Processed meats found to be bad for your heart....

Today's Post: Tuesday, 6-21-2011

I was reminded recently that avoiding processed meat most of the time was heart protective. But I don’t recall posting that when that news came out.

A. First, here are 5 ways we already knew to make eating meat safer for your heart.

We now know that it’s possible to eat some meat without harming your heart.

1. Eating less meat helps. Two or three times a week is likely far better for you than 14!

2. Eating a mix of health OK protein foods besides meat helps.

Here are some examples. Eggs, wild caught fish, seafood, beans and lentils, and nuts if you aren’t allergic to them -- are some of the many foods you can eat instead of eating meat every time.

Some skinless and fat trimmed poultry from grain fed birds or if possible from birds fed their natural diet in an unpolluted pasture also works.

Nonfat cottage cheese and some 2% lowfat yogurt and even some full fat cheese if from cows fed only grass can be OK.

3. Then eating the meat you do eat only from animals fed only grass or only the leanest and most fat trimmed meat from grain fed animals also helps.

(By eating less meat, the better for you and more expensive 100 % grass fed meat is more affordable.)

4. Eating meat with onions or garlic -- or wine -- also helps your body process the saturated fat in the meat better.

5. Using only extra virgin olive oil instead of corn, or soy, or canola, or safflower oils cuts your intake of omega 6 oils. That can make eating some meat from grain fed animals that has too much omega 6 oils safer to do.

B. But, I was reminded that there is new information about a whole other category of making meat safe for your heart to eat.

Harvard researchers looked at 20 studies of a total of 1.2 million people and found dramatically more heart disease, 42% more, in people who ate processed meats such as salami, sausage, bacon, hot dogs, and lunch meats than in people who ate other meats. They also found 19 % more type 2 diabetes.

That could be partly from the fact that such meats are often eaten in sandwiches or on pizza with refined grain used to make the bread and pizza dough. Many people eat such foods along with soft drinks as well. (That would certainly help explain the link to type 2 diabetes.)

It’s less well known; but that would also help explain the much higher heart risk. Refined grains and high fructose corn syrup lower your protective HDL and increase your level of heart harmful triglycerides and small particle LDL.

I suspect it’s also likely that the higher fat meats and the curing chemicals used in processed meats helped cause this.

The important thing is to eat processed meats far less often than many people do now.

Eating processed meats twice a month is likely to be far less harmful than eating them twenty times a month.

It may also help to eat such meats that have had less nitrates and nitrites and salt added to them. (Whole foods sells that kind of bacon for example.)

And, it would help for sure to eat them with vegetables or even wine instead of refined grain and soft drinks!

Skim milk may be fattening and bad for your heart....

Today's Post: Tuesday, 5-24-2011

As some of you know, I’ve done many things to keep my LDL cholesterol low.

(Some of those have worked well. Others in my family were over 160 when first tested. And, I’ve gone from 130 to 73 with niacin, inositol hexaniacinate, sterol supplements, continued regular exercise, taking curcumin, and recently losing 15 pounds.)

And, I also have been making a strong but mostly unsuccessful effort so far to lose inches off my too large waist. (Losing the 15 pounds took off a bit over an inch; but it’s more like 4 to 6 inches too large still.)

And, as many have done, I switched from whole milk to skim or nonfat and from half and half, light cream, for coffee and cereal to 1% lowfat milk.

So, a recent news article saying I could be less fat and have BETTER heart health by discontinuing the nonfat and 1% lowfat milk, was quite a surprise!

But they quote actual studies showing it is accurate that skim milk & 1% milk tend to make people fat. They also have an analysis saying some of the reasons that skim milk & 1% milk can tend to increase inflammation.

The article, "Is Skim Milk Making You Fat?" by Details Magazine, on Fri Apr 29, 2011 was a feature recently on Yahoo.

The recommendation has been to drink skim and 1% lowfat milk since they have fewer calories a glass than 2% lowfat or whole milk. That would lead you to think drinking them would help you lose fat and excess weight.

And, by having less saturated fat and omega 6 oils from the grain fed cows that usually produce the skim and 1% lowfat milk, you would expect lower LDL and inflammation.

The article says that each of these 3 points is incorrect: for preventing or reversing excess fat gain; for lowering inflammation; & for lowering the dangerous kind of LDL.

For preventing or reversing excess fat gain , the article made several points.

“It's becoming widely accepted that fats actually curb your appetite, by triggering the release of the hormone cholecystokinin, which causes fullness.”

“Fats also slow the release of sugar into your bloodstream, reducing the amount that can be stored as fat.”

Milk has lactose, a sugar, so the higher fat milk causes less boost to your blood sugar levels AND less boost to your insulin levels. Insulin causes you to add fat and hold onto the fat you already have.

“In other words, the more fat in your milk, the less fat around your waist.

Not only will low-fat milk fail to trim your gut, it might even make you fatter than if you were to drink whole, according to one large study.

In 2005, researchers from the Harvard School of Public Health and other institutions studied the weight and milk consumption of 12,829 kids ages 9 to 14 from across the country. "Contrary to our hypothesis," they reported, "skim and 1% milk were associated with weight gain, but dairy fat was not." “

So, there is evidence. This is not just theory!

(I decided to switch from nonfat and 1% lowfat milk to 2% lowfat milk only.

Since I’d already read that milk tends to boost insulin, I’d cut back on milk and added nonfat cottage cheese for the protein and food based calcium. Since nonfat cottage cheese has no or little lactose, that seemed a good idea. And, one writer on fat loss said that nonfat cottage cheese worked for fat loss while skim milk did not.

If that will cut even a half inch or an inch off my waist and lose a few pounds of fat, the change will be well worth it.)

But what about the saturated fat and omega 6 in the dairy fat?

Wouldn’t that be a reason to drink nonfat and 1% milk? It would cut LDL and inflammation wouldn’t it?

I would have thought so.

But the article says that dairy fat boosts the harmless large particle LDL only.

By buffering the lactose in the milk, the dairy fat may lower triglycerides and the greater content of fat may boost HDL. If so, that would explain it. Doing those two things REDUCES the small particle LDL that causes heart disease.

What about the omega 6 oil in the milk from grain fed cows? The reason to avoid the omega 6 oil is to lower inflammation.

So, if nonfat and 1% lowfat RAISED inflammation and 2% and whole milk did not, that would be significant and a good reason to drink the higher fat milk.

Oops! It seems the accepted idea that nonfat and 1% lowfat helps lower inflammation is also incorrect.

The article explains why.

Skim milk is blue or bluish in color. So to make nonfat milk look less blue and more milk like, dried milk is added.

And, to make 1% milk taste richer and have a bit more protein, dried milk is added.

THAT does it! It seems that dried milk boosts inflammation a lot!

The article said this:

“Powdered skim (which is also added to organic low-fat milks) is produced by spraying the liquid under heat and high pressure, a process that oxidizes the cholesterol. In animal studies, oxidized cholesterol triggers a host of biological changes, leading to plaque formation in the arteries and heart disease, Spanish researchers reported in 1996.

"OCs are mutagenic and carcinogenic," they wrote.

In 1998, Australian researchers studied rabbits fed OC and found that the animals "had a 64% increase in total aortic cholesterol" despite having less cholesterol in their blood than rabbits fed natural sources of the substance. (A 2008 Chinese study with hamsters confirmed these findings.)”

So, it looks like to protect your heart and avoid excess fat, the common wisdom is very likely wrong.

Drinking nonfat and 1% lowfat milk is not a good idea. If you drink milk, drink less perhaps; but drink 2% lowfat or whole milk.

It may be wise to do things like drink less milk and eat more nonfat cottage cheese. It may be wise to use more extra virgin olive oil than butter. And it may be wise to get full fat cheese and butter from cows fed only grass.

But if you drink milk, 2% and whole milk looks to be less fattening and safer for your heart.

But the last piece of research also supports something I’d heard.

Do NOT fry in butter or use extended cooking times with it. Only cook at very low temperatures for short cooking times or use extra virgin olive oil or coconut oil. High temperatures and extended cooking times tend to produce the oxidized cholesterol that causes heart disease.

Cold butter or gently melted butter from grass fed cows however when eaten in moderation may have gotten a bad rap.

Overcooked butter causes heart disease. But butter itself apparently does not.