From the Dr. McDougall e-mail list: “A study, published in the July 17, 2008 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine, has generated headlines that may lead the casual reader to believe that a low-carbohydrate (animal-food based) diet is the healthy, effective way to lose weight and a low-fat, plant-food based diet, like the McDougall diet, is not. The diet they called “low fat” was the American Heart Association Diet - a diet of 30% fat with 300 mg of cholesterol daily. The diet I recommend is 7% fat with no cholesterol.

The Dr. Robert C. and Veronica Atkins Research Foundation funded the study.

The full study can be read here: http://content.nejm.org/cgi/reprint/359/3/229.pdf

This is another case of purposeful deception, publicized widely in order to confuse the public—keeping the status quo. There will be an economic windfall for a variety of industries with an increase in sales of meats, dairy products, cholesterol-lowering statins, and angioplasties. Consumers will pay with worse health, rising medical bills, higher food costs, and an increase in environmental pollution. (emphasis mine)

This was a 2-year trial of 322 moderately obese (about 200 pounds or 91 Kg), mostly men, randomly assigned to follow a low-fat, restricted-calorie; a Mediterranean, restricted-calorie; or a low-carbohydrate, non–restricted-calorie regime. The mean weight losses were 7.26, 10.12, and 12.1 pounds (3.3 Kg, 4.6 Kg, and 5.5 Kg), respectively. There was little change in cholesterol levels (LDL-cholesterol changes were -0.5, -5.6, and -3 mg/dL, respectively).

At our live-in program the average weight loss for moderately overweight people in 7 days is 4.5 pounds (2 Kg)—while eating without limit from a delicious buffet of foods. And the average reduction in total cholesterol is 25 mg/dL.

McDougall talks about the four obstacles to following the McDougall Diet:

• Change is difficult: “People are always amazed by how many of their incurable ills are fixed after only a few days of eating right. They are equally surprised by how forcefully their problems return when they slide back into their old ways.”
• McDougall is not about vegetables: “The primary purpose of eating is to obtain life-giving energy. This is accomplished safely only by whole plant foods plentiful in carbohydrates. These special plant foods are known as starches.”
• Failure to appreciate the body’s efficiency: “Give up the nuts, seeds, cold-pressed olive oil, dried fruits, refined flours, and all the other rich treats you have been pampering yourself with since your gave up meat and dairy. Right, they are all vegan (not from an animal), and even more holy, they are mostly “raw.” But they are still “calorie bombs,” which are guaranteed to stop weight loss and cause fat gain.”
• No one responsible is fixing your food: “The cost of doing nothing could be as expensive as a $100,00 heart bypass operation. Now does that make financial sense to a businessperson like yourself?”

There’s a new McDougall DVD coming out soon, all about protein, soy and fish. Should be good, look for a review in the future.

Recipes from the McDougall Celebrity Chef Weekend include a lot of gems, such as Vietnamese-Style Stuffed Grape Leaves, Easy Macaroni and Cheeze, Red Lentil and Bulgur Salad Balls in Lettuce Cups with Creamy Basil Dressing, and No-Bake Chocolate-Peanut Butter Pie.

Congratulations to the most recent Star McDougaler, Mary Splady: “People often tell me that they could not do what I do because they love to eat. Well, I really love to eat too, and that is what first led me to become vegetarian, then vegan. In counting calories, I quickly figured out that I would rather eat a big bowl of cauliflower than a small piece of meat. It is really quite simple: Vegetables are not as calorie dense, and therefore I can eat more of them.”

The PCRM is asking for people to sign its petition to ask the Department of Health and Human Services and the Food and Drug Administration to investigate the true cause of the recent salmonella outbreaks, the meat industry: “Contaminated produce is only the last link in a chain that begins with the meat industry. It is essential for consumers to know that burgeoning meat consumption has caused a massive overproduction of chickens, cows, pigs, and other animals, leading to unprecedented production of feces that end up in rivers, streams, and irrigation water, and contaminate otherwise healthful produce. Salmonella are intestinal organisms. Needless to say, tomatoes and peppers do not have an intestinal tract. When feces end up in irrigation water, salmonella can contaminate the surfaces of plants and can apparently pass into their rootlets, ending up inside produce. Infectious bacteria from animal feces also contaminate agricultural fields, workers’ hands, retail shelves, and kitchen surfaces.”

New study predicts that almost 90 Percent of Americans will be overweight or obese by 2030: “A new study in Obesity shows that if the steady increases in the prevalence of overweight and obesity continue through the year 2030, 86.3 percent of adults will be overweight or obese, the prevalence of childhood overweight will double, and 1 of every 6 health care dollars will be used to pay for overweight and obesity-related costs. Researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health based these projections on trends from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Study (NHANES) data collected over the past three decades. By 2030, the prevalence among African American women and Mexican American men will be 96.9 percent and 91.1 percent, respectively. If trends continue unchecked, 100 percent of American adults will be classified as overweight or obese by 2048.” (Source: PCRM)

And the verdict is still in on the link between diet and Type-2 diabetes: “Three long-term studies published in Archives of Internal Medicine show how food choices lead to type 2 diabetes. Researchers at Boston University followed 43,960 African American women over 10 years, and found that type 2 diabetes developed more often among those who consumed more sweetened beverages. Researchers at Addenbrook’s Hospital in Cambridge, England, found that higher plasma vitamin C levels and greater consumption of fruits and vegetables were associated with a lower incidence of type 2 diabetes among 21,831 adults followed over 12 years. A third article, from Fred Hutchison Cancer Research Center, Seattle, found that among 48,835 Women’s Health Initiative participants, women assigned to a low-fat diet trended toward a reduced disease incidence, which authors attributed to weight loss.” (Source: PCRM)

Seems like a new vegan place in North Beach is imploding before I even paid a visit.

MenuPages has the run-down: “The initial reviews were mostly glowing and there was talk of the Usual Suspects giving popular veggie spots like Herbivore a run for their money. But a meltdown in the kitchen seems to have left this promising upstart reeling on the brink of closure.”

Sad that they kept the cruelty off the menu, but not out of the kitchen…

So, by now, the stories are everywhere about tomatoes carrying salmonella and now, today, it is also possibly linked to jalapeno and serrano peppers and possibly cilantro. The story always seems to be the same, some vegetable gives you food poisoning, but it nearly always ends up being produce from near some animal agriculture factory, with the barely-inspected fecal runoff going where it shouldn’t. But, it gives meat eaters the usual dodges they love… “you say meat will give me cancer, but spinach and tomatoes give you food poisoning.” It is nice that the animal agriculture industry finds a way to taint other products, too…

And, 8 year olds might be able to score cholesterol-lowering drugs now, so they won’t have heart problems later in life? As part of the same recommendations, kids can go on low-fat milk earlier, since they already get enough fat… so they have that going for them.

Just an FYI, but this whole post will contain WALL*E spoilers, if you’re concerned about such things.

I’m not a big animation nut, but after being disappointed by Wanted and Hancock, I tried to see something bulletproof, so I went to a late night showing of WALL*E (to lessen the amount of kids in attendance).

Wall*E is a robot that is cleaning up the Earth after humans evacuated 700 years earlier, with the hope they would eventually recolonize after the clean-up. But it’s been going for a while now…

Since this isn’t a movie review site, suffice it to say, the robot gets himself transported onto one of the spaceships that held evacuees 700 years earlier, and now houses their descendants. They basically fly around in hover chairs, eat everything in a cup (including cupcakes), and every generation aboard the ship has gotten increasingly fatter and atrophied from doing nothing, since they have robots to do everything for them.

While I did have problems with the movie from a story perspective, it was interesting to
see Pixar be so brazen about a movie where we ruined the earth and became a race of lifeless, connected slugs beholden to a big box store that provides everything we need.

Fact, fiction, or foreshadowing?

If I wasn’t so nutty about keeping my in box cleaned out, I’d never write on here, it seems… big plans in the works to change up the game, don’t worry. Anywhere, here’s this month’s McDougall news:

McDougall is really pushing more lately. First, suggesting that Bill Clinton had brain damage because of his bypass surgery and now, a posthumous interview with Meet the Press’s Tim Russert, who reports on the diet in the afterlife: “…the food’s terrible. Nothing but rice, potatoes, beans, corn, fruits and vegetables.  Everything’s bland, but they say I’ll get used to it.”

This month’s recipes include items from the recent Celebrity Chef Weekend, so worth checking out for Fat-Free Karei-Rice (Japanese-style Curry Rice), Mexican-Spiced Summer Squash, Bryanna’s Italian Polenta, Bean, and Kale Slices, and Bryanna’s Fat Free Vegan Brown Gravy.

And congratulations to Beth Burns, the most recent Star McDougaller, who attributed her switch to a low-fat vegan diet as a cure for her migraine headaches: “My migraines became fewer and farther between. They appeared once a week, once a month, once in a while, and then they completely disappeared. The last time I had a migraine headache was October 2006.”

According to the PCRM newsletter: A study in today’s American Journal of Epidemiology found that people who were obese or overweight in adolescence were three to four times as likely to have died of heart disease by middle age as compared with their thinner peers. A total of 226,678 Norwegian teens were measured for body mass index (BMI) as part of a compulsory national health survey and followed for an average of 34.9 years. They were found to be two to three times more likely to die from colon cancer or respiratory disease. Women in the highest BMI category were at increased risk of death from cervical cancer and both sexes were at increased risk for sudden death.

Here’s your latest McDougall news:

McDougall was quoted in the Wall Street Journal, as Clinton aides “vehemently denied” Bill’s uncharacteristic remarks on the campaign trail were related to brain damage from his heart bypass surgery. In the column, McDougall was quoted as saying: “I have hundreds of patients whose families will say, ‘Dad’s not the same as he was before surgery.”

McDougall also talks about why 2008 is the UN’s International Year of the Potato. McDougall calls the potato “humankind’s best hope for, resolving the current worldwide epidemic of obesity, diabetes, heart disease, and cancer, and eventually, thriving in the near future.”

McDougall reviews his five favorite articles from recent medical journals:

• Should You Drink 8 Glasses of Water Daily?
• Animal Fat May Accelerate Prostate Cancer
• Monitor Blood Pressure at Home Says the AHA
• Eat Yourself Impotent
• Vitamin Supplements May Increase Breast Cancer

The May McDougall newsletter also offers up some new potato-themed recipes such as Green Goddess Potato Salad, Mexican Potato Stew, and Potato Enchiladas.

Also, if you’re in northern California, their celebrity chef cooking weekend runs in Santa Rosa from June 27 to 29. It is not to be missed, with guest chefs such as Millennium’s Eric Tucker, Fat-Free Vegan Blog’s Susan Voisin, and  Joy of Vegan Baking author Colleen Patrick-Goudreau, among others. Go if you can, it is not to be missed (although for some reason, I do)!

PCRM sent out information about two recent medical studies on their e-mail list:

More Evidence Links Cow’s Milk to Type 1 Diabetes

A new study adds more evidence that cow’s milk proteins trigger type 1 diabetes. Marcia Goldfarb of Anatek-EP, a protein research laboratory in Portland, Maine, reports having found antibodies to bovine beta-lactoglobulin in the serum of children with diabetes. Individuals without diabetes did not have the antibody.

Type 1 diabetes is believed to be caused when antibodies destroy the insulin-producing pancreatic cells. Several studies have suggested that cow’s milk proteins may trigger the production of these dangerous antibodies. Larger studies are currently testing this theory.

Goldfarb M. Relation of time of introduction of cow milk protein to an infant and risk of type 1 diabetes mellitus. J Proteome Research 2008;7:2165-7

I know this stuff might get boring, since all the studies seem to link the same diet to different negative results:

High Saturated Fat Diets Linked to Short, Failure-Free Survival Following Prostatectomy

A recent study showed that men who consumed a high saturated fat (HSF) diet were significantly more likely to have a biochemical failure following prostate cancer removal and a shorter biochemical-failure-free survival than men on a low saturated fat (LSF) diet. Researchers looked at 309 white patients at the University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center with clinically organ-confined prostate cancer who were treated only with prostatectomy. Food frequency questionnaires were compiled to reflect dietary intake one year before diagnosis. Five years after surgery, 80 percent of men who consumed an LSF diet were disease free, compared to 65 percent of men who consumed a HSF diet.

Those who consumed HSF diets were comparatively younger and had higher body mass indices at diagnosis than those with LSF diets. The top contributors to the saturated fat intake for this population were beef steak, cheese and cheese spreads, hamburgers and cheeseburgers, eggs, ice cream, and salad dressings/mayonnaise. In this study, LSF intake was on average 23.4 grams per day and HSF was 37.2 grams per day. The government recommends no more than 10 percent of calories from saturated fat.

Strom SS, Yamamura Y, Forman MR, Pettaway CA, Barrera SL, DiGiovanni J. Saturated fat intake predicts biochemical failure after prostatectomy. Int J Cancer. 2008;122:2581-2585.