The Best Diet? It Isn’t a Diet at All: It’s Just Real Food - Study Finds

What should you do to get back in shape this Summer? Try a paleo-diet, go vegan? How about the Mediterranean diet, or even experiment with a low-carb diet? It turns out, according to a study recently published in Annual Reviews by a highly credentialed medical expert, Dr. David Katz, that the best food – is REAL food.

A recent comparison of popular diets (yes, including the Paleo diet) found none to be a “best diet” for optimal health compared with a well-balanced and generally healthy approach to eating focused on real food. Low-carb, low-fat, low-glycemic, vegan, vegetarian, Paleo and Mediterranean diets were among those compared for their health benefits. But none seemed to be as effective in providing the health benefits as author and food expert Michael Pollan’s sage advice: Eat food, not too much, mostly plants.

We all have had inclinations of eating better – whether it was to cure ourselves from a serious disease like cancer or diabetes, or for more superficial reasons, like wanting to look better in a bathing suit, but real, and dramatic changes can happen in lifespan, and the reduction of chronic illness when we eat right. Study after study has compelled us to eat more nutritious foods, and now the latest compares all the ‘popular’ or ‘fad’ diets, and finds, unequivocally, that real food still wins.
Dr. David Katz works at Yale University’s Prevention Research Center, and he rebels against a sea of disinformation about what people should eat to be healthy. He looks down on of-the-moment diet fads and dangerous crazes that many of his contemporaries – even other doctors promote without sound reason. In a recent interview, he said “I don’t care which diet is best. I care about the truth.”

The study
Katz published his findings with colleague, Stephanie Meller in a paper titled, “Can We Say What Diet Is Best for Health?” They compared all the trend diets of the day: Low carb, low fat, low glycemic, Mediterranean, mixed/balanced (DASH), Paleolithic, vegan, and elements of other diets.
Katz says that despite the prevalent promotion of these diets in mainstream media, there are few studies proving they actually work:

“There have been no rigorous, long-term studies comparing contenders for best diet laurels using methodology that precludes bias and confounding. For many reasons, such studies are unlikely.”

Conversely, he found that:

“A diet of minimally processed foods close to nature, predominantly plants, is decisively associated with health promotion and disease prevention.”

Among the important points made by the article are these:

• Plant-based diets (non-GMO,organic, real plants, I might add) are nutritional powerhouses which support a wide variety of favorable health outcomes. These include lower rates of heart disease and cancer. These diets don’t just include fruits and vegetables, but real grains, nuts and seeds.

• Katz and Meller found that ‘low-fat’ diets are no better than diets high in real, healthful fats (not fake, man-made ones). The Mediterranean diet is only successful because it contains a lower omega-6 to omega-3 ratio than the typical American diet. Americans also rely far too much on unhealthy fats like trans-fats.

• Moderating meat intake, and alcohol improves health.

• Increasing natural fiber improves health, including, “defense against neurodegenerative disease and preservation of cognitive function, reduced inflammation, and defense against asthma.”

• Carbohydrate-selective diets are better than simply low-carb diets. Attention to glycemic index is important, but not the most important thing – since carrots, for example have a high glycemic index, but can cure cancer. Again, it goes back to eating real food.

• One of the most important points of the study was this one: “if Paleolithic eating is loosely interpreted to mean a diet based mostly on meat, no meaningful interpretation of health effects is possible.”
  

Katz is frustrated with the misinformation about how diet affects health:

“It’s not just linguistic, I really at times feel like crying, when I think about that we’re paying for ignorance with human lives . . . At times, I hate the people with alphabet soup after their names who are promising the moon and the stars with certainty. I hate knowing that the next person is already rubbing his or her hands together with the next fad to make it on the bestseller list.”

It’s a radical notion in today’s GMO-promoted, FDA-ignorant, pharmaceutical-pushing world, but real food can cure you.

Sources: http://www.theatlantic.com/, http://naturalrevolution.org/

Paleo diet twice as effective for weight loss: study

The best way for a woman to lose weight may be to eat like her Stone Age ancestors.

New research shows a cavewoman diet is potentially one of the most effective ways to slim.

Scientists came up with the findings after tracking female dieters for up to two years and comparing weight loss among those on the cavewoman - or paleolithic - diet with those complying with modern nutritional guidelines.

Women who adopted a so-called Palaeolithic diet lost twice as much weight within six months as those who followed a modern programme based on official health guidelines. Researchers also saw a greater reduction in their waist circumference, although the difference between the two groups became smaller after two years of dieting. 

The Palaeolithic diet involves eating plenty of berries, vegetables and lean meats such as chicken, but some types of food such as bread, rice, pasta and dairy products are banned. Scientists said it could be preferable to other forms of diet, such as those which are low in carbohydrates but high in fat, because it strips out all unhealthy foods meaning there are unlikely to be negative side effects.

It is designed to simulate what our ancestors ate before the advent of farming, meaning followers can eat whatever they like except for certain types of food including grains, refined sugars and salt.
One previous experiment found that men who followed the Palaeolithic diet for just three weeks were less likely to suffer from heart attacks and strokes.

The study in detail
In the latest study, published in the European Journal of Clinical Nutrition, researchers divided 70 postmenopausal, heavily overweight women into two groups.
One was told to follow a Palaeolithic diet, and the other a Nordic diet based on whole-grain cereals, low-fat dairy products, fruit, pulses, fish and vegetable oils.
Dr Caroline Mellberg, who led the study along with colleagues at Umeå University and researchers at Cambridge University, said: “Since pasta and rice and such things were excluded, most [participants] ate pretty normal things like a chicken fillet, but they excluded pasta and added vegetables instead.”
Participants were asked to design their diet to get about 30% of their total energy intake from protein but found it difficult to reach that level and compensated by eating extra carbohydrates and five to seven portions of fruit and vegetables each day, she added.
“They lost weight probably due to a low energy intake,” she said. “It is quite hard to eat enough fruit and vegetables to fill your energy needs. None of them complained about being hungry, so I guess the foods are quite filling. They ate a lot.”

After six months those on the Palaeolithic diet had lost an average of 6.2kg of fat and 11cm from their waistline, compared with 2.6kg and 5.8cm in the other group, and levels of harmful blood fat known as triglyceride were also lower.
By the end of the two-year study the difference between the groups had narrowed, but Dr Mellberg suggested there could be a simple explanation – people on the Palaeolithic diet grew tired of it.
“I think the participants weren’t compliant,” she said. “It is quite a hard diet [to follow] in the Western world. We eat a lot of foods like bread, pasta, cereals.”
“They were quite satisfied too, after the first year. They had lost a lot of weight and many of the participants did not want to lose any more, so they started to eat more normal foods.”
Catherine Collins, chief dietitian at St George’s Hospital in London, added that the low protein intake could have slowed the rate at which participants’ bodies burned calories over time.
“As the metabolic rate declines, at some point that will stop you losing weight,” she explained.



Sources: http://sciencenordic.com/, http://food.ninemsn.com.au/, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/, http://www.iol.co.za/