Bad news for food manufacturers: the low-carb word is ou

Joanna Blythman

https://www.thegrocer.co.uk/health/.../650241.article

Love to hear news like this as an indicator of progress. Food manufacturers will continue to campaign against low carb, as their businesses depend on it, and the mantra of "healthy whole grains" continues in the registered dieticians camp and among many in the medical community, but the first step has started. The first step is that people aware of clinical successes like Dr. Unwin and many others adopting a low carb WOE are causing them to take action by ignoring the highly processed foods on grocery store shelves. As sales decline with improved identification of healthy foods, things will change, slowly, but things will change.

Since nutrient density is a relative measure, I guess the bit about



is true. But in this case, 'only relative' helped us to discover most of the vitamins--various deficiency diseases caused by relying on various grains, whole or refined, for nutrition. Pellegra, beri-beri, rickets, scurvy, all related to eating grains. Only relative is important--because it's only because other foods are relatively rich in various nutrients, and can be added to a grain-rich diet, and provide more than their share of vital nutrients, that a grain diet is at all tenable.

I don't have a problem with grains being a staple in much of the world. I think it's clear that reasonable health can be had on a diet heavy in starchy grains. (It's not clear that it can be had for me, and everyone on this forum, but there's enough evidence I think that a population can do reasonably well). It's not just a matter of, lean on whole grains and you'll do well. There's a whole dietary structure and lifestyle, much of it not entirely voluntary--people eating the foods they can actually afford that are available in their area--going into that. To me, is whole grain healthful? or even is heavy cream healthful? is nonsensical, it's more, in what dietary/lifestyle context is it healthful, and for who?

And cereals are even nutrient poorer before all the vitamins & minerals are added. It would be just as effective to eat the box (for fiber if you believe you need it) and pop a multivitamin.

I think recent history illustrates this. Prior to the Food Pyramid, the Four Food Groups allowed starches on the plate far more than sugar. In my case, this makes a difference; maybe even if only in concentration.

History shows grain filled diets are bad for teeth and bones. Period.

Good to see low carb movement building....... even if the products are usually higher carb than the daily 20 which is baseline for a surprising number of people and the products will be highly processed, another negative.

As for grains becoming sugar, every diabetic knows carbs are a reason to track blood sugar after a meal. Really.

Very well stated. The many frankenfoods produced that masquerade as "healthy grains" are the real culprits in this context. Not only do they not provide nutrients, unless they are fortified, but they are very different than the harvested grains they started with after they were processed into something else. Some people do ok on on whole grains. I'm not one of them.

If whole grains are so great then why have people around the world put so much effort into polishing off the husks from rice, removing bran from wheat flour, etc? My opinion, the lectins and other anti-nutrients are mostly found in the hulls/bran and people have figured out over eons of trial and error that they feel better not eating that stuff. Doesn't mean extremely processed grains with added inflammatory industrial seed oils are good, though. Thinking of traditional Asian white rice, French white flour breads, etc. I can't eat that stuff due to years of metabolic damage from SAD diet but people who grew up that way on the stuff are often relatively healthy.

I think a little grain every now and then is OK for me, definitely not daily, definitely small doses, and definitely with a healthy portion of good fats.

I'm 65 pounds down and extremely healthy.

Starch used to be a staple, 65 pounds ago.

Everybody is different though. Small portions, like a slice or two of zero carb bread (mostly fiber) per week for a grilled cheese sandwich with Irish Cheddar plus Danish Havarti and saturated with grass-fed butter. Mmmmm - delightful.

Bob

Thank you for this article Demi! So glad to see the low carb food market growing. Personally, I am dirty low carb (a term I got from the book Dirty Lazy Keto), and don’t fret over artificial sweeteners or the occasional low carb cookie. In fact, I love to bake, and low carb products like almond flour have opened up a world of possibility for me.

Looking back, I never did well on “ healthy” whole grains like Quinoa and brown rice. I get my fiber from psyllium now, and never fret about grains any more. Never going back!

Thanks again for your wonderful postings.

But even the starches were far more limited with the 4 basic food groups than they are now. Potatoes were lumped in with bread, pasta, cereals, and other grains in the oldest 4 food groups classifications, because they were all starch based.



It's difficult now to even find information about the 4 food groups and how many servings were recommended back then (much less images of the 4 food group posters from the 50's and 60's), but if I'm recalling correctly, each meal was basically a serving of starch (usually 2 slices of bread or one slice of bread plus a small serving of potatoes or cereal - and bread slices were most often white bread, and smaller in size back then than they are now), 2 servings of vegetables (not potatoes), or a vegetable and a fruit (juice was permitted as a 4 oz serving), a serving of meat (4 oz, not the pitiful 2 oz recommended now), and a serving of dairy (whole milk and/or real cheese) at each meal. Fats like real butter fit in with the meal to spread on your bread, or season your veggies. Easy, and it didn't cause nearly as many metabolic problems for nearly as many people.



In the 70's (I have an old college textbook from then with this information in it), potatoes had been quietly moved to the fruit and vegetable group - but they were the very last item on the fruit and vegetable list, with vegetables clearly preferred, followed by fruit (preferably whole fruit, not juice), and finally potatoes - small potatoes, not the huge 1 lb baking potatoes we see these days. There were also alternatives offered for the meat group - you could have some beans or peanut butter, but again the very last option on the list, the assumption being that you'd get the vast majority of your protein from various animal products. Dairy was a separate group (milk, cheese, eggs), which means you also got protein from that group too. Real fats - butter was added to season vegetables, or spread on bread. Fruit was served with cream. Cheese was full fat. Meat didn't have most of the fat trimmed away. For hamburger, 30% fat was the norm. Pork and beef were well marbled. Chicken was always on the bone, with the skin intact.



So different from now with the pyramid and plate - far too much starch, far too little protein, far too much of the protein being plant based, and hardly any fat, much less real, naturally occurring fat.



Bah, humbug.

What I remember of the 4 food groups was servings per day, something like 4 servings of the starches, 2 meat, 2 milk, 4 fruit/veg (or was it 2 fruit, 2 veg?). It was supposed to represent a minimum selection of foods to get the nutrients you needed, expecting you'd eat more of whatever as individually needed for energy.

Yes, I believe you're right - it was sooo long ago now, that I can't recall exactly. It's just so difficult to find the exact information now, and the only image I found illustrating the 4 food groups from back in the 50's and early 60's is so small that I can't see what it says about each food group. Food recommendations had started changing by the time that college textbook came out in the 70's, so mostly going by memory here.

I remember the 4 food groups too, but I don't remember the ratio.

I don't think they were as commercialized as the pyramids, but I don't think we knew as much about nutrition as we do now either.

No matter how much we know, it doesn't matter. Way too many people still think if you eat fat you get fat.

The minority of us use our brains, the rest just do what the salesmen/saleswomen in their living rooms tell them to do (TV, magazines, newspapers, websites).

Bob

I hate to throw shade, but I've learned something disturbing since we rely so heavily on meat to stay healthy. Thought posting it here is the best place.
China finds coronavirus on frozen meat, packaging from Latin America, New Zealand