A word about biodiversity: we need to have it. In this very small world of ours, there are some things to watch closely. Biodiversity is one of them. Why? Let me back up to explain this idea better. We grow in this world very few crops when you think about it.

And we’re dependent on having them when we need them. The problem is that crops develop invasive organisms that destroy them. Take cacao. It has developed a disease called “witches broom”. Witches broom can destroy the entirety of the crop. There is a treatment that treats the cacao plant, but it comes with a heavy price. Pesticides.

Pesticides are not a panacea and they are expensive. So what about the fragile nature of crops. Unless you were around in the 40’s you probably never learned about tragic loss of all the crops of bananas. Fortunately there was more than one variety of bananas and a replacement crop was substituted.

Corn is another. Wheat and sugar are fragile, too. If our sparse number of crops are wiped out, we’re a bad place. And that is why biodiversity is so important. More on this later.

The menace of sugar

When I read or see a blog with copious amounts of sugar laden products, I have to wince. I think everyone would agree that sugar causes cavities. That being said, there is little evidence that people are willing to give it up. In my studies of nutrition I once read where 1 year olds were given their first taste of sugar, usually in the form of icing on a cake. The immediate reaction seen on these infants were like, “Where’s this been, mom?”

That is troubling in two ways. We seem to have an inborn desire for sugar. We certainly have taste buds to detect sweetness, for example. It is the deduced, however,  that those taste buds were designed for sugar. The second trouble, as I see it, is that it is quite possible that sugar is a leading cause of diabetes. There is a growing body of evidence that sugar does indeed cause obesity. I don’t think anyone would argue that. But when it comes to diabetes people scoff and walk away.

In the first case sugar is present in a mother’s milk. Could this not be one of the more enticing reasons for our sweet glands? Sugar’s history goes back to the fields of India, about 6,000 years ago. But humans have been around for about 100,000 years. So, how did we get to the point we’re at now? How did sugar become so rife in this nation? How did our ancestors survive? Walk in to a convenience store and try to find something that doesn’t contain it. It’s not as easy as it sounds. Try to navigate your way around the bakery department in your local supermarket. They are typically placed so that they are the first items you see. That’s by design folks. Not your health!

The biggest driver of this insidious substance is that it tastes good. If I told you that the average person eats about 17 teaspoons of sugar a day, you would probably rolls your eyes and say, “Sure Dave.” Google it. It’s there in plain sight for everyone to see. The biggest driver of this onslaught has been, “Wait for it”,the sugar industry. They don’t want you to give it up. No. There are profits to be made. Mouths to feed. People to addict! (Okay that’s my opinion).

I don’t think I will live long enough to see this trend flip. And that is a sad thing for me. I do think however that my grandchildren will be around when we realize that sugar is killing us.

What are your goals? I think I can help. If you want to lose weight, start by cutting sugar from your diet. Then let me know if it helps. Sugar comes in many forms as far as your body is concerned. Think pasta, refined bread, refined rice, donuts, sodas and candy to name a few. Then let me know in a week how you’ve done.

Is anyone else familiar with Satter’s Division of Responsibility (sDOR)? If you are a parent, it would help make for a good study. If you are thinking about becoming a parent, it would help make for a good study.

The mealtime principles outlined there in foster professional care when it comes to feeding children. For instance, it’s the responsibility of the parent to prepare meals. It’s the responsibility of the child to decide if he/she will eat it and how much. Not the parent! That’s force feeding.

When a parent tries to force feed a child, the child will get the idea that it doesn’t know when it’s full. Let the child decide when they are full. They really do know better than the parent when they’re full.

“The Case Against Sugar” a book review.

Gary Taubes is probably the world of nutrition’s smartest person. In his book “The Case Against Sugar “, Taubes covers centuries of material on sugar, from its origins to today’s cultural knowledge of this substance.

Taubes research is exhaustive. He starts his work on the ills of sugar and how it has been the root cause of every ailment from obesity to diabetes. Taubes then claims that sugar may also be responsible for our dental caries and cancer.

He leads the reader through the corruption of the sugar industry’s efforts to keep sugar at the front of “good nutrition”. He concludes his case against sugar by leaving the decision to limit intake of this harmful substance squarely with the reader. “It really takes a personal decision”, he says.

What with the current obesity crisis, this book is a must read for every parent, student and individual. The world will be a better place for doing so. -Dave Compton

Eating less means you’ll lose weight. Right? No is the short answer. Eating less slows your body’s energy output. We’ve been told that decreasing calories by 500 calories a day will only cause your body to expend 500 fewer calories.

There, the truth is out. So what is going on? Your body’s hormones regulate energy output. If it didn’t, you’d die. If by this model your starting weight was 200 lbs and you lost a pound of weight a week, you’d weigh 148 lbs by years end. And in two years you’d weigh 96 pounds.

Your body is smarter than that. It doesn’t want to die. So what does it do? It lowers caloric output. That’s the only way it can survive.

Okay, okay. So how do you lose weight? You cut sugar consumption. Sugar comes in different forms. Think table sugar, bread, pasta and potatoes. If you do that, you’ll replace some of those calories with protein and fat. That’s great! You will have rediscovered what may grandmother use to tell me. “Don’t eat all those sweets, David!” And the weight will come off.

Let’s talk. Let’s talk about supply. Let’s only plant what we me need to survive on. There was a song back in the seventies. “Everything we eat, drink [and need comes in a pill we take].” What if we were to pay farmers to plant only what is needful? We need water, we need protein, we need carbohydrates, we need lipids, we need vitamins and we need minerals.

If we’re going to survive, we only need plant the foods necessary for our survival. Let’s start with protein. Instead of subsidizing corn to feed cattle, let’s subsidize farmers to grow grass. This is conjecture, but what if we plant only the necessary foods to feed pigs, chickens, lamb.

What if the plants we grow are green leafy vegetables: spinach, lettuce, mushrooms and other needful vegetables; that is, only the ones that we need to survive on.

Fruits like apples, berries and oranges would supply most of the nutrients we need to survive on. We could plant and subsidize very little sugar. It’s not necessary.

Lipids could be supplied by olives, avocados, coconuts and use tallow from beef, and butter from milk products.

Most of our grains could come in their natural state. Think brown rice and whole grain wheat products.

Those items listed could be mass produced for worldwide consumption. We now grow enough food to feed the world and to keep us alive. What we produce is what nutritionist and government need to talk about. Think of a world freed from hunger all because we fed it just what was needed. The foods I listed above would do it.

We will win. I guarantee it.

Jumping Rope

Did you ever watch a person who jumped rope that wasn’t fit? I have. Jumping rope is one of the fastest ways to get into cardiovascular health. When children jump rope, it’s an easy workout. As we get older, however it’s real work. I’m 72 and still do it on occasion. 

But you say I can’t afford to jump rope. It costs too much you say. Well, when I jump I I don’t use a rope. I just pretend I’ve got a rope in my hands and jump.The only reason I can possibly think of not to jump rope is a medical one. If you have a bad heart, you don’t want to for sure. If you have a injured foot, you probably want to lay off of it, too. Other than that it’s a great exercise.

So what does that have to do with nutrition? Clients, patients, friends or however you want to identify yourselves find that they feel better having done something for themselves. And that is very much a part of nutrition.

Too Complicated

Okay folks. Things, including nutrition, have gotten far too complicated. Everybody has their idea of what’s the best way to eat. As with professions, I used to tell my children, “Do what you like. The money will come later.” so too it goes with eating. I can tell you Paleolithic Man did not have such a complicated lifestyle. He lived a much simpler life. Life has become far too complex. My wife and I were musing over how many different cookbooks we have now. Everybody can eat the way they want really. It has become, though, like going to the grocery store and having too many selections to choose from. We usually prefer fewer choices here in our household. Take it for what you want, but in our opinion things, including our diets, have become too complicated. 

Okay, okay. I’ve been overly critical of carbohydrate consumption. The fact of the matter is that change has to come from within. I can preach till the day I die and not convince one person to eat the way we did 100 years ago. Or I can love you 😘.

There is an elephant in the room that I would like to point out. That is, we haven’t adapted to the European lifestyle of eating. Most authors go back 10,000 years to the fountainhead of agriculture to explain it. But we really don’t have to go back that far to expose the elephant. We can look at the Northern Plains Indians.

The NPIs were a nomadic bunch. They followed the bison 🦬 to live on. They ate a soup at breakfast and a communal stew in the afternoon. Besides this food source they ate a few root vegetables, some berries and corn. And when first discovered by Europeans, they were in amazing shape.

Another indigenous people the Intuit’s of Alaska subsided on chiefly fish (whale, seal and salmon). They too were physical specimens.

Once Europeans began introducing these indigenous peoples to the European diet they became obese. The NPIs are the now the single most obese people on the continent. They now eat government subsidized foods like hamburgers, bologna, fries and canned fruit cocktail. And the Intuits have followed suit.

Is it any wonder why I don’t stand behind this change of diet? I sincerely hope not. And I sincerely hope that we look to the past and learn from it.

This has very little to do with nutrition, but I thought you might enjoy one of my photos from Yosemite. This is Yosemite Falls. To very loosely tie this to nutrition this water helps supply the Bay Area.

Students of nutrition take the commandment to “Feed my sheep” quite literally. I’m currently living in 110 degree weather, so I stocked up on water to give to our local homeless people.

This is a Dave predicts moment. Diabetes will supplant heart disease as the #1 cause of death in the not too distant future. That is unless we suppress our addiction to carbohydrates. Other things will be helpful as well. Take for instance government subsidies. We could subsidize farmers to plant grass instead of corn to feed our cattle. We could subsidize plots of land just about anywhere to grow organic vegetables. We can do this.

As anecdotal as this was, I lost weight shifting to the low carb regimen. There were many studies done to back up my evidence, however. If you want to examine some of them, I’m going to suggest a book written by Gary Taubes entitled “The Case Against Sugar”. It’s was an extremely detailed account of the evidence against sugar. All of his books have been thoroughly researched.

Just a quick thought today. Offer your children oatmeal a couple of times a week instead of those sugary cereals.

Gluttony or is it...

Many in the world of nutrition are wont to blame obesity on gluttony. I think they’re wrong. The real culprit for obesity is what we eat, not how much. If we were to eat 500 kcals of steak we would feel absolutely stuffed. If we were to eat the same 500 kcals of donuts we would want more of it in about 30 minutes. Why? Fair enough! It’s a matter of nutrient density. The 500 calorie steak leaves you feeling full longer because of its energy density. Beef is a source  of 14 essential nutrients – protein, iron, zinc, selenium thiamine, riboflavin, niacin, vitamin B6, vitamin B12, vitamin D, phosphorus, pantothenate, magnesium and potassium. Beef contains other nutrients of interest including choline, monounsaturated fat and conjugated linoleic acid (CLA). The donut contains 8 grams of protein, 30 grams of fat, 62 grams of carbs, 30 grams of sugar, 130 mcg of Folate, 0.4 mg of Thiamine and 4.4 gm of Iron.

Now I don’t know about you, but most people find a donut irresistible. And the reason is clear “All of that crap taste ‘better’.” For my money, a topic I’ve visited before, I’m going to take the steak. Be smart about food choices. If I do no other good, I would like to make you an informed shopper.