chuckle at this one. There is always something worse. If, in response to criticism, Marlboro proudly trumpeted that that they do not sell hard drugs to children, there would be laughter and outrage in equal measure. This is playground reasoning.

The Series:
The Worst Sugar Pushers of all: Health Food Stores
Julian Graves Responds to 'Sugar Pushers' Post (Worst Sugar Pushers Part 2)
The Worst Sugar Pushers of All Part 3 - Holland and Barrett Takes Centre Stage

See Also:
New York - Limited Cake Porn but Plenty of Sugar Pushers
New York Part 2 – Another Sugar Pusher and Cake Security Threat
We're all Junkies
Why (Refined) Sugar is Bad: Some References
... Read more

Food Truth Leaks into Mainstream Media

This is happening slowly but surely.

This Sunday Times article will surely convince a wider audience of the validity of theories of nutrition hitherto dismissed as 'fad'. My only objection to this article would be that by using the word 'diet' in the title and by showing a picture of a tape measure, Appleyard perpetuates the belief that controlling body composition is something necessarily done at intervals. Devany and others advocate a lifestyle, not a diet, and until this point is understood people will continue to view nutrition and exercise as something to be applied when their 'normal' lifestyle has made it necessary.

See Also:
You’re on that Funny Diet, Right?
... Read more

The Worst Sugar Pushers of all - Health Food Stores

Julian Graves Responds to 'Sugar Pushers' Post (Worst Sugar Pushers Part 2)
The Worst Sugar Pushers of All Part 3 - Holland and Barrett Takes Centre Stage

UK-based health food stores like Holland and Barrett and Julian Graves are selling garbage to us. These retailers masquerade as health food vendors but are no less cynically exploiting the junk food market than vilified organisations like McDonalds. Sure, these ‘health food’ stores also sell nuts, dried fruits, supplements and sundry other harmless products, but they also sell confectionary.

I am interested to know whether there is a similar phenomenon in the US or elsewhere. I am visiting the US next week and will be sure to check it out.

This is what you find in the UK: healthy products featuring prominently around the store – bags of nuts, dried fruits, seeds and so on - but equally prominent, and sometimes mixed in with these products so that the layout implies no obvious distinction, are bags of confectionary. Yogurt-coated nuts or raisins are favourites, and whilst these at least contain a natural food, nevertheless the coating is usually made mostly of sugar. In some cases – as with Julian Graves – you find products made almost entirely from sugar.

Obviously these retailers are not breaking any laws. Apparently, they are entitled to position themselves as health food stores and yet sell food which by any reasonable definition is unhealthy; and please, if anyone from any of the stores is thinking of responding with the phrase we suggest customers enjoy these products as occasional treats as part of a balanced and nutritious diet, then don’t bother. This has no relevance here. By positioning yourself as a health food store and selling unhealthy food alongside healthy food, you are implicitly indicating that the unhealthy food is also healthy; and I know you have the ingredients on the back – but many people do not read or understand these labels, and you know it.

The thing is, I can picture them in the marketing meeting. The cynicism is breathtaking.

-Bob, we’re not making enough money on nuts – what can we do?
-Well sir, we could start selling those sugar-coated nuts that make us more profit.
-But people might not buy them, Bob.
-Why not, sir?
-Well, because they’re coated in sugar. It has something of a reputation for not being healthy.
Long pause.
-Sir – what if we added a small amount of yogurt and called them ‘yogurt-coated nuts?’ People will convince themselves they are healthy.
With growing excitement and conviction:
-...and the fact they are in our health food store, and located near these other genuinely healthy foods will seal the deal! Bob, you’re a genius. Give yourself a raise.
-Thank you sir.

The worst part is that they prey on our biggest weakness - weakness. We want to believe that by eating yogurt-coated nuts or raisins we are being healthy. We want to believe that they taste so good just because they do, and not because they are 1% yogurt, 99% sugar.

You might say it is naive to think that health food stores are any less driven by the bottom line than other stores. If people want to buy this food, stores will sell them. The products they stock merely reflect what we want to eat.

However I disagree. By choosing to enter the ‘health food’ market, these stores have taken on an unwritten burden of responsibility. Their activities now come under the same ethical umbrella as medicine, and as such they are required to operate with the same transparency and respect for their customers. I don’t care whether they are legally obliged to do so and I don’t care whether their spokespeople are able to worm their way out of criticism with gibberish and sophistry. They know what they are doing and we know what they are doing, so the only conclusion we can draw from the fact they continue is that they have nothing but contempt for the people they serve.

See Also:
Julian Graves Responds to 'Sugar Pushers' Post

For more background on why I feel so strongly about the inclusion of sugar in our foods read We’re all Junkies.

The cereal industry is another hot bed of sugar pushers – check out Drop that Spoon from Ross Enamait's blog. I love the quote “If you currently eat cereal, consider eating the box instead.”

Also of note is this recent advertising campaign for the sugar-laden Special K, encouraging us to eat not one, but TWO bowls per day, replacing two meals.

Admittedly the sugar issue is more complicated than making ‘refined sugar’ the only bad guy. Nevertheless, see this evidence for the dangers of refined sugar. If you don’t like the technical stuff, you could do a lot worse than just avoiding that and eating fresh food.

But if you do want to know the full skinny, check out Modern Forager’s excellent explanation here.

…and Dr Eades’ piece on the medical implications.

If you want to read one testimony that supports the notion of sugar as an addictive substance, check out Fit Shack’s Ban the Refined Sugar Experiment.

Here is a post on Diet Blog that for me epitomises what we are up against. It’s a list of healthy snacks being suggested for kids on journeys. Number 9 on the list? Boiled sweets. When I read this I almost had an aneurism.

And finally, a superb rant from Mount Baker Cross-Fit about the shame of so much sugar being in the foods our kids eat.

See Also:
Julian Graves Responds to 'Sugar Pushers' Post (Worst Sugar Pushers Part 2)
The Worst Sugar Pushers of All Part 3 - Holland and Barrett Takes Centre Stage
New York - Limited Cake Porn but Plenty of Sugar Pushers
New York Part 2 – Another Sugar Pusher and Cake Security Threat
Cigarettes, Sugar and our Innate Short-Termism
... Read more

The Professor Diet Part Three: No Shortcuts any Time Soon!

The Series:
The Professor Diet - Eat as much Junk as you like
The Professor Diet Part Two: Healthy Junk Food
The Professor Diet Part Three: No Shortcuts any Time Soon!

In my post, The Professor Diet Part 2: Healthy Junk Food I asked whether in the future we would be able to eat one food and have it taste like another. For example, we might eat what looks like a slice of chocolate cake from the Nintendo range of foods but is actually a healthy meal. By wearing the Wii ‘sense’ headset at the same time, we would fool our brains into thinking the healthy meal tasted like chocolate cake.

Something I failed to consider in that discussion was that when we eat food, the body does more than tell us how it tastes. Ironically, this point is clear from the article on obesity and artificial sweeteners I cited in my original The Professor Diet: Eat as Much Junk as you Like post. The article suggests that the taste of sweetness causes ‘digestive reflexes [to] gear up for that intake.’

So although I do still think this is an area that will be explored by science soon, it will not necessarily herald the new age in which the meddling of scientists with our food and taste does not have unintended consequences. Perhaps eventually they will become such skilled manipulators of the brain and food that we will be able to enjoy virtual junk food without any adverse affects on our bodies – but I cannot see that being anytime soon. For that to happen they would need to understand nutrition first, and as Natural Messiah points out here, there is some way to go on that score.

Thanks to Jimmy Moore from Livin’ La Vida Low-Carb for reminding me that what we taste affects our bodies too!

The Series:
The Professor Diet - Eat as much Junk as you like
The Professor Diet Part Two: Healthy Junk Food
The Professor Diet Part Three: No Shortcuts any Time Soon!... Read more

Five Great Health and Nutrition Quotes

Quotes:
Health and Nutrition
Longevity
Doctors and Medicine

"I refuse to spend my life worrying about what I eat. There is no pleasure worth forgoing just for an extra three years in the geriatric ward." ~John Mortimer I like this one because although witty, it illustrates one misconception around health. Mortimer assumes that being healthy means living longer whilst incapacitated when in fact remaining healthy may be one of the best ways to avoid spending any time at all in a geriatric ward.

	"Just because you're not sick doesn't mean you're healthy." ~Author Unknown
	"Health is so necessary to all the duties, as well as pleasures of life, that the crime of squandering it is equal to folly." ~Samuel Johnson
	"Sickness is the vengeance of nature for the violation of her laws." ~Charles Simmons
	"Life is not merely to be alive, but to be well." ~Marcus Valerius Martial

If you have any favourites of your own you'd like to share, go ahead and leave a comment...

Quotes:
Health and Nutrition
Longevity
Doctors and Medicine... Read more

The Professor Diet Part Two: Healthy Junk Food

The Series:
The Professor Diet - Eat as much Junk as you like
The Professor Diet Part Two: Healthy Junk Food
The Professor Diet Part Three: No Shortcuts any Time Soon!

Imagine this: you eat a piece of chocolate cake. It looks like chocolate cake, tastes like chocolate cake and has the texture of chocolate cake. Yet when you have finished eating it, you are not left with that wired, sugar-loaded feeling, and more to the point, do not experience the sugar low 30 minutes later.

The reason these expected feelings did not transpire is that it was not chocolate cake – at least not as we currently understand it. For reasons I will come onto, what you have just eaten was nutritionally equivalent to a steak of grass-fed beef, servings of carrot, broccoli and zucchini, and a handful of wild-growing berries and nuts.

What led me to consider this scenario was this article about research being conducted into the mechanisms governing our sense of taste. Whilst I have no specific knowledge in the area, it seems likely that there are billions of research dollars being pumped into this sort of thing, given the potential for commercial applications.

In The Professor Diet Part 1, I decry the fact that we are taught by the news flowing out of research labs to look to science for answers to problems that a healthy diet would solve. Yet when I follow this research to its logical conclusion – the scenario I describe above – I find myself wondering whether things are as clear-cut.

What I mean is this: if at some point, scientists are genuinely able to create the cake described above, and if it genuinely has precisely the same impact on our bodies as the steak, vegetables, berries and nuts, would any of us still want to eat healthy food? Would the doctrine of self-discipline that is so important to me and many others lose all its meaning? If we could choose what we thought we were eating but ensure that what our bodies were getting was, let’s say, a hunter gatherer diet, then getting the right nutrition would be too easy.

“Can I get a slice of chocolate cake?”

“Sure - Paleo, Zone, Atkins or regular, sir?”

How might the scientists achieve this? What follows is educated speculation. I stress again that I have no specific knowledge in the area – if any of you have such expertise, please comment. Also, for the purposes simplifying the discussion I talk about food as if it were made up of a homogenous mass of the same molecule.

One possibility, and the one we are most familiar with today, is trying to find molecules that taste like one thing but are in fact another – just as we have done with artificial sweeteners. Yet the problems with this approach became evident soon after well-intentioned but deeply misguided regulatory bodies allowed them to be included in our foods.

Until now we have been less interested in what a molecule does once it has passed the taste test. Imposter molecules like Aspartame have successfully made things taste sweet, but then had other, undesirable effects. Finding a molecule that tastes like one thing but digests like another strikes me as an approach doomed to failure. After all, our bodies are used to dealing with molecules that occur naturally in food – so unless the molecule that is digesting really is the naturally occurring one, we are back in the Aspartame situation where there are potential side effects.

Yet maybe there is a way in which the molecule of real food could be cloaked by another molecule, only to be released by the digestion process. The cloaking molecule has one taste, but when digestion begins it releases the molecule of genuine food. Of course for this to work, the cloaking molecule would have to be a harmless by-product. Not only that, but by changing the digestion process it’s highly likely that however harmless the by-product of de-cloaking, something will be different. You can’t fool millions of years of evolution that easily.

If there is a way this can be achieved, I think it is by going straight to the brain. We are already close to commercially available game controllers that use brain signals (Brain control headset for gamers); and Sony clearly thinks there might be a future in sending signals the other way so that our senses can be controlled externally (Sony patent takes first step towards real-life Matrix.) This is another area into which billions of research dollars must be being poured. Might the two areas of well-funded research meet?

If we can fool the brain into thinking the food has the right taste and texture then all we have to do now is make it look like the food we like – much easier. In 10 years, when the Wii comes with a standard headset for controlling games with your mind and receiving feedback from the game, could there be a ‘Wii Taste’ game which has an accompanying range of Nintendo foods?

So back to my original question – if this happens in our lifetime, what does it mean for us? Should we be glad that we can now eat junk but still have a healthy diet? Personally I get a lot of pleasure out of exercising the kind of self-control that is necessary to eat a completely healthy diet – would there be a hole in my life? Perhaps I would find other outlets for this need.

And what about our palettes? These would still face ruination with the constant barrage of junk taste, regardless of the nutritional value behind it. Yet would this matter if we are free to eat junk all the time anyway? We might no longer need a sensitive palette.

I would be interested in your thoughts on this.

The Series:
The Professor Diet - Eat as much Junk as you like
The Professor Diet Part Two: Healthy Junk Food
The Professor Diet Part Three: No Shortcuts any Time Soon!... Read more

The Professor Diet - Eat as much Junk as you like

The Series:
The Professor Diet - Eat as much Junk as you like
The Professor Diet Part Two: Healthy Junk Food
The Professor Diet Part Three: No Shortcuts any Time Soon!

Whenever I hear about some new drug or technique to tackle obesity or protect us from diet-related disease I always think of the professor from Futurama. For non-Futurama fans: the professor typically begins “Good news everybody!” before announcing some incredibly sophisticated, yet crazily inappropriate invention which has either fundamentally missed some basic point or is ludicrously over-engineered.

In a recent post, You’re on that Funny Diet, Right?, I mentioned society’s apparent belief that we are entitled to derive pleasure from everything we do and how because of this, many people don’t get the idea of permanently giving up foods they like.

Meanwhile, scientists work hard to find professor-like solutions to what they see as the problem. “Good news everybody! Using my digesta-block-a-tron I can stop fat from being metabolised. I just install this dial in your chest and you can choose how much fat from a meal gets digested!”

The basic point apparently being missed – the elephant in the room, if you like – is that if we all stopped eating junk, we would start enjoying the basic food we currently think we are not able to enjoy and the medical problems we are spending billions trying to resolve would begin to diminish in the population.Don’t get me wrong, I accept the near-impossibility of this - I still daydream about cakes thanks to my latent sugar addiction. We have been led by the nose into a mire of confused cravings and unclear directives from organisations with misguided and dubious agendas.

Yet it's by no means clear the scientists' intentions are quite so innocent. A cynic would say that their ‘solutions’ are not driven by the desire to uphold our right to enjoy our food, but by the desire for money - for them, their employers, or both. A cynic would say they are not missing the point at all – they simply don’t care.

The rest of us are missing the point precisely because of the scientists and what they tell us:

Well hey, the scientists have found the problem - we just to turn off those genes! (The obesity gene) ...or maybe we all just need to take some drugs to prevent us getting heart disease! (Statins for kids!) ...and it's not that we shouldn't eat so much sweet food - we were just sweetening it the wrong way! (except that oops, this may not work after all: Artificial sweeteners and obesity) ...and it's not that we should eat less starchy food - we just have to remember to block its digestion! (Blocking starch digestion)

The list is potentially long, so I will stop here. Feel free to add your own.

As the diagram shows, this is a vicious cycle. How to we get out of it? This is a question for a future post.

The Series:
The Professor Diet - Eat as much Junk as you like
The Professor Diet Part Two: Healthy Junk Food
The Professor Diet Part Three: No Shortcuts any Time Soon!
... Read more

Sometimes a video is worth a thousand words...

Following yesterday's post asking about your most sarcastic response to questions about your 'funny diet', I wanted to share something many of you will already have seen but it's worth posting just for the few who haven't.

It's easy to forget sometimes just how much research you have done and how much knowledge you have assimilated in the journey from a 'normal' diet to some kind of low carb diet. So in the few cases where I have been engaged on the subject of my 'funny diet' and my interlocutor is still standing in front of me 15 minutes later, it's nevertheless only a matter of time before the glazed expression sets in. At that point I say "I'll send you a link." This is what I send them.

Here is the direct link.

The movie was made by a guy called Tom Naughton and the content based on a book called The Cholesterol Myths : Exposing the Fallacy that Saturated Fat and Cholesterol Cause Heart Disease by Uffe Ravnskov, M.D.... Read more

You’re on that Funny Diet, Right?

I get this a lot – and the range of sarcastic responses is so vast I am sometimes paralysed by choice. When that happens my colleague helps me out and says "No, he has a funny diet." This is the point at which most questioners wish they hadn’t asked.

There is apparent confusion between diet as in ‘what I eat’ and diet as in ‘a campaign to lose weight over a set period of time.’ This is odd, because given the right circumstances, most people understand the distinction. If said “Hey, I was watching a wildlife program last night and it turns out this one animal has a diet of soil and twigs,” few people would assume the animal was attempting to lose weight and would in a few months would return to burgers and fries.

Yet if I said “My diet is composed entirely of meat, eggs, vegetables, nuts and fruit,” many would ask “Wow – how long are you on that for?”

Somehow, society has given us the message that as humans we are entitled to have the things we enjoy all the time. We have grown up believing that the de facto state of affairs should be that we are deriving pleasure from what we do. Is this a western phenomenon, or worldwide? I am not sure. Either way, because of this, we tend to assume that when someone describes a diet that limits what they can eat, they must be “on a diet” rather than “this is their diet, period.” The idea that someone has taken the decision to restrict what they eat permanently, by and large, does not compute – and the more radical the change, the bigger the computational challenge.

Rather than rail against the world, I have decided to celebrate the opportunity this gives us for pithy, sarcastic responses. The rules are simple – either share the response you would most likely give to this question, or, if there is a different question you are sick of being asked, share that along with the response you prefer to give. The more sarcastic the better!

I’m tagging Modern Forager, Rob Wolfe and Natural Messiah....

See Also
Five Great Health and Nutrition Quotes
... Read more