Which diet advice is to be believed?

[TheDeadlyDonkey]

I've started reading John Briffa's Escape the Diet Trap. It makes for very interesting reading, but has made me question the usual run of the mill low fat type diet advice.
If Briffa is to be believed, low fat diets are unsustainable and can contribute to ongoing obesity issues and increasing the risk of diabetes.

I've also recently heard that if milk is to be drunk, full fat milk is better, as the majority of vitamins and minerals are in the fat.

I'm also hearing varying reports on cholesterol, and how it maybe isn't playing the dangerous role that many drs are telling us.

So, after DH's stroke (which wasn't in any way a lifestyle issue) he has been advised to be cautious and cut down on fat and use benecol spread and yoghurt drink (I have read that these aren't good for you, but can't remember where, could have been on here)

So when there is so much conflicting advice, who do you trust? What do you believe?

John Briffa's book is really convincing, quotes trials, uses scientific charts etc, and makes sense.
I myself have struggled with low fat diets, and failed more times than I care to admit.
I am in no way qualified to interpret scientific trial data (along with the majority of the population) and am growing more and more confused about the conflicting advice that is out there.

I'm not really sure what I'm expecting from this thread, but I'm interested to see what others think about this, and who you trust when it comes to diet advice?

There's a good book called "Wheat Belly" by William Davis M.D. if you're interested.

I'm the same I think Twas I was snacking on toast, cakes (shop bought not homemade) and had lost sight of what a normal portion size is.
Recently I've started weighing things and am surprised at how small a single portion of say porridge is. 40g looks so little and I would have normally had double that.

I also find that if I buy a packet of cakes then I'll eat them all which can't be good for you whereas one slice of homemade cake, so you know it has a maximum of four ingredients is not as bad.

What's the problem with wheat if you're not intolerant to it or have coeliac disease? I get that it's good to mix up the grains a bit and not have too much wheat and not eat processed foods etc but I don't get what the problem is with wheat in and of itself.

I also don't get the issue with ingredients! I made a delicious cake this weekend using wholewheat flour, oats, olive oil, dried figs, dried apricots, bananas, flax seeds, walnuts and a few other goodies, certainly more than four (no added sugar though!). Why is this bad? It's not the NUMBER of ingrediets but WHAT those ingredients are!!

Not keen on supermarket bread, it's full of rubbish - anti fungal treatments, preservatives, improvers etc. we don't eat bread very often but when we do its home made - flour, water, fat, salt and yeast - nothing else needed.

wheat is difficult to digest - can cause inflammation in the body -> body reacts with auto-immune disease, it also blocks the absorption of various minerals & vitamins.

I'm sure your cake was delicious to you, however, it sounds very high in difficult to digest (& therefore potentially inflammatory) wheat & high in sugars which can elevate ones blood sugar. Blood sugar will then 'crash' & you could be left feeling 'hungry' when if fact your not hungry, but craving. This sort of food fits the category of high carb, low fat.

Better off eating the dried apricots/dried figs with the nuts. Soaking the flaxseeds & having them as a soluble fibre provider. I'm assuming the 'other goodies' are eggs - have them scrambled for breakfast.

wheat also encourages the body to hold on to water, so when it's cut out of the diet, people do tend to drop the water weight very quickly.

Bread & cakes are also very easy to eat, as are chips.

Lifeisontheup yes, people do lose sight of an appropriate portion. I used to use myfitnesspal as it helps focus on portion size. How many people weight pasta & rice for example, before they cook ? It's all carbs, carbs, carbs. Bloat, bloat, blood sugar surge, quick get some sugar in, oh look I've put weight on...

I managed to put my mum on a diet/eating programme last year. She ate better quality, higher fat food in those 2 mths than on her oh-crap-I-need-to-lose-weight 'regimes'. She lost 1.5 stone & looked & felt better than she had for years.
Unfortunately, whilst everyone told her how great she looked, she has an eating & personality disorder & decided she could eat what she likes & lost interest.

itsonlysubterfuge The best thing to do is eat a varied diet low in saturated fats.....what are your sources for this ?

snowor I agree BUT you can get pure rye if you look carefully in the larger supermrkets, I make my own too but if you're just starting to cut it out its useful to know you can get good non wheat bread, not just the horrible GF stuff that's got all the additives in it, in supermarkets.

People have got rather fixated by my point about ingredients. I don't have some major diet principle that ingredients are bad. It was just a way of expressing - If man made it don't eat it; eat whole foods; eat foods as they grew kind of thing. The less mess around with and processed a food the more likely it will be good for you.

The sad thing with that philosophy Xenia is that man has messed around with so many things that grow in the fields; wheat has been messed around with to make it grow faster and shorter etc. that's without the genetic modification,spraying, factory farming, steroids and A.B.'s etc. that are put in our 'fresh ' foods .

There are two sorts of food

Fresh cooked meals made from identifiable ingredients
Industrial processed foods made from components

I try to avoid the latter.

I agree about supermarket bread. I bake my own (have a breadmaker) and it's far nicer - you control the fats, sugar, salt etc.

I'm sorry willowisp but what you're saying is simply not true for people who are not diabetic. The cake I made was, actually, quite low in sugar for cake plus it had fats, proteins, fibre etc from the other ingredients. Since I'm not diabetic or prediabetic, my body is quite capable of handling a small increase in blood sugar from one slice of (relatively low sugar) cake. As I mentioned before with regards to rice cakes sending you into a 'sugar coma', if your body is reacting in such a way to increases in blood sugar, you should really go to your GP and get tested for diabetes.

I haven't seen any scientific evidence that there is anything particularly bad about wheat unless you're intolerant or a coeliac.

The big deal about wheat and gluten is all faddy if you ask me other than for the few people for whom it really is an issue.

And what's wrong with genetic modification? I don't see anything wrong with it at all in a healthy eating diet. In fact, it's probably quite good because you can genetically modify foods to need less pesticides, fertilizers etc. Don't forget we have to feed 7 billion people and growing. GM is the way forward IMO.

60% of British people are overweight and I think it's 25% who are obese and it is even worse the older they get so something is wrong with the foods people eat.

It's a global problem. The greatest obesity problem is in middle income countries like Egypt, South Africa, Turkey, Mexico. Obesity is increasing far more rapidly than it did in the West and they're not equipped to deal with it (eg the increase in hypertension, diabetes, cancer) plus the negative impacts of obesity are far worse in people who had nutritional deficiencies in-utero and during early childhood, which is often the case in these countries. Parents often overfeed their kids as well to compensate for what they didn't have :(

Kungfutea I think you might like to research the impact on the environment & the unknown impact on humans & animals before stating GM is a good thing.

Yes, I have had a test for diabetes thank you. It's ok, but high glycemic tips my blood sugarunfavorably.

Perhaps you should calculate the amount of sugar in your cake before you advise me how little sugar it has - you'll find its mainly sugar.

It might also be worth you spending (quite a considerable) time really reading a lot of information about food & nutrition.

I don't have the time/energy or inclination to waste my time with anyone who is aggressively clueless.

Wheat causes my stomach to bloat, gives me cramps and acid indigestion, I've had painful acid indigestion for nearly 30 years and when I gave up wheat it disappeared. Sugar/refined carbs eaten after lunch gives me insomnia, I have spent years lying awake at night not sleeping for hours on end. i went on a low carb diet giving up sugar and wheat and two fairly annoying but clearly not life threatening health issues were resolved.
It doesn't matter what other people call it - being faddy or whatever - I am not allergic to wheat, I've had the test - which I know can give a false negative, I don't feel I need a label or a proper medical diagnosis - staying off wheat and sugar allows me to feel better, healthier, at last I get a good night's sleep every night and my stomach no longer feels bloated and raw. Now if I could only find the source of my skin problems.

I do the 5:2. I am the slimmest I have been for about a decade. To those who asked about feeling faint: you really get used to it very quickly. I have just been for a 3.5 mile run. I did actually walk the last little bit because I had only had a few calories all day--my fault, I mis-timed and misjudged it. But apart from longish runs, I can do everything on fast days. You just adapt.

I no longer bother with trying to avoid saturated fats such as cheese and butter. The evidence about a connection with heart disease seems patchy. I just smile politely when healthcare professionals urge me to cut back. I imagine sugar is the big enemy.

I think Kungfutea has a point about GM, too. I would rather eat non-sprayed GM crops, for instance, than sprayed non-GM. The sprays used on some of the fertilisers used on crops around here worry me a lot, especially as I have had two pregnancies while going for long walks in the fields: you can't always know when they're spraying and suddenly I'd find myself very close to the chemicals.

I don't think I'm the one who is aggressive and insulting, willowisp . You should read your posts! I think, by your own account, the attack on the nutritonist who dared to have something with an artificial sweetener is quite telling (and also what that nutritionist suggested to you).

As it happens, I have researched food and nutrition quite a lot. It interests me (although I certainly wouldn't assume I know more than someone who has studied it for 5 years at uni). Sometimes people can be well read yet come to different conclusions, especially with something like nutrition where it's very hard to pinpoint any one diet as THE diet. The scientific evidence isn't strong for any one diet really as it's hard to tease things out among all the other confounding factors.

I think the consensus is reduce sugar and processed carbs, focus on good fats (certainly what you're proposing on saturated fats is controversial), eat plenty of fruit and veg, beans and nuts is the way to go.

All the rest is conjecture. If it works for you, fine, but no need to attack people who don't agree as it's not the gospel truth.

Abra1d I think you raise a interesting point about which is less harmful - spraying non Gm crops versus non spraying Gm crops - it's a tough call. Pesticides aren't great for the environment either. I must admit I don't know enough about either side to form an opinion.

Ideally I'd eat organic vegetables, but they are expensive. If GM means less harm to wildlife, because we're not spraying as much, it gets at least a partial thumbs-up from me.

I think the thing is that the issues with GM are maybes (I think we should be concerned and there should be safeguards in place but it's an exciting way forward) but the issues with pesticides/fertilizer etc are definites, we know they're not good for human health and for the environment.

GM can also increase yields in some of the poorest countries in the world where food security is a big issue eg by making crops more drought resistant - I know that's a different issue but I think equally important for GM.

Fascinating thread.

Can anyone direct me towards a book which will help improve my understanding of food and physiology. I'm not interested in reading a diet book, but would like to read something that explains in a little more detail than GCSE biology what happens to different food groups when they enter the human body. Watched the Robert Lustig lecture last night on YouTube about sugar. Fascinating, but some of the info on what happens in the liver when we eat fructose/sucrose vs glucose went over my head rather.

You can take free online courses at coursera

www.coursera.org/

I did one on the basics of nutrition. It was very interesting.