It's Drive-By Low-Carb Blogging Time Again!

Continuing with the theme I started yesterday of catching up on some much-needed blogging that I haven't had time to do lately, here are a few more items of interest for fans of livin' la vida low-carb!

READER SHARES HIS UNPLEASANT ENCOUNTER WITH MALTITOL

Ever since I first started warning people about the sugar alcohol maltitol found in so many sugar-free, low-carb products, there have been some wang dang doozy stories that are both hilarious and horrendous all at the same time. Remember "Farting" Fred and "Sharted" Sarah. Now we have "Maltitol Macaroon" Mike. ENJOY!

I have a maltitol story to share with you that I'll never forget. I was driving out of town one day and I happened by a health food store. So I stopped in to see what they had. There was a package of little macaroon cookies with all kinds of good numbers, low fat, low sugar, etc. What could be wrong with that? Especially since I LOVE macaroons.

So I bought a bag and headed off to my appointment, snacking on the little macaroons as I drove. Before you knew it, I had eaten the whole package. The next day, I found out the principal adverse effect of maltitol--tropical strength diarrhea. I figured I simply had a bad reaction because I ate too much, so later I tried two pieces of candy made with maltitol, and that also gave me diarrhea.

Take if from me, DON'T EVER EAT ANYTHING WITH MALTITOL IN IT.

GOOD ADVICE, Mike! That why I shared in this recent YouTube video that people should avoid it if they possibly can. It's just not worth the trouble (or pain), is it?

HOOD'S CALORIE COUNTDOWN LOW-CARB MILK BEING DISCONTINUED?

Low-carbers who want an excellent milk substitute have been pleased to use a product called Calorie Countdown from a company named Hood. The milk comes in chocolate (my personal FAVE!) and white and contains just 4g net carbs per serving. This product used to be called Carb Countdown and had the Atkins logo on it before they changed the name to appease the health-conscious consumer last year.

Well, it appears this lone low-carb milk may be on its way out, but I'm still trying to confirm that with Hood. However, one of my readers said she visited her local grocery store to pick up a carton and was told by the manager that Hood Calorie Countdown was being discontinued. If I hear back from Hood about this, then I'll let you know what they say. We may be back to using cream again for milk.

READER DROPS 74 POUNDS IN 2007 AFTER FINDING MY BLOG

You know, when I started this blog I had no idea the impact it was going to have on the lives of real people who were just like me nearly four years ago looking for a glimmer of hope in this weight loss journey. But they're out there watching, reading, learning, and changing their lives forever for the better! I never get tired of hearing stories of low-carb weight loss success like this:

Jimmy,

You've inspired me to lose over 70 pounds in 9 months! I woke up at 41 weighing 270+. I got the "wake-up" call while tying to keep up with my two grade school aged boys. I got on a bicycle and tried to keep up with my nine-year-old and six-year-old. They cleaned my clock! I was so winded I felt as though I'd just ran 10 miles.

I took a long look in the mirror and said to myself, "Man, you're one fat, out-of-shape piece of *^&%!". Well, I decided to do something about it. I did all the stuff the "experts" advise. I went on that dreadful low-fat, low-calorie diet and started to exercise. Well, I had some marginal success, but the hunger was unbearable.

One day I remembered how I used to get to weight during my high school wrestling days. The coach would tell us to avoid all the "White Stuff". He gave us permission to eat two pieces of fruit a day with all the meat, cheese, & garden veggies (excluding potatoes) we wanted, but bread, rice, corn, & sugar were "no nos."

I pulled out an old photo and saw just how lean I was (talkin' about a six-pack!). I contemplated going back on the diet, but was worried about the health risks. I was obviously brainwashed by what I was being told on TV and by my Doctor.

I then started doing a little research to find out how I could do the old diet without the problems. I then stumbled upon your "Livin' La Vida Low-Carb" blog. You had it all laid out! I read the stuff you posted and checked out the studies for myself.

I got Dr. Atkins' book and started my journey. Since January I've went from
about 272 pounds down to 198 pounds. I was wearing size 46" waist pants in January and now I'm wearing 34". I'm the thinnest I've been since I got out of the Army 19 years ago. My bodyfat level is now at 14% and I haven't felt this good in years!

Keep up the good work! I appreciate your efforts--way to go!

Man, I NEVER get tired of these kinds of stories. Feel free to share how this blog has motivated you in your low-carb journey by e-mailing me anytime at livinlowcarbman@charter.net.

NUTRITION ANSWERS WEB SITE GIVE CARB COUNTS, GLYCEMIC INDEX OF FOODS

There's a brand new tool that I'm thrilled to be able to share with you for people who are confused about how many carbohydrates are in various foods. Or perhaps you are following the low-glycemic index diet (GI) and want to know what the numbers are for the foods you are eating. Let me introduce you to Nutrition Answers which was created by an Australian Type 1 diabetic named Derek Miller. This program is still in beta, but I happen to think it is absolutely FANTASTIC! When you get to the web site, click on "Sample Questions" and you will see a list of invaluable links to give you the answers to the carb counts for your low-carb lifestyle. Use this tool early and often to stay on track with your healthy low-carb food choices.

ONCE YOU LOW-CARB FOR A WHILE, DO CARBS ACT CRAZY IN YOUR BODY?

I've heard all kinds of stories from people about what has happened to them since they started livin' la vida low-carb and most of the time it is good. There is an occasional strange symptom or two like what this person shared right after I started this blog. We're all different and not everything is tied to our low-carb diet. With that said, though, there may be a connection sometimes like in the case of this woman who wrote to me:

Hi, Jimmy –

I started the low-carb lifestyle this past summer, on July 4, and am happy to report that I’ve already lost 35 pounds and am down 3 or 4 dress sizes! And I feel absolutely great. In fact, I used to have heartburn fairly regularly on my old “normal American” diet, with the sugar and starches – and had to take a Zantac or Tums or two almost every night – but a week or so after starting low-carbing, the heartburn simply went away and never came back!

I never want to go off this way of eating. I was not pre-diabetic and there’s no history of diabetes in my family – but I had read Dr. Atkins’ books and Protein Power by the Drs. Eades and it all made good sense to me. And I’m so glad I tried it and have taken up the low-carb way of life!

But I have a question for you – on the very rare occasions when I have “slipped” in the past few months and eaten something high-carb (like a couple of mini-Milky Way bars…arrgh, pure sugar! Don’t ask me why I did it – I just did it once!) or some bread-y thing (once or twice, just to be “polite” when it was served) my body has had a bad reaction. Not long after eating the sugar and/or starch, I feel my heart start to pound, sometimes my head will start to ache, and I just overall feel quite bad.

My question is – is this the way I was feeling all the time before I started low-carbing, and I just never noticed it?? Or is my ability to handle carbs somehow weaker than it was? Or has my body just adjusted itself to the low-carb way of life, and now it’s just warning me not to go back? What exactly is that shaky, achy, lousy feeling I get when I, rarely, eat sugar or starch? Is that normal to have that happen?

At any rate, it is a truly effective deterrent. I don’t want to feel lousy again; therefore when I want something sweet, I stick to Splenda or maybe some sugar-free Jello or a few berries.

Thanks so much; love your blog!

It's always interesting to hear how people respond when they reintroduce carbs after they started livin' la vida low-carb. It's an great object lesson to remind us that we are making a LIFESTYLE CHANGE that is permanently altering the way we eat forever. That's something I attempted to convey in my response:

THANKS for writing and congrats on your success.

Think about sugar/carbs like you would crack cocaine. It is addictive and your body goes through withdrawals when you try to stop consuming it. When you get "clean" from the addiction and try to reintroduce it to your body, it is TOXIC and the body rejects it.

That's what happens with carbs after you have been livin' la vida low-carb for a while. Your body no longer relies on them and treats them as foreign entities when they are consumed. You've learned your lesson and won't be doing that again soon. :D

THANK YOU again for your e-mail!

Something tells me she'll be on strict low-carb for a while. As she should.

That's all the time I have for now, but I'm happy to be catching up on some much-needed blogging! More coming soon! In the meantime, Celebrate Gary Taubes Week!

9-26-07 UPDATE: After one of my readers was concerned the Hood Calorie Countdown low-carb milk was being discontinued, I contacted them to find out the scoop. According to a customer service representative, it's still available:

"We appreciate your interest in Calorie Countdown Dairy Beverages. In answer to your question, we have not discontinued these. If you are unable to locate a particular product, we suggest you speak with the store or dairy manager and ask if it can be ordered in."

So, if it's not on your grocer's shelf, ASK FOR IT!!! And be sure to let Hood know how much you appreciate their products that cater to your low-carb lifestyle by sharing your product experience.

Holy Cow, A Low-Fat Milk-Making Bovine?!

Russell Snell found a mutated cow that makes low-fat milk naturally

Beam me up, Scotty, because I think this world has gone absolutely institutionalized on me now after reading this MSNBC story about a cow that has been found to make (get this!) low-fat milk. Sounds totally sci-fi freaky, doesn't it? Sadly, it's dead serious and coming to a milk carton near you!

It was one thing to create genetically-altered potatoes to make them lower in carbohydrates a couple of years back. But what they're doing to cows just to artificially lower the fat content of their milk takes weird science to a whole new level!

We have the New Zealand-based biotechnology company ViaLactia to thank for stumbling across almost by accident a cow they named Marge in 2001 which has a gene mutation allowing it to produce milk with 1% milk naturally rather than the 3.5% milk that traditional cows make for whole milk. This new low-fat milk produced by this one-of-a-kind cow supposedly has more omega-3 fats and the butter created from it is spreadable even when it's cold.

Ooooooh! Am I supposed to be jumping up and down? NOT!

Russell Snell, chief scientist at Vialactia which happens to be a major subsidiary of milk-producing giant Fonterra, said they paid a mere $218 for Marge to conduct research on why the Fresian cow makes low-fat milk. It looks just like a regular cow and the milk has the same "positive taste" of normal milk except it contains "other desirable benefits."

Interestingly, Snell said they decided to breed Marge to see if her calves would also make low-fat milk--they all have the same "dominant" mutated gene that produces low-fat milk as the mother. But they just don't know exactly why this is happening.

"Every now and then nature throws up these sorts of things, and it was simply a case of us being in the right place at the right time," Snell noted.

The results of Snell's research will appear in an upcoming issue of the UK-based scientific journal Chemistry & Industry.

Vialactia hopes to have this all-natural low-fat milk and softened butter available for retail sale on grocery store shelves within the next four years. But is this REALLY something we should all be clamoring for? Is low-fat dairy, created naturally or by machine, something that should be part of a "healthy" lifestyle? I think not based on the scientific evidence.

Although it is extremely high in carbs, most people get all super-sensitive upset over the fat content in their milk being the least healthy part of that beverage. Yet we've seen this study on how low-fat dairy leads to infertility as well as this study on milk's role in kidney cancer.

That's why you should find low-carb milk alternatives like Calorie Countdown if you are livin' la vida low-carb. So what's next? Gene mutation of sugar to negate the carbohydrates? Don't laugh, I bet they're working on it!

Also, I can't but wonder what this new all-natural low-fat milk is gonna cost--if you think gasoline is expensive, just wait'll you see what they'll charge for this stuff! I think I'll skip past the mutated milk and butter thank you very much!

You can e-mail your comments to Russell Snell at r.snell@auckland.ac.nz.

Study: Low-Fat Dairy Can Lead To Infertility

You might want to reconsider that low-fat dairy if you want kids

We've all heard that we should eat an adequate amount of dairy in our diet, but that we should choose the low-fat or fat-free versions of milk, cheese, and yogurt to provide the most "healthy" food for our bodies. If I had a dime every time I've heard that in my life, then I'd be as wealthy as Bill Gates!

But if you are a woman in those precious few childbearing years, then that widely-accepted dietary advice is just about the most foolish thing you could ever follow if you want to have a baby, according to a new Harvard study discussed in this Medical News Today column.

Lead researcher Dr. Jorge Chavarro, research fellow in the Department of Nutrition at Harvard School of Public Health, and his team observed 18,555 married, premenopausal women ages 24-42 with no history of infertility attempting to get pregnant over an eight-year period (1991-1999). This group of study participants was a subset of the larger group of 116,000 women that were part of The Nurses' Health Study II.

Dr. Chavarro monitored very closely the dietary intake of dairy foods by the women in the study, including the types and frequency of consumption, over the eight years. The women were also asked to provide information about the regularity of their period, if there were any problems with ovulation, and how their attempts to conceive a child were going.

A total of 438 women in the study experienced difficulty trying to have a baby during the study and Dr. Chavarro noticed that most of these women ate more than two portions of low-fat dairy foods daily. In fact, he quantified that women who eat that amount or higher of low-fat dairy every single day are 85 percent more likely to experience infertility compared with those women who eat it less often than once a week.

Interestingly, the researchers found something even more remarkable considering the dietary recommendations that rule the day in our society--those women who ate full-fat dairy foods, including whole milk and even ice cream, on a daily basis saw their risk of being infertile caused by ovulation problems drop by 25 percent compared to those who only ate full-fat dairy once a week. You read that right--CONSUMING FULL-FAT DAIRY DROPS THE RISK OF INFERTILITY BY TWENTY-FIVE PERCENT!

What does the lack of dietary fat from the dairy products consumed by women have to do with their risk for infertility? Plenty! The researchers believe there is a fat-soluble substance in the full-fat dairy foods that works to improve the function of the ovaries. Thus, when that fat-soluble substance gets taken out during the conversion to 2% or skim milk, the health benefits dissipate as well.

Additionally, the processing of full-fat milk to skimmed milk requires the addition of whey protein to the milk to give it a more "natural" taste and color. However, whey protein has been found to produce testosterone-like effects in lab rats and may be the culprit wit the infertility in women consuming low-fat dairy. Oops!

The results of this stunning Harvard study appeared in the February 28, 2007 issue of the scientific journal Reproductive Health.

Well how ya like them apples, hmmm? All this talk about cutting your fat intake way down low in everything you eat is one big crock of you know what and this study is more proof of that fact! Just for kicks, I decided to pay a visit to the Holy Grail of all things related to a healthy diet--MyPyramid.gov--just to see what the good ole health "experts" advising our government about what's really healthy had to say about dairy intake.

As Frank Barone on Everybody Loves Raymond used to say, "Holy crap!" Under the "Milk Group" page you see that they highly recommend that the "milk group choices should be fat-free or low-fat." But if you click on the "Tips for making wise choices" link on the upper right-hand side of the page, the "Holy-crap-o-meter" goes off the charts!

Check this out (see if you can find the common theme):

- Include milk as a beverage...Choose fat-free or low-fat milk.
- If you usually drink whole milk, switch...to fat-free milk.
- Try reduced fat (2%), then low-fat (1%), and finally fat-free (skim).
- If you drink cappuccinos or lattes—ask for...fat-free (skim) milk.
- Add fat-free or low-fat milk...to oatmeal and hot cereals.
- Use fat-free or low-fat milk when making...cream soups.
- Have fat-free or low-fat yogurt as a snack.
- Make a dip for fruits or vegetables from yogurt.
- Make fruit-yogurt smoothies in the blender.
- Make chocolate...pudding with fat-free or low-fat milk.
- Top cut-up fruit with flavored yogurt for a quick dessert.
- Top casseroles...or vegetables with shredded low-fat cheese.
- Top a baked potato with fat-free or low-fat yogurt.

What's wrong with this picture? Why all the intense focus on "fat-free or low-fat" options? Clearly these heavily-publicized dietary recommendations are creating a lot of unhappy young couples who are trying to bring a little bundle of joy into the world that they can call their own. On what basis are they pushing these nasty foods that are actually working against women who want to conceive all in the name of "better health?"

I remember from my personal low-fat diet experience in 1999 how utterly disgusting all those low-fat foods really are. The worst ones to me had to be the fat-free cheese and skim milk. The cheese was so gross and didn't even seem like real food. Describing it as a cardboard box texture is being MUCH too kind. And then the white water that passed for skim milk was about as useless and I never got used to drinking that stuff. Getting 2% was about as close as I could get to skim!

However, one thing I continued to do even after I stopped my low-fat diet and started gaining my weight back was to keep drinking 2% milk instead of whole thinking it was somehow a "healthy" alternative. When I started livin' la vida low-carb, I didn't drink regular milk anymore and switched to Hood's Carb Countdown (now called Calorie Countdown) milk instead.

Yet, I kept on buying 2% milk for my wife Christine. We will celebrate 12 years of marriage in August and have been desperately trying to have a baby since we said "I do" to each other in 1995. Unfortunately, the good Lord has not chosen to bless us with a little munchkin just yet and we trust in His perfect timing. But after reading this study, I can't help but think what role the 2% milk Christine has been consuming over the course of our marriage may have had on our inability to conceive. I don't know if it has anything to do with it or not, but you have to wonder.

We're working out the issues that could be the culprit by getting checked out to see if it's me or her preventing the conception, but I know one thing we're gonna start doing--BUYING WHOLE MILK FOR CHRISTINE AGAIN! It may not be the reason for our inability to have a baby at all, but it's certainly worth a try to see if we can get her ovulation to be more consistent and regular to set up a higher probability for a future pregnancy. Cross your fingers and wish us luck!

There have been previous studies that hinted at the possibility of problems with infertility linked to dairy foods, but hardly any of them have been on humans like this one was. That's why Dr. Chavarro wanted to see what impact the fat content in the dairy foods consumed in a woman's diet can play regarding the prospect for motherhood.

Their conclusion: "High intake of low-fat dairy foods may increase the risk of anovulatory infertility whereas intake of high-fat dairy foods may decrease this risk."

Did you get that all you Dr. Dean Ornish-loving low-fatties? Eating lots of low-fat dairy INCREASES infertility while eating lots of high-fat dairy DECREASES infertility. How much clearer can it be that that?! I'd love to hear what Ornish and his low-fat minions have to say about this Harvard study. Let the spinmeisters begin like they did following the Stanford study published in JAMA last month!

If you are a woman trying to have a baby, Dr. Chavarro recommended what I am going to do with Christine's dairy intake.

"Consider changing low-fat dairy foods for high-fat dairy foods; for instance, by swapping skimmed milk for whole milk and eating ice cream, not low fat yogurt," he stated.

HA! Now THAT'S a switch seeing a RECOMMENDATION to eat the high-fat version of a food INSTEAD of the low-fat one. It really makes you wonder what other unintended consequences of this low-fat diet LIE we have been told for decades has had on the health and well-being of our society. How many tens or even hundreds of thousands of women have been left without an answer to their infertility problem while our government has kept on peddling the very reason they never got to be a mother? How sad.

When you stop and think about it, you can't help but wonder out loud about what would have been or even still COULD be if our government would simply end their nonsensical endorsement of the biggest dietary failure of our generation. That's why I have been on the frontlines of the debate to have our government actively promote low-carb alongside low-fat as another healthy dietary option for people to consider for weight and health management.

But, as is the case with most researchers who come out with something positive regarding low-carb, high-fat consumption, Dr. Chavarro got right back on the government talking points in what he recommends after a woman is "with child."

"Once they have become pregnant, then they should probably switch back to low-fat dairy foods as it is easier to limit intake of saturated fat by consuming low-fat dairy foods," he explained.

And what exactly is wrong with saturated fat, Dr. Chavarro? Noted researcher Dr. Jeff Volek has found that consuming saturated fat in combination with a low-carbohydrate diet has no ill effect on your health. In fact, the so-called studies showing how "harmful" saturated fat is like this one are so ill-conceived that they are ripped to shreds by objective researchers like Anthony Colpo.

This continuous onslaught against saturated fat by people who are supposedly intellectuals regarding diet and health is needlessly causing alarm among the general public. The fact is eating saturated fat is good for you and it's high time we stop demonizing it in the same breath as trans fats. Those are indeed bad news for your health, but saturated fat is not even close. The studies about saturated fat are mounting quickly and all you "experts" can apologize to me later for being so ignorant about it now.

At this point, Dr. Chavarro would like to further his research on low-fat dairy as it relates to infertility so he can "confirm or refute the findings" from this study. We'll be watching for those results with great interest, Dr. Chavarro!

You can e-mail Dr. Jorge Chavarro at jchavarr@hsph.harvard.edu.

Study: High-Carb Foods Lead To Kidney Cancer

Man shall not live by bread alone, but he could get cancer from it!

If people thought the popularity of the low-carb diet was bad for the bread, pasta, dairy, and rice industries, then they ain't seen nothing yet!

A brand new Italian study released on Friday provided the shocking revelation that a diet rich is bread consumption is directly linked to the most common type of kidney cancer there is called renal cell carcinoma (RCC). This research may be the most damning evidence yet against eating a high-carb diet for health ever again and is proof yet again why livin' la vida low-carb truly is a healthier way to eat for the rest of your life.

Lead researcher Dr. Francesca Bravi, from the Milan, Italy-based Institute of Pharmacological Research "Mario Negri," and her fellow researchers conducted a large controlled study of 2301 Italians adults to determine if diet and nutrition played any significant role in the development of RCC. Dr. Bravi said this is an extremely controversial subject among dietary researchers and she wanted to see if a link existed.

"To our knowledge, no other study investigated the role of cereals on RCC," Dr. Bravi remarked about the reason for her research.

One-third (767 study participants, including 494 men and 273 women) were already diagnosed with RCC when the study began and the other two-thirds (1534 study participants, including 988 men and 546 women) were used as the control subjects in the study because they had not previously been diagnosed with the disease. In fact, there were two control subjects matched up by gender, age, and location with each RCC-diagnosed case.

For everyone who participated in the study, Dr. Bravi and her team looked at their lifestyle, where they lived, who they interacted with, what kind of medical history each of them had, and other appropriate measurements at the beginning of the study.

The participants were also required to take a food frequency questionairre consisting of 78 questions about food and beverage intake was adminstered to determine what the average weekly diet was like for them over the previous two years to see if any of the foods they consumed played a role in the RCC. Alcohol consumption was also assessed in a separate set of questions.

What they found was a "significant direct trend in risk" of developing RCC when foods like bread, pasta, rice, milk, and yogurt were consumed. Here is what the study found regarding the probability of INCREASED risk of the onset of RCC for eating any of the following foods:

Bread -- 94 percent increased risk
Pasta -- 29 percent increased risk
Rice -- 29 percent increased risk
Milk -- 27 percent increased risk
Yogurt -- 27 percent increased risk

The researchers suggest that the greater risk of RCC from these high-carb foods "may be due to the high glycemic index of these foods and their possible involvement in insulin-like growth factors." This is much more serious than the excessive acne caused by high-carb diets which was recently studied.

At the same time, Dr. Bravi found that many of the following low-glycemic, low-carb foods were actually protective against RCC because they DECREASED the risk of developing it:

Poultry -- 26 percent decreased risk
Processed meats -- 36 percent decreased risk
Vegetables -- 35 percent decreased risk

Dr. Bravi said each of these foods were "inversely associated with RCC risk." In fact, she went on to say that there was "no relation" to RCC found in coffee, tea, soup, eggs, red meat, fish, cheese, fruits, potatoes, sugars and desserts.

"Decreasing risk was associated with increasing intake of poultry, processed meat, and all vegetables, both raw and cooked," Dr. Bravi noted in her study.

Vegetable consumption, which is a staple among most healthy dieters including those on low-carb diets, has long been found in studies to contain many vitamins, carotenoids, flavonoids and phytosterols--all of which are good for your body and help keep you healthy.

"The results of this study provide further indications on dietary correlates of RCC, and in particular indicate that a diet rich in refined cereals and poor in vegetables may have an unfavorable role on RCC," the researchers concluded.

The study entitled "Food Groups and Renal Cell Carcinoma: A Case-Control Study from Italy" was published in the October 20, 2006 issue of the International Journal of Cancer.

While the dieting world has been exposed to a lot of crazy diets over the years, this new study just confirms how truly ridiculous these cereal diets you see on television all the time as well as books such as "The Pocket Diet," "The Bread For Life Diet," "The Diet Code" really are when it comes to a healthy lifestyle.

And let's not forget about the government-recommended USDA Food Pyramid. Are they going to back away from these suggestions for grain intake in light of this new study? Don't count on it. It's another reason why YOU must take control of your own health and never allow the government to tell you what is good for you. This study is proof positive they are simply not looking out for the best interests of you and me.

As for me, I'll keep on livin' la vida low-carb proudly because I can be confident my weight will be controlled and my risk of developing renal cell carcinoma is MUCH lower than it would be on the typical high-carb Standard American Diet (SAD). It is SAD indeed.