Health Quiz

Have you heard of the RealAge quiz?  It's on-line and it asks you to answer questions about your health history and life-style.  After you're done, it projects your "real age" based on those answers.  It's fun but RealAge sells your answers and e-mail address to drug companies.  Those companies than use the information to target advertisements to people who have certain diseases, sometimes before they have been diagnosed by a doctor.  

A better quiz is Your Disease Risk.  For this site, you click on a disease and it asks you targeted questions to assess your risk.  Once done, it tells you your risk and says what you're doing well and how you can improve.  It even makes suggestions on the type of food to eat!

A Diet Rant

Lately I have been thinking a lot about the way we talk about weight to one another. A good friend of mind has recently gained a few pounds and she is constantly talking about how fat she is and how she just wishes she was thin again. I am so sick of this kind of talk! We need to change the way we talk about our bodies RIGHT NOW. It is absurd to act like gaining a few pounds makes you automatically fat! First of all, we need to start thinking of our bodies as healthy versus unhealthy. Another good friend of mine told me the other day that her BMI was 24.5, almost overweight according to the rules of BMI. But she is one of the healthiest people I know, very fit and athletic and she eats great. So the words we are using to describe our bodies are obviously not the right ones. Second of all, diets are not a lifestyle. In order for our bodies to be healthy, we need to not focus so much on dieting and getting the numbers on the scale to change, but to fueling our bodies with the nutritious things they need in order to be active and feel that we have enough energy to be focused, happy people.
So my idea is this: next time someone is talking about their weight in terms of fat and skinny, or if you are thinking of it yourself, change the words you are using. Think to yourself, is my body image healthy or unhealthy? Is this food I am about to eat fueling me or dragging me down?
It is time to change the conversation about our bodies.

To diet, or not to diet...

This past summer I stumbled upon Michael Pollan's book The Omnivore's Dilemma. In the book, Pollan breaks down three different ways that we, as a nation, tend to obtain our food. There is the industrial route, or as he argues, the corn route. While we have all heard the facts that high fructose corn syrup is in almost everything we eat (see my earlier post) he also explains that it is also in less known places, like beef. Many of the current industrial farming practices use corn to feed the animals, even though corn is not the animals diet of choice. This leads to many of the problems we see today, such as tainted food, among others. Another route he details is the so-called organic route. Upon further investigation, he finds that many of the organic foods we buy/eat, while adhering to the "organic" standards, are grown use similiar methods as industrial farmers. Finally, he attempts the foraging route, meaning he both hunts for his meat and grows his vegetables.

All in all, The Omnivore's Dilemma is probably one of the most thought provoking books I have recently read. Pollan concludes that each of these "food webs" has its downsides, whether it be impracticality (foraging) or unsustainable (industrial farming). In the end Pollan argues for transparency in the food processing industry and that we re-examine our notions about food. He believes that if we all knew what we are putting into our bodies, our diets would inevitably change. In the beginning of the book, Pollan makes a reference to any of the other purchases we make on a day-to-day basis. For example, when buying a car many agonize over the sticker price, safety features and even gas mileage. Unfortunately, this same scrutiny does not hold for food- many of us simply eat what is around without any thought given to how it was grown/produced and what it will do when it gets inside.

In terms of a "diet", Pollan coins what he calls the American paradox: "Americans are a people so obsessed with nutrition yet whose dietary health is so poor." Instead of recommending a diet, he takes a more holistic view of eating and believes eating should be a communal experience centered on the cooking and sharing of a meal- something our fast paced society has definitely moved away from. In conclusion, The Omnivore's Dilemma is a book I think everyone should read, whether you feel confident in your dietary decisions or have no idea where to go, or like me, fall somewhere in between. If you want to check out more of Michael Pollan, here is a link to his recent interview in the NY Times:

http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/01/17/an-omnivore-defends-real-food/

Atkins Revisited

In honor of Diet Week here on Keen, I thought it would be a nice idea to pay tribute to one of the most well known diet trends in America, the Atkins Diet. I'm pretty sure that at some point or another, almost every person who reads this blog has heard of the Atkins Diet. I remember about 5 years ago, Atkins was a common dinner table term that everyone thought of as being the ultimate low-carb, quick weight-loss fad. There were success stories left and right of people who had abandoned their beloved breads and pastas in exchange for high fat, high protein only meals like steak and bacon. The results were intriguing, and it turned out people were actually losing weight. What was the secret behind the mystery?

Here is the quick breakdown of how Atkins works: By drastically reducing the amount of carbohydrates consumed, the body is forced into a ketogenic state where fat stores become broken down for energy. Essentially, you are tricking your body into starvation mode, which results in the break down of stored fats.

There's a TON of information out there for those who are interested in pursuing this diet. Here are a few links for those out there who are interested:
Atkins Diet
Ketogenesis
WebMD

There are also a slew of videos on YouTube. Here are some interesting ones that I saw:




There's the Atkins Diet in a nutshell. We at Keen do not endorse nor reject any one diet plan. My advice to anyone out there looking to change their calorie intake, is to read up and do your research first, and then decided on a diet plan that works for you. Atkins has helped a lot of people lose weight, but it doesn't mean anything if you can't make it last in your long term goals. Good luck everyone!

Next Week is Diet Week

I am addicted to celebrity gossip.  I love reading about their troubles and seeing the fashion.  This week, my fascination with all things celebrity turns to photoshop.  Most celebrities keep a personal photoshop technician on their staff and make sure that any photos that are released are first 'touched up' by their photoshop technician.  Below, you can see an example of Faith Hill on the cover of the July 2007 Redbook.

In the before picture, Faith is a beautiful, thin, (then) 39 year-old woman.  In the photoshopped cover picture, she is much thinner and younger looking.  Look at the headlines, Redbook wants to tell us about "The New Skinny Pills".  Have you ever heard of a pill that was healthy and provided long-term weight-lost?  I haven't.  How are we, who don't have personal trainers and photoshop technicians, supposed to achieve what the media tells us is beauty?

We can't.  All that we can hope for is maintaining a healthy weight for our height by eating healthy foods.  Now comes the tricky part; what are healthy foods and what diet do we follow?  The New England Journal of Medicine published a study yesterday (here) which focused on comparing three major diets, Atkins (low carbs), Dean Ornish (low-fat) and Mediterranean (low animal protein).  The diets were randomly assigned to the study participants and all reduced calorie consumption but none of the diets had less than 1,200 calories per day.  After two years, all of the participants lost and regained the same of weight regardless of the diet they were on (13 pounds after six months and 9 pounds after two years).  The lesson is that the best way to lose weight and to keep it off is to reduce your calorie consumption by following a diet that you enjoy.

Next week, we hope to shed some light on all this diet stuff for all of you.  

Vitamins 2.0

As a continuation of my last post on vitamins, I decided to focus on the health affects of Vitamin D. For those of you out there who don't know, Vitamin D is an important vitamin found in a variety of foods including milk and certain fish species such as salmon, tuna, and herring. The cool thing about vitamin D is that we can also make it in our own bodies- all we need is to be exposed to sunlight. In our bodies, vitamin D is responsible for helping the body absorb its required calcium, regulates certain hormones and also plays a role in the immune response. Deficiency can lead to rickets, a condition in which the bones become soft and brittle.

In a article I read recently (which may or may not have been from the Science Times), researchers have demonstrated on various occasions that consuming adequate amounts of Vitamin D is linked to good health outcomes. Researchers also noted that many Americans feel that they are consuming enough Vitamin D, but few actually do. These studies have shown that consuming high levels of Vitamin D is associated with fewer colds, decreased incidence of cancer, decreased bone fractures, to name a few. Also, researchers noted that individuals with Type I diabetes and Multiple Sclerosis tended to have lower levels of Vitamin D. From this data, it truly seems like Vitamin D is the superman of vitamins.

While I admit that these results are pretty convincing, it is important to realize that everything can be bad if taken in large enough quantity. Vitamin D is a fat soluble vitamin, meaning that the body has a harder time removing it than other vitamins. Furthermore, consuming too much Vitamin D will cause the intestines to absorb too much calcium, which leads to deposits in places like the heart and lungs. The moral of this story, like my post last week, is to strive to maintain a well-rounded diet. Fish like salmon have many health benefits outside of their ability to contribute vitamin D. Consuming low-fat milk or even skim milk, an important source of vitamin d and it provides lean protein. Finally, if anyone wanted to further research this stuff, the NY Times has their own Vitamin D page. Here's the link:

http://health.nytimes.com/health/guides/nutrition/vitamin-d/overview.html?WT.z_gsac=1