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Pass the Protein – Part 1

By admin On February 21, 2012 · 125 Comments

Can you pass the protein? I’ll have a little protein with that. I’m dragging a little, I think I need some protein. I’m really trying to bulk up, what are you eating for your protein?

Okay, I admit I was of the same mindset. I once recommended “one serving of protein and one serving of carbohydrate with every meal.” I lost 50 lbs on that advice and yet when challenged by a 11 year old girl with a simple question my “belief system” was stopped in it’s tracks. I took biochemistry in undergraduate and graduate school. I worked in the Biophysics Branch at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center.

While there, I even participated in research on protein crystal growth. We wanted to grow these crystals in the quiescent environment of microgravity (weightlessness) to determine the 3D structure – a lock and key approach to the many complex biological systems sustaining life. Back then I studied the growth of hen egg-white lysozyme and also had my blood drawn weekly to extract hemoglobin to developed liquid-liquid chromatography techniques to resolve separation of from other model proteins like horseradish peroxidase and whale myoglobin.

My goal of telling you that is not to establish credibility or to boast. It’s for you to consider after we go through what should have been an obvious understanding to anyone that has studied biochemistry or protein chemistry in detail. It’s to demonstrate just how profoundly ignorant EVERYONE seems to be about this subject when it comes to food. I’m as guilty of it as anyone. It’s as if there is a mysterious wall put up and we all just blindly follow the common explanation in a trance marching one by one over a cliff.

I had all of the information and background necessary and could not answer the simple question from that 11 year old girl on the spot:

“if you’re eating beef for protein, where do cows get protein, because they eat grass?”

I honestly couldn’t completely answer the question. I left that day back in 2009 and headed to attend my first TEDMED conference. There I met some of the most amazing scientists from Nobel prize winning Biochemist, Kary Mullis, to Apple Co-Founder, Steve Wozniak. The list goes on and among that list was Cardiologist, Dr Dean Ornish and his wife, Anne. They’ve been involved in helping heart patients for years. His work has been featured and ridiculed, but it’s never been disproven. They run a successful practice in beautiful Sausalito California and were even named the 2012 top heart-healthy diet by U.S. News and World Report a few weeks ago.

TEDMED is about being vulnerable and asking questions. I’d been working on lowering my total cholesterol. It started at 240 and had come down to 220 with diet, exercise, and weight loss. I had a debate with a female, “rock-star” friend in late 2008 that convinced me to try Pescetarian (fish, dairy, and eggs only). This did result in a change in my cholesterol taking it from 220 to 209. My “protein” was reduced to dairy (mostly yogurt and occasional cheese) and Fish (mostly salmon) – no “red meat” and no chicken.

Dean was quite clear, “Ray, cut the dairy and limit the servings of fish until you reach your goal and then, if you want, you can add some fish back, but it’s not necessary. I would steer clear of the dairy.”

Crap, I LOVE yogurt. I LOVE cheese. I was drinking WHEY “protein supplements.” Additionally, I LOVE eggs, but stick to egg whites. You know, I like lamb with mint sauce, but I’m a scientist and quite frankly I had never even considered eliminating ALL animal products.

This brought me full circle to that question posed by this very bright 11 year old girl in California: where would I get my “protein?”

Bohemian like you..

Dean didnt say it, but I was thinking it. No, not the V-word. Eat vegan? AYFKM? How would I get my protein? Wow, do I need to mix up vegetable protein sources to get complete protein? I don’t want anyone to jump to conspiracy theories. I have mentioned I ate a completely vegan for fourteen months (for the record, a year after my 50 weight loss with using cold exposure) as a self-experiment and I can’t explain away the results:

My total cholesterol dropped to 135.

It was a self-test no different than the work on mild cold stress. I’m not here to simply “advocate veganism,” nor am I particularly motivated by pushing animal rights. I’ve hunted and I grew up with 200 head of cattle on our family farm. I am not a “reformed meat eater,” but a scientist that wants to understand the basic facts about nutrition. I am fascinated by what happens on a “plant-based diet” and I lived it completely for 14 months, so I do understand it – the difficulties, traveling, activist agendas, and ridicule. It was quite clear that I saw results with a plant-based diet that simply never happened when I was eating meat and dairy. Even my adult acne (mainly on my back and triceps) completely vanished.

Have I offended everyone yet?

My motivation is to understand why the explanation of the food I eat was clashing with what my text books taught, but most importantly this question from an 11 year old girl REALLY puzzled me. After all, some of the biggest animals, hippopotamus, rhinoceros, elephants, elk and even my own “protein” sources (cows, pigs, lambs and chickens), are all herbivores. Big fish eat little fish, but what do little fish eat?

I am driven by understanding the energy. We must follow the thermodynamics, because I don’t believe for one minute that the second law is wrong. To understand what I learned, I am going to have back up a little and help you learn, or refresh your memory, on the fundamentals of proteins in biochemistry. Let’s learn about proteins, but we’re not talking about Turkey or Tofu. We are going to discuss REAL protein not a classification for food.

Protein: it’s part of a complete breakfast.

Starch and Cellulose are made from the same building block, Glucose. They have a different saccharide bond that holds them together.

Remember when I outlined carbohydrates? Do you recall that starch (bake potato) and cellulose (e.g. wood fiber) are the same thing: long chains of glucose or sugar? When we digest starch we break it down into units of glucose. The same is true when termites eat wood. We discussed long and short chained fatty acids, which also get broken down.

The energy in ALL of these molecules are in the bonds that hold them together. For example, fiber doesn’t have calories, because you don’t have the enzyme to break the beta-linkage between the glucose. Bacteria in the rumen (a stomach) of a cow CAN do it. The bacteria get the energy from breaking down the fiber and then the cow absorbs the resulting glucose. A baby calf grows 600-800 lbs in a year on grass we can’t digest.

Protein is also made up of a fundamental unit called an amino acid (see figure). These amino acids are the building blocks of all proteins from the “meat” we eat to enzymes, specialized proteins like amylase and pepsin, we used to break down food into absorbable nutrients. Scientists call these large strings of amino acids or glucose (as in starch/fiber) macromolecules. Plants, fungus, animals and bacteria – all living things – depend on macromolecules. Even a non-living virus is composed of genetic material and a protein coat.

Proteins are repeating units of various amino acids (R varies). We can grow protein crystals and determine the 3D structures.

A single cell contains between 100,000 and 1,000,000 different kinds of molecules and a little over half of these are macromolecules such as protein, nucleic acids (RNA/DNA) and polysaccharides (carbohydrates)

For today, understand that protein is to an amino acid as Starch is to glucose (sugar). Our body doesn’t need starch or protein. Our body needs glucose and amino acids. We don’t bolt oyster protein onto our biceps after we slurp them down. Equally important is that pasta isn’t shoved into a marathon runner’s quads when he carb-loads before a race.

Digestion (we’ll study this further after finishing protein) breaks down these macromolecules from the plants and animals we ingest and it is the base units – the amino acids and sugars – that are then reassembled by our body into useful macromolecules. Protein is synthesize from amino acids in ribosomes of the cell cytoplasm and glycogen (remember it’s the animal version of “starch”) is manufactured primarily in the liver and muscle tissue from glucose in the blood.

Do you see the big picture here? We take in this complex food, with all the proteins, carbohydrates and fat contained within, and then it is completely broken down to its individual components (e.g. amino acids and glucose) during digestion. At that point your body creates the specific macromolecule it NEEDS (proteins and glycogen) from these little lego-blocks.

This is indisputable and yet our idea of eating “protein, carbs and fat” does not really capture this at all. What REALLY is happening at the most basic level is:

1) The body needs ENERGY (carbohydrate, fat or protein are all used) to keep warm, move, build tissue, activate the many biochemical reactions of life
2) The body needs NUTRIENTS (amino acids, vitamins, phytochemicals and minerals) for components/catalysts (lego blocks) to create the 50,000-500,000 macromolecules that form each cell in your body.

The confusion comes in because dieting, particularly weight loss, is about minimizing macronutrient energy consumption (fuel), while continuing to provide sufficient micronutrients (service) for repair and function. It’s further complicated by the fact that protein is both a source of amino acid nutrients AND can be used as a back up fuel.

Lego of protein to understand

The best thing you can do, and I am not splitting hairs here, is to substitute the words “amino acids” every time you say, I need “protein.” Chances are you don’t “need” it, but at least it will help remind you what your body really needs. You likely don’t crave it at all – it’s a myth. The body does not store amino acids – cells grab them from the blood stream all the time. Our body needs 20 different amino acids to build all proteins and half, the 10 nonessential amino acids, our body manufactures without the need to ingest. The other half, 10 indispensable or essential amino acids, we must ingest in our food. The truth is, whether a body builder or growing child, you don’t need “protein” at all. You need amino acids so that the body can synthesize or manufacture its OWN protein.

Plant cells are made up of proteins as well. There is nothing more “plantish” then chlorophyll (the green photosynthesis lifeblood of leaves) and each plant cell contains the complex organic molecule chlorophyll along with MANY proteins. Insulin is a protein. Milk casein is a protein. Wheat gluten is a protein. Amylase is a protein. Egg whites are about 10% protein (13 different kinds, balance is water). Some are allergic to bee venom proteins. We all react to protein neurotoxins in snake venom bites. If you are allergic to pollen, strawberries, shellfish or cats…your body is reacting to PROTEINS.

Our body NEEDS amino acids, but it is set up to DEFEND against foreign protein. The entire immune system is based on recognition of protein which cloak a virus, attacking and then eliminating identified invaders from the body. HIV is a particularly difficult virus because it’s protein coat goes through a change as new copies are produced – like trying to chase a criminal with a mug shot that changes after each crime. Autoimmune diseases is simply when our immune systems starts think “us” is “them.” It goes on a rant – attacking your own protein and destroying vital biological function.

Protein: useful in journal articles, useless for menus

The body and it’s ability to produce unimmaginably complex proteins that literally create life is astonishing and we all should know better than to trivialize it. Scientists all know that we don’t “need to manage protein” in our diet and yet I was guilty of the same psychobabble as the rest of them. It was a convenient way of categorizing food that has reached it’s limit. We don’t have to use this very imprecise word, protein, quoined in 1838. It even confuses physicians and most nutritionists. We all just want to know what to eat and yet our NEW government plate no longer says “meat,” because that is simply not true and so they have gone in reverse semantically and now say protein.

On the next post, I will delve more into protein and continue to give you a new way to think about it. The answers will be obvious. Until then, please take a look at this amazing video, originally produced by a world-renowned medical illustrator that happens follows this blog.

Hi-res narrated version here: Harvard Multimedia site.

Perhaps you too will see the astonishing beauty in the complexity of protein in all life. If you are familiar with cell biology, maybe you’ll even recognize some of the many chemical reactions that keep us alive. Make no mistake about it – no one that truly thinks about it would EVER ask: So, where are you getting your protein? Protein is ubiquitous in everything we eat. We’ll discuss more about amino acids, but keep in mind that proteins lay at the very heart of our immune system. The many chronic issues we face today could in fact be lurking in the massive quantities of foreign protein we are exposed to routinely.

Btw, I don’t want to debate vegan vs paleo vs slowcarb, etc… It’s boring and irrelevant and I have experimented with all of them. What I am interested in are questions comments about amino acids and hearing what you have to think about this explanation. There is a lot to…digest…so, after some time for discussion, I will post Part 2 and we’ll explore the various sources of amino acids and how that may have impacts on health.

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Fat – Part 2

By admin On December 31, 2011 · 50 Comments

In Fat – Part 1 I explained some details about our body’s use of lipids (fat) and the role it plays in both survival and diet. The most important concept to take away is that you MUST go on a naturally “high-fat diet,” digesting your OWN adipose tissue, to lose weight. This may seem so incredibly obvious, but if you take a few minutes each day to think about it, I believe it will have profound impact on your results.

Why? because every calorie you put into your mouth will fuel your body and that will result in the part you WANT to lose remaining safely in place – the rainy day fund. You can juggle macronutrients (protein, carbohydrates and fat) to your heart’s desire and still it will not make any difference unless you run a caloric deficit. No matter how frequently you pay your credit card bills, if you keep spending, you’ll never reduce the balance.

There is a yin yang to carbohydrate and fat and that is why they are presented as the evil sisters of the macronutrient triplets: protein carbohydrate and fat.

As we learned in the Carbohydrate posts, these starchy foods (natural starches – not french fries and chips) are not evil things to be “completely avoided.” Glycemic index has a role, but it’s far from absolute. Fat is much the same. It got its bad wrap in the 80s and became synonymous with weight gain. When we look back in 100 years to the chronic obesity epidemic created at the end of the 21st century, the focus on fat in the 1980s will be shown to have started the health decline and launch us into record chronic illness. It will be our amazing mastery of calorie (food) that will be shown to have caused a decline in health after millions of years of battling starvation.

In fact, once fitness experts, media, and even physicians became obsessed with a “low-fat diet,” the food industry surged with advertisements: FAT FREE, low FAT, reduced FAT, no trans-FAT, saturated FAT-free and the list goes on and on. Of course you and I were lead to believe that fat-free = healthy, but all the food industry did was load up our food chain with simple sugar (high fuctose corn syrup, honey, sucrose, agave, etc…) and processed starches (flour, corn meal, wheat flour, etc).

Voilà, we began stuffing our mouths with healthy, low-fat “carbs” and now here we are 2 decades later and suddenly the new enemy is the carbohydrate. Can you sense the pattern here? It’s incredible to think our body’s entire energy economy is based on blood-sugar and yet the “new and improved” diet experts are now telling us our primary energy source is bad for you.

The Lizard Brain

You see, all of these concentrated energy foods give us that “lizard-brain” hit. Simple sugars, processed starch, and fats (even OLIVE OIL) are all nothing more that concentrated energy with very little nutrient value. Ok, stop right there with the Omega-3 “good fats” thoughts. Sure, we need omega-3s and we NEED fat (and carbohydrate) in our diet. The problem comes when it’s over processed, think concentrated and readily available.

If you’ve been reading this blog from the beginning (if not, start here), you should start to recognize a pattern and it doesn’t matter if you are paleolithic, vegan, body for life, The Zone, Atkins, Mediterranean or Ornish. No matter WHAT diet you decide to go on, the way you lose will be a caloric deficit. It was clear to me after a few months of blogging on “boosting” your weight loss with mild cold stress that there was no way to boost, if everyone was confused about the primary issue at hand – burning ones own body fat as fuel.

So let’s think just a little more about fat and compare it to simple sugar. In both cases you have something that is relatively unavailable in nature in it’s pure form. Rather, you find it in nature combined with other micronutrient your body needs. Just try eating 250 lbs a year of sugar by gnawing on sugar cane – knock yourself out.

Your body needs more than energy and perhaps it’s seeking the plant-derived minerals, amino acids vitamins and other phytonutrients (light produced nutrients such as antioxidants) or maybe the amino acids found in meat. Either way you will note that ENERGY (fuel) is ALWAYS packaged in nature with micronutrients or fiber – it just doesn’t exist in its pure form of simple sugars or fat.

We can go ahead and throw out the Inuit now as the exception that survived on seal and whale blubber. I might point out, selfishly, that they also had an ENORMOUS thermal load on their body, which called for extreme caloric intake (in excess of 5000 cal/day); they are not the healthiest culture despite their popularity to justify excessive fat consumption.

Low-carb and low fat diets are one in the same. Both limit ENERGY (fuel) and attempt to maintain the flow of micronutrients (maintenance) your body needs to function and repair while simultaneously living off your fat stores.

If it’s really that easy, then why is it so difficult to resist?

It’s that damn lizard brain. Eat. Survive. Store. I don’t know when I might get a chance to drive through McDonalds again. WTF? That is the problem. Your body is the result of millions of years of evolutionary starvation and we have been thrust into a world of plentiful, no EXCESSIVE calorie.

You know what is even worse than this excessive calorie? You are intelligent and you WANT to listen to all the experts that tell you it is okay to eat __________ and still lose weight. Here is what we can all be absolutely certain of: unless you begin to live off of the fat in the stomach, thighs, buttocks, or hips that you so desperately want to part ways with, no amount of macronutrient “juggling” will work.

Oh, and you can’t out-exercise your mouth.

If it Jiggles and Wiggles – Eat It.

So rather going into yet another scheme to juggle good fat from bad fat or good carb from bad carb, just know that simple sugars, processed carbs, and extracted fat/oils (including meats and excessive nuts) all contain a ton of energy (fuel) and will slow down the rate of loss. Its YOU and YOUR FAT that you want to digest. Don’t screw it up with olive oil and bacon. They might taste good and really give you that lizard brain hit, but it is only short lived. It’s only lasts as long as you are eating.

The reason I enjoy a vegan diet is that I LOVE to eat and eating stops after you swallow. I can simply eat a tremendous volume of food and not have to worry. Unlike most “vegans” (I use it as an adjective, not a noun), I don’t use oils (gasp – even olive oil) or excess simple sugars, because I am focused on the maximum micronutrients with minimum calories and the MOST food I can joyfully stuff into my mouth (sorry – it’s true, I love to cook and eat). Besides, there are a lot of fat vegans and vegetarians. Just because it doesn’t have eyes or a mother, doesn’t make it automatically healthy.

For others you might still be addicted to simple sugars, or fat and so The Zone, BFL, paleo approach or Mediterranean might appeal. Just understand that if you tinker too much with fat (or simple sugars and processed carbs) you can easily over consume calories. If you do, your body will not be teased into burning “stomach, hips and thighs.”

So Fats, are necessary for good health, skin, nails, and brain function, but they contain a lot of calories per serving. What is worse is that one can EASILY hide an entire Snickers bar in the dressing on your salad…or cheese sauce on your broccoli…or the butter/sour cream on your baked potato without you even knowing it. Compounding this are the dopamine hits your lizard brain will get from these calorie-dense foods that did not exist when it evolved; eat more. eat more. eat more…thunder thighs.

Don’t kid yourself, sucking down loads of refined oils – even plant oils – are not going to help you in your battles. Afterall it was the vegetable oil and margarine surge of the 60s and 70s that lead to the 1980s “low fat” products that put us on the fast track to obesity. Refined oils and fats and simple refined carbohydrates and highly processed starches (breads, crackers, chips, and milled grains) are both at the heart of the obesity surge and chronic illness we face today. The french fry, donut or potato chip are iconic images for me – fat-fried (even the “good fat” – LOL), sugar (oh yes, agave – the new, trendy “high-fuctose syrup”) and processed starches.

Is the answer protein? well, we will see about that in the next post.

Happy New Year to everyone and thanks for an amazing year in 2011!

Ray

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Carbohydrates – Part 3

By admin On October 24, 2011 · 41 Comments

We’ve covered a lot of ground. What we’ve discussed is that carbohydrates come in the form of simple sugars (monosaccharides) and more complex carbohydrates (polysaccharides). We know that the sugar names all end in “ose” (glucose, fructose, lactose, etc…). Polysaccharides are many of these monosaccharides linked together in a chain and are a common way plants store energy (similar to our fat) for later use.

I’m suggesting you stop thinking about “Carbs” as a food group; instead categorize meat, vegetables, grains, dairy, etc… Starch (potato) and Cellulose (wood) are made from IDENTICAL glucose molecules. They have a different saccharide bonds, only one of which we have the enzyme (amylase) to digest.

So in Part 3, I want to talk about another pseudo-carbohydrate that is critical for you – glycogen. Many of you are familiar with glycogen from athletics. It’s the “load” part of carb-loading in preparation for a race. It’s also the center of your glucose-centric metabolism and the reason I personally don’t think “carbs” are bad or unhealthy.

What is unhealthy is the way we process high-energy foods with even more empty calories and then consume them in excessive quantities.

So, let’s take a little step back to understand what glycogen is and why it’s important to your performance and your life. Your body has three basic storage points for energy: ATP (adenosine triphosphate), glycogen, and fat. the most immediate energy – what is behind the muscle explosion is ATP. You have about 250 grams of this stuff, about the same amount of energy as is contained in a AA battery, energy comes form popping off one of the phosphates to form ADP (adenosine diphosphate + energy)(1). We then use this other enzyme many of you will be familiar with, creatine kinase, to shuttle these phosphates back and forth.

Save the Liver

ATP is at the very basic level of your energy utilization. Just above this in the “energy food chain,” is our friend, glycogen. Think of glycogen as a “fuzzy protein.” It is made of a core protein, glycogenin, surrounded by fuzzy starch (poly glucose) hairs. It is located throughout your body. You have about 2000 calories at any given time; 500 or so is stored in your liver and the rest packed among your muscles where it can be readily accessed. I’m using approximate numbers because everyone is slightly different, but here is an interesting side fact.

It takes (about) 2600 calories to run a marathon. 2000 calories/2600 calories = 77%. Now using that number and knowing a marathon is 42.2Km/26.2M we see that 77% is 32.5Km/20.2 miles. Anyone that has attempted to run a marathon can tell you about that number: THE WALL. If you are like me and would rather freeze your ass off than run a marathon, that is the point where ATP can no longer be generated by glycogen stores (you’ve run out) and you MUST resort to stored fat.

Fat is then the highest level and quantity of stored energy in your body and the body has to work to get it into a primary glucose-based energy system. Conversely, fatty foods (Oils, lards, etc) have the densest energy reserves. It’s simple: fat is there for long term storage. Plants, and Humans have carbohydrate based reserves for the most immediate needs and that is in your blood sugar level and glycogen reserve.

Record marathoners have trained their bodies to dip into fat reserves much earlier and they use fat throughout the race. When we get back to fat metabolism and thermal loading, you’ll find this is a side benefit of conditioning your body to withstand cold – free fatty acids (FFA) liberated from your fat stores. You may remember from BATGirl, that the mitochondria of BAT and other tissue can use FFA in the presence of a special up-regulating proteins to create HEAT instead of generating ATP.

Your ability to regularly engage in this FFA economy can be significantly influenced by running marathons – extreme milage volume causes this switch as does mild cold stress. People make fun of me about cold all the time, but I just think this is far easier than running 50 miles/day. You may see it different.

What happens in Protein-rich diets is you have depleted your glycogen reserves and it’s energetically costly to refill glycogen from converting protein. Your body switches over to fat metabolism and voilà, you start losing weight. That’s how it works and the ultimate decision one should consider is what will be the long term health effects by using your body’s tertiary macronutrient, protein, to drive it into a secondary reserve, fat, by depleting it from it’s primary energy, glucose. The other direction works just as well and in a glycogen replete state, Chris Voigt lost weight eating 20 potatoes a day – all bad carbs. This is an interesting contrast to the high-fat approach and I think it’s far more important than a silly PR stunt.

Seems complicated, but I just want people to discuss this factually and make informed decisions.

We can equally manage 1) hunger (satiety) and 2) total caloric intake, while maintaining correct micronutrient intake, living permanently thin as opposed to yo-yo dieting. This does require modifications to your lifestyle and I won’t tell you it is trivial, but neither is bypass surgery, insulin shots, high blood pressure, or lugging around an extra 50-200 lbs.

So, there really is not debate that carbohydrate, particularly starch, is a perfectly natural food. As we process with cooking (or over process) ANY carbohydrate, the energy becomes more readily available and then we damn “starch” as the bad-calorie; it’s simply not true. What is interesting is there are many ways to put your body into “survival mode” and only two that have ever demonstrated longevity in laboratory animals: caloric restriction and mild cold stress.

We still have to cover proteins and fats and we’ll keep the rules engaged, neither are food groups. As well, I want you guys to jump in on new commenters in the future and explain when we discuss carbohydrate here, we are primarily discussing high-starch foods that are relatively unprocessed (heated, with no added fat, dairy, or sugar). If you don’t believe me, TRY to go find food in a restaurant that 1) contains a starch and 2) is not loaded with sugar, fat, or dairy. I did it as an experiment for 14 months and know first hand the difficulty.

Brain Drain

We are fat, but let’s not damn potato, squash, and rice – the very staples of Humankind – as the punching bag for of our epidemic obesity. Let’s acknowledge that preparation and added empty calories play the MAJORITY role. When I construct a new paradigm to consider for eating at the end, you’ll see that there is plenty of room for carbohydrate (starchy-foods) on the plate.

Starches are an EXCELLENT food option and contain glucose, the only fuel used by the largest energy consumer of your body: The Brain. When you run low on glucose (and glycogen), gluconeogenesis creates glucose from amino acids by stripping off the nitrogens and using what is left to synthesize glucose. Energy for this is driven through beta-oxidation of FFA. If you have a lot of beta-oxidation is occuring (untreated diabetes or starvation), acetyl-CoA builds up, and is converted to the ketone bodies. That’s the basis of ketosis and why ketones are found in your urine.

The brain-blood barrier is the separation of this distinctly different glucose metabolism from the rest of your body. So, I think is at least it is easily questionable to say carbs are “bad” or even the cause of obesity. At the same time, throwing your body completely into starvation mode, while certainly effective to lose weight, might not be the best long term. Of course we have to consider the implications of caloric restriction too. I just raise the question.

With that is it fair to ask if “carbohydrate” was so bad for you, why did we evolve one of the most advanced, energy-conuming brains of any species to use only a carbohydrate fuel?

Think about it.

(1) “On the prebiotic potential of reduced oxidation state phosphorus: the H-phosphinate–pyruvate system,” David E. Bryant, Katie E. R. Marriott, Stuart A. Macgregor, Colin Kilner, Matthew A. Pasek and Terence P. Kee, Chem. Commun., 2010, 46

Carbohydrates – Part 2

By admin On October 21, 2011 · 41 Comments

In Part 1, we began the process of distinguishing the difference between a food group and a macronutrient. Carbohydrates (Carbs) are probably the most vilified of the macronutrients. This is probably due to the ubiquitous availability of starch foods throughout human history. For the most part, oils, fats, and meats were the food of the rich. Everyone else ate beans, rice and potatoes.

If we listed the many staple foods: grains, rice, beans, squash, quinoa, potatoes and corn we see a high amount of starch. Remember, starch is simply a long chain of glucose. We all need glucose to live and our primary energy is derived from glucose and stored glycogen or fat (more later).

I want you to know that a carbohydrate need not be fattening, nor lead to diabetes. In fact, Carbohydrates can be very satiating (1) for 4-5 hours after meals. What seems to be the big diversion, where the “bad carbs” come in, is the processing (blending, frying, flouring, pasting, etc) of carbohydrate. When we break down starch too much in the food preparation process, it leads to lots of simple sugars. These are both easy to overeat and can have other deleterious health effects.

Starch digestion begins in the mouth with the amylase in the saliva. The starch begins to break down to glucose. A great way to experience this first hand is to take a unsalted cracker and just hold it in your mouth. You will begin to generate a lot of saliva and as you hold it there, begin to taste sweetness as the glucose is formed. Remember, a termite can do exactly the same thing with cellulose in wood.

From an evolutionary biology perspective, the AMY1 gene that is responsible for making amylase is so important that you have as many as 12 copies of it (2). It was extremely important to our hunter-gather predecessors. While there’s been much put forward on the “hunting” side of the equation, some of the most recent anthropology suggest that the “gathering” side dominated. Underground storage organs (USOs – tubers, bulbs, corms, and rhizomes) played a significant role in our energy management of times past.

Men like the idea of beating their chest and running through the woods hunting and they write a lot of the stories, but gathering is actually a better (less sexy) explanation of our survival. It even allows the elderly to participate productively in the group, even grandmothers would have a significant role in the earliest tribes. Anyone can dig up a potato, they aren’t very fast, and they grow in predicable places.

The naked mole rat is found with archeology of hominid population explosions and points to USOs as a gathered food source. click photo for NPR Story

Many of the early tools used to process USOs were probably made of wood and didn’t survive in the archeological records, but the early Hominid starch crystals in teeth have. Also there are also fossilized populations of mole rats that surge with every human population expansion (3). We’ll also learn that the mole rat has some FASCINATING genetics that impacts thermal loading.

I don’t want to get into the Paleolithic debate. What I want everyone to see is that starch IS an important evolutionary part of your fuel system, but at the same time recognize french fries are NOT the starch I am talking about. Your view of carbohydrate has been jaded since the beginning of diets. In the earliest of diets (Banting) it was simple breads combined with butter/sugar that caused the excess energy to creep in. Processed starch (sugars) of all kinds can lead to excess caloric intake; it’s just easy to digest and pleasurable to overeat, especially when combined with salt and fat.

For today, understand that primary complex carbohydrates: squash, legumes, onions, carrots, whole corn, whole rice, and potato are all good bases of energy. They are satiating ways to make up for caloric deficit, but don’t confuse those items, “items your great grandmother would recognize as food,” Michael Pollan might say, with the “carbs” served at school lunch.

Most importantly understand that many of these “starchy” foods also contain significant proteins with complete compliment of the essential amino acids your body will use to synthesize your own protein. These complex carbohydrates are broken down by amylase to glucose: the fuel for your brain and many cells in the body. If they aren’t consumed with excessive alternate energy sources (like excessive fat or simple sugar), your body will tap into it’s own fat reserves. If too much pre-processing is performed, then you might see increased problems managing blood sugar.

Eating carbohydrate is convenient and pleasurable, and know there is room for “carbs” in your diet if you make the correct choices.

So, when we are putting this all together and I say carbohydrate, I want you to think about these whole, starchy food items that enter YOUR kitchen/cooking reasonably resembling how they came out of the ground or off the plant. Sugar, raw, brown…whatever, is refined. I challenge you to eat the 250 lbs of sugar a year gnawing on sugarcane, however; you might be able to do it with grapes or beets.

Others have commented on fructose, a simple sugar in fruit, and I think there is merit to the issues that come from too many simple sugars, especially highly processed. This likely includes high fructose corn syrup, apple juice, sucrose, agave nectar, etc…). Fruits are not found in nature year round, but USOs are. Similarly, think about what is easily stored (beans vs beets). It’s amazing to hear people rave about “natural agave nectar” (inulin/fructose squeezed from agave) and then begin to lambast the food industry for high fructose corn syrup (fructose squeezed from corn). Yes there are some differences, but we’ll debate it in 5-10 years. It’s all simple sugar to me and best avoided.

These simple sugars are energy without the fiber or micronutrients. Others, like Robert Lustig, have covered the issue of fructose in far better detail than I will, but likely our problem as a nation is probably more related to drinking, for example, too much apple juice, rather than eating too many apples. The same is true of french fries vs potatoes. The larger group health statistics just don’t separate the issues (e.g. apples vs apple juice or fries vs potato) with enough granularity and it is all complicated with saturated fats and other compounding, synergistic concoctions we now call food.

Many energy dense foods are now available year round (like fruits or avocados) and so we must be careful with these foods. We’ll see a similar trend with fats, oils, and nuts.

Starch is a wonderful molecule and has been around for millions of years. Starch is just one bond different from wood. You are designed to eat starch, with back ups systems in place (AMY1). We can identify paleolitic starch in teeth, even knowing the plants that produced it, and so there is nothing wrong with carbohydrate as a food – it highly processing it and combining with other energy-rich processed product that causes much of the issues.

You will inevitably hear more about the amazing work anthropologist, Nathaniel Dominy is doing with starch and USOs. I personally believe the depth and thoroughness of his work will have an impact on what many, like Loren Cordain, believe to absolute. Nate has a very uncanny ability to see past the obvious. For the record, he’s a meat eater, despite what he’s uncovered in the last few years about starch in anthropology.

In terms of the thermodynamics, most natural starches come with a compliment of other micronutrients that are beneficial. These are “energy foods” and so we absolutely CAN lose weight by eliminating them from your diet. I am not suggesting diets higher in fat or protein (atkins, paleolithic, slow carb) cannot be used to lose weight – I am diet agnostic. What I can explain is on whole the overall management of energy, heat (not temperature), that is responsible for your success.

If we stop isolating these foods based on our perceived/suggested notations of macronutrient content and return to simple food, A calorie will be a calorie. Once you learn to recognize what you are consuming at every meal (and snack) you’ll see the results you’ve been after. It doesn’t even take discipline once you understand the underlying principles.

Gauging on the comments/questions, I might dig in a little more (Part 3) on carbohydrate. Eventually I will post the overall biochemistry and some have written asking me to explain the TCA cycle (that complex part in the middle of a Lustig presentation if you’ve seen one). Otherwise, I will move onto fat and catch sugars in the wrap up.

Next week is TEDMED in San Diego. It’s hard to believe a year has past. I’ll probably have at least one update on what I learn there, but will *try* to write two posts on fat before I leave so they can post next week.

(1) Carbohydrates and human appetite, Blundell, JE, et al.,Am J Clin Nutr 1994;59(suppl):728S-34S.

(2) Diet and the evolution of human amylase gene copy number variation, Perry, G.H., et al., Nature Genetics 39, 1256 – 1260 (2007)

(3) Communication/presentation with Dr Nathaniel Dominy, Dartmouth University Dept of Anthropology

The Chain Gang

By admin On October 6, 2011 · 45 Comments

The picture says it all. We are going to talk about chains, not of steel, but of the basic energy units that keeps your body going and make you fat. I hope it is a new beginning, a bridge to a new way of thinking. Once you understand how the body processes food, it’ll take away mystery and magic.

The reality is actually far more simple than all of the crazy schemes you’ve followed in the past; the beauty is every one of them can be easily explained – with no contradictions.

The beginning of the story actually starts at the end. It is an interesting circle. You are here primarily because you have fat to lose. That fat is stored, in the form of Triacylglycerols (fancy term don’t worry about it) in the adipose cells. These “fat cells” are a place so this high-energy can be stored for “later use.” As we learned last week, our problem is that later never comes before we return to the gas station. You know the rest of the story.

Other animals, and even plants, store slightly different forms of energy for the exact same reason; it’s stored for later use. This is energy to sustain life when fuel (food/light) is not around to keep the animal/plant functioning. We’ll learn of some other special types of storage in addition to fats, glycogen and starch, and how it fits into the puzzle. When we are done, you will see ALL food with a new view – from ingestion to use or from ingestion to storage. I want you to FORGET about the association of carbohydrates, protein and fat with particular foods (e.g potatoes = carbs) – most (real) food has all three sources of macronutrients.

The Evolutionary Shuffle

So here is the picture that should be etched in your head: Stumble around, find food, eat as much as you can, starve for a while living off of reserves, and find food again. That is how it worked for nearly 7 million years. Even in the last 10,000 years, when Humans became far more useful with respect to their hunting and gathering, we still mostly starved. If we go back to the first recorded agriculture (5000-6000 years ago) we are still talking a mere blip on the evolutionary scale. Genetically speaking, we are still programmed to stumble, eat, starve and eat again.

Genetically speaking, we haven’t changed that much in the last 5000-6000 years. To put that into evolutionary perspective if all hominid development of 7 million years was represented by a mile, our dominion over agriculture was the last 4 feet – barely a step. You are genetically programmed to store energy for times of famine. So are your skinny friends.

The problem? Famine never comes.

So when we eat animal or plant fat, we take that stored energy and either convert it to useful energy or extract the energy from it and store it ourselves. The same goes for carbohydrates. We use the energy directly or just convert the excess to fat for later. Proteins, we’ll see, are just a little different. We can break them down and use the nutrients (amino acids) to build other proteins (e.g. insulin, enzymes, antibodies, or hair) or we can burn them and use the energy or store it in fat for later use.

In case you didn’t notice, I didn’t say MUSCLE in that list, because we’re over focused on the muscle/protein connection – both on intake and body nutrient use. It keeps you from really digesting these concepts. Put it away for now.

Each of these macromolecules: Carbohydrates, Proteins and Fats contain smaller “packages” of energy, but are stored like the links on the chain. As we dive into the each of the individual chains, you will see the similarities, and differences, but right now the BIGGEST obstacle to understanding this is to stop associating proteins, carbohydrates, and fats with specific foods. These are not food group labels like meat, dairy, or vegetables. These are basic collections of molecules of similar chemistry and function and the vast majority of unrefined food has all three.

To define a particular food by what macronutrient it has “most of” or to reject it because it’s a macronutrient that you believe you should consume less/more of is THE problem. It starts a chain of events and you end up inextricably linked to the latest fad diet. They make money; you stay fat. These macronutrient-based diet schemes all invoke an enormous amount of generality and in doing so, well, the results speak for themselves the world is getting fatter despite record spending on diet/fitness.

We have excess energy not bad genes. Can anyone argue with this logic? can you possibly get fat if you don’t eat?

Think Different

Steve Jobs, an extraordinary man that challenged status quo - all the time.

This photo takes you to the 2005 Stanford Commencement Speech - please take 14 minutes to watch it.

So, in memory of Steve Jobs, I want you to THINK DIFFERENT beginning today. Steve taught us in his amazing 2005 Stanford commencement speech, “Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking.” You CAN understand this in a way that you will no longer be trapped by dogma. I’ll take the time to explain the difference between protein and meat or potatoes and carbohydrate, if you’ll keep an open attitude.

Why am I splitting hairs on this? Because you can’t recognize or even taste a protein and yet, you’re probably convinced you need more. It’s not limited to protein, Harvard professors (1), even an outrageous story on NPR YESTERDAY, can’t seem to differentiate between a potato and a french fry and therefore group them together with the resulting blame for childhood obesity going to the poor potato. A food that has been around in some form for millions of years is now THE problem de jour. It doesn’t stop there as the USDA is probably the worst place for information.

When you get to the end of the news report note that the kid get’s it right: who wants to eat a dry potato just for the fun of it? The answer: your starving ancestors did. They were hungry and you’re fat. But until you get past that it has nothing to do with carbs, glycemic index or fat, you’ll stay stuck in the yo-yo cycle. That continues to fuel another jiggleflex sale, a deal a plate, or a bypass surgery. Everybody wins, right?

I will stop ranting now.

Today, make a step in the right direction. Forget food for a moment. We are going to dive into the three macronutrients. We are going to understand the difference between starch and cellulose – why cows can eat grass and termites can eat wood. Does your current idea of food explain where the cows get protein or how termites digest and get energy from undigestable fiber Probably not, but once you truly understand carbohydrates, proteins and fats, you can rebuild from the ground up and construct a different, a RADICALLY DIFFERENT, basis for what and why you put stuff in your mouth.

I’ll even leave room for creme brûlée.

After we are finished, what I hope you’ll never do again is to try to pick your food groups based on macronutrients: carbohydrates, proteins or fats. I hope you realize that rice, for example, has enough available protein (and a full complement of amino acids) to sustain you (2). I want you to understand why birds and wild cats aren’t fat and how an elephant can grow so much muscle mass without a single protein shake.

You see, we once understood how to survive and, ironically, didn’t even think about it. We stumbled through the world and ate what we could find. Today, with all of our macronutrient diet schemes, eat for blood type, 21 days to fight belly fat, or super secret supplement goop, we’ve lost the way. It’s unbeliveable that we have never know MORE about food and yet it’s never been more difficult to understand what to do.

Steve Jobs took everything we knew about computers, music, and computer programs and turned it into an incredible assembly of tools that…just worked. I am suggesting that we do the same with nutrition. I say for the group following this blog – stop debating and let’s just break this down and see what makes sense.

I’m willing to go against the mass market. I believe people are intelligent enough to figure this out. I know that I was wrong for most of my adult life – even with advanced education and a deep interest/motivation to understand it (I was FAT). The difference, perhaps, is that when I found the contradictions – michael phelps eats 12,000 cal/day and termites eat wood – I took the time to reflect on the world and set aside my bias.

But like ts eliot observed: I’ve arrived where I started, and know the place for the very first time. I think you will too.

We’ll start with carbohydrates on the next post. See you there!

1) Changes in Diet and Lifestyle and Long-Term Weight Gain in Women and Men, Mozaffarian D et al. N Engl J Med 2011;364:2392-2404.

2) Nitrogen retention of young men fed rice with or without supplementary chicken, Lee CJ, et al., Am J Clin Nutr. 1971 Mar;24(3):318-23.

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