Food myths and facts: Health or hoax?

When it comes to food, you must have heard many an old wives’ tale that has been going around longer than we can remember. Which is fact and which is fiction? Let us separate the wheat (or what’s useful) from the chaff (or crap) in Part 2 of our one-on-one interview with Hawaii-based Filipino nutritionist Dr. Angel Respicio Jr.:

PHILIPPINE STAR: Is brown sugar better than white?

DR. JUN RESPICIO: No. Sally Fallon clarifies it in her book Nourishing Traditions: Raw, natural, turbinado and sucanat sugars, Florida crystals, and brown sugar are all refined, meaning the nutrients have been removed. A small amount of molasses may be added back to give it brown color. They are refined sugars in disguise! Natural sweeteners are healthier, their nutrients are intact. These are raw honey, maple syrup, rapadura sugar, stevia powder, dehydrated date sugar, molasses, malted grain syrup, sorghum syrup, naturally sweetened jams, and evaporated cane sugar.

What’s wrong with refined sugars (and refined flour)?

These refined carbohydrates are stripped of their vitamins, minerals, and enzymes, allowing us to fulfill our body’s energy requirements without obtaining the nutrients needed for bodybuilding, digestion, and repair. The fiber which plays an important role in digestion and elimination is also removed. So when you consume refined carbohydrates, they draw the body’s reserves of vitamins and minerals to be properly digested. This leads to bone loss and tooth decay. Dr. Melvin Page, a Florida dentist, demonstrated in numerous studies that sugar consumption causes phosphorous levels to drop and calcium to rise. Calcium rises because it is pulled from the teeth and bones. Thus sugar consumption causes tooth decay not because it promotes bacterial growth in the mouth as most dentists believe, but because it alters the internal body chemistry. But if they are fortified, are they any better? Fortification adds a handful of synthetic vitamins and minerals to refined flour and polished rice, which may even be dangerous. Some researchers believe excess iron from fortified flour can cause tissue damage. Vitamins B1 and B2 added to grains without B6 lead to imbalances in numerous processes involving B vitamin pathways. The safety of bromating and bleaching agents, almost universally applied to white flour, has never been established.

Will yogurt make you slim?

Only if it is not laden with sugar. The redemptive values of yogurt are the presence of probiotics Lactobacillus bulgaricus and Streptococcus thermophilus, They partially brake down lactose, and predigest casein. These make it easier to absorb milk in yogurt, especially for those who are lactose intolerant. Most yogurt products available on the market today are sweetened with high-fructose corn syrup, a sweetener more dangerous than refined sugar. Some have added food coloring and preservatives, contributing to oxidative stress.

Is low-fat yogurt any better?

The low-fat varieties have the additional danger of the atherogenic oxidized cholesterol as all reduced fat milk do, unless the powdered milk they added were processed with low heat. Non-fat yogurt, on the other hand, is mostly probiotics and sugar which elevate your blood sugar and insulin. Once insulin has taken care of the sugar rush, you feel hungry again and the cycle goes on and on unless you can break it. Eaten alone, it doesn’t have the fat to absorb vitamin D important for the proper utilization of calcium.

What matters most in trying to get slim is the total number of calories you take in every day and the balance of carbohydrates, fat, and protein. People who avoid fat are always hungry so you see them eating all the time mostly carbohydrate snacks. 1 cup of rice or two slices of American bread has 200 calories. A tablespoon of butter has only 125 calories. If you don’t have adequate fat intake (4 tablespoons a day), you will always be hungry. Fat is the only macronutrient that sends negative feedback to the brain, telling you that you are full. Carbohydrates, especially those without fiber, will only satiate you once your tummy starts to stretch. The best yogurts are those made from good-quality whole milk (from grass-fed cows raised free of hormones and antibiotics) and naturally sweetened.

Do you really have to drink six glasses of water a day?

DR. JUN RESPICIO: Conventional wisdom calls for six to eight large glasses per day, but Oriental medicine teaches that this is dangerous practice that puts undue strain on the kidneys, according to Sally Fallon. I asked that question when I went to see my urologist and he told me, “The rule of thumb is not how much you drink but you must void 2 liters of water a day.” If you do the math, does it mean I have to drink 2 liters? No, no, no! Water is a by-product of carbohydrate and fat metabolism, hence you need less than two liters. There are instances where you might be sweating a lot or losing water insensibly (through your breath or skin, in unusual temperatures) and might actually need more water. So, let your urine output be your guide.

Is margarine better than butter?

Butter is better. “Margarine eaters have twice the rate of heart disease as butter eaters-” (Nutrition Week 3/22/91 21:12). It is no longer a secret that the margarine Americans have been spreading on their toast, and products manufactured with this hydrogenated vegetable oil like cookies and crackers is the chief culprit in our current plague of cancer and heart disease, according to Sally Fallon and Dr. Mary G. Enig. The new-fangled tub spreads that mainline nutrition writers recommend may not contain hydrogenated fats, but they are composed of highly processed rancid vegetable oils, soy protein isolate, and a host of additives. Heart disease was rare in America at the turn of the century. Between 1920 and 1960, the incidence of heart disease rose precipitously to become America’s number one killer. During the same period, butter consumption plummeted from 18 pounds per person per year to four.

Butter has vitamin A, vitamin E, lecithin, selenium, the anti-cancer fats: conjugated linoleic acid and short and medium chain fatty acids. Butter has vitamin D essential for proper calium absorption leading to strong bones and teeth. Butter is a good source of highly absorbable iodine, preventing goiter in mountainous areas where seafood is not available. Butterfat has special glycosphingolipids that protect against gastro-intestinal infection. The notion that butter causes weight gain is a sad misconception. The short- and medium-chain fatty acids in butter are not stored in the adipose tissue but are used for quick energy. Fat tissue in humans is composed mainly of longer-chain fatty acids from olive oil and polyunsaturated oils.

Cholesterol found in butterfat plays an important role in the development of the brain and the nervous system. Mother’s milk is high in cholesterol and over 50 percent of its calories is butterfat. This cholesterol is also an anti-oxidant. What? Yes, indeed, cholesterol is an anti-oxidant that is flooded into the blood when we take in too many harmful free-radicals — usually from damaged and rancid fats in margarine and highly processed vegetable oils.

Is fish good for the brain?

Yes. Actually fatty fish, fish liver oils (remember cod liver oil?), and fish eggs are rich in docosahexaenoic acid or DHA. DHA is found plentifully in the human brain because it is essential for its development and function.

Are all sweet foods fattening?

Yes, if you eat them. Seriously, what matters most, as I have mentioned earlier, is not to habitually consume over your recommended daily total calorie allowance. In general, it’s 1,800 calories for women and 2,000 calories for men. Carbohydrate allowance is 50-60%, fat 25-30%, and the rest is protein. For carbohydrates that is 800-1200 calories. A 12-ounce juice or soda has 150 calories. 1 and 1/2 cups Haagen Dazs or Ben & Jerry’s ice cream have at least 800 calories, just like a cup of sugar.

Are artificial sweeteners safe?

The word artificial should give you a clue that they are not safe, according to Lori Lipinski CNC in her article “The Kitchen Transition.” Artificial sweeteners are associated with cancer, weight gain, increased cravings for sweets, impaired coordination, decreased mental function, multiple sclerosis, Parkinson’s disease, seizures, and migraine headaches, Sally Fallon adds: The most widely used artificial sweetener is aspartame. It has been associated with dizziness, visual impairment, severe muscle aches, numbing of extremities, pancreatitis, high blood pressure, retinal hemorrhaging, seizures, and depression. Methanol, the breakdown product of aspartame, is a known poison. Methanol is also found in fruit juices and the regulatory agencies have seized upon this fact to assure us that the methanol by-product of aspartame is not harmful. But they failed to tell us that the methanol in diet soft drinks is 15 to 100 times higher than that of fruit juices. In any event, the safety level of mehanol has never been determined. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) puts the “safe consumption level “ of methanol at 7.8 mg. per day. One liter of aspartame sweetened beverage may have as much as 56 mg.

There are other sweeteners on the market and they are not without adverse reactions.

Does smoking after a meal help digestion?

Some nicotine-dependent people feel better when they smoke whether before, during or after a meal. I don’t have any scientific explanation for that. What I do know, working in a clinic that deals with lung diseases, is that, smoking can cause lung cancer. The lung is like a candle and the cigarette is the flame.

Is drinking coffee healthy?

A Harvard study says it is helpful for diabetics, but only if you drink six cups per day. You don’t benefit if you drink five cups or less. I wonder if this study was funded by a coffee company! There are other ways of treating diabetes which are more sound than drinking coffee. Sally Fallon, author of Nourishing Traditions, has this to say: Caffeine, which is also found in many soft drinks, and its related substance theobromine (from tea and cocoa) are like sugar in their effects on the body. They stimulate the adrenal glands to release an adrenaline-like substance, which in turn causes the liver to release sugar into the blood stream. This is what gives you the “lift” when you drink coffee, tea, or caffeinated soft drinks. The delicate blood-sugar-regulation mechanism cannot long tolerate the constant stimulation of habitual caffeine ingestion. Often, the blood sugar-lowering mechanisms overreact, causing low blood sugar and its concomitant complaints of chronic fatigue, dizziness, depression, allergies,, and behavioral disorders. Caffeine irritates the lining of the stomach and can cause an increase in stomach acid. It affects the nervous system, leading to insomnia and restlessness. Prolonged use of caffeine can contribute to any one of a number of serious diseases such as cancer, bone loss, mental disorders, and birth defects. Caffeine’s effects on the nervous sytem are most pronounced in children — yet cola drinks have become standard fare for our youth. Wanna shift to our very own rice coffee? It is decaffeinated — as they say in Ilokano, “Diay kape ti native.”

Cereals are very handy, are they healthy?

In the article “Dirty Secrets of the Food Processing Industry,” presented in March 2002 at the Consumer Health of Canada, Sally Fallon lamented that in modern times we have abandoned local artisanal processing in favor of factory and industrial processing. Dry breakfast cereals are produced by a process called extrusion. First, a slurry of the grains is created and then forced out of a little hole in a machine called an extruder at high temperature and pressure. Depending on the shape of the hole, the grains are made into little o’s, flakes, animal shapes, or shreds, or they are puffed (as in puffed rice). Paul Stitt, in his book Fighting the Food Giants, tells us that the extrusion process destroys most of the nutrients in the grains. It destroys the fatty acids and the chemical vitamins added at the end. The amino acids are rendered very toxic, especially lysine, a crucial nutrient which is denatured by extrusion. All dry cereals that come in boxes are extruded cereals. In the rat experiments conducted by a cereal company, the rats given the vitamins, water, and all the puffed wheat they wanted died within two weeks — they died before the rats that got no food at all. Autopsy revealed signs of insulin shock. Sally Fallon suggests going back to the old-fashioned porridges or traditional breakfast.

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