Category: Healthy Eating

How to Stop Eating Sugar

4/10/2018

Read NY Times article

Additional thoughts from Dr. Goldman:
The author, David Leonhardt, is not a doctor and usually writes editorials relating to politics and economics. In the article, he states that "he is not sure about diet sodas being harmful." I AM SURE that diet sodas are harmful and cause weight gain!

Breakfast is discussed a lot, as it is easy to consume high sugar amounts. Take a look at the below photo of a typical breakfast for me: veggies, hummus and shrimp. I take my supplements before eating and don’t experience any vitamin “burp up.” Eggs or other protein could be substituted for the shrimp. Any vegetable (cooked or uncooked) will do.

Many TV ads for diet sodas promote taglines such as, “One calorie but still tastes great.” The message never endorses diet sodas as part of a weight loss plan or a healthy diet.

That is because they cause weight gain.

There are taste buds in the intestine near the pancreas. Artificial sweeteners found in diet sodas stimulate these taste buds and in response the pancreas makes more insulin. The insulin drives sugar from the blood into fat stores. The brain sees the sugar levels go down and the person is driven to want more sugar.

Tests have shown that after three months, lab rats who drank Diet Coke, weighed 50% more than control lab rats drinking water!

Don’t be fooled by
the term “diet” soda

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Chile Takes on Junk Food and Obesity

2/14/2018

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Read NY Times article

Like the United States, Chile is seeing a huge rise in obesity along with related diseases such as diabetes, heart disease, joint problems and cancer. After twenty years of debate, Chile’s new president, Michelle Bachelet, a pediatrician, is doing something about it.

The new laws do not ban the sale of snack foods containing high sugar, salt, fat and calories. But they now require black warning labels to appear on the front of the packages — they also prohibit the sale of these unhealthy products in schools. Advertising aimed at children has been discontinued. Even Tony the Tiger is banned from Frosted Flakes boxes and Chester the Cheetah has been removed from all Cheetos packaging (I always hated the Cheetos Cheetah. He teaches children bad manners including smearing yellow Cheetos dust onto other people's clothing).

Over the last several decades, Americans went from consuming a few pounds of sugar each year to ingesting approximately 150 pounds annually! The move from white sugar produced from sugar cane to high fructose corn syrup markedly lowered the price of sugar — and with lower prices, portion size and total sugar consumption grew. Chile has also added an 18% tax on high sugar beverages. They are still much cheaper than before the advent of corn sugar sweeteners. Mayor Bloomberg tried to do this in New York City and failed.

In 1981, Pepsi and Coke both made the change to using corn sugar. Soda became so cheap that McDonald’s moved their soda dispenser from behind the counter to inside the dining area. It was cheaper to allow a customer to drink unlimited soft drinks than to pay an employee to fill empty cups. Instead of tracking soda consumption, management would simply track the number of cups used.

In the 1970s, most people in the world were thin. There are still areas where food is in short supply, but mostly these are areas where war or fallen governments prevent the distribution of food. American produced sugar is so cheap that huge regions of the planet now have high obesity and diabetes rates. Diabetes was virtually unknown in China a few decades ago — now it is a rising epidemic.

Like many businesses, the food industry has undergone consolidation, resulting in a few huge companies controlling most of the trade. They can (and do) lavish money on politicians worldwide, and lobby heavily to protect their business.

Sadly, one of the responses of the food industry in Chile has been to remove sugar and replace it with artificial sweeteners. Those chemicals raise insulin levels, just like sugar and have many of the same bad effects on health. In lab experiments, rats given Diet Coke weighed 50% more than water drinking controlled rats after just three months!

As individuals, we all have the power to change our food choices. But, as a society, it helps a great deal if consumers can clearly see which foods are unhealthy. It is especially effective if these labels are plainly visible to children. We also need to remove unhealthy snacks from schools and forbid harmful food advertising directed at children.

The rise in food related disease takes many years. As with smoking, deaths occur four to six decades after the habit begins. If the U.S. launched a program to reduce consumption of sugar, processed carbohydrates, salt and unhealthy fats, it could take over thirty years to document some major improvement in health statistics.

Cigarette consumption peaked in 1968 when advertising was banned. Lung cancer deaths continued to rise and peaked in 1998. In order not to die of lung cancer, a smoker would need to quit smoking thirty years before they would otherwise die of the disease. People don’t suddenly get a heart attack at sixty or seventy — they have been gradually accumulating the problem for decades.

By changing the detrimental advertising sales patterns of processed foods, it will mostly benefit our children when they become mature adults. The earlier we start, the sooner the changes can begin.

I congratulate the people of Chile for their courageous step and wish them good health. If only the American people were to take such a step.

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Why French Food is Healthier

5/4/2017

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In April my sister and I went to France to celebrate my 70th birthday. I learned some interesting things about the way the French grow their food — it could be done in America, but unfortunately, it is not.

We landed at Charles de Gaulle Airport outside Paris and flew on to Bordeaux, located in the south of France near the Atlantic coast. Our flight crossed the heart of France. It was a cloudless April day and I had a good view of the French countryside. Unlike the Midwest, the French countryside is divided into many small fields. Multiple crops grow in small patches. According to our trip guides, France is second only to the United States in terms of total agricultural output. But unlike the U.S., France’s output comes from many small farms, not from a large corporate agribusiness. Almost half of their total production is organic, or as the French call it, Biologique.

While attending elementary school in the 1950’s, I learned about crop rotation, contour farming to maintain healthy soil, and how to minimize the loss of topsoil. We are not doing this in the U.S. anymore, but the French still are.

Looking down at a field (while still in the air), the French
agri-system is obvious. The field has odd-looking shapes to accommodate the varied slopes of the landscape and is divided into different portions. One section has planted vegetables, and a nearby field is filled with fruit trees. A pasture with cattle, sheep or goats can be observed and finally, another is planted with grain or flowers. Interspersed throughout are small patches of forest. Between the fields are borders of flowers, bushes and trees. Any one area contains a whole ecosystem — it’s just not one single crop planted for miles and miles (as we see in the U.S.!).

Honeybees, birds and insects are the main pollinators of crops, but American honeybees are actually dying off. One reason is from our heavy use of insecticides and herbicides. Another reason is the poor diet of the pollinators themselves. With only corn, wheat or soy available for miles, the bees and other species have too narrow a diet. The French locations offer a variety of crops, trees, flowers and grasses, providing the pollinators with plenty of choices to accommodate their diet.

The French have a very long-term view. In Bordeaux and the Dordogne River Valley, we toured wineries and small villages. An important point — wine barrels are made from oak trees that are nearly 200 years old. Barrels are good for only three years and cannot be reused for Bordeaux wine. To continue to make wine, new oak trees must be planted and maintained for over one hundred years. Today’s oak plantings are intended to make wine for six to ten generations from now.

In the American South, the soil became rapidly depleted and was attributed to raising mostly cotton — after the soil was used up the solution was to simply move on. Farmers gradually moved from Georgia to Alabama, then to Mississippi, on to Arkansas and finally Texas. The French have been making wine and living on the same land since Roman times, nearly 2,000 years ago. They do not have another place to move and they are very serious about keeping their soil healthy and maintaining the quality of their food.

Travel can be educational. Americans do not have a monopoly on the best ways to live. I am not saying that France is perfect but they do have some great ideas that we could adopt. Most of their food is locally grown and the quality and flavor of their fruits and vegetables is wonderful.

Better tasting fruits and vegetables almost always have higher nutritional value. The tax and subsidies of American agribusiness was designed to favor large, corporate farms. Although food prices may go up somewhat, we would be much better off subsidizing small organic mixed-use farms instead of large farm businesses. We would need much smaller farm machines, fewer chemicals and there would be jobs for many more farmers. In the 1920’s, it required over 30% of the American population to raise our food. Today, just 2% of Americans have agricultural jobs. The American rural economy, the quality of our food, the health of our soil (and the health of the pollinators) would all be better if we raised our food more like the French.

Maybe we shouldn’t start our search for the next president in Iowa, the land of corn and corn and corn.

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7 Lifestyle Tips to Better Health — Pathway to Health is both Complex & Simple

8/19/2016

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Below is a basic roadmap for longevity and health:
1. Exercise on a regular basis.
2. Eat lots of fresh vegetables, fruits and whole foods (raw or prepared in a healthy way -- avoid eating processed foods!). Meats are a minor part by volume.
3. Avoid processed sugars and artificial sweeteners.
4. Limit intake of salt, sugar and alcohol.
5. Take a balanced set of vitamin and mineral supplements (unfortunately, our current crops of vegetables and fruits have been depleted of nutrients to help extend store shelf life).
6. Sleep 7 ½ to 8 hours a night. Stop watching stimulating screens at least 30 minutes before bedtime. Stop eating carbohydrate foods and alcohol two hours before bedtime.
7. Have your hormones evaluated and balanced. As people age, some may require a low dose of natural hormone supplements.

Over the past fifteen years, my quest has been to obtain a new view of the best way to not only help my patients, but also with my own pathway to health and longevity. I have been amazed at both the complexity and simplicity of that pathway.

There has been an explosion of detailed scientific research on the mechanisms of how our bodies work. Unfortunately, very little of that science trickles down to the mainstream medical community unless a new drug or product gets involved.

A single human cell can have thousands of receptors on its outer membrane, getting signals from thousands of messenger chemicals. DNA does not always determine how our bodies work — it is just the basic program. Complex interactions between DNA, messengers and programming compounds, a system called Epigenetics, determines what parts of our DNA, our Book Of Life, are turned on or off. Finding out what is going on (or going wrong) in a particular person can be very complex.

Individuals might have inherited peculiarities in their DNA called SNPs, Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms (pronounced like snips). These SNPs can either give strengths or problems that are unique to a family or individual. This is where understanding of the individual patient (not the big population statistics), becomes important.

On the other hand, most of our diseases for aging, heart disease, diabetes, Alzheimer's and general wear and tear are connected to broad lifestyle problems. The ideal lifestyle and hormone balance principles are mostly the same when I want to help patients who may have a tendency for any these diseases. Some people are more likely to have problems in some areas and not others, but the pathway to health is mostly the same for everybody.

In the future, genetic and chemical pathway testing will become more available and less expensive to enable honing in on special individual issues. Although these tests and possible therapies are much talked about as the wave of the future, they only figure in about 7% to 10% of health problems.

The 7 lifestyle points listed above will get you 90% of the way to better health.

To know everything about one person is extremely complex but most of what is needed to stay healthy is simple and applies to everyone.

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Eat Real Food for a Meal - Don’t Drink it in a Cup Holder

2/7/2016

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With the exception of humans, all mammals on the planet only drink one liquid — and that is water. Water requires no digestion and is simply and rapidly absorbed. Blenders, juice machines and smoothie juice bars have become popular and trendy in the U.S. We should not convert proteins, fruits and vegetables into liquids that can be sipped from a glass. It is unhealthy and frequently leads to weight gain and poor nutrition.

Here is why
In the 19th century, German physiologists discovered that the stomach is shaped so that liquids can pass right through the center. The German medical word for the “rapid pathway through the stomach” is called, magenstrasse, which means main street. Only water is supposed to go through the mouth and stomach without digestion. Everything else requires processing.

If a person eats an apple or carrot, the eating process is slow. A bite is taken, chewed for a while and swallowed. The sequence is repeated. There are digestive enzymes in the saliva that begin to process the food. The taste and “mouth feel” of the food sends signals to the stomach to make appropriate acid and digestive enzymes to prepare for the first arrival of food. The digestion process continues. Various minerals require stomach acid to be ionized for absorption and many vitamins need to be changed or attached to special proteins for proper absorption.

Rough, fibrous foods (such as apples and carrots) slowly and gradually break down, sending a little at a time into the intestine. Gradually, over many hours, the sugars extracted from these foods will reach the intestine. Because the body is only receiving a little sugar at a time, very little insulin is needed. In contrast, elevated insulin levels stimulate weight gain, hormonal imbalance and can stimulate cancer.

Turning our food into liquids in the form of juices, shakes and smoothies cause the food to speed through the mouth and stomach and go directly into the intestine without any of the proper processing. Without preparation, only the sugars can be well absorbed. That sugar hits the blood rapidly causing a sugar high which might later be followed by a crash as insulin levels rise. Protein powder comes in unnaturally small pieces. Protein can be broken down into sugars if too rapidly absorbed. Fats cannot be turned into sugars but protein can.

At Costco they often have a sales display of a big, heavy blender. The demonstrator declares that you can get all of the vitamins needed with a pound of carrots in one, single drink. Wrong. You will get all the sugar from that pound of carrots but the undigested vitamins and minerals will not be well absorbed. The fiber will be in tiny pieces, not chewed in bigger pieces that the bacteria in our intestine should have. Author Michael Pollen says that there is no healthy meal that fits into the cup holder of your car.

Following a healthy diet is simple: eat mostly whole plant-based foods, some protein from meat or seafood and importantly, always eat calmly and with intention. These are considered Slow Foods, not Fast Foods. Most fast food is very soft and can be gobbled down rapidly, or worse, turned into a liquid drink. Soup and salad is acceptable because salad ingredients slow down the absorption process along with the soup, which is eaten a spoonful at a time. Soft drinks and juices contain huge amounts of sugar, and flow rapidly through the magenstrasse into the intestine. Water is still the best drink to have during a meal and it doesn’t have to be cold. Hot water, tea or coffee is fine (with minimal sugar). The French and Italians have it right. They eat healthy food in a relaxed atmosphere, with good taste and in small portions.

Bon Appetit!

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Are we eating Roundup Pesticide in some of our foods (GMO)?

1/8/2016

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There has been a lot of conversation about GMO foods — from labeling discrepancies to just banning them altogether. Even with the holistic and functional medicine courses I have taken, there has been very little discussion about exactly what the genetic modification of food items actually are.

So, allow me to share what I have learned:

GMO sugar beets
About seven or eight years ago, Atlanta radio station (WABE 90.1 FM) ran a story about a farmer who grew sugar beets. Monsanto (an agrochemical and agricultural company) was pressuring the farmer to switch to buying their genetically engineered sugar beet seeds. I wondered why a company would even want to genetically modify a sugar beet. While researching the Farmers section of Monsanto’s website, I discovered a lot.

The word cultivation means to “pull up weeds” — this enables food crops to grow without competing simultaneously with weeds to grab its nutrients. Monsanto changed the genes in some of their sugar beets, making them resistant to Monsanto’s popular weed killer, Roundup. If the farmer grew Monsanto’s GMO sugar beets, he could spray the whole crop with Roundup and kill the weeds without forfeiting the growth of the sugar beets. Each company wins – the farmer doesn’t have to pull up weeds and Monsanto receives earnings from both the seeds and Roundup.

Monsanto sells Roundup to the general public — they publicize that Roundup can kill unsightly weeds growing inside driveway cracks because of its capability to destroy the entire weed down to its roots.

Beets are a root vegetable, right? Does this mean the chemicals contained in Roundup ends up in the sugar we eat? The short answer is, I don’t know. Currently, there are seven Roundup Ready crops: corn, soybeans, alfalfa, cotton, canola oil, sorghum and sugar beets. Most of these are fed to cows, chickens and pigs — foods that many of us eat. Sugar and canola oil are eaten directly while cottonseed oil is found in many processed foods (including most mayonnaise brands). This means that directly or indirectly, Americans could be “eating” Roundup and the other toxic chemicals (such as the main ingredient glyphosate) that it degrades into.

For more information, watch the video, The Health Dangers of Roundup (Glyphosate) Herbicide, by Jeffrey Smith & Stephanie Seneff

GMO wheat and potatoes
Monsanto also developed another major genetic modification — a bacterial gene called Bt Toxin. They are added to wheat and russet potatoes, and generally used for baking or making French Fries. I watched a promotional film by Monsanto that showed a beetle eating the leaves of a Bt potato plant — the beetle was shown later hanging upside down and dying from intestinal problems.

A number of my patients grew up in Germany, which bans all GMO foods. Many patients confessed to getting stomach cramps whenever they ate American bread, but never experienced problems when digesting German bread. Generally, American flour is higher in gluten (a natural wheat protein) than German wheat flour, but American GMO wheat also contains Bt Toxin. Whole Foods, a popular natural and organic food store, makes their own bread, attesting that all of their breads are organic. Their breads contain gluten (as all wheat does), but contains no Bt Toxin. Some patients have explained that they can tolerate organic bread but not GMO bread.

I think it is conceivable that many Americans who think they are gluten intolerant may actually be just GMO Bt Toxin intolerant. When possible, try to buy organic wheat bread that contains no added GMO Bt toxin. Avoiding wheat is another way to circumvent exposure to Bt toxin but even most non-organic russet potatoes still contain a lot of Bt Toxin.

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Why Do People Still Gain Weight From Diet Sodas?

12/14/2015

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An experiment was done on two groups of lab rats. Both groups consumed identical meals, but one group drank water and the second was only served Diet Coke. At the end of three months, the Diet Coke group weighed 50% more than the water drinking lab rats.

How could this be?

Just as we have taste buds in the mouth, it has been determined that there are similar taste buds residing in the intestine, near the pancreas. The pancreas “tastes” the sweetness and in response, makes extra insulin.

Insulin’s main job is to move sugar into the muscles to be burned for energy. If the muscles don’t need the extra sugar, insulin shoves the sugar into “fat stores” and transfers some of the stored fat to be used for the next famine. Fortunately we have not experienced a food shortage in the U.S. for many decades. However, Americans are not burning off the extra fat — to make any progress, people have to consciously reduce calorie intake and increase exercise activity.

Artificial sweeteners increase the production of insulin — even caffeine is an insulin-producing culprit. The body needs some insulin, but having excess amounts encourages damaging results. The ovaries are stimulated to make more male hormones — insulin overload can also irritate the lining of arteries in the heart and brain and triggers coronary artery disease and dementia. The stimulation and growth of many common cancers (e.g., breast, prostate and bowel) increases by hitting receptors for a hormone called insulin-like growth factor (IGF).

BOTTOM LINE: Unfortunately, diet sodas contain artificial sweeteners and caffeine. All artificial sweeteners (including stevia, splenda, saccharin, etc.) “tells” the body that it is receiving sugar and automatically increases insulin production. SORRY!

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Fast Food Used to Be Considered Holiday Food?

12/4/2015

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Today, America is overwhelmed with an assault of fast food restaurants with other countries trailing not too far behind. There was a time when going to a fast food restaurant was only reserved for special occasions. Some examples:

French fries
I read an article in Scientific American regarding the science behind French Fries. Yes, that is correct -- the science of French Fries. Have you ever used raw potatoes to make French Fries? Initially, the first few batches turn out terrible, as they just don’t get crispy. It’s not the hot oil that creates the crispy outside. When fries are continually being prepared all day, the starches and sugars from the potatoes seep out into the oil. The hot sugars are the responsible party for making the fries crispy. In the old days, oil was expensive and French Fries were considered a holiday treat. Preparing them was only worthwhile if a large number of people were eating, requiring recurring batches to be made. When ordering fries today, your batch may be number 2,000.

Ice cream
Before refrigeration was available, making ice cream required cream, sugar, flavoring, ice, rock salt and lots of energy. The ingredients were mixed and put into a special bucket surrounded by ice and rock salt to reach below freezing temperatures. Someone would turn a crank to mix the ingredients, keeping it frozen to make a smooth consistency and to keep the ice crystals small. In those days, attending a July 4 picnic would require the job of many teenagers to consistently turn the crank. Ice cream had to be eaten the same day (there was no way to maintain below freezing temperatures during the summer and required lots of time and exertion). Everyone got a little treat and then it was gone. In Henry David Thoreau’s book Walden Pond, there is a chapter describing how ice was made in the summer months. In the dead of winter, ice was cut from the pond and stored under straw to last into summer. Ice cream was a very rare treat for special occasions.

Fried chicken
Fried chicken has some similarities to French Fries. Oil was expensive and would never be wasted on a single meal to feed a handful of people. If you have ever made it, you recall the messy process including splattering grease all over the kitchen — it usually was reserved for a group project. After church on Sundays, folks often gathered for lunch and heaps of chicken would be prepared for the entire group. Because many women participated in this messy endeavor, it required a shorter amount of time to clean up afterwards. Again, fried chicken was made on occasion (not daily) and was considered an indulgence.

Barbecue and burgers
To barbecue food, it used to require special equipment. A large griddle was needed for the burgers and a smoker for the barbecue. It entailed loads of work and was saved for a weekend treat or event. The alternative was to meet at an urban location where smoked meat could be sold to a large number of customers.

Soft drinks
At one time, producing soft drinks required an industrial plant to make carbonated water and sugar syrup was costly. When I was young, Coca-Cola came in a six-ounce bottle and the average person usually drank a single bottle serving. The familiar drugstore fountain wide top Coca-Cola glass had a tiny bottom. It contained only five ounces of liquid plus ice. Now, it can be purchased in 36-oz cups and two liter bottles — many restaurants happily offer free refills.

Many of Michael Pollan’s books point out that fast foods today have become regular staples of the American diet. These infrequent, tasty, naughty, high caloric treats are now part of a daily diet that has markedly increased the caloric intake of the average American.

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The Sugar Box

11/9/2015

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There is a popular PBS show called, Antiques Roadshow. It's a combination of history, exploration and scavenger hunting. Antique owners bring in old, unusual items to be appraised by experts — they also discuss the history, origin and value of the item.

I watched an episode that was filmed in a Southern city. The dealer brought in a wooden box that was about 2 ½ feet wide, a foot high and a foot deep. It had a heavy top with a big, strong padlock and stood on legs about two feet high. The owner had used it for an end table, unaware of its original purpose.

The appraiser said it was a sugar box. The design was made in a time that segregation even included separating the white sugar from the brown. Inside, there were two sections — white sugar was kept on one side and brown sugar in the other. The owner of the box would open the padlock to remove just the amount needed for the daily cooking and relocked the box to prevent possible theft. Sugar was expensive — cakes, pies and other sweets were considered luxurious treats and reserved for special events.

In 1905, it was estimated that the average American ate five pounds of sugar a year. In 2005, that estimate has risen to 195 pounds a year! Times have changed and so has the shape of the average American.

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Nuts are Healthy, right?

10/19/2015

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It is well documented that nuts are very healthy for the body. I agree — they have a good balance of protein, healthy fats and some carbohydrates. Some time ago, I attended a lecture by Arthur Agatston, M.D., author of the original South Beach diet books. A woman attending the lecture told Dr. Agatston that she had initially lost weight on the program but was now gaining it back. Dr. Agatston’s response was, “Too many nuts.”

When discussing edible nuts, I am referring to the kind contained in a shell and that grows on trees. Peanuts are not nuts. They come from the roots of a bush, and the sugar becomes stored into the roots. Walnuts, cashews, filberts, Brazil nuts and pistachios are all real nuts.

Years ago, nuts were mostly sold in the shell, and eating just one required some work. The hard shell had to be broken in order to dig out the meat. They could only be consumed one at a time. Today, there are so many options available including shelled, salted or roasted. This is where the problem lies. Excess salt is not healthy. Bars are known to offer free salted, roasted nuts. The object is to sell more alcohol. Ingesting salt leads to craving more of it and also initiates thirst. Eat more nuts, drink more beer.

Just a handful of nuts contains a lot of calories. If they have been roasted, the oils could have also burned, making it more likely to stimulate cancer growth. Excess salt also leads to high blood pressure. If you need a snack, eat four to six nuts, unroasted and unsalted. For an extra treat, mix them with a date or a fig — the combination is really delicious. STOP THERE. After ten minutes, if you are still hungry, eat a few more.

Tips: Don’t drive with a bag of nuts in the car or keep a bag of nuts by your side while reading or watching TV. Without realizing it, you can quickly pack in a lot of calories.

Eating nuts are healthy, but only in moderation.

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How to Stop Eating Sugar

Chile Takes on Junk Food and Obesity

Why French Food is Healthier

7 Lifestyle Tips to Better Health — Pathway to Health is both Complex & Simple

Eat Real Food for a Meal - Don’t Drink it in a Cup Holder

Are we eating Roundup Pesticide in some of our foods (GMO)?

Why Do People Still Gain Weight From Diet Sodas?

Fast Food Used to Be Considered Holiday Food?

The Sugar Box

Nuts are Healthy, right?

Robert P. Goldman, M.D.

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