How to afford to eat right….

Today's post: Wednesday, 9-5-2007

Health OK foods like beef fed only grass; organic nonfat & 1 % lowfat milk; & pasture raised poultry are a good bit more expensive than the grain fed and now more common varieties.

1. But some of the foods that are the best for you are LESS expensive than the really bad foods.

By making those foods your staples, you can either eat right for very little or include some of the more expensive health OK foods without spending more.

2. Another key is to stop buying the worst foods. Why pay more for foods & drinks that will make you sick if you eat or drink them at all often?

1. Here are some of the best for you foods that are inexpensive.

a) Unless you are allergic to them, beans & lentils are very good for you AND very cheap.

This is particularly true if you buy them dry in packages or in bulk & cook them yourself.

My wife & I cook up a batch every weekend that’s just enough to eat for a week. Then we put them in smaller containers to cool in the refrigerator which helps them say good & cool more quickly. That way they are virtually instant food the rest of the week.

They are high in protein. They are high in soluble fiber. And, I just found out recently, they are high in antioxidants. By eating them as staple foods you can eat well on very little.

You can flavor them with onions which are good for you and also inexpensive.

And, since you will do better with some health OK oils, you can flavor them with a small amount of extra virgin olive oil. Extra virgin olive oil does cost more than beans and lentils; but it usually costs less than butter or meat or cheese. And, it is MUCH better for you.

Lastly, beans & lentils are much better for you than fatty and grain-fed meats. And, they cost far less. If you eat eggs, nonfat & 1% lowfat milk, wild caught fish, nuts, and other more health OK protein foods along with them, beans & lentils can do a great job supplying your protein needs.

I usually eat mine with extra virgin olive oil & tomato sauce flavored with garlic. It tastes good & both the tomato sauce & the garlic are good for you.

b). Wild caught canned salmon is surprisingly inexpensive. It’s high in the omega 3 oils that promote good health and that grain feed meats tend to be very short in. And, it has very little of the excessive omega 6 oils that grain fed meats are high in.

Wild caught canned salmon does have some salt. But if you eat very few other salted foods & unless you are salt sensitive and fighting high blood pressure; & if you don’t over do the amount of salmon you eat, you can balance the salt with the next really inexpensive kind of food. That kind of food is very high in potassium which tends to lower blood pressure & counterbalance the salt.

c) Frozen green and nonstarchy vegetables are quite inexpensive; convenient; & extremely good for you.

Broccoli has many, many health benefits. So I cook up a batch of frozen broccoli every two weeks and have a serving almost every day for dinner.

I expected that adding this to my dinner most days would help me lose 10 pounds. I did. Then I lost 20 pounds more. To be fair, I was also exercising regularly & also cut back a bit on beer and wine. But the very low caloric density of any green nonstarchy vegetable is so low & the filling fiber is so high, any of them is a superb choice to help you get & stay trim.

Frozen green peas, green beans, chopped spinach, brussels spouts, & cauliflower all work as well for this.

d) Oatmeal; eggs; and nonfat and 1% lowfat milk are a bit less good for you than the first three kinds of foods. But they are more health OK than most foods and only moderate in price.

2. The other key is to stop buying the worst foods. Why pay more for foods & drinks that will make you sick if you eat or drink them at all often?

I’ve seen other shoppers in grocery stores where 90 percent of the foods in their basket are these kinds of foods. That’s a LOT of wasted money.

a) These snack foods, packaged foods, & refined grain baked goods are low in nutrition and fiber so they don’t make you feel full or feed you well.

And, to make them taste good, they tend to have ingredients like excessive sugar, high fructose corn syrup, excessive salt, and often today are made with transfat loaded partially hydrogenated vegetable oils.

If you eat them more than about once a month, you’ll make yourself fat & sick. Why pay money to do that?

NOT buying them frees up money to spend on good quality health OK foods.

b) This is gradually changing, and there are some exceptions, but fast food tends to be similar with similar ingredients. French fries are one of the worst foods of all for your health.

For many people, the bad for you fast foods are half their food intake each week. Ouch.

You can do better.

Either bring your food from home; get health OK foods at the fast food places; or eat at a restaurant that serves health OK foods.

You can save your money by NOT buying the bad for you fast foods.

c) Research has found that both regular & diet soft drinks are even worse for you. They tend to cause disease and both help make people fat. And, many young people and less well to do people drink LOTS of them.

The good news is that most fast food places do offer plain water also.

And, at home, green tea & black tea & sparkling waters are usually good choices besides plain water.

Coffee without creamer & black or with 1% lowfat milk or even a very small amount of half and half is even MUCH better for you than caffeinated soft drinks.

Adding spices, more expensive health OK foods and more variety can help you enjoy eating healthy besides taking these two steps.

But these two steps can save you more than enough to pay for those foods. And, in a pinch, eating this way plus taking vitamins can keep you healthy on very little money.

Glycemic load can help you eat right & lose fat….

Today's post: Tuesday, 8-28-2007

(This post is a very good short-summary of how to eat right.)

Foods that cause very rapid rises in your blood sugar tend to cause you to put on fat you don’t need. They can cause mood problems. And, if you eat a lot of them & eat them often, you tend to be fat & are at very high risk of type II diabetes & cardiovascular disease if you don’t have them already.

One way to measure this is with the glycemic index. It measures how much an equal weight of food tends to increase the blood sugar of the person eating it.

The bad news is that it can be misleading since a typical serving of some foods is large & for others it’s quite a bit smaller.

Why not have a measure of the blood sugar increase of typical servings of food?

There is one. A measure of this more accurate & useful number was created & is called the Glycemic Load.

Last week on Thursday, 8-23-2007 in the Early to Rise email there was an excellent article on this which I include today.:

(This article appears courtesy of Early To Rise, the Internet’s most popular health, wealth, and success e-zine. For a complimentary subscription, visit http://www.earlytorise.com/.)

Glycemic Index? Not So Fast

By Jonny Bowden, Ph.D., CNS

If you’re a regular ETR reader, you already know how important the glycemic index is to make sure you’re eating well. But there’s a big problem with using the glycemic index as a guide to eating: It doesn’t take into account portion size. Glycemic load - a far more useful number - does.

The glycemic index measures your blood sugar response to a "standard" serving of 50 grams of digestible (non-fiber) carbohydrate. Great. But the real world of actual portions presents a much different picture. Some carbohydrate foods have way less than 50 grams in a serving, while many typically have a lot more.

Enter the glycemic load, a formula that multiplies the glycemic index by the number of grams of carbs in a typical portion (and then divides the result by 100, in case you’d like to do the actual math). Because the formula for glycemic load takes into account real-life portion sizes, it gives you a much better idea of what a food is doing to your blood sugar.

Take spaghetti and carrots, for example. The glycemic index of 50 grams of spaghetti is only "moderate," but you’d be hard-pressed to find someone who eats just 50 grams of spaghetti. The glycemic load of spaghetti is humongous. And while the glycemic index of 50 grams of carrots is "high," you probably wouldn’t eat 50 grams of carrots. (There are only three grams of carbohydrate in a single carrot.) Carrots have a high glycemic index- but a very low glycemic load.

Using the glycemic index is a great start in learning about the impact of food on your blood sugar. But glycemic load is even better, because it takes into account what you’re actually likely to eat.

It’s easier to find the glycemic index of a food than the glycemic load, but you can find both at mendosa.com/gilists.htm.

Alternately, you could ignore the entire glycemic numbers game and just follow this simple rule: When it comes to sugar, less is more, zero is better.

[Ed. Note: Dr. Jonny Bowden is a nationally known expert on weight loss, nutrition, and health. He’s a board certified nutritionist with a master’s degree in psychology, and the author of the best-selling book, The 150 Healthiest Foods on Earth. For more information, go to www.jonnybowden.com.”
********
More info I got from www.mendosa.com/gilists.htm : (It’s listed in his article above.)

Many foods that enhance your health are very low in glycemic load.

Though they are not listed in that reference source, health enhancing or health OK protein & fats like extra virgin olive oil, avocados, nuts, wild caught salmon, beef fed only grass, poultry only pasture fed, & some other wild caught fish & seafoods are all very low or zero in glycemic load.

Almost all green nonstarchy vegetables are very low in glycemic load & very nutritious.

Strawberries & lentils are very low.

Many fruits are low: apples, whole grapes, kiwi fruit, whole oranges, peaches, plums, & nectarines, prunes, & other berries are all low.

Nonfat yogurt is low.

Bananas, real fruit juices, oatmeal, & barley are moderately low.

Sweet potatoes are medium but very nutritious.

If almost all of what you eat is on this list as listed as low, you’ll find it much easier to stay healthy, stay trim, &/or to lose excess fat if you have it now. That’s particularly true if you also do NOT eat foods that are high.

What foods are high & so are better NOT eaten or eaten only VERY rarely?

Much to my surprise almost all kinds of rice are high. Pasta is high. I already knew potatoes & French fries are high. (Raisins are high but can be eaten occasionally along with low or very low glycemic load foods to compensate.) The other foods that are listed here as high simply are eaten too often & in such large servings that they are NOT good food choices. (Very small servings eaten with low glycemic foods or small servings once a week or less may be OK for some people.)

Also, any food made with refined grains is either high or tends to impact most people as high. And, unlike most of the foods listed above as low, they have little fiber to help make you feel full. They also don’t give you as much nutrition as the low glycemic load foods do.

Lastly, foods & drinks made with high fructose corn syrup tend to boost your blood sugar, to NOT make you feel less hungry, & even to make you MORE hungry sometimes.

And, food & drinks made with artificial sweeteners tend to be eaten along with high glycemic load foods, make you MORE hungry for real sugar, & to cause problems with metabolizing sugars & fats from other sources I’ve read. A recent study found that in addition to the studies showing they don’t work to help with fat loss, diet soft drinks made with artificial sweeteners produce as many health problems as regular soft drinks do.

2 people eat same breakfast. One dies & one lives.

Welcome to our health & self help blog.

Focus on Your Health:

In it we post health commentary & reviews of books, eBooks, & other things that improve or protect your health or which enable you to live longer, to be more prosperous, & to be more effective. We do posts on staying healthy; preventing disease; aging more slowly; weight loss; exercise; nutrition; & news in medicine.

Today's post: Friday, 6-15-2007

2 people eat same breakfast. One dies & one lives ….

It really can happen. Here’s why & how to be the one that lives & stays healthy.

(My original title was 2 men eat the same breakfast. And, I do write it that way. But it’s now beginning to be known that women are as at risk of heart attack & related diseases as men are. In fact, their risk may be higher in some ways once they pass menopause.

Whole Foods Market has an excellent free handout on Women & Heart Disease that I recommend you read if you are a woman or have women in you life you care about.)

The common breakfast foods in this post are steak & eggs.

Let’s say each person eats a six ounce steak & two fried eggs for breakfast or brunch.

Here’s why the results can be so different.:

1. Their health status is different.

2. The quality of their food is different.

3. They eat different things with their food.



1. Their health status is different.:

The man who dies could be someone who smokes & believes that he will succeed in not getting lung cancer from it. He even could be right. Many people who smoke don’t get lung cancer. But what he doesn’t know is that everyone who smokes damages their cardiovascular system & disables their natural defenses against heart attack, stroke, & more. So, he hasn’t quit. And, his homocysteine is over 16.0 & his blood vessels are so choked with plaque that a small clot will cause a heart attack or stroke. He doesn't know what it is & has never had it tested. Smoking has also given him high blood pressure he doesn’t know he has because he has never had it checked. It’s 178 over 105.

He also eats too much fatty meat from animals penned up & fed grains, including his steak today. So he’s eaten too much omega 6 oils, too little omega 3 oils. His HDL cholesterol is quite low, 36, as he’s also not gotten that tested; he doesn’t take any supplements that raise it; & he never exercises. His LDL cholesterol is over 180; he also doesn’t know that as he has never had it tested; & he takes no supplements to lower it.

Even worse, because he eats so many refined grains & no vegetables to speak of & never exercises, his HBA1C reading is 9.3; he has type II diabetes; & he doesn’t know it as he’s never had his blood glucose or HBA1C tested -- & he hasn’t yet had symptoms that he saw a doctor about. He also doesn’t know that this increases his risk of heart attack by more than double or that it’s one of the causes of his high blood pressure.

The man who lives got lucky & never started smoking or he did & found out what its real risks are to his cardiovascular system & quit.

He knows he has desirable blood pressure because he has it measured every so often. It tends to average about 116 over 65. When it’s taken at his doctor’s appointments, he always asks what the reading was. He exercises regularly, eats a lot of vegetables every day & some whole fruit or real fruit juice every day; & he has found & uses a way to physically relieve stress & uses it almost every day. He also takes several supplements that keep blood pressure down, notably including 200 mg a day of CoQ10.

He knows his homocysteine level as he has that tested every so often. And, because he doesn’t smoke & takes several supplements that lower it, it’s tended to be about 8.0.

He has high LDL readings of over 70 as he exercises regularly, including strength training; takes supplements that increase it; & drinks one or two glasses of red wine most days. His LDL is around 100 as he takes sterol supplements & eats many foods with sterols or soluble fiber every day. And, he gets both tested every time he gets his homocysteine level tested.

But there’s more:

2. The quality of their food is different.

The man who dies eats meat several times a day. So, to be able to afford it, he buys his meat from stores & restaurants that serve only meat from animals penned up & fed grains. That’s the cheapest kind to get. But eating it often harms your health.

And, that’s the kind of steak he has today. It’s loaded with omega 6 oils from the grain; it’s quite fatty from the cow that it’s from getting stuffed with grain while it was penned up; & it’s also high in saturated fats.

The man who lives eats beans & nuts & nonfat dairy & wild caught fish & seafood for most of his protein intake. He only has beef a few times a month. So he only eats beef that is grass fed only & never penned up to be fattened.

That’s the kind of steak he is eating today as he’s found & patronizes an upscale restaurant that serves it. It isn’t cheap. But he only eats it a few times a month so he finds it affordable. It’s a bit chewier & more strongly flavored than the grain fed beef. It’s more like wild game. But it has some omega 3 oils & very little omega 6 oils. It’s quite lean. And the fat it does have is low in saturated fats.

3. They eat different things with their food.

That also makes a surprising difference.

The man who dies has his steak & eggs with French fries that were fried in an oil high in omega 6 oils. He has his eggs fried in butter. And, he has a piece of white bread, refined grain, toast with jam that has high fructose corn syrup as its sweetener. Then he has a large caffeinated soft drink with it.

The man who lives has onions sautéed in extra virgin olive oil on his steak. And he has his eggs fried in extra virgin olive oil also.

He has a small bowl of strawberries & one of peeled & sliced kiwifruit. And, this being a brunch, he has a glass of a sparkling red wine.

The result is the man who dies has extra saturated fat that acts like sludge in his blood vessels which aren’t up to the job & dies of a massive heart attack within hours of eating his brunch.

The man who lives has very little sludging in his blood vessels. But they can handle it. And his body disposes of it efficiently. And he lives several decades more in good health.


Ask yourself:

What kind of message are your food & health practices sending your heart?

Should you lower high cholesterol?….

• Welcome to our health & self help blog.
  
  Focus on Your Health:
  
  In it we post health commentary & reviews of books, eBooks, & other things that improve or protect your health or which enable you to live longer, to be more prosperous, & to be more effective.
  
  We do posts on staying healthy; preventing disease; aging more slowly; weight loss; exercise; nutrition; & news in medicine.
  
  Today's post: Wednesday, 4-11-2007
  
  Should you lower high cholesterol?….
  
  If your overall cholesterol is high maybe you should -- but it depends totally on how high it is & what kinds of cholesterol are in it.
  
  And, for most people with high total cholesterol, statin drugs are neither necessary nor desirable.
  
  Some people have a kind of HDL cholesterol (called Milano) that keeps their blood vessels clear of obstructions; is at least 10 times as effective at this as the HDL cholesterol most of us have. This kind of HDL cholesterol has even been given intravenously & produced reversal of blood vessel blockages. So, some people who have it are quite healthy with total cholesterol of over 300 or over 400 in some cases.
  
  Almost of all of you likely reading this probably have regular HDL cholesterol. The good news that the higher your HDL cholesterol is, the lower your risk of heart & vascular disease is. High HDL cholesterol predicts low heart attack risk BETTER than low LDL cholesterol; & people who have high HDL cholesterol tend to be quite long lived. So, a total cholesterol of 205 may be extremely health if 105 of it is HDL; & there are people, often who get a LOT of exercise, who have just such readings.
  
  And, a person with a total cholesterol of 245, above the 240 cut off some doctors look at; but who has a HDL cholesterol of 105 may be at little risk of heart disease.
  
  However, there are studies I’ve seen reports of that LDL cholesterol of over 130 increase heart disease risk some; that LDL cholesterol of over 160 increase heart disease risk a good bit more; that the risk goes up much more if that person has an HDL reading of less than 40; or if their LDL is oxidized; & goes up even more if their LDL is largely made up of small, slightly denser, globs since these are literally just small enough to fit into the chinks in your blood vessel walls & begin to have the effect of coating the inside of your blood vessels with a glue like substance that is anchored in place.
  
  In addition, I’ve read there are studies that show some blood vessel blockage reversal for LDL cholesterol readings of less than 100.
  
  So, if your LDL cholesterol is 130 or over it may make some sense to lower it with sterol supplements; eating lots of vegetables; & limiting your consumption of saturated fat & eliminating transfats.
  
  It’s very important also to have your homocysteine level checked; & if it’s high (9.0 or higher), learn how to lower it with supplements to below 9.0 & do so. High homocysteine levels are MORE predictive of heart & vascular problems than high LDL cholesterol levels.
  
  NOT smoking or being around cigarette smoke is also more important than lowering high LDL levels in part because smoking or being around cigarette smoke increases homocysteine levels. And, it directly causes cardiovascular disease in several other ways. Unfortunately few smokers yet know this.
  
  And, it always makes sense to be sure to get regular exercise. Vigorous or intense but brief cardio & strength training when done safely so you can continue to do them raise HDL & raise the most protective fraction of it. And, exercise lowers the kind if LDL that’s small enough to cause heart problems. It also makes sense to take antioxidants like vitamin C & E & others & to eat a lot of fruits & vegetables as that prevents your LDL from getting oxidized.
  
  Also, eating more vegetables does triple duty: doing so lowers your LDL levels; increases your blood levels of antioxidants; & helps prevent you from adding excess body fat.
  
  Statin drugs also work & have other heart protecting benefits but are also very expensive & carry considerable risks. They lower the level of heart-beneficial CoQ10 as many doctors still do no know. I think Dr Stephen Sinatra is correct that they are best reserved for the sickest & most at risk patients a doctor sees.
  
  At first, many doctors & health experts recommended eating a very lowfat diet to lower total cholesterol levels & one very low in saturated fat. And many people did that by adding large amounts of grain to their diet.
  
  Since then evidence has been building that such diets were deficient in protein; didn’t include health enhancing fats like extra virgin olive oil & sources of omega 3 oils; tended to have too much omega 6 oils in the fat they did have; & made people fat & sick because humans are NOT well adapted to live on grain foods. Worse, people ate refined grains as part of such diets. The evidence is now overwhelming that eating refined grains makes you fat & sick & does so most reliably when sedentary people eat them.
  
  Limiting saturated fat intake; & sharply limiting consumption of meat from animals fed grains that have a high pesticide & herbicide content, WILL improve your health.
  
  So will eating a lot of, & a large variety of, nonstarchy vegetables. To some degree, so will eating a lot of nuts & lentils & beans.
  
  These steps are also part of the DASH diet that does lower blood pressure in people where it’s high.
  
  But eating LOTS of grain – even whole grains – actually increases your risk of heart attack & type II diabetes. And doing so has by now been shown to make people fat – just like it does when fed to cattle.
  
  People evolved to be hunter-gathers eating game (very lean & naturally fed meat); wild caught fish & seafood; vegetables; & some fruit -- & ate virtually no grains.
  
  That said, you now know some of the ways I part company with the author of the next article.
  
  But I think the evidence suggest he is totally right about NOT eating tons of grain & NOT eating a lowfat diet deficient in monosaturated fats & omega 3 oils & protein.
  
  I think he overdoes saying high cholesterol is not a problem & is partly wrong about that besides. And, I suspect he eats more conventionally raised meat than is good for him.
  
  But agree with absolutely every other point he makes.:
  
  This ( the following) article appears courtesy of Early To Rise, the Internet’s most popular health, wealth, and success e-zine. For a complimentary subscription, visit http://www.earlytorise.com.
• 
  The Diet Myth That Could Be Ruining Your Health
• 
  By Anthony Colpo
• 
  “In 1989, at the age of 21 and after a few years of inactivity, I made a visit to the doctor. I learned that I had a cholesterol level of 213, which (according to the doctor) placed me at "moderate risk" for heart disease. I left that day with a handful of literature that, among other things, advocated the restriction of saturated fat.
  
• To me, good health had always been about physical fitness - how much weight I could lift or how easily I could climb a steep hill on my bike. So I began training again. But I also paid a lot more attention to what I ate, and I began to study everything I could get my hands on about nutrition.
  
• Everything I read reiterated the same message: "Fat is BAD. Complex carbohydrates are GOOD!" The message appeared to be unanimous, and I fell for it hook, line, and sinker.
  When my father, an active, well-built man who appeared to be very fit for his age, experienced a heart attack in 1990, my resolve to eat what I believed to be a heart-healthy diet was further strengthened.
  
• I resolved to eat only the leanest meats and low-fat fish. And because my intense training required a high caloric intake, I began consuming copious amounts of carbohydrates: rye bread, brown rice, sweet potatoes, whole-meal pasta, rolled oats, buckwheat, and millet.
  
• I began partaking of the delights of butter-less toast, egg whites, salad without oil, and water-packed tuna. If I were served meat that had - shock, horror, gasp! - visible fat, I would surgically trim it away before taking a bite. I wouldn't even think of buying any new food item until I had scrupulously examined the nutrition label for fat content.
  
• When I calculated the average amount of fat that I was taking in, I was proud to find that it was less than 10 percent of my daily caloric intake. I wore my low-fat habits like a badge of honor.
  
• But reality began to bite several years later. Despite my "healthy" diet, strenuous training regimen, and strict avoidance of cigarettes, alcohol, and recreational drugs, my blood pressure had risen from 110/65 (a reading characteristic of highly conditioned athletes) to an elevated 130/90. It was increasingly hard to maintain the lean, "ripped," vascular look I had always prided myself on. Instead, my physique was getting smooth and bloated.
  
• My digestive system became more sluggish and my stomach often felt heavy and distended after meals. I frequently felt tired after eating. I began to rack up a rather impressive list of irreversible food sensitivities. I had never been much of a coffee drinker, but I was now trying to fight increasing fatigue by sipping a strong black or two before workouts. My fasting blood glucose level was below the normal range, indicative of reactive hypoglycemia.
  
• In short, I felt terrible and my health was suffering.
  Despite monumental effort and discipline, my supposedly wholesome low-fat diet had raised my blood pressure, sapped my energy, and left me with a screwed-up blood sugar metabolism. Ironically, these changes increased my risk of the very thing I was trying to avoid: heart disease.
  
• This disheartening revelation was the catalyst for an extended period of self-experimentation, during which I anxiously tried a number of highly touted popular diets.
• It was only after settling into a high-fat, high-protein, low-carbohydrate plan - the exact opposite of that recommended by most health authorities - that I was able to reverse the negative changes bought about by years of high-carbohydrate eating. My blood pressure and glycemic control finally returned to normal, while my digestive function, mental focus, energy levels, and overall sense of well being improved dramatically.
  
• This experience caused me to question everything I had ever learned about nutrition. I wanted to know why the revered low-fat paradigm had failed me, while a diet in which the bulk of calories were obtained from supposedly "dangerous" animal fats made me feel better than I had in a long, long time.
  
• Rather than simply take for granted the existence of data showing saturated fat to be harmful - as does so much of the public, medical, and research communities - I insisted on viewing this data for myself. My burning desire for the facts drove me into an intensive search of the medical literature.
  
• What I discovered astounded me.
  
• The low-fat, anti-cholesterol paradigm was a complete sham right from the outset. It began in the early 1900s when Russian researchers noted that feeding rabbits cholesterol caused a build-up of fatty deposits in their arteries. However - unlike humans - rabbits are herbivores. They are not metabolically equipped to eat animal products. (Plant foods do not contain cholesterol.)
  
• In the mid 1950s, health authorities were at a complete loss to explain the rising prevalence of coronary heart disease (CHD). Inspired by the utterly irrelevant findings of the Russian rabbit experiments, scientists began examining possible links between fat, cholesterol, and CHD in humans.
  
• One of those individuals, Ancel Keys, plotted CHD death rates from a mere six countries on a graph, and was able to show an almost perfect correlation between fat consumption and CHD mortality.
  
• But what Keys didn't share with his readers was the fact that he handpicked his data - even though relevant statistics were available for 22 countries. Other researchers demonstrated that when data from larger numbers of countries were included, the alleged association between fat and CHD vanished into thin air. Keys, however, was on the nutrition advisory committee of the powerful American Heart Association, and his erroneous theories were officially incorporated into AHA dietary guidelines in 1961.
  
• The cholesterol theory of heart disease has been largely built upon "epidemiological" research, which examines disease trends among certain populations. Such population-based research can be useful in identifying leads for further research - but, due to many confounding factors, should never be used as conclusive proof of anything.
  
• For example, one of the arguments commonly used in support of the lipid hypothesis is that countries with high levels of saturated fat consumption have the highest levels of heart disease. Sure they do. But they also have high levels of psychosocial stress, the highest consumption of sugar, refined carbohydrates, polyunsaturated vegetable oils, and trans-fats, and the lowest levels of physical activity. All these factors have been implicated in the development of CHD.
  
• To conclusively prove that saturated fat causes CHD, we need to conduct randomized, clinical trials comparing low-saturated-fat diets with saturated-fat-rich diets, in which all other possible confounding variables are controlled.
  
• Indeed, over the last six decades, numerous controlled studies have tested the effect of saturated fat restriction on cardiovascular and overall mortality. But supporters of the lipid hypothesis rarely mention them, instead focusing on the epidemiological data. That is because none of those controlled clinical trials have ever demonstrated a beneficial effect of saturated fat restriction or cholesterol lowering.
  
• In fact, a number of these studies directly refute the cholesterol theory. Ironically, statin drugs - the only cholesterol-lowering interventions that have demonstrated any ability to save lives - do not work by reducing cholesterol. A mountain of evidence shows that these drugs work via anti-clotting, anti-inflammatory, artery-dilating, and antioxidant mechanisms. Thankfully, taking toxic cholesterol drugs is not the only way to achieve those effects.
  
• Despite almost half a century of intense research, the indisputable fact is that heart disease is still the industrialized world's number one killer - occurring with the same frequency as it did 50 years ago.
  
• And the great tragedy is that the dietary and lifestyle factors that do increase CHD risk remain neglected or even completely ignored. Modern medicine has become far more adept at saving the lives of those who already have heart disease - but it has achieved little in the way of preventing the disease from occurring in the first place.
  
• This situation will not change until health authorities drop their cholesterol obsession. But don't hold your breath. The upper echelons of modern medicine are dominated by politics and money, and cholesterol paranoia is way too profitable for those who wield the most influence. The welfare of ordinary folks like you and me ranks far behind that of the powerful vested interests who lobby and fund health policy makers.
  That's why it is up to you to learn about the things that really matter when it comes to heart disease.
  
• These include reducing stress; avoiding elevated blood sugar; ensuring the adequate intake of omega-3 fats and avoiding excessive omega-6 fat intake; shunning heavily processed, nutrient-depleted foods; eating a diet that emphasizes fresh, nutrient-rich meats and vegetables; maintaining optimal antioxidant status through the use of proper diet and supplementation; avoiding high bodily iron stores; exercising regularly; and eschewing both passive and active cigarette smoking. “
• ***********************************
  
• Readers will note that despite the differences I have outlined with some of what he says, his list of recommended steps that he ends with is almost identical to mine.

David