After a year of basically being out of business due to various forms of lockdown, I have returned from thinking about respiratory disease pandemics to thinking about the other pandemic. The one that started about 50 years ago, got worse and worse for each of those 50 years and has claimed countless lives. Countless, mainly because nobody has bothered to count them. It’s also now suspected of making the disease of the pandemic of the last two years even worse than it would otherwise be. Obesity.

I’ve written many times about my view. The obesity pandemic has been caused by the replacement in the human diet of fat by sugar and highly processed carbohydrates. I’ve formed this view based on my own experience of being obese for many years and trying and failing to lose weight by restricting calorie intake principally by severely restricting fat in my diet (the Energy Balance Model) and the sudden, rapid, and sustained weight loss I experienced when I severely restricted carbohydrates in my diet (the Carbohydrate-Insulin Model). Also, I would note that, when I severely restricted fat in my diet I felt terrible, but when I severely restricted carbohydrates I felt better than ever.

At this point I can hear a few people wandering off shaking their heads and saying, “Well if he’s going to restrict something “severely” then he deserves to feel terrible!”. To which I say, you can’t make a big change without making a BIG CHANGE. Plus eliminating carbs made me feel better not worse!

I would just like to be clear that no one told me that restricting carbohydrates would cause me to lose weight. I hadn’t read a book about it or taken advice from a guru or scoured scientific journals, it was a matter of simple observation, over dinner in a restaurant in Paris in 2003. Every woman in the restaurant was thin and not one of them (that I could see) had any carbohydrates of any description on her plate. The women were mostly eating steak and green salad with an olive oil dressing. So, I decided to try what I thought they were doing and miraculously started to lose weight. It was only when, during a routine check-up, I told the practice nurse at my doctor what I was doing, she told me about the famous Dr Atkins. I had never heard of him until then.

Since then, I have, of course, read the esteemed Doctor’s books, discovered William Banting, John Yudkin, Thomas Cleave, Mark Sissons, Nina Teicholz, Gary Taubes and many others who, in general, all seem to hold the same view that I had come to – that it was carbohydrate intake that drives weight gain and not fat intake. The thing that links all these writers together is that they try to describe the mechanism by which it would be possible for carbohydrate intake to drive weight gain by causing excess insulin secretion which increases the deposition of fat in the adipose tissue of the body. The Carbohydrate-Insulin Model (CIM).

Below is the CIM as a diagram. The numbered arrows in the diagram indicate a scientifically testable hypothesis that is considered in the peer reviewed paper I refer to later.

Ludwig et al American Journal of Clinical Nutrition

However, for more than 50 years we have been told by the large majority of the medical and scientific establishment that it is the Energy Balance Model (EBM) that was the correct model, and that the obesity pandemic was caused by people simply eating more calories than they needed for the amount of physical activity they were doing. This seems strange to me as, as far as I am aware, people are now eating FEWER calories than they were 50 years ago and still getting fatter. So I am puzzled as to where the evidence is to support this EBM model or what the mechanism would be that would drive it. In my experience, people that advocate the EBM do not try to describe any mechanism by which the overconsumption of calories of itself causes the body to lay down more fat than it otherwise would do rather than, say, raise your basal metabolic rate to burn off this excess energy to preserve your body weight set point. As homeostasis would suggest it would. The human body does not like change. They just say things like “move more, eat less” or “it’s obvious that if you eat more than you need to for the exercise you do, you will get fat”. I have many problems with these statements but in particular;

a) If you move more, you will probably eat more and if you eat less you will probably move less; and

b) Can you point me to the evidence which shows that if you eat more calories than you need, you will get fat simply because of those additional calories? Or are you just fat shaming people as greedy and lazy, when they are actually suffering from a serious disease?

Which may sound a bit grumpy but having been the recipient of this EBM advice which drove me to severely restrict fat in my diet that made me feel terrible, I feel I have the right! This advice also requires you to swallow two other unproven assumptions

a) that all calories have the same effect on the body – a calorie is just a calorie, no matter what food it comes from; and

b) If a) is true, the best was to reduce calorie intake is to cut fat from your diet as it has the most calories per gram.

The problem with a) is that it simply isn’t true. Different foods have very different effects on insulin production which, among other things, promotes fat storage. The problem with b) is that your body needs dietary fat for many vital functions of the body, and I mean MANY. Therefore, if you don’t eat enough of it, you will feel TERRIBLE. What your body does not need is dietary carbohydrates. If your body needs some glucose, it will simply make what it needs. You do not need to eat any carbs at all, and if you don’t eat any, you will feel FINE.

So far, so much my view of the world and an unreferenced one at that! It would be a reasonable question to ask where my evidence is for the all the above. Well, I deliberately didn’t reference anything as I no longer have to! Quite a lot of high powered doctors, scientists and journalists (including the ever-present Gary Taubes) have done it for me in a peer reviewed paper in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition:

https://academic.oup.com/ajcn/advance-article/doi/10.1093/ajcn/nqab270/6369073?searchresult=1

For me, while the whole paper is well worth reading, the standout argument for change is contained in this paragraph:

Furthermore, conceptual adoption of the EBM has failed to stem the obesity pandemic. Governments and professional health organizations heavily promote energy restriction (especially with low-fat diets) and exercise; nutrition labels on packaged foods prominently display calorie content; and personal responsibility to avoid excess weight gain is emphasized in patient care. Nevertheless, obesity prevalence continues to increase worldwide, prompting spectacularly complex formulations of the EBM addressing myriad biological, behavioural, environmental, and societal factors converging on energy balance, with questionable practical translation.

In other words, you establishment types have been running this unethical EBM experiment for 50 years. You now have a lot of results across the world to look at and they all say the same thing – EBM as a means of controlling the obesity pandemic DOES NOT WORK.

If the thought of reading a scientific paper isn’t your thing, never fear! In one of those coincidences that are hard to explain, in today’s Observer newspaper there is an article which makes many of the same points in an easy-to-read form:

https://www.theguardian.com/food/2021/sep/26/food-myths-busted-dairy-salt-steak-swedish-study-science-health-advice

The authors also make the point that nothing of what they are saying is new and can track back the CIM to almost a century ago (see the table below). I think they could have gone quite a lot further than that. William Banting (c. December 1796 – 16 March 1878) was a notable English undertaker. Formerly obese, he is also known for being the first to popularise a weight loss diet based on limiting the intake of carbohydrates, especially those of a starchy or sugary nature in 1863!!

Some people heeded Mr Banting’s advice and still do – in South Africa there are restaurants that describe themselves as “Banting Friendy”! That’s quite an impressive legacy to leave behind you.

 https://theculturetrip.com/africa/south-africa/articles/11-banting-friendly-restaurants-in-johannesburg/

TABLE 1

Historical precedents regarding the carbohydrate-insulin model of obesity

Plague: A plague is a very infectious disease that spreads quickly and kills large numbers of people.

In the depths of lockdown in the UK, I’ve been reading about how people that came before us dealt with plagues, to see if we have learnt anything since pandemics became popular around 10,000 years ago.

I say 10,000 years because that’s about the time we started collecting together in groups larger than hunter gather bands, started to produce surpluses of food and so invented trade, international – intercontinental even – travel and started to transport bacteria and viruses around the world and infect large numbers of other people. Never forget, if we don’t move, then bacteria and viruses can’t move either, which is why I have spent the last 10 weeks in the garden.

I started with Laura Spinney’s book Pale Rider.

It charts the progress of the 1918 flu pandemic, spectacularly mis-named as Spanish Flu. The Spanish called it the “Naples Soldier” and almost every other country in the world apart from the Britain, the USA (where it almost certainly originated) and France, named it after a neighbouring country they viewed with distrust. It’s a great book and well worth a read as she describes the huge societal inequalities that were laid bare, if they needed to be, by the progress of the disease. Whilst the industrialised world was able to engage in total warfare and mechanised death, both on the ground and in the air, its scientists and doctors still only had partial understanding of the germ theory of disease and medicine was on the whole unregulated. Homeopaths and osteopaths were equally as able to treat flu as more “scientific” doctors. Bacteria had been observed and understood as an agent of disease but viruses were a mystery – they were unobservable and therefore unknowable at that time. Some vaccines were available – for example, Edward Jenner created a vaccine for smallpox in 1796, with no understanding of germ theory let alone viruses, simply through observation. However there were no vaccines against any kind of flu in 1918 and no defence against the novel H1N1 flu variant called Spanish Flu (and other things). This was a new disease, no one had had it before and so no one was immune (sound familiar?) neither was there any hope of finding a vaccine as no one had the first idea how to go about it. In the eyes of many this plague was an act of God. The disease ripped across the planet in three waves, sped on its way either by transporting men out to fight in the First World War or demobilising them as it ended. By the time the third wave of the pandemic burned itself out, it had killed somewhere between 50-100 million people.

However, I turned the final page of the book feeling a little relieved. Even though, at the start of the current plague, in the UK we appeared not to have learned the lessons of personal protective equipment and that took a long time to re-learn in 2020, in the UK at least. In 1918 face masks seemed to be accepted as essential protective equipment.

Looking at the pictures above you may be thinking “Ha! The fools aren’t standing two meters apart!”. But why would they? They had no idea that the disease was caused by a particle that struggled to jump more than a meter.

So hey! We have learned something! Now we understand viruses cause disease and we have brilliant scientists all over the globe that have sequenced the genome of the little blighter and are desperately looking for the vaccine that will render it harmless. In 2020 we can stare into the very essence of the SARS-CoV-2 virus and pick it apart bit by bit. In 1918 they didn’t even know what a gene was. I put the book down and felt brave enough to go back further in time…

All the way back to 1665.

Well maybe not all the way to 1665 but to 1722 when the book was published. Arguments have been had as to whether the book is non-fiction or fiction but now it is regarded as a novel. The book is a first person recounting of the Great Plague in London and is attributed to a person called “H.F.” a saddler in Whitechapel district of London. Daniel Defoe had an uncle – Henry Foe – who was a saddler in Whitechapel so it may be based on his uncle’s journals. Who knows? However, Defoe is very careful to allocate events to specific streets and places and the book has a sense of a contemporaneous recording, but we just don’t know. What it clearly does give you is a sense of how they would deal with a plague at the time the book was written and I personally doubt things would have been different 60 years earlier. I opened the cover…

We start with rumours of the disease abroad. Rumours are that it is very bad in Amsterdam and, although the government did discuss it, people seemed unconcerned as it was a long way away and things were fine at home. That sounds familiar, I thought…

19 Jan 2020: Coronavirus: China reports 17 new cases of Sars-like mystery virus

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jan/19/coronavirus-china-reports-17-new-cases-of-sars-like-mystery-virus#maincontent

Yet within a flash, the plague breaks out in London in Drury Lane, where two Frenchmen die of the Plague after opening a bale of silk from Holland. It then all goes quiet for a few months although Defoe says that he suspects that cases during this quiet period were being hushed up…

13 May 2020: Ian Murray accuses Nicola Sturgeon of ‘cover-up’ over Edinburgh Nike conference outbreak

https://www.scotsman.com/health/coronavirus/ian-murray-accuses-nicola-sturgeon-cover-over-edinburgh-nike-conference-outbreak-2852401

But then people start dying in large numbers and, helpfully, the numbers are recorded and published in parish “bills” which Defoe reproduces throughout the book as the Plague progresses… just like we do today! But there are problems with the numbers…

…for now for about nine weeks together there died near a thousand a day, one day with another, even by the account of the weekly bills, which yet, I have reason to be assured, never gave a full account, by many thousands; the confusion being such….

As you can see, he sees a discrepancy between the numbers of deaths reported and the number of deaths actually occurring – by the thousands. 300 years later in the UK, we seem to be be better at recording the total number of deaths, but there are still discrepancies between those recorded as dying of COVID-19, and the total number of people dying – by the thousands. Its the number between the red and blue lines…

And so the comparisons go on: the refusal of shops to accept cash payments; the quack remedies that do much more harm than good – including smoking… I recall us doing that one too; the differential effect on various occupations – butchers being particularly mentioned – we have exactly the same this time round; how pregnant women are grievously affected by the Plague in a part of the book that is pretty devastating; and the huge financial intervention made by the Lord Mayor to prevent civil unrest – Defoe says hundreds of £thousands. Today we have hundreds of £billions.

The similarity is astonishing with one difference. He says that throughout the Plague, London was never short of food or any other supplies and prices increased only slightly. He doesn’t mention toilet roll in particular.

However what really made me stop and think is how they dealt with risk of the onward transmission of the infection. They did it by the only means at their disposal. People who had symptoms were shut up at home with their family (today we are calling it household) and told they couldn’t go out and someone else had to do their shopping for them, until they either got better or died.

Not to put too fine a point on it… 300 years later, in the face of a novel disease that no one has immunity to, we have appeared to have made very little progress indeed in how we to deal with a plague, because we are doing exactly the same thing.

We even whine the same whine as they did 300 years ago…

This shutting up of houses was at first counted a very cruel and unchristian method, and the poor people so confined made bitter lamentations. Complaints of the severity of it were also daily brought to my Lord Mayor, of houses causelessly (and some maliciously) shut up.

However…

… after all that was or could be done in these cases, the shutting up of houses, so as to confine those that were well with those that were sick, had very great inconveniences in it, and some that were very tragical, and which merited to have been considered if there had been room for it. But it was authorised by a law, it had the public good in view as the end chiefly aimed at, and all the private injuries that were done by the putting it in execution must be put to the account of the public benefit.

At the end of the day though, our hero seems to despair that, by the time people display symptoms and are shut up in their houses, it is too late. He says it’s not those people you need to worry about, it’s the people who are infected but are not showing symptoms. They are the real killers! He muses that what you need is some system to track all of the people that the symptomatic people have met, before they became symptomatic, and shut all of them up too!! But that’s probably impossible. Sound familiar at all?

However, when all the options are considered…

… it is my opinion, and I must leave it as a prescription, viz., that the best physic against the plague is to run away from it.

I tend to agree.

And finally, before I close, Mr Defoe ends on a brighter note! The terrible economic slump that was caused by the Great Plague was followed by the V-shaped recoveries to end all V-shaped recoveries! The economy bounced back and accelerated into period of sustained growth as unseen before. Economic growth that was occasioned, of course, by rebuilding of London after the Great Fire… that was waiting in the wings.

If you would like to read the Journal of the Plague Year, you don’t even have to buy it. Those fine people at the Gutenburg Project have made it available online for free.

http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/376

Stay well, stay safe, stay at home, work out.

PS I have just opened my next book which is, of course, The Plague by Albert Camus and the book opens with a quote from… why Mr Daniel Defoe!! Sometimes life is very pleasing. 😊

As a personal trainer I am often asked, “Pete, what’s the best exercise to get me off to a good start in the New Year?” Now, that’s a tricky question because it all depends on what you are trying to achieve. However, if I was Mr Mean Ol’ Personal Trainer, I might reply, “Why not try doing the same exercise you were doing in December, but in January, do it properly.”

But I am not that person (not out loud anyway ) and so I like to offer people something that is fun, challenging and just downright useful. That’s one of the reasons I don’t have many clients…

“Make some fat.” I say.

“No, I already did that in December, now I want to lose it!”

“Yes, I get that. Try butter!”

“No, you’re really not getting this. I tried butter in December and look at the state of me!”

“I don’t mean eating butter – although I doubt that butter consumption is where your issue lies – make some butter. Shake it off!!”

To explain… if you are anything like me, you probably bought a lot of cream over Christmas and used about 5% of it. Yes I know you will have poured the rancid mess away by now but think of this as forward guidance for next year – you’re welcome.

So what do you do with all that unused Christmas cream that could also double up as a workout? You make it into butter, of course. But how does sitting at butter churn, sedately moving a paddle or watching a Kenwood mixer go round and round double as a workout? I hear you ask. The answer is you don’t use them; you use this high tech. piece of gadgetry…

A plastic food saver with a safe, tight fitting lid. It needs to be big enough to accommodate your cream and with room left over to allow the cream to move as you shake it. Mine has a capacity of about 1.5 litres and I had about a litre of cream – a mix of single and double because that was what was in the fridge.

After allowing the cream to come to room temperature, pour it into the container (add nothing else), clip down the lid and shake! And shake. And shake and then shake it some more. If possible get a gullible friend to help you, tag team style. After a while you will begin to feel tired but keep shaking until you are exhausted and can shake no more. At this point, you will want to look at your cream to see how much of it has turned to butter. So unclip the lid, look inside and you will notice that… nothing has changed, so get back on it and shake! After a further period of shaking, you may start hallucinating that Taylor Swift has entered your kitchen, to inspire you on in your shaking workout. In my experience this hallucination happens at the same time as the cream changes from liquid to a solid whipped cream, although I am unsure why this should be the case.

Shake it off

If you are desperately unlucky you may get Shakin’ Stevens instead of Taylor…

Shaky

…but the effect seems to be the same… oddly. Maybe that explains the 99,000 subscribers to his youtube channel??

Now don’t let me put you off!! Keep shaking!

Eventually, after maybe 45 minutes, when you have nothing left to give, your heart rate is at threshold and your arms are about to drop off, something magical will happen. All of a sudden, the contents of the food saver will go from a thick whipped cream consistency to a splashy liquid. You’ll hear it first then feel it as it changes from whipped cream to a solid lump splashing around in a watery liquid. You made it, the workout is over! Congratulations!

As Taylor fades away, undo the lid and inside you will find this…

Butter, or at least the beginnings of it. The small popcorn like spheres are the butter and the liquid is buttermilk. You need to remove the butter from the buttermilk and then wash the buttermilk off the butter. If you leave buttermilk on the butter it will go rancid and spoil the butter.

Before I get ridiculed, I know that buttermilk is useful and I could make buckwheat pancakes with it or use it to start a lactic fermentation in my sauerkraut… but today is butter making, my kimchi is already fermenting, I’m not eating any dairy or grains and my freezer is full, so it has gone down the sink. I’m sorry.

Next, with cold, clean hands, you need to pick up the butter and wash it under running water, squeezing the buttermilk out from between the little spheres and amalgamating the butter globules into a pat.

Keep your hands cold and keep washing the butter until the water runs clear. Then you need to get the water out of the butter. Either you can squeeze it by hand or you can use some butter pats (which take a bit of getting used to). Either way, hands and pats need to be cold.

After several minutes patting you will have got the water out and your butter is ready. I have a little butter mould to give it a pretty shape but it’s just an affectation you can just shape it with cold hands. If you want to you can add a little salt – soft sea salt crystals are the best as they give a gentle crunch to the butter – rock salt will probably break your teeth so don’t use that. Carve an “S” for salt in the butter so you remember which is which.

How much butter you get is going to depend on the fat content of your cream, which will vary with the type of cream, the cow it came from and the time of year. From my litre of mixed single and double cream I got just under 300g of butter. I made 125g each of salted and unsalted butter with a bit left over to make some herb butter later.

I wrap mine in greaseproof paper and keep it in the freezer until needed then use it all at once, as I don’t trust myself to wash all the buttermilk out.

So there you have it. Home made butter from leftover cream that would have otherwise been wasted, plus you get buttermilk to start off your sauerkraut or kimchi fermentation or to make buttermilk pancakes with AND an upper body workout to boot!

What more could you ask for in dry January?

If you would like a fuller, clearer and much more professional explanation of how to make butter at home, check out Bread and Butter by Richard Snapes, Grant Harrington, Eve Hemingway.  You may never buy butter again (if you have a Kenwood mixer)!  😉

I’ve not been here for a while… but enough has happened to warrant a new post, so here I go!

A long time ago (decades not weeks) I was involved in a minor court case where I was required to produce a document for submission to the court. Like the good civil servant I am (during daylight hours), I drafted a detailed document with many annexes of supporting information. Prior to the submission of my document to the court, I attended a conference with a QC where he would review it to ensure I hadn’t said anything stupid. His office was in Inner Temple, in a building that was founded by the Knights Templar during the 12^th century and is now the place where barristers hang out.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inner_Temple

It was a winter’s day in his sitting room-like office – comfy sofas facing an open coal fire, tea in china cups and Viennese whirls on a tea plate – where I proudly presented my work.

I was surprised when, instead of starting at the first page and reading my carefully drafted text from the beginning, he went straight to the back and started looking through the annexes. He looked at my puzzled expression over the rim of his teacup and explained, “I always start with the annexes. That’s where people put the interesting stuff, that they don’t want you to read.”

This was brought back to my mind when I read the latest paper on childhood obesity from those masters of obfuscation, Public Health England. The report is called Time to Solve Childhood Obesity. An Independent Report by the Chief Medical Officer, 2019 Professor Dame Sally Davies.

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/time-to-solve-childhood-obesity-cmo-special-report

It’s ok, in a fairly mediocre sort of way, and it wouldn’t have made the headlines had it not contained one of the stupidest recommendations that has ever been made – that the government should ban eating on urban public transport.

Here is how one (irony defying) newspaper front page covered it:

Now, I’m no fan of people that stink out the train with their Cornish pasty or drop their Marks and Spencer sushi on the seats, but I wouldn’t want to be the person whose job it was to take away the Big Mac from the drunken banker on the 21:54 Guildford train from Waterloo!

Anyway, the report is curious from one aspect. It is almost ALL ANNEXES. The report is ten pages followed by about 80 pages of annexes, some of which are really quite rich in data and visuals. If we think back to what the QC said, its where they put the interesting stuff that they don’t want you to read, I wondered what they could have possibly hidden in there. And then I found it!

“The important biological determinants for obesity are: genetics; programming of biology that happens before birth and early in life that affects how the body responds to food; in all probability, the microbiome…

Emerging evidence suggests the microbiome, the many millions of microbes living inside a human’s gut, play an important role in health and disease. Babies are colonised as they are born from their mother’s birth canal. Recent work has shown an association between antibiotic usage and increased weight gain in childhood.”

Hold the phone!! An association between antibiotic usage and increased weight gain in childhood??? How come that didn’t make the headlines??? Cos it was buried in 80 pages of annexes maybe?

The link between antibiotic use, or over-use really, and obesity is covered in detail by Tim Spector in his recent book The Diet Myth in which he cites research by Martin Blaser.

It was Martin Blaser who produced the famous maps comparing antibiotic prescription rates and obesity in the USA. As he says, the correlation is strikingly non-random.

Given that PHE has now recognised the association too (albeit only in Annexe D), I wondered if they had produced a similar comparison and guess what? They haven’t. Quelle surprise…*

Undeterred, I wondered if I could produce my own maps given the PHE does collect data on prescription rates for antibiotics (they are trying to reduce over-use) and rates of obesity. I found maps for both, already done by others, and here they are. See if you think there is a strikingly non-random correlation in England too:

Map on the left is overweight-ness from the Daily Telegraph … the darker red the fatter. Map on the right  is antibiotic prescription rates – the darker blue the higher the number of prescriptions. It was produced by Laura Shallcross, and Dame Sally C Davies (British Journal of General Practice 2014;64:604-605).

Whoa!! Shut the door!!! Dame Sally Davies??? The same Dame Sally Davies that wrote the obesity report?

So, she wrote the obesity report that buries the connection between antibiotics and weight gain in Annexe D of Annexes A-G and then what, she forgot that she had done the map that might demonstrate the possible connection and so it didn’t get into the report?

Or, maybe, it was just too interesting even for an annexe.

*Definition – A French phrase that means “what a surprise.” Often said sarcastically.

This is old now but I just came across it.

I have started the video where Jamie starts to explain how much sugar American children are ingesting solely from milk based drinks served in school.

As he describes it… it’s simply abuse.

The rest of the talk is definitely work 20 minutes of your life.

Modern, western adults accrete weight.  It’s simply a fact of life. The environment that we live in sticks fat to us… particularly around our middle. Eventually, that abdominal fat kills us – which is not a great outcome.

To avoid the unwelcome results of excess abdominal fat, it would seem to be a sensible idea to manage your weight within some parameters around your “ideal” weight. Maybe a couple of kilograms up and a couple down. I expect that people that make a living out of their body’s look might have tighter controls but I am talking about everyday people like you and me. So I control my weight – or rather I don’t. I let my body control my weight by providing it appropriate nutritional signals that say things like everything is all right in the world, you don’t need to store the food coming as fat, feel free to burn whatever you like. Oh and BTW we like muscle because we lift heavy things and we love available energy because we run and play and think about stuff too. So what does my body do with this information and food (food is information too)? It does this…

That’s about seven year’s worth of data comprising about 3800 data points showing my body managing its weight, by itself, between about +/- 2kg, simply on the basis of what I put in my mouth and the life I lead. No calories were ever counted or piece of saturated fat avoided in the making of this seven year data series. This is simply proof that a primal diet allows the body to control human adult weight by itself. 3800 objective, tamper free, repeatable bits of proof.

But why did I start recording only in 2012 when i lost my weight in 2004? Because that’s when I bought the wifi scales – d’oh! Seriously, wifi scales… if you don’t have them you need them!

So there you have it. The wiseacres of weight loss tell you that the difficult bit about weight loss is maintaining the loss over time. I say nuts to that… nuts, butter, cheese, cream and avocados with lots of mayonnaise.

🙂

They’re back… the carbohydrate loving members of the medical establishment, and this time they mean business. What kind of business they mean; you can decide for yourself.

Prof. Jim Mann (Professor in Human Nutrition and Medicine at the University of Otago) his team at the University of Otago Dunedin come armed with a meta analysis of

observational studies and clinical trials conducted over nearly 40 years [that] show a 15 to 30 per cent decrease in deaths and incidence of coronary heart disease, stroke, type 2 diabetes and colorectal cancer, when comparing the highest dietary fibre consumers with the lowest.

In other words, they have (re)examined a lot of the studies that have been conducted over the last 40 years – now that would appear to me to exclude Ancel Keys’s 1955 Seven Countries Study but I’d take a punt it’s in there – and found, surprise, surprise that they agreed with the results.

Now here’s the thing… given that the kind of person likely to listen to medical advice is probably going to listen to all the medical advice (I listen to none of it, as far as food is concerned) and that over the last 40 years the medical establishment has flooded the planet with advice of all types – some good, some nonsense – why do they think it is eating carbs and fibre that has made such a magical difference to people’s health? Why do they not think that the same people that have increased their fibre intake, at the same time would not also be giving up smoking, taking more exercise, lowering their stress levels, reducing their exposure to pollutants, having blood tests and acting on the results, moving to the country and taking up pottery, making their own butter (new one for me, that) or maybe even stopping eating bacon (never!!).

The truth is they don’t know, they can’t know and it looks to me like they are just trying to create a bit of (cheap) publicity, for reasons I can’t imagine… The study was commissioned by the World Health Organisation and frankly, I would have thought that the WHO could have been a bit more imaginative than to ask for a rehash of 40 (or more) years of the same old, same old. But what the hey, it’s not their money.

Meanwhile let’s have a look at the obesity statistics for children from some selected countries over the last 40 years, as the medical community again congratulates itself for getting its advice exactly spot on.

Finally a word about the organisation that carried out the study – the Edgar Diabetes and Obesity Research Centre at the University of Otago, Dunedin in New Zealand, and there’s nothing wrong with that, but this is an interesting throwback…

Dr Robyn Toomath – a diabetes specialist and obesity campaigner – says after 14 years she has achieved nothing.

If you can’t be bothered to read the post, here’s a relevant chart from it, showing New Zealand’s obesity rates:

Hmmm… not much success there Prof. Mann. Maybe your countrymen and women aren’t listening to your advice? Or maybe they are…?

And now here’s a word from our sponsors, well the Edgar Diabetes and Obesity Research Centre’s sponsors who, amongst others, are:

Eli Lilly. Whose diabetes related medical products are as follows:
Basaglar® (insulin glargine injection)
Glucagon™ (glucagon for injection [rDNA origin])
Glyxambi® (empagliflozin and linagliptin) tablets**
Humalog® Junior KwikPen® (insulin lispro injection 100 units/mL)
Humalog® Mix50/50™ (50% insulin lispro protamine suspension, 50% insulin lispro injection [rDNA origin])
Humalog® Mix75/25™ (75% insulin lispro protamine suspension, 25% insulin lispro injection [rDNA origin])
Humalog® U100 (insulin lispro injection)
Luxura HD
Humalog® U200 (insulin lispro injection)
Humulin® 70/30 (70% human insulin isophane suspension, 30% human insulin injection [rDNA origin])
Humulin® N (human insulin [rDNA origin] isophane suspension)
Humulin® R (U-100) (regular insulin human injection, USP [rDNA origin])
Humulin® R (U-500) (regular U-500 [concentrated] insulin human injection, USP [rDNA origin])
Jardiance® (empagliflozin) tablets**
Jentadueto® (linagliptin and metformin hydrochloride) tablets**
Jentadueto® XR (linagliptin and metformin hydrochloride extended-release) tablets**
Synjardy® (empagliflozin and metformin hydrochloride) tablets**
Synjardy® XR (empagliflozin and metformin hydrochloride extended-release) tablets**
Tradjenta® (linagliptin) tablets**
Trulicity® (dulaglutide)
Humatrope® (somatropin [rDNA origin] for injection)
Olumiant® (baricitinib)
Taltz® (ixekizumab)

Phew!!! That’s a lot of drugs for people who have (mainly) eaten too many carbs!!!!!

And…

Novo Nordisk. Whose diabetes related medical products are:
GLP-1 analogue
Victoza® (liraglutide)
Basal insulin / GLP-1 analogue
Xultophy®  (insulin degludec/liraglutide)
Modern insulins
Fiasp®  (insulin aspart)
Levemir® (insulin detemir)
NovoMix® 30 (biphasic insulin aspart)
NovoRapid® (insulin aspart)
Tresiba® (insulin degludec)
Human insulins
Actrapid® (insulin human, rDNA)
Insulatard® (insulin human, rDNA)
Injection devices
NovoPen® 5 Blue
NovoPen® 5 Silver
NovoPen® 4 Bue
NovoPen® 4 Silver
NovoPen Echo® Blue
NovoPen Echo® Red
NovoPen® 3 PenMate®
Needles
NovoFine® Needles 31G 6mm
NovoFine® Needles 30G 8mm
NovoFine® Autocover® 30G 8mm
NovoTwist® Needles 32G 5mm
NovoFine® Needle Remover
Glucagon
GlucaGen® Hypokit 1mg

Bloody Hell!! I wonder how much money they make from this stuff!!! BTW, I like that all the needles are helpfully followed by a needle remover 😦

In case you had any doubts though, the Edgar Research Centre says that it provides more information on its sponsors in its annual reports and gives a useful link that takes you to this page (my bold):

Ketosis is not, unfortunately, a little known Greek island. I am far from soaking up the sun on a mini-break on the Mediterranean and actually sitting in England watching the rain for the second consecutive day of the weekend. So if it’s not a Greek island, what is ketosis?

Well, if you are rejecting surgery as an answer to getting rid of the excess fat you are carrying, ketosis is the only way you are going to do it. Ketosis is the state in which the body is using primarily fat for energy i.e. “fat burning”. Ketogenesis is the process by which the body turns fat into energy. Here’s what it looks like:

The two molecules at the top are acetyl-CoEnzyme A and are the result of the breakdown of fat molecules either directly from food intake or, if you are losing weight from your stored body fat. The three molecules at the bottom in pink are what is known as “ketone bodies” and are what the body actually uses as fuel. Wikipedia tells us that:

“The three ketone bodies, each synthesized from acetyl-CoA molecules, are:

• Acetoacetate, which can be converted by the liver into β-hydroxybutyrate, or spontaneously turn into acetone
• Acetone, which is generated through the decarboxylation of acetoacetate, either spontaneously or through the enzyme acetoacetate decarboxylase. It can then be further metabolized either by CYP2E1 into hydroxyacetone (acetol) and then via propylene glycol to pyruvate, lactate and acetate (usable for energy) and propionaldehyde, or via methylglyoxal to pyruvate and lactate.
• β-hydroxybutyrate (not technically a ketone according to IUPAC nomenclature) is generated through the action of the enzyme D-β-hydroxybutyrate dehydrogenase on acetoacetate.

β-Hydroxybutyrate is the most abundant of the ketone bodies, followed by acetoacetate and finally acetone. β-Hydroxybutyrate and acetoacetate can pass through membranes easily, and are therefore a source of energy for the brain, which cannot directly metabolize fatty acids. The brain receives 60-70% of its required energy from ketone bodies when blood glucose levels are low.”

So, if you want to burn off your body fat, all you have to do is persuade your body to break down the fat into acetyl-CoA then turn it into ketones and use it for fuel. Simple!  Unfortunately Wiki also tells us however that:

“Ketogenesis takes place in the setting of low glucose levels in the blood, after exhaustion of other cellular carbohydrate stores, such as glycogen.“

Hmm… so how do you do that then? Wiki to the rescue:

“Depletion of glucose and oxaloacetate can be triggered by fasting, vigorous exercise, high-fat diets or other medical conditions, all of which enhance ketone production.”

Now I don’t ever suggest getting ill is a good idea so let’s rule out the last one “medical conditions” which leaves us fasting, vigorous exercise and high fat diets. Does that remind you of anything? Oh yeah… a “primal” way of living. This is interesting! But if we were actually meant to base our diets around carbohydrates then why did we bother to evolve ketogenesis as it looks pretty complex? Because in reality, for early people, carbohydrates were not common in large amounts and an unreliable food source, we experienced frequent bouts of fasting when hunting was poor and when hunting was good, we undertook large amounts of vigorous exercise to catch stuff. And finally, if we were lucky enough to find carbohydrate to eat we immediately shut down ketosis to preserve our fat stores because fat is the body’s insurance against bad hunting. If we reflect on that for modern people, basically, if you are trying to lose weight you can only do it by using fat for fuel and if at the same time you are eating carbohydrate you are telling your body to stop burning fat. No wonder people feel weird on a low fat/high carb weight loss diet!

OK I hear you say, that all pretty easy to write but can you demonstrate any of it? have a look at my week. The pictures are of what are called Ketostix and they measure the amount of acetoacetate (one of the ketones) in urine. The more purple the end of the stick the more ketones and the stronger your state of ketosis i.e. the more fat you are burning. This isn’t scientific but I tested myself at the same time every day for nine days. My diet was mainly very low carb. Ketostix are not an accurate way to measure ketones in your blood as they are measuring the overspill in your urine, but they do demonstrate that some ketosis is happening.

Monday – low carb diet and lunchtime workout that was pretty strenuous. Heavy fat burning.

Tuesday – the same as Monday and still heavy fat burning.

Wednesday even more so!

Thursday and its the same again. Same routine same result.

On Friday I change my workout to a lower intensity stretching session and my ketosis dials back as I don’t need as much energy from my fat.

Saturday and I take the day off exercise and down it goes again but still in ketosis – still burning fat as my diet is very low in carbs and so there is very little glucose in my body – one of the conditions for ketosis. But watch what happens on Sunday…

BOOM!! NO KETOSIS!! Or almost none anyway – what happened here to stop things so abruptly? Carbs happened. For breakfast I ate half a smallish potato rosti fried in butter. Maybe the equivalent of half a medium sized potato and my fat burning almost completely stopped dead. Check out how much carbohydrate it took… half a medium potato thats all! No fat was getting burned by my body as it was preferentially using the carbohydrate from the potato and preserving its fat stores. I took all my readings at 6pm and so I had lasted the whole day on half a medium potato without having to touch any fat for fuel.

Monday was back to the usual routine and back to very low carbohydrate and working out at lunchtime and back into ketosis and back to fat burning.

Tuesday I worked it a bit harder in the gym and I think I just about went off the scale…

So there we have it. Don’t eat carbs and burn body fat, eat carbohydrate and completely shut down your fat burning and preserve body fat.

So how people expect to eat a low fat/high carbohydrate diet and lose their body fat at the same time is simply a mystery to me. Unless of course what they are actually doing is actually starving themselves by reducing their intake of food to a level that does not support the normal functioning of their body  in an effort to lose weight…. that might explain why they feel ill, suffer depression, find it unsustainable and put all the weight and more back on when they stop starving themselves.

One lump or two?

Lots of pictures plus lots of recipes as I haven’t blogged for ages! Anyway I’m back from holiday, autumn is on the way and the harvest is starting. Here’s something from last weekend that was just a triumph even though modesty prevents me claiming all the credit…. maybe 97%…. 😉

Rob the butcher has been explaining to me over several weeks about a specific joint of pork that he calls a blade of pork. I did a little research and found out that on the other side of the Atlantic the joint is called a Boston butt. Apparently because they were packed in barrels or butts in Boston. You live and learn…

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston_butt

Anyway I decided that I should try it out and as it was nice weather the Big Green Egg and a long slow cook, a couple of friends and some wine seemed to be the right approach. I asked Rob for enough for four people and he replied that, as it was me, I would need two of them for four… not knowing any different, I readily agreed. It turned out to be over 4kg (9lbs) of pork. That’s quite a lot for four people, but it looked great! Here they are…

The dry rub was salt, fennel and nigella seed (crushed a bit), smoked paprika and a little pepper. Rubbed over the joints the day before cooking and wrapped up and left in the refrigerator overnight.

Next morning, temperature probe set for 95C internal meat temperature and a grill temperature of 110-120C (if you look carefully).

Some soaked hickory chips for a bit of smoke flavour and off we go!

Here’s the thing though… if you are going to slow cook meat the same day as you eat it… you have to get up early! I was expecting to serve at 8pm so the meat was in the Egg at 8am…

About 11 hours later after a day of controlling the temperature with the upper and lower air vents  on the Egg, the desired temperature is reached and the meat is cooked to perfection. If you ever do this and watch the temperature of the meat carefully you will see that it goes up and down as various bits of the meat change their nature and consistency and some bits of it disappear altogether!

Looks a bit blackened but I assure you, that was the best bit!!!

And you simply pull it apart. The meat is beautifully cooked and soft, there is no connective tissue left in the meat at all and it comes completely cleanly off the bone.

So what would you serve with pulled pork Boston butts? Well, as I mentioned, the food from the garden is being harvested and I had all the ingredients for a coleslaw. Some of the carrots were a bit small… but never mind.

I am extremely proud of my cabbage that I hand reared from seed. It was absolutely perfect but that was purely down to beginners luck, no skill involved at all!  🙂  Of course you don’t have to grow your own cabbage and supermarket cabbages are perfectly all right, but growing your own is just a fantastic way to show off… you

I am a bit precious about the order to do the vegetables in, as I don’t like two things about some coleslaws – too much onion or pieces of apple that have gone brown! Yuk! This method should avoid both.

For a big bowl of coleslaw I grate half a medium size onion. When I finish crying, I juice half a lemon (not home grown) and mix it into the onion. The lemon juice “cooks” the onion a little and smooths the flavour so it’s less strong and raw tasting. Gentle onion is so much better in my view. Thinly slice half a white cabbage… and leave it on the board.

Core and small dice some desert apples to add some sweetness…

And mix the apples in to the onion and lemon juice straight away. If you leave them they’ll go brown but the lemon juice will keep them beautiful and for several days.

Grate the carrots and mix well it the apples and onion…

Then add the shredded cabbage, handful by handful, mixing as you go to make sure its all incorporated evenly together.

Now here’s the good bit… mayonnaise on its own will swamp the flavour of the vegetables but if you mix it 50:50 with creme fraiche you get a lovely light and creamy dressing that compliments the other flavours, but don’t use too much… its all about your cabbage. I use 2 desert spoons of mayonnaise and 2 of creme fraiche mixed well together for this big bowl.

A beautiful bowl of home grown coleslaw that will stay perfect (no brown apple pieces) if covered in the refrigerator for at least 5 days. Total time to make –  about 5 months  🙂

Two butts was far too much for four people by the way… we barely ate one!! Which was good news as I took the rest for my lunch all week. With coleslaw!

And a dash of homemade chilli sauce from the excess of chillies, peppers and tomatoes that have been just perfect this year!

I love this time of year, don’t you?