Anyone Read "Food Is Not Medicine?"

[Saphire]

Here is a link

Food Isn’t Medicine

Written by Dr. Joshua Wolrich who from the pictures looks to be pretty young. I only read the sample and I like to read things that are different from what I think to avoid confirmation bias Plus there seems to be a new movement (I know it is not brand new) that is gaining traction with the health at any size and so on. As a heavier person I like that aspect as even when I considered myself a healthy weigh, doctors would make assumptions but I am pretty knowledgeable and able to self advocate so I do not worry much about that! Although I still have less than fond memories of one of my children’s pediatricians who was in his 50s or 60s at the time (the child has graduated college!) making a comment at her 4 month check up that she was overweight (that was the implication, I do not remember exactly what he said), and I should think about starting her on solid food sooner rather than later (ignored it of course). I liked him otherwise, he was not quick to prescribe antibiotics for every nonsense and so on so I let it go and ignored anything he had to say about weight from then on

He is against any restrictive diets including Keto so I do not want to support this but I am interested.

I tried to find it in an online library but my local public does not have it and I would rather not spend money on it without knowing more.

[SomeGuy]

@Saphire In short, he sounds to me like Dr. Whacka-doodle. Follow his guidance at your own peril. Here’s a write-up from the publisher:

Do carbs make you fat?
Could the keto diet cure mental health disorders?
Are eggs as bad for you as smoking?

No, no and absolutely not. It’s all what Dr Joshua Wolrich defines as ‘nutribollocks’ and he is on a mission to set the record straight.

As an NHS doctor with personal experience of how damaging diets can be, he believes every one of us deserves to have a happy, healthy relationship with food and with our bodies. His message is clear: we need to fight weight stigma, call out the lies of diet culture and give ourselves permission to eat all foods.

Food Isn’t Medicine wades through nutritional science (both good and bad) to demystify the common diet myths that many of us believe without questioning. If you have ever wondered whether you should stop eating sugar, try fasting, juicing or ‘alkaline water’, or struggled through diet after diet (none of which seem to work), this book will be a powerful wake-up call. Drawing on the latest research and delivered with a dose of humour, it not only liberates us from the destructive belief that weight defines health but also explains how to spot the misinformation we are bombarded with every day.

Dr Joshua Wolrich will empower you to escape the diet trap and call out the bad health advice for what it really is: complete nutribollocks.

[ctviggen]

Actually, the keto diet (and the carnivore diet) do help with many mental health disorders. “Cure” is always a tough word. Am I cured from diabetes? As long as I eat low carb/keto, yes.

[PaulL]

Since they both work for the NHS, it sounds as though we should put this guy and Dr. Unwin in a cage and let them fight it out, lol!

[SomeGuy]

Just goes to illustrate how, at one point or another, the US government will pay just about any body to do just about any thing.

As Hippocrates is said to have said: “Let food be thy medicine, and medicine be thy food.”

US taxpayers could’ve saved some cash by not funding this guy’s time.

[Saphire]

the US government will pay just about any body to do just about any thing.

Good news, he is in the UK

[SomeGuy]

Good news, he is in the UK

Ah, thanks! that is good news (for some of us) - and less so for others.

Sorry, I misread @PaulL’s comment as NIH not NHS. Yankee arrogance.

[lfod14]

I also like reading stuff from the “other side” as well. I also like a lot of what he’s quoted saying, and I believe his mindset seems to be in the right place… BUT, People immediately lose credibility (for me) with the health at any weight stuff, it’s just BS. It’s nothing more than excuse making for when you’re way overweight and don’t want to deal with it. I say that as somebody the weighed 300lbs at one point.

When I was that weight I had all the assumptions made that all I did was eat garbage all day long, not have any activity, not work out etc, all wrong.

Same thing now, I’m floating around 225lbs, and at 5’10" they don’t like that either because my BMI is in the low 30’s, some I’m “Obese”, so I love when they mention that and I tell them that I’m fine and BMI is complete garbage and nothing more than the lazy way to not figure out if somebody is fat or not. They dispute and then I ask how that’s not true since my bodyfat is around 11%, last one said “those online things aren’t that accurate you know”, I said I know which is why I got a DEXA scan to see what it was, I can pull it up on my phone, wanna see it?..silence!

Some things can be true, some things aren’t. But being overweight when it’s fat is never good, it’s a stress on your joints, heart and other organs regardless of other lab markers. I can’t see a Doctor making an excuse for that. I see why that mindset started, you don’t have to be a gym freak with a perfect physique to be healthy, but like everything, it’s been taken WAY too far! “Normal” people aren’t the face of that movement, very obese people are, that’s not good for anybody.

[SomeGuy]

@lfod14 Agreed.

The modern taboo against “fat shaming” steps off into the wrong direction from the outset. “Shaming” others - who haven’t committed crimes against humanity - is simply unkind.

But let’s be honest: Obesity is unhealthy. And unhealthy situations are a shame. Full stop.

We can feel badly for the unhealthy, regardless of whether they can control their condition, yet it’s still not our place to make someone else feel shameful for their predicament. (Not to mention those suffering from pituitary gland dysfunction.) Personally, when I need to feel shame in life, it readily sprouts from within.

So yeah, being obese is a shame. It’s likely to shorten your life and create health challenges along the way.

I know of no one who struggles with weight who’s happy about their situation (else there’d be no struggle). So while it’s not for me to shame them, it’s still a shame.

Telling them there’s pride to take in being unhealthy is not helpful.

[GregH]

@Saphire I agree with @SomeGuy. This sounds like yet another apology for the BigFood, Big Sugar, Big Pharma trio that are responsible for the metabolic disaster that is engulfing people. Check out the work being done by Virta Health (https://www.virtahealth.com/) with diet to treat diabetes and other metabolic diseases. Check out the writings of Nina Teischolz, Gary Taubes, John Yudkin, Richard K. Bernstein, Robert C. Atkins, Stephen D. Phinney, Jeff Volek, Eric Westman, Jimmy Moore, Robert K. Su, William Davis, Michael and Mary Eades, Denise Minger, Dr. Terry Wahls, Catherine Shanahan, Malcolm Kendrick, and Zoë Harcombe on this topic. (Their books will be in your local library.)

[PaulL]

BUT, People immediately lose credibility (for me) with the health at any weight stuff, it’s just BS.

Well, there is such a thing as “metabolically healthy obese” (MHO), and as I recall, they make up about 20% of the obese population. They don’t have any metabolic diseases, they are just fat. The way the percentages work, at least in the U.S., there are actually several million or so more TOFI’s (thin on the outside, fat on the inside) than there are obese people with metabolic syndrome. (MHO and TOFI are official medical terms, by the way.)

I just found my notes of the figures Dr. Robert Lustig goes into, in a couple of his lectures on metabolic syndrome. At the time of the lecture, out of 240,000,000 adults in the U.S., there were 70,000,000 obese, of whom 57,600,000 had one or more of the chronic diseases, the remainder (12.4 million) being MHO. Given that 40% of the thin adults are TOFI, that means that there are 67,200,000 of them. So about ten million more people are “thin/sick” than “fat/sick,” as Dr. Lustig puts it.

Like you, I weighed around 300 lbs. (136 kg) at my heaviest, but I by no means qualified as MHO back then. I was definitely “fat/sick,” and given the amount of diabetes on both sides of my family, I am lucky to have been merely pre-diabetic, not full-blown. Fortunately, keto brought my insulin under control, so my blood sugar, blood pressure, heart rate, and blood work were all normal after about a year on keto. I’m still obese, having lost only 25% of my starting weight, but I’m otherwise healthy these days. So come to think of it, I guess I qualify as MHO now, after all!

[Saphire]

I have read almost all of them, never heard of Robert Su but I love Denise Minger among others. Love the TED talk by Virta founder. Yudkin always makes me sad to think what was done to him by Ancel Keyes! You forgot Jason Fung who is probably responsible for me finding Keto 4 years ago this month. Not saying I agree with the book, simply asking if anyone has read and found out anything interesting. When I read something I want to know why the author is wrong and what is the science

As for the fat/fit thing. One thing I have learned over the last 4 years is that I will never be as thin as I would like to be. I am not big boned either, I simply have a body that short of a world wide food shortage (these days should be careful what I consider an outlier event!) will never be below a 29 - 31 BMI and I need to come to terms with that. And I will still always have a substantial amount of fat. I had what I considered about 100 lbs to lose when I started to get to 25 BMI. I lost 50 over the course of about 6 months. The other 50 refused to come off and I started gradually putting on weight. This is with strict keto, fasting, exercise, sleep and so on. I have gained a lot back but I keep trying to stay low carb (do not always succeed) because it limits my hunger and cravings, I would like to reduce my risk of prediabetes, and nothing else works any better! Plus I get really tired when I eat carbs.

One of the things I have learned through keto is that it really is not my fault and the deck is pretty much stacked against me. First because I grew up in the era of high carb/low fat, second because my metabolism like most people’s has a certain homeostasis, but probably the most shocking thing I learned is that carb eating really does beget carb eating and it becomes more difficult to control so eating a “balanced” diet is a lot harder than eating keto, but even more than that, is that often your cravings originate either from your body wanting to be in homeostasis or the microflora in your gut which generate certain cravings. None of which is within your control. Yes you can try and change your flora but that take resources and knowledge that most people do not have. Also of course your insulin spiking or dropping which stimulates you to eat

When I was that weight I had all the assumptions made that all I did was eat garbage all day long, not have any activity, not work out etc, all wrong.

The things is, the people who do eat badly do not always do it because they do not care, sometimes it is bad diet advice from licensed professionals or because they are addicted to sugar, but unlike an alcoholic they do not even realize it. The usual advice just eat less is about as helpful as telling a poor person to spend less or an alcoholic to drink less (Gary Taubes said it first I think)! Yet fat is the last permitted form of discrimination because the general public believes the condition is voluntary

[GregH]

I quite agree with you @Saffire - I think metabolic health is the important thing not weight all on its own. I’m a type 2 diabetic so my original goal was blood glucose management. Thanks to low carb I achieved that and along the way my other markers all came into normal ranges including my weight - but that never was my goal. Keto gives me even better BG so that’s where I am now. You are so right about the sources of a lot of folks bad diets - the diabetes counsellors I had when I was first diagnosed would have probably made my problems worse. Things only improved when I cut the carbs out.

[Fangs]

In short, he sounds to me like Dr. Whacka-doodle.

This had me cracking up!

-------so old basic sayings like You are what you eat are truths.
Sucking down soda, does anyone on this planet require soda for anything in their lives…nope, but we do it

Wandering thru today’s food and false advertising and claims about eat this product, we know what is right for you, and the population goes happily along with it…til one breaks out of the box. Luckily many are breaking out of the old BS messages and info out there and finding the real healthy way forward.

you know I personally can’t read ‘the other side’…I just wanna scream and tear my hair out. I best not read or look at any of it

I really enjoyed reading this thread. Great thoughts from all on here.

[ctviggen]

I think being “fat” is more complex than just BMI or any other indicator. For instance, Ivor Cummins did a presentation at KetoFest 2017 where he showed people who were ostensibly “obese” yet had perfectly fine lab markers. In particular, I seem to remember him saying they were quite insulin sensitive. Other obese people weren’t nearly as good.

And I listened to Dr. Ben Bikman where he was describing being in Asia (Singapore? A great place, visited once, would love to go back), and he remarked that many people of European descent can gain weight and not be any unhealthier, but that wasn’t true for many of Asian descent. They would look barely “overweight”, yet be much more impacted.

And I know the ideal man or woman is supposed to have super low body fat, but I often wonder how healthy that is. I think was we age, some fat might be good. Unless, of course, you’re so insulin-resistant that you can’t access that fat, say if you’re sick.

One reason I started low carb was because my Italian dad ate pasta so much he became a T2. I don’t want to be relying on insulin when I’m older. Even if I never get back to the body I had when I was 20-25, and have some fat, I’d rather have that than diabetes.

[PaulL]

Ivor Cummins did a presentation at KetoFest 2017 where he showed people who were ostensibly “obese” yet had perfectly fine lab markers.

A doctor would call such people MHO, “metabolically healthy obese.”

he remarked that many people of European descent can gain weight and not be any unhealthier, but that wasn’t true for many of Asian descent. They would look barely “overweight”, yet be much more impacted.

And these would be the TOFI, “thin on the outside, fat on the inside.”

Apparently some people have a genetic tendency towards visceral (ectopic) fat, whereas others tend to adiposity. Fat in the adipose tissue is supposed to be much less dangerous to health than visceral fat.

I know the ideal man or woman is supposed to have super low body fat,

The standard figures used to be 10-12% for men, and 21-23% for women (because they need a cushion for pregnancy).

Interestingly, our impressions change over time. I remember the first time I saw the movie Houseboat, with Cary Grant and Sophia Loren, some forty or fifty years ago, remarking how voluptuous she looked. She was beautiful and well-formed, but very well padded. But I recently had reason to look up stills from Houseboat, and this time I was struck by how thin she looked. Apparently, we have become accustomed to seeing much fatter people over the intervening decades.

After watching one of Michael Eades’s videos on paleopathology, I took his advice and looked up pictures of people from the 1940’s. The shirtless soldiers and sailors from WWII look positively emaciated in retrospect. You can usually see their ribs. I notice, by comparison, that even very fit young men these days all have a layer of fat under their skin.

[ctviggen]

I’m not sure the 1940s are the best time to look at people. That was just after the great depression.

But I found a picture of my mom’s family when she was relatively young. They were all thin. Yet when I met them not too many years later (10? 12? Old enough for me to remember), they were all obese. All of them (except my mother).

There was no date on the picture, but I think early 60s might have been it.

And Eades seems to want to blame that on PUFA intake. Is that true? It’s hard for me to tell, since when I ate high saturated fat/low PUFA, I gained a ton of weight.

Others want to say it’s the type of food (“ultra processed”) or the food environment (snacks, eating many times per day, sugar everywhere, etc.).

I think it’s probably factors from each, although I’ve become less enamored with the PUFA theory: I can eat as many croissants with added butter as I want or as much ice cream as possible, and still want more. Both low PUFA. And when I eat things that are higher in PUFA, such as chicken or pork, I am no hungrier than at any other time. Or at least that I can tell.

Nuts are another example: I will overeat almonds, which are high in PUFA; but I can also overeat macadamia nuts, which are not. Is this because of the taste? It doesn’t seem to be the PUFAs.

Brad from Fire in a Bottle posted the PUFA intake between Switzerland and France and the US, and also the calories. The Swiss and French ate more calories but less PUFA than did the US. His theory is that PUFA = higher calories.

Me, I’m not so sure. There are way too many differences between these three countries. Could it be the PUFAs? Maybe, but I doubt it, based on my own tests. And I don’t know enough about the cultures of Switzerland or France to say anything about what they actually eat. (And is that even possible? Consider the US. I’ve lived in a bunch of different places with different families, and have eaten tons of different foods. Polish food is not Italian food, for instance.)

[PaulL]

I’m not sure the 1940s are the best time to look at people.

Except that the military fed its people very well; rationing was more of a home front phenomenon. And the sugar rationing helped people on the home front stay thin, as well. The curve of diabetes cases follows the curve of sugar consumption pretty well (there is something of a lag, of course).

But I found a picture of my mom’s family when she was relatively young. They were all thin. Yet when I met them not too many years later (10? 12? Old enough for me to remember), they were all obese. All of them (except my mother).

I remember my mother’s family, who were generally rail thin in the fifties and sixties, but a decade or so of cutting back on fat and eating a lot more carbohydrate made us all quite fat.

There are people, such as Chris Knobbe, who make a persuasive case to the effect that seed oils are as much to blame for metabolic dysfunction as refined sugar. It is hard to untangle, because seed oils, cheap refined sugar, and cheap refined flour all came on the market pretty much at the same time. It was noticed that dental caries increased quite soon after (probably from the sugar, but possibly from the flour, as well), and the diabetes epidemic began about twenty years later, just in time for Joslin to observe it begin at Massachusetts General.

The Swiss and French ate more calories but less PUFA than did the US. His theory is that PUFA = higher calories.

What time period is he talking about? In general, the diet in Europe before World War II was high in meat, low in processed foods (except traditional items, such as cheese and sausage), and high in animal fats. Refined sugar and flour were available, but much less prevalent in the diet.

The U.S. was starting to embrace processed foods, as well as PUFA’s. There was also a shortage of meat in the early 20th century in the U.S., as production struggled to keep up with the population increase. The diet after WWII was skewed by the persistence of rationing in some countries (I don’t know about France and Switzerland), so it is harder to make comparisons.

But I think this guy Brad is on the wrong track in his conclusions, at least as you describe them.

[ctviggen]

@PaulL Were you ever in the military? I can tell you that I was very thin coming out of basic training. Tons of walking, running, drilling, 3 meals only. Sure I ate as much as I wanted, but there was like 15 minutes to eat, and then you were gone doing something else.

Of course, I went into machinist’s school after basic, and promptly gained 15 pounds…eating ice cream (is what I remember).

The data Brad uses is as current as he could get it:

EDIT: Oops, missed this one, which helps this make more sense:

More here:

The French Obesity Paradox - Fire In A Bottle

As you state above, however, PUFAs and processed foods go hand in hand. Tortilla chips, potato chips, popcorn, for instance, are all fried or have added PUFAs. French fries, salad dressings, cooking oils, are all now PUFA-based. Even the chicken strips we buy for our kids are flash-fried…in soybean oil. Heck, I keep wanted to buy some olives from the local store, but they are in sunflower oil. We could be here all day listing things that have added PUFAs.

Hard to disentangle.

[SomeGuy]

Except that the military fed its people very well;

Worth noting that “K-rats” - fed to US military GIs during WWII - stood for Ancel Keyes Rations. And GI didn’t stand for gastro-intestinal