The American Heart Association's "New look" at nutrition research

(Bob M) #1

“New look” at nutrition research from the American Heart Association:

https://newsroom.heart.org/news/new-look-at-nutrition-research-identifies-10-features-of-a-heart-healthy-eating-pattern

New, in what way?

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(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #2

I notice that points 5 and 6 appear to contradict each other. I suppose olive oil might count as “minimally processed,” but sunflower oil and the other seed oils on the market are certainly “ultra-processed.”

(Bob M) #3

Good point.

And, of course, anti-fat, particularly saturate fat, pervades this list.

Not to mention that “high fiber protein” does really exist. At least nothing I would call “protein”.

And…salt. Always harping on salt, with little to no evidence against it.

(Doug) #4

Still, filtered through “our viewpoint” on this forum (if there is such a thing), it seems like some progress is being made on their pronouncements.

(Jane) #5

Which bullet point do you see progress on? Limit red meat, no saturated fats, no mention of eggs, limit salt, pushing plant proteins… I suppose 6 and 7 line up with our philosophy, but not enough to offset their other recommendations IMO.

(Doug) #6

Jane, while I see the objections, I don’t think it’s as bad as it used to be, and granted that I don’t remember what the prior positions they took were, exactly.

1 through 3, no big problems from my viewpoint. For most people those would work well.

4 - I see the “low fat” thing… But that’s no worse than for the past 40 - 50 years.

5 - Does leave the door open for less-than-ideal oils; not going far enough there.

6 - 7 No problem, I think.

8 - Salt - It’s BS for most people, but by the same token they’re getting a lot of salt with a ‘standard’ or ‘western’ diet to begin with; not likely to have any deficiency there, regardless of what the AHA says.

9 - Booze. Well, I’m prejudiced there, but on “limiting alcohol” I can’t disagree.

#7

Is getting it half right an improvement? Probably! I like how the war on eggs, avacodos and coconut oil ended (again) years back but they’re still on the lean meat thing.

Is a Canola a non-tropical plant? Oh ya… it doesn’t exist! AHAHAHAHAHAHA!

(Doug) #8

I think so, in the context of this forum and that “They’re going to **** it up, pretty much no matter what.”

(Joey) #9

So in round numbers, assessing these 10 guidelines, I’d assign a score of roughly 50%.

In baseball, this represents an enviable batting average.

In high school, this represents the mark of a future drop-out.

In science, similar results could be produced by a random advice generator. :no_mouth:

#10

I question my sanity on LCHF because I question the sanity of this mainstream advice. But then, eventually, I get hungry and eat a whole food, locally sourced, quite a bit home-grown, pasture-raised, low carbohydrate, healthy animal-based fats meal, so I can contemplate sanity further with a calm, clear mind.

(Jane) #11

Well they didn’t want to name it after the plant it is from - rapeseed!

(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #12

It is, in the sense that “canola” stands for “CANada Oil, Low Acid,” and the oil so named is derived from a low-acid varietal of rapeseed.

#13

I follow 1, 6 and 7 (okay, I eat processed meat and lately quite much but it’s usually little and I think my body can handle it if I do the other things right), 9 doesn’t matter as I don’t limit alcohol at all but I want very little… And I definitely go against some point, sure and I know it’s the only way for me to feel right. I felt very healthy on vegetarian HCHF as well but I was young and I don’t risk my future health. And anyway, I feel better on extreme low-carb, it’s what is healthy for me, obviously.

I have no problem with high-fiber protein (except the carbs), it’s my plan C but I am lucky enough, I very very rarely need even plan B (that’s using gluten as my main protein source for a whole day, it’s not for everyone but it’s way better for me than adding a bunch of carbs)…

This anti-fat attitude, I never ever understood it. Oh well, my brain can’t comprehend it so I automatically ignore all of that. The shops are full with very fatty meat so it’s fine.

Oh my god. How bad was it? Well I have read about opinions that white sugar is NEEDED… But that was really long ago.

I am not sure. Fruits are extremely sugary and it’s very easy to eat 1 kg or more in one sitting (I totally did it). Not everyone can afford all those calories. Many of us just get hungry when eating fruit, it just balloons up our energy intake and unless we are very careful, our normal food already do that.
If fruits satiate someone who eat it galore, it may leave a too little room for the essential nutrients (okay, the others. fruits has something but they are mostly sugar and water and some fiber)… I see every day that I just can’t afford fun extras in more than minimal amounts, I will overeat that way. I have my overeating past, not everyone is like me but… Many.
And fruits are hyped and people interpret it wrong. The worst is when someone is starving eating mostly or only fruit. I don’t know how their mind works.
But some fruit, smartly eaten may be fine for many people and definitely wrong for others. It’s no good to me but I don’t care, I love fruits and no one can keep me from them, period :smiley: But thinking of fruit as some magical health thing full with vitamins… I find this dangerous and the focus should be shifted to essential nutrients.
And I dislike the lie that it is a must to eat lots of fruits to get the essential nutrients and that I must supplement if I don’t eat like that. It’s simply doesn’t true.

I wonder why we don’t have rapeseed oil here… Some tinned stuff contains it and probably a bunch of other processed foods (I just rarely eat them since ages while I bought some tinned fish here and there. in brine when I could do it but I saw ingredient lists) but we only can buy sunflower oil for our own cooking. And now coconut oil but it’s very recent. And there is lard, duck and goose fat but people got very effectively brainwashed into using sunflower oil, I saw it in cookbooks. People thought sunflower oil is bad smelling while lard is neutral and fine… It was odd to me as (proper) lard is so tasty and not neutral at all (I hate pastries made with lard but they have some popularity even now) while sunflower oil is neutral. But when I stopped using it, I started to feel its sunflower taste, ew. I dislike sunflower seeds and they are super popular too… I don’t mind the smell of sunflower fields and they are very pretty and we have them everywhere (there was one in my “street” this year but probably last year or the year before too just elsewhere). Rapeseed is common as well (maybe somewhat less and it makes sense as people only use sunflower oil. but it’s almost exclusive for cooking, baking brings butter and margarine but there are cakes with oil) and that’s pretty as well. We have lots of yellow fields due to these two plants.
Olive oil is some fancy expensive stuff here, mostly for salads. Sunflower is the number one oil/fat, by FAR.

(Bob M) #14

Personally, I think 1-3 are complete garbage and unsupported by any scientific evidence. WHI, 49,000 women, 8 years, 700+ million dollars, RCT, the group under test ate more fruits and vegetables, less saturated fat, more “whole” grains, fewer calories, and there was no benefit. For weight, there was a tiny benefit of a few pounds. After 8 years.

And “whole grains”. What is a “whole grain”? If I take whole wheat and grind it up to make bread, is that “whole”?

Personally, I think “whole” grains are much worse than grains without the fiber. Many cultures get rid of the fiber, such as white rice in China, white flour in France, and still are fine.

Of those 10 features, I practice one of them (7). (Well, I will have olive oil sometimes.)

(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #15

Actually, the Women’s Health Initiative is interesting, because the nutritional intervention did lower cholesterol, and this is one of the studies that showed a negative correlation between cholesterol level and cardiovascular risk, especially for women above a certain age. In other words, the ones with the lower cholesterol were the ones with a greater risk of dying, whereas the ones with the higher cholesterol were healthier and lived longer.

And yet, arterycloggingsaturatedfat is still going to kill us. Go figure!

(Bob M) #16

The other thing is that statements like “balance food and calorie intake with physical activity to maintain a healthy weight” means that all the blame can be placed on the person, and none on the AHA. If you gain weight, you obviously didn’t “balance food and calorie intake with physical activity to maintain a healthy weight”, did you?

The AHA never has to ask themselves WHY you didn’t “balance food and calorie intake with physical activity to maintain a healthy weight”. You failed. They, of course, did not.

(Bacon is a many-splendoured thing) #17

Gary Taubes quotes an article by Malcom Gladwell of The New Yorker, in which, writing about diet books, he noted that all the narratives seemed to feature a “conversion experience.” Taubes says that this is to be expected, because the doctors who wrote those books had been blaming their patients for not following advice, until they tried to use their advice themselves—and found it didn’t work. At that point, they realised that the problem did not lie in their patients, but in the advice itself. That was certainly the case with Dr. Atkins, who lost quite a bit of fat on his diet.

Taubes also mentions, in one of his lectures, a group of Canadian women physicians who wrote an open letter about their success in treating patients with a ketogenic diet. They remark in the letter that, having seen the results, it is now impossible for them to un-see. Would that this would happen with the people promulgating the official advice!

(Bob M) #18

Yeah, I often think a lot of this is because of the people who are writing/influencing these. They are the type of people who can eat one tortilla chip and close the bag or eat 1 ounce of nuts and put the nuts away. The very few people like that.

That’s why some of the doctors, like Dr. Tro, who gained a ton of weight eating normally, then lost a ton by eating low carb, are influenced by low carb. Dr. Unwin out of the UK, he was always thin But he was about to retire and a patient came in who had lost a lot of weight. Dr. Unwin asked him how he did it, and the patient said low carb. So, Unwin started recommending this to his other (mainly T2) patients, and saw enough benefits that he did not retire.

(Doug) #19

Well, the premise is that things are kept in balance and that a “wide variety” of food is eaten. :wink:

If somebody’s regularly powering through a kilogram of extremely sugary fruit, then I’d say they’re a bit off-kilter in the first place.

But if people are doing 1 through 3, for the vast majority of people in the world that works fine, whether it’s conscious/unconscious and willful or unwillful.

As individuals - certainly, some of us are prone to excess. As with ice cream; I’ve recalled eating a half gallon or ~2 liters/1.6kg at one sitting, and some people are amazed at that - even on this forum! :smile::grin: (At those times I think, “Geez… A half gallon really isn’t all that much…” :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:)

Long ago, yeah - sugar was seen as “white gold.” What I’m thinking of is more emphasis on ‘whole grains’ versus just “grain” which may be severely processed, and advise to limit “ultra-processed foods as much as possible.” I think that’s new language, and that there is likely great resistance to the inclusion of it from food processing companies.

(Paul) #20

Agree, also what is of concern is that Olive Oil is now seen as being heavily cut with other oils, cheaper oil, and it’s not disclosed on the label. Back to tallow etc…