Tag: carbohydrates
The Skinny on Saturated Fat
The bottom line is that there are trade-offs and complexities when it comes to biology. A high carbohydrate diet is a risk factor for many diseases, and this is highly genetically variable. Types of sugar matter, weight matters, exercise matters, and genetics matter. The same is true of fat.
Vegan Betrayal: The Myths vs. the Realities of a Plants-Only Diet
NOTE: The original version of this book review was criticized for not making it clear when I was simply reporting the book’s content and when I was expressing support for one of its arguments. I have revised it to make it more clear. The additions are marked by brackets. Vegetarians come in several flavors. Ovo-vegetarians eat eggs, lacto-vegetarians eat dairy products but...
What Can We Learn from the Kitavans?
A Swedish researcher, Staffan Lindeberg, has been studying the inhabitants of Kitava, one of the Trobriand Islands of Papua New Guinea. He claims that sudden cardiac death, stroke, and exertion-related chest pain never occur in Kitava; and he attributes this to their eating a Paleolithic diet. 2,250 people live on Kitava. They are traditional farmers. Their dietary staples are tubers (yam, sweet...
What’s for Dinner?
Diet advice changes so fast it’s almost a full-time job to keep up with it. Avoid cholesterol; no, avoid saturated fats; no, avoid trans-fats. Avocados are bad; no, avocados are good. Wheat germ is passé; now omega 3s are de rigueur. The supermarket overwhelms us with an embarras de richesses, a confusing superabundance of choices from “organic” to low-sodium. How can we...