Authority Nutrition on Myths about Nutrition
 

I just got this from a friend in the UK who owns a health food store. I felt it was worth sharing for those who might be interested.

LW888


Top 11 Biggest Lies of Mainstream Nutrition

You may want to check that writers credentials??????

And the age of the basis for his unprofessional opinion.

This report discusses one of the statements written LW888....:)
Eggs have gotten a bad rap for a while.

Egg consumption and risk of coronary heart disease and stroke: dose-response meta-analysis of prospective cohort studies | BMJ

This post is interesting, but it will also bring out the vegans in force! Get the popcorn ready! :)

More and more, my personal research agrees with the conclusions of this article. I think we may have all been sold a bill of goods with the high-carb, whole grain, low-fat, low protein, bought-and-paid-for-by-industry, current federal food guidelines. Study after study is calling the into question the traditional American diet. But we will see how it all plays out in the health of real people, now that new dietary ideas are taking root.

What a really really good article......and so true. Excellent article.
Thanks for sharing...........

In the late 1980's/early 1990's a dear neighbor suffered a mild heart attack. His wife was at her wit's end trying to adhere to the new "cardiac diet" of the day, while she was still used to cooking 1940 and 1950 style meals for her elderly husband and middle aged son. He actually lived to age 92 while she worried so much and went much earlier........at 74.

Anyway, he had been a "farm boy" and loved going for "fresh eggs from a Vermont farm".....it was an inexpensive nutritious meal any time of the day. Now, he could not have eggs......or if so, a very limited amount.

I gave her a recipe for cannelini beans, onions, garlic and tubular pasta which all three of them loved.......and the doctor said it was fine with the olive oil, beans, etc..........so that was good that beans were coming back into vogue at the time..........plus it was tasty.

Getting back to the eggs..........all of the college educated young adults nowadays are "into" raising laying hens on their property with fancy or not so fancy chicken coops............guess it's part of the self sufficient prepper movement........city, suburbs and rural areas are sprouting chicken coops in the back yard............these young folk are into HEALTHY EATING so I'm thinking eggs must be back in vogue too........along with beans........

The gluten is scary.........as are the additives and high fructose corn syrup........SOY, ditto. If people ate all food, including meat, in moderation............but made from scratch.......not packaged, not frozen, not with artificial sugar substitutes just to save a few calories......they would feel more satisfied and not think about food so often..........

The chain restaurants are particularly bad for one's health.
Nothing is made from scratch......

Once we were traveling across the country and stopped for the day in a small town in the midwest. We tried the "Long John Silvers".......well that fried fish, as yummy as it tasted, was just loaded with salt and MSG, etc. We were so thirsty for days afterward. Bob Evans , also in the Villages, also has tons of sodium in their food. We used to think it was good homestyle cooking..........until the last visit. Way too salty.

So, it isn't necessarily a certain food.........but the way it is prepared or "marketed as a prepared frozen food"......in other words, preservatives and flavor enhansors/excitotoxins..............etc.

The above link contains information that's obviously biased. And I wonder who the author is and what his or her connection is to some commercial diet plan. Is it the Atkins diet? It could be Atkins because it seems to be in favor of 1) high protein 2) high fat and 3) low carb or no carb. It's primarilly a weight loss diet for people who are addicted to lots of processed carbs like pancakes 'n' syrup etc.. But does it keep the weight off over the long term? And does it prevent cancer? Notice that they only talk about heart disease and it's as if cancer doesn't exist.

Part of the problem with a high-protein high-fat diet is that it displaces fresh fruit, vegetables, legumes and other foods high in nutrition and fiber.. Once you fill up on tasty fatty meat and eggs etc.. where is your appitite for healthy vegetables? Yuck! The author of this diet doesn't care about that. Who likes vegetables anyway? Overweight people don't. And this diet is primarilly for overweight people who hate healthy vegetables.

Also, in the U.S. we have an epidemic of cancer and the author never gives it any mention. I guess he forgot.

I tend to agree with Parker. Many of the "givens" that we've believed for a long time are now being debunked. However in my humble opinion, there is no question that whatever we believe, vegetables are essential for good health.

I believe that if we all ate more vegetables and fruit and less meat and fat, we could enjoy some carbohydrates.

Some of the things that our moms did to stretch the meals when some of us were small are still good nutritional practices; things like vegetable soup and adding beans to things and making cassaroles with not too much meat. And fruit in our lunch boxes. Didn't have money for pop. (soda) or much candy either. And we ran and walked and rode our bikes everywhere. It was safer to do so.

In following the above link, I found this one too. Seems like this young woman has spent a lot of time debunking The China Study; http://rawfoodsos.com/2010/07/07/the...act-or-fallac/

Gracie, thanks, that is an extremely interesting link! I'll read it again tomorrow.

Thanks Gracie
 

for sharing the link about the China Study. There will of course be people on both sides of these positions. However it really is useful to have this kind of information available to help people make informed choices for themselves. And if a person is not feeling really convinced about what to eat, then moderation or the 80/20 rule would seem to be a good middle of the road choice.

LW888

Dr, Campbell’s conclusions that even moderate consumption of animal-sourced foods and refined foods promote poor health in our time, there are a lot references.

He has quite a bit of science to back up his claims but more importantly, he has modern human populations and controlled clinic trials to reference as well.

To be fair read his reply to her blog.

The naysayers here on this forum wish to continue their eating habits and most take drugs to combat the ill effects of their diet.

That's fine, it's your choice but your mileage will vary.

We take NO meds at all (for three years), we certainly don't miss the side effects of those drugs and feel great works for us.

Understand I'm not trying to convert anyone to becoming a vegan, make your own informed decision.

.

You've always been informative and not judgemental as far as I can tell.

Being drug free, as far as pharmaceuticals, is a plus ......for sure.

We've always been heavy on the veggies and fruit, but do consume meat and seafood, in moderation. If I were cooking for myself alone, it might be different.

For my own personal knowledge, I looked up "free range chickens" vs. the type sold in supermarkets..........

Organic chickens are quite expensive to purchase (for consumption), but they really taste different and aren't filled with all the junk normally found in the big poultry businesses........it's really scary to know what goes into our food supply.......and the potential for poor health from consuming said animals.........

Antibiotics:
Antibiotics have been used on poultry in large quantities since the 1940s, when it was found that the byproducts of antibiotic production, fed because the antibiotic-producing mold had a high level of vitamin B12 after the antibiotics were removed, produced higher growth than could be accounted for by the vitamin B12 alone. Eventually it was discovered that the trace amounts of antibiotics remaining in the byproducts accounted for this growth.

The mechanism is apparently the adjustment of intestinal flora, favoring "good" bacteria while suppressing "bad" bacteria that provoke inflammation of the gut mucosa. So, the goal of antibiotics as a growth promoter is the same as for probiotics. Because the antibiotics used are not absorbed by the gut, they do not put antibiotics into the meat or eggs.

Antibiotics are used routinely in poultry for this reason, and also to prevent and treat disease. Many contend that this puts humans at risk as bacterial strains develop stronger and stronger resistances. Critics point out that, after six decades of heavy agricultural use of antibiotics, opponents of antibiotics must still make arguments about theoretical risks, since actual examples are hard to come by. All antibiotic-resistant strains of human diseases whose origin is known originated in hospitals rather than farms

A proposed bill in the United States Congress would make the use of antibiotics in animal feed legal only for therapeutic (rather than preventative) use, but it has not been passed.However, this may present the risk of slaughtered chickens harboring pathogenic bacteria and passing them on to humans that consume them.

In October 2000, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) discovered that two antibiotics were no longer effective in treating diseases found in factory-farmed chickens; one antibiotic was swiftly pulled from the market, but the other, Baytril, was not. Bayer, the company which produced it, contested the claim and as a result, Baytril remained in use until July 2005.

To prevent any residues of antibiotics in chicken meat, any given antibiotics are required to have a "withdrawal" period before they can be slaughtered. Samples of poultry at slaughter are randomly tested by the FSIS, and shows a very low percentage of residue violations

Arsenic

Chicken feed can also include Roxarsone, an antimicrobial drug that also promotes growth. Roxarsone was used as a broiler starter by about 70% of the broiler growers between 1995 to 2000.The drug has generated controversy because it contains arsenic, which is highly toxic to humans. This arsenic could be transmitted through run-off from the poultry yards. A 2004 study by the U.S. magazine Consumer Reports reported "no detectable arsenic in our samples of muscle" but found "A few of our chicken-liver samples has an amount that according to EPA standards could cause neurological problems in a child who ate 2 ounces of cooked liver per week or in an adult who ate 5.5 ounces per week." The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), however, is the organization responsible for the regulation of foods in America, and all samples tested were "far less than the... amount allowed in a food product."

Roxarsone, a controversial arsenic compound used as a nutritional supplement for chickens.


Growth hormones

Hormone use in poultry production is illegal in the United States.Similarly, no chicken meat for sale in Australia is fed hormones.Several scientific studies have documented the fact that chickens grow rapidly because they are bred to do so, not because of growth hormones.A small producer of natural and organic chickens confirmed this assumption:
“Using hormones to boost egg production was a brief fad in the Forties, but was abandoned because it didn't work. Using hormones to produce soft-meated roasters lasted into the Fifties, but the improved growth rates of normal, untreated broilers made the practice irrelevant--the broilers got as big as anyone wanted without chemicals. The only hormone that was ever used in any quantity on poultry (DES) was banned in 1959, and everyone but a few die-hard farmers had given up hormones by then, anyway. Hormones are now illegal in poultry and eggs.”E. coli

According to Consumer Reports, "1.1 million or more Americans [are] sickened each year by undercooked, tainted chicken." A USDA study discovered E. coli (Biotype I) in 99% of supermarket chicken, the result of chicken butchering not being a sterile process.However, the same study also shows that the strain of E. coli found was always a non-lethal form, and no chicken had any of the pathenogenic O157:H7 serotype.

Many of these chickens, furthermore, had relatively low levels of contamination. Feces tend to leak from the carcass until the evisceration stage, and the evisceration stage itself gives an opportunity for the interior of the carcass to receive intestinal bacteria. (So does the skin of the carcass, but the skin presents a better barrier to bacteria and reaches higher temperatures during cooking). Before 1950, this was contained largely by not eviscerating the carcass at the time of butchering, deferring this until the time of retail sale or in the home. This gave the intestinal bacteria less opportunity to colonize the edible meat. The development of the "ready-to-cook broiler" in the 1950s added convenience while introducing risk, under the assumption that end-to-end refrigeration and thorough cooking would provide adequate protection. E. coli can be killed by proper cooking times, but there is still some risk associated with it, and its near-ubiquity in commercially farmed chicken is troubling to some. Irradiation has been proposed as a means of sterilizing chicken meat after butchering.

Avian influenza:
There is also a risk that crowded conditions in chicken farms will allow avian influenza (bird flu) to spread quickly. A United Nations press release states: "Governments, local authorities and international agencies need to take a greatly increased role in combating the role of factory-farming, commerce in live poultry, and wildlife markets which provide ideal conditions for the virus to spread and mutate into a more dangerous form..."

Efficiency

Farming of chickens on an industrial scale relies largely on high protein feeds derived from soybeans; in the European Union the soybean dominates the protein supply for animal feed,and the poultry industry is the largest consumer of such feed. Two kilograms of grain must be fed to poultry to produce 1 kg of weight gain, much less than that required for pork or beef. However, for every gram of protein consumed, chickens yield only 0.33 g of edible protein.

Economic factors
Changes in commodity prices for poultry feed have a direct effect on the cost of doing business in the poultry industry. For instance, a significant rise in the price of corn in the United States can put significant economic pressure on large industrial chicken farming operations.
World chicken population


The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations estimated that in 2002 there were nearly sixteen billion chickens in the world, counting a total population of 15,853,900,000. The figures from the Global Livestock Production and Health Atlas for 2004 were as follows:

1. China (3,860,000,000)
2. United States (1,970,000,000)
3. Indonesia (1,200,000,000)
4. Brazil (1,100,000,000)
5. India (648,830,000)
6. Mexico (540,000,000)
7. Russia (340,000,000)
8. Japan (286,000,000)
9. Iran (280,000,000)
10. Turkey (250,000,000)
11. Bangladesh (172,630,000)
12. Nigeria (143,500,000)

In 2009 the annual chicken population in factory farms was estimated at 50 billion. With 6 billion raised in the European Union, over 9 billion raised in the United States and more than 7 billion in China.
The poor cows /cattle in the slaughterhouses are another story......

I think if folks saw the way the animals feed, housed, slaughtered and processed many would place any part of them in their mouth.

Do some reading on what constitutes free range, it's a big joke.

I "hear you", but we know a lot of folks including family members who raise chickens...........and they are doing it the healthy way......but these are not for meat consumption...............they are laying hens.

We've driven through Kansas and Nebraska and Iowa......sometimes we actually drive right through where these cattle places are and the stench is terrific............I often wonder about mad cow disease.

Getting back to the organic meats, we just saw on the news the other day where a local (nearby) New York fellow had fallen on bad times......long story......but he started buying up meat and falsely labeling it as ORGANIC, etc........and driving down to N.Y.C. to sell it...........obviously,he was found out.....so, buyer beware........