#foodtrends

"Mind-Opener" coffee to start the morning at my favorite post-ride, pre-beach tennis stop, The Source Cafe.  Hermosa Beach, CA

... So, understanding everything I wrote in my previous post also understand that I love experimenting with how what I put in my body makes me feel.  No carb, low-carb no gluten, organic, vegan, paleo, raw... wine vs. beer vs. scotch vs. no booze ever?  What makes me feel the best on the day-to-day and what seems to be the best option for me and my family long term?  I mean, I am in the trending capital of the world, it's only fair that I get caught up in some of it, #amiright ?  Below I will be touching on a few of the topics that I am currently interested in and experimenting with.  Any of these trendy things I'm willing to dive into must fit within the construct of "Eat Food, Not Too Much, Mostly Plants."  As a very logical person with a strong scientific background I refuse to get wrapped up in nutritional and herbal supplement quackery.

Bulletproof Coffee (BPC):
The first trend I'm into is the easiest to follow and easiest to understand the logic behind yet gets a lot of flack.  "Butter coffee" is a newer trend and one that I'm starting to become a believer in.  I've been drinking and making my own daily cup of BPC for over one year now.  The basic recipe is very simple, if you don't dive too deeply into what the Dave Asprey (creator of BPC) disciples will preach.  My recipe is 1 Tbsp coconut oil, 1 Tbsp of butter from free range, non-GMO, grass fed cows (ensuring better fat content).  The original BCP recipe is:

• 8-12 oz coffee Bulletproof branded coffee.
• 1-2 Tbsp purified medium-chain triglycerides (MCT) oil.
• 1-2 Tbsp of Kerrygold grass-fed, unsalted butter or ghee (What's Ghee?).
• BLEND the contents for emulsification (taste).  Stirring makes it less appealing to certain folks... not me. 
• Basic nutritional content:
• Calories: 250-450 depending on amount of oil/butter added (my version is about 300 calories).
• Fat: up to 50g in total all of it being saturated (mine contains about 30g).
• Vitamins/nutrientients: butyrate (short-chain fatty acid), omega-3 fatty acids, linoleic acid (CLA), beta-carotene, vitamin A, vitamin K, vitamin D, vitamin E

There's a huge debate about whether or not this is a healthy thing to be doing.  People are planted firmly on one side or the other.  Since it's that time of the political cycle just think about it in terms of Republican v. Democrat and you'll understand how ludicrous and unfounded most of the arguments from both sides can be.  I believe that it's good for me... and probably bad for people with a standard American diet.  The calories and fat content provide very little to zero benefit if you are eating a bowl of cereal along with it.  BPC is in my opinion a great option if you eat a diet heavy in vegetables and relatively low in carbohydrates... and if used as a sort of meal/breakfast replacement (meal replacement is a contentious subject on many levels).  The basics are that if no sugar is available to us for energy in our blood, our body is very efficient at converting fats to energy.  By using fats instead of sugars we reduce the insulin spikes and fluctuations in blood sugar that lead to tired feelings.  We need calories, but where they come from has a big impact on how we feel... this is not breaking news, Dave Asprey just found a new way to tell us.

When you break down the claims made by Dave Asprey about the amazing benefits of BPC (not limited to muscle building, improved cognition, fat burning, increased metabolism) it's pretty easy to see that he is a great pitch man that knows how to market products and make a lot of money.  The theory and marketing behind BPC bothers me because he focuses on the individual nutrients as the reason for its benefit and not the basic and proven calorie/carbohydrate/caffeine argument.  Yes, he promotes ketosis but he also spends a lot of time, in my opinion, over-glorifying his versions of the products necessary to make BPC.  As I eluded to in my previous food post I believe the focus should not be on the specific nutrient but instead the goodness of the whole product and lifestyle that leads to obtaining that nutrient in your diet.  If we ignore the big picture we contribute to a lack of understanding of what is truly happening with our bodies on a macro level.  Oh well, it works for what I want and I eat a nutrient dense diet so I'm likely safe from the legitimate downside concerns.  Bottom line: I feel significantly better and less tired throughout the work day when I am in my BPC routine.

Ketogenic Diets
This is really surface level explanation of why people talk about ketosis because I don't have the time or energy to write a chapter on how our body brings Acetyl-CoA into mitochondria and I also don't think you really care.  But it's important to understand that we don't need sugar to survive, our bodies have been adapted over millions of years to figure out how to utilize whatever we ingest as well as stored energy in adipose tissue.  Just know that depending on how active we are in a moment of time and what we are ingesting (or not ingesting), our body (mitochondria) is getting energy from these 3 sources:

• Glycolysis- breakdown of glucose (sugar).
• Protein catabolism- which leads to gluconeogenesis and glucose production by the liver.
• Fat catabolism- this is where believers in ketosis want us to live most of the time.
• In this state fatty acids are converted to ketones which can be used by the brain and other cells for energy.
• To get to this state you need to consume less than about 50g of carbs per day. 
• If you are doing cardiovascular activity (HR of 50-80% of Max) for more than 30 minutes you have likely changed over to a fat burning state.  This is why body-builders walk briskly for long periods instead of running.  They don't want their heart rate too high to the point that they are in an anaerobic state (ketosis needs oxygen).

I won't get into it too much here but there is a severe lack of attention paid to ketosis as therapy.  There are some papers out there (ketosis therapy) but MD's and nutritionists that I work and speak with still do not have a grasp on what it entails and who it is good and bad for.  A very small sect of the nutritional and medical (obviously mostly endocrinologists) world is diving into ketosis and I hope that there's a legitimate explosion of long-term research.  So much money in America is spent on attempting to prove the easy way out (pharmaceutical) of disease because drug companies pay for and profit from this proof.  Maybe the food industry needs to put more money into health research of what they are producing.  I make that statement without having an actual idea of how much of a coconut farmer conglomerate's $$ goes into health studies.  Food is therapy.  The lack of food therapy in a treatment plan is either the fault of the MD that does not push it hard enough or because they are not convinced a ketogenic diet is strong enough for their patient to treat ailment X.  From my experience the reality is that most western medicine practitioners don't know/understand the basics of nutritional ketosis much less other food therapies.  Making sure to spread the blame appropriately the patient that demands their MD pulls an easy-fix to the problem they are having out of their butt because they don't want to work for their health is just as much if not more to blame... let's call it the "invisible hand of the health market."  Ketosis is the theory behind what Bulletproof and Dave Asprey are spreading.  Ketosis is also whats behind Paleo (basically for the layman) and The Atkins diet.  So, it's not really trendy, it's just re-packaged and re-visited trendy... kinda like hipsters.


For further reading on this subject go read what Dr. Peter Attia has to say.




Gluten Free:

I believe in being mostly gluten free not because I think gluten should necessarily be eliminated from our diet... but a lot of the foods that contain it should be significantly reduced in order to reduce overall calories and carbohydrate load in the American diet.  Two of the healthiest and longest living populations in the world (Sardinia, Italy and Loma Linda, CA) eat a moderate amount of foods that contain gluten.  Therefore, I don't really think you can vilify gluten as much as we do but there is a strong argument about the inflammatory properties of gluten in our body.

I became obsessed with this topic after I lost 20 pounds in a month due to intestinal distress back in 2009.  For a while we thought I may have celiac disease or something.  After a lot of diagnostic tests including a colonoscopy and endoscopy (YAY!) it turned out to be a stomach bug that messed with my intestinal flora.  When I recovered from it I couldn't digest food very well, particularly dairy and gluten.  Slowly as the flora in my intestinal tract recovered I was able to tolerate those things more but still struggle to this day.  If by eliminating gluten I can reduce my overall daily amounts of carbohydrates, then my energy levels will stay much more consistent.  When I'm not trying to get into ketosis I get plenty of sugar in the form of root vegetables and fruit.  Really, I don't need breads or pastas for any nutritional benefit.  For holistic health purposes, though, I walk once a week to Amandine Patisserie for my fix of endorphins, dopamine, and serotonin.  The chocolate almond croissant should never stop trending!