Wisdom Wednesday: Eight Most Popular Diets – A Summary

Wow, that was a long series. I hope it gave you some options for improving your diet and maybe some understanding of why others choose to eat the way they do.
Although I learned a lot myself, I’m ready to move on to a new topic. But before I do, let me share some common threads to all these diets.

• Plant-based – Obviously, the Vegan and vegetarian diets are solely plant-based, but plants as a majority of the food intake was a common even in the Atkins Diet, after the induction phase.
• Limited Grains – The Paleo Diet excludes them completely, and some diets limit them to whole grains. Processed wheat, rice, and corn are the downfall of diets worldwide. It’s how we feed the masses, but they are nothing more than empty calories. They will sustain life, but not health.
• Whole food – Avoiding processed foods whenever possible was also a common thread. Eat a piece of fish rather than drinking a protein shake. They both contain about 15 grams of protein, but the real thing is much better than the processed food.
• Raw versus Cooked – Obviously, the Raw Food Diet is at the extreme, but all the diets promote eating a large percentage of your fruits and vegetables raw. If you have a thyroid issue, then avoid eating the cruciferous vegetables (broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, etc.) raw as they are goitrogens. Otherwise, I recommend about 50% of your diet be composed of raw fruits and vegetables.
• Adequate protein intake – All the diets focused on eating protein frequently. This can be a problem with the vegetarian diet. However, Americans often eat too much protein. (They generally just eat too much of everything) About 45 grams of protein per day is adequate. Make sure you have some protein at every meal, especially breakfast. A protein snack is a good idea as well.
• Healthy fats – This is a real change in thinking for many. Fat has been demonized for the past generation and many healthy fats have disappeared from our diet. Some fats, like the omega 3 and omega 6 fatty acids are essential. We cannot manufacture them from other foods, they must be in the diet to sustain life. But many fats are healthy, in fact, it’s the “reduced fat” products that contain most of the trans-fats that are so unhealthy. The data never supported a low-fat diet as a preventative for heart disease. It was just manipulated to support the need to lower serum cholesterol by selling statin drugs. I know this is hard for many of you, but add those healthy fats back into your diet. Fat is extremely satiating. I honestly believe that the loss of healthy fats from the American diet is a major factor in our epidemic with obesity.

The Bottom Line:
So pick one of these diet formats that fits your lifestyle. Or maybe combine some aspects from a couple of them. I think the Mediterranean Diet is the easiest for Americans to follow, but I like aspects of all of them. The key is to find the format that works for you, something you can adopt as a lifestyle rather than constantly “trying to diet”. Next week I’ll review when to take your supplements.

The South Beach Diet

The Raw Food Diet

The Mediterranean Diet

Weight Watchers

The Vegan Diet

The Vegetarian Diet

The Zone Diet

The Atkins Diet

The Eight Most Popular Diets - Introduction

Wisdom Wednesday: The Raw Food Diet

The thrust of the raw food diet is the consumption of unprocessed, whole plant-based, ideally organic foods. A minimum of three-quarters of the person’s diet should consist of uncooked food. A significant proportion of raw foodists are also vegans. Some raw foodists consume raw meat and raw animal products.

There are four broad branches of raw foodism:

• Raw vegetarians – only animal products consumed are eggs and dairy.
• Raw vegans – no animal products consumed at all.
• Raw omnivores – both plant-based and animal based foods are mainly consumed raw.
• Raw carnivores – meat products are eaten only raw.

Common Raw Foods:

• Beans
• Dried fruits
• Fresh fruits and vegetables
• Freshly made fruit and vegetable juices
• Grains
• Legumes
• Milk from a young coconut
• Nuts
• Other organic or natural foods which have not been processed
• Purified water (not tap)
• Seaweeds
• Seeds
• Sun-dried fruits

Depending on the lifestyle, the following may also be included:

• Eggs
• Fish (sushi, sashimi
• Meat
• Milk and dairy products (non-pasteurized/non-homogenized

Wisdom Wednesday: The Eight Most Popular Diets Today

As of October 15, 2015, Medical News Today listed the following diets based on three criteria: how many articles there are around about these diets/lifestyles, how popular they seem to be generally, and how often they receive feedback on them.

• The Atkins Diet
• The Zone Diet
• The Vegetarian Diet
• The Vegan Diet
• Weight Watchers
• The Mediterranean Diet
• The Raw Food Diet
• The South Beach Diet

The diet that is obviously missing from this list is the Paleo Diet. Based on feedback I receive from my patients; Paleo is by far the most popular at this time. So in keeping with the title, I will combine the Vegetarian and Vegan diets and add Paleo to the list.

Atkins Diet or Atkins Nutritional Approach, focuses on controlling the levels of insulin in our bodies through diet. If we consume large amounts of refined carbohydrates our insulin levels rise rapidly, and then fall rapidly. Rising insulin levels will trigger our bodies to store as much of the energy we eat as possible – it will also make it less likely that our bodies use stored fat as a source of energy. Most people on the Atkins Diet will consume a higher proportion of proteins than they normally do.

The Zone diet aims for a nutritional balance of 40% carbohydrates, 30% fats, and 30% protein each time we eat. The focus is also on controlling insulin levels, which result in more successful weight loss and body weight control. The Zone diet encourages the consumption of good quality carbohydrates – unrefined carbohydrates, and fats, such as olive oil, avocado, and nuts.

Growing Up on Raw Foods

What are the benefits of feeding your children raw foods?
June 2, 2014 (The New York Times)

Meals for Levi Bowland are pretty much the same every day. For breakfast, it’s melon. For lunch, a heaping bowl of coleslaw and three bananas. Dinner involves more fruit, and a salad. (Photo by elachica)

Levi is 10 years old. Since birth, he has eaten almost exclusively raw and vegan, meaning no animal products or food heated over 118 degrees.

The Bowlands are among a growing cadre of families who are raising their children on entirely uncooked fare: fresh fruits, vegetables, seeds, nuts and sprouted grains. While most of these diets tend to be vegan, some do include raw meat or fish, as well as raw or unpasteurized milk, yogurt and cheese.

But many doctors are cautioning against the trend. A child’s digestive system may not be able “to pull the nutrients out of raw foods as effectively as an adult’s,” said Dr. Benjamin Kligler, a family practitioner with the Center for Health and Healing in Manhattan.

Over the last year, Dr. TJ Gold, a pediatrician in Park Slope, Brooklyn, with a strong focus on nutrition, has seen about five families who are feeding their children, including toddlers, raw diets. Some of the children were severely anemic, she said, and the parents were supplementing the diets with vitamin B12. “If you have to supplement something for children in order to do it, is that really the right diet for them? Dr. Gold said.

Dr. Anupama Chawla, director of pediatric gastroenterology and nutrition at Stony Brook Children’s Hospital, points out that although fruits and vegetables are very good sources of vitamins and fiber, “they do lack protein.” Legumes, lentils, chickpeas and red beans, which have protein, she said, “can’t be eaten uncooked.”

Others fear that the rigidity involved in such strict diets may border on pathology. In many instances, a raw diet could be “an extension of the parents’ eating obsessions, and maybe even a clinical eating disorder that they have sort of packaged in this raw diet mentality.” Said Dr. Margo Maine, a specialist in eating disorders in West Hartford, Conn., and author of the “The Body Myth.”

Raw enthusiasts insist they are raising vibrant, energetic children who have never had a sick day in their lives.

Julie Rodrigues, 31, mother of two, credit a raw diet with clearing up her eczema and acne, and helping her and her husband, shed a combined 150 pounds. Like others who eat on raw, or “live,” food, Ms. Rodrigues believes that cooking destroys immune-boosting minerals, enzymes and vitamins.

Andrea Giancoli, a spokeswoman for the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, agreed that cooking may diminish some nutrients. “Enzymes are proteins, and proteins unravel when they are cooked, to a degree.” But, she said, enzymes are also naturally rendered inactive by the acidity in our stomachs. And several studies have shown that levels of some nutrients, like lycopene, are enhanced by cooking.

MY TAKE:
How far to you have to go back in history to find a time when humans did not cook their food? The answer – every archaeological record of early man shows evidence of cooking our food. Fire appears to be one of our earliest tools and the home cooked meal quickly followed.

Raw food has its’ place and most of us don’t eat enough of it. However, it is unhealthy to eat 100% raw. Cooking is a form of pre-digestion. We can not adequately digest complex proteins with the aid of cooking to break some of the chemical bonds and allow the proteins to unravel. This allows HCl and pepsin to further break the bonds holding the amino acids together.

Just think about the toughness of a raw piece of meat, fish, or even beans prior to cooking. Then compare that with how tender, easy to cut and chew these proteins become once cooked.

Yes, cooking does destroy some nutrients, especially vitamins and enzymes, but it makes others much more available. The key is a mix of both raw and cooked foods. That assures the broadest spectrum of nutrients in the diet.

The comment by Dr. Gold about the need to supplement indicating the diet is inadequate is, in my opinion, naive. It is virtually impossible today to meet all the nutritional requirements of the body with the food that is available. Virtually all of us need to supplement omega 3 fatty acids and calcium. Those anemic children needed vitamin B12 supplementation because their diets lacked any real source. However, the lack of complete protein also means they are not secreting enough HCl to absorb the B12 in their food. They need a bio-available form.

THE BOTTOM LINE:
Work toward a diet that is 50% raw fruits and vegetables. Eat a big salad for lunch and dinner, and have two fresh fruit servings as snacks everyday. Add a cooked vegetable at dinner and some cooked protein at all three meals to balance the diet. A vegan diet can work but it is really hard to get enough protein and you will have to supplement vitamin B12. I think it is just a lot easier to add some lean meats. Supplement omega 3 fatty acids and calcium as a minimum.