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Globesity

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From The World Health Organization (WHO) on controlling the global obesity epidemic:

The Challenge

At the other end of the malnutrition scale, obesity is one of today’s most blatantly visible – yet most neglected – public health problems. Paradoxically coexisting with undernutrition, an escalating global epidemic of overweight and obesity – “globesity” – is taking over many parts of the world. If immediate action is not taken, millions will suffer from an array of serious health disorders.

Obesity is a complex condition, one with serious social and psychological dimensions, that affects virtually all age and socioeconomic groups and threatens to overwhelm both developed and developing countries. In 1995, there were an estimated 200 million obese adults worldwide and another 18 million under-five children classified as overweight. As of 2000, the number of obese adults has increased to over 300 million. Contrary to conventional wisdom, the obesity epidemic is not restricted to industrialized societies; in developing countries, it is estimated that over 115 million people suffer from obesity-related problems.

Generally, although men may have higher rates of overweight, women have higher rates of obesity. For both, obesity poses a major risk for serious diet-related noncommunicable diseases, including diabetes mellitus, cardiovascular disease, hypertension and stroke, and certain forms of cancer. Its health consequences range from increased risk of premature death to serious chronic conditions that reduce the overall quality of life.

The response:  making healthy choices easy choices

WHO began sounding the alarm in the 1990s, spearheading a series of expert and technical consultations. Public awareness campaigns were also initiated to sensitize policy-makers, private sector partners, medical professionals and the public at large. Aware that obesity is predominantly a “social and environmental disease,” WHO is helping to develop strategies that will make healthy choices easier to make. In collaboration with the University of Sydney (Australia), WHO is calculating the worldwide economic impact of overweight and obesity. It is also working with the University of Auckland (New Zealand) to analyse the impact that globalization and rapid socioeconomic transition have on nutrition and to identify the main political, socioeco-nomic, cultural and physical factors which promote obesogenic environments.”

:: Report of the Joint WHO/FAO Expert Consultation on Diet, Nutrition and the Prevention of Chronic Diseases (Geneva, 28 January – 1 February 2002) – WHO Technical Report Series No. 916

Scientific background papers: The background papers prepared for the joint WHO/FAO Expert Consultation on diet, nutrition and the prevention of chronic diseases (Geneva, 28 January – 1 February 2002) have been published in Public Health Nutrition, volume 7, number 1(A), February 2004

For more of the facts about the globesity epidemic, check out these obesity statistics.

 

Healthy Eating: Making Essential Changes

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Step One:  Positive Additions First

When making any lifestyle change, whether getting started on a new dietary regimen or a new exercise program, it’s always better to start by adding good or positive things first, and discontinuing or removing bad habits later.  By taking the “add positive first” approach, there isn’t the psychological aspect of self-deprivation slowing you down.  For example, if your goal is to get in shape, then going to the gym (okay, you have to join the gym first) on your way home from work or going for a walk after dinner is better than beating yourself up by saying, “I’ve got to stop sitting on the couch watching TV so much.”  If you start going to the gym, by default you will sit around watching TV less when you fill that time instead with positive actions and activities.

STEP ONE: Adding Good Habits

When it comes to making dietary changes, adding positive is just as important, and for the same reasons.  Rather than beginning a new nutritional regimen by trying to stop eating all the bad foods you enjoy, and feeling deprived of your favorite mid-morning soda or candy snack (that you may be literally addicted to), it’s better to start by adding a good breakfast, eating large salads at lunch and dinner, and bringing fresh fruit and raw nuts as snacks; you will find that your cravings for the bad junk foods (think of them as “disease foods” or “die fast foods”) decreasing.  One main concept that should be well understood is that of whole foods.

So here are some basic steps to start getting more fruits, vegetables and nuts into your diet.  Remember, you want to begin any change to your health regimen by adding something positive first; then later, start removing the negative lifestyle habits you may have adopted.

  • Eat a large salad with lunch and dinner.  This doesn’t mean iceberg lettuce drenched in Ranch dressing.  This means a salad made with green leaf, red leaf, and romaine lettuce, and vegetables such as carrots, celery, cucumber, tomato (I know, tomato is technically a fruit), avocado, radishes, green beans, legume beans (navy, garbanzo, kidney, etc.), miscellaneous greens (kale, chard, mustard, dandelion, etc.), cabbages (napa, savoy, Bok choy – Chinese cabbage), etc.  Make salad the main dish for your meals; the protein, if there is one, should be smaller or secondary.  Minimize how many starches you eat (i.e. pasta, breads, etc.).
  • Have steamed vegetables every night with dinner.  This is one of the easiest things to add, even while eating out – almost all restaurants will accommodate your request to add or substitute steamed vegetables to your meal instead of rice, fries, or some other starch that typically comes with a dinner.
  • Snack on raw veggies (i.e. carrots, celery, jicama), raw nuts, and fruit, etc. Take the time to cut up some vegetables, put them in Ziplock™ baggies.  In another baggie or Tupperware™ container put some raw almonds, walnuts, cashews, hazelnuts (filberts).  Along with an apple, banana, tangerine, etc., you now have some take-along snacks for work or the car (especially if you’re transporting little people).  Taking these preparatory steps will enable you to avoid succumbing to eating junk food, fast food, etc.
  • Start eating nutritious breakfasts.  If you’re not eating breakfast, shame on you – it’s the most important meal of the day (I know your mom told you that!).  If you are eating breakfast, what are you eating?  Cereal?  Bagels?  Coffee (please, not with some poisonous, chemical-laced “non-dairy” creamer!)?  Soda pop (yes, people actually drink soda pop for breakfast; and we wonder why 55% of U.S. adults are overweight or obese and 1 in 4 Americans will develop diabetes)?  Start eating fruit, whole grains (i.e. oatmeal with raw nuts; to sweeten, add cinnamon, raw Agave nectar and fresh berries or sliced bananas), and raw nuts for breakfast; or poached eggs on sprouted grain toast (no wheat flour); or make a batch of egg-salad (with grated carrots or zucchini, or chopped left over vegetables from the night before) and eat it straight out of the bowl or have it with avocado.

STEP TWO: Stopping the Bad Habits

As with nearly every aspect of our lives (diet style, marriage, finances, exercise, etc.), success comes not only from doing positive, successful, proven vital behaviors, but also from stopping known negative, destructive behaviors.  When it comes to the food you put in your body, this input and its corresponding impact on our health cannot be overemphasized – it’s critical!

So, one of our first concepts is “out of sight, out of mind.”  This means potato chips, soda pop, candy, breads, or whatever it is that you will eat if it’s in the house, and therefore shouldn’t be in the house…get rid of it – NOW!  Just go through your cupboards and refrigerators, and toss all disease foods.  These include the following (or if it has any of the following as an ingredient):

  • Artificial sweeteners:  Aspartame (i.e. Nutrasweet and Equal) and Sucrolose (i.e. Splenda)
  • Hydrogenated oils (also known as trans-fats) and partially hydrogenated oils
  • Potato chips, tortilla chips, pork rinds (do people really eat fried pork rinds?)
  • Fried foods (this includes chips)
  • Milk and milk products (unless it’s raw milk; also, organic butter and heavy cream don’t have the milk proteins in them and are therefore relatively healthy)
  • Roasted, salted nuts – switch to eating raw nuts – they’re incredibly nutritious and energy providing (and non-gas producing; your spouse will be happy!)
  • Soda pop (this includes ALL soda pop, diet or regular)
  • Fake “juices” (you know, the kind that say “10% real juice” – do you wonder what’s the other 90%?)
  • Wheat flour foods (breads, pasta, cakes, cookies, crackers, etc.) – this is a stumbling block for many people, but it will prevent you from developing diabetes and being overweight
  • Cured meats (bacon, sausages, and lunch meats; anything with nitrates, nitrites)
  • MSG (monosodium glutamate; now disguised as hydrolyzed yeast extract, etc.)
  • High fructose corn syrup (in many foods:  ketchup, soda pop , sport/energy drinks)
  • Low fat, non-fat or “lite” foods
  • Non-dairy “creamers”
  • Candy
  • Chewing gum (especially sugarless – artificial sweeteners are toxic and cancerous)

People love to hear good things about their bad habits – never is this truer than when it comes to the “crap” people put in their bodies.  You’ll hear opinions, even by respected, well intentioned doctors, such as “everything in moderation.”  Well, if that’s true, then, is it okay to have a “little” crack cocaine?  Or is it okay to cheat on your spouse “a little?”  Is it okay to dump a little toxic waste into our rivers and oceans?  The truth is, that much of the toxic poisoning that we are self-dosing ourselves with through our food supply is being done over years in small doses.  The fact that it’s a slow poisoning and in small doses (in living systems, called bioaccumulation), doesn’t negate the fact that it’s still poison and that it will ultimately have adverse effects on our health.  Just look at the cancer rates – they keep increasing (despite the false celebration of the development of earlier diagnostic detection technology yielding improved survival statistics).  This same principle applies to the over-consumption of cereals and processed grains in our culture, which is causing a horrendous obesity epidemic and its attendant pervasive heart disease and diabetes, which our society as a whole is in complete denial of its causes; however, that denial doesn’t make it any less true or serious.

It’s time for all of us to be convicted on these facts.  Let’s move forward (now that we know the truth, it’s our moral duty to move forward), and let’s move back – to our genetic roots of eating whole, fresh, nutritious foods.  It will impact every aspect of our lives and health.

Energy Acquisition and Energy Consumption

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Acquiring food used to be hard work.  Whether it was walking to a water source to obtain water, gathering fruit, or hunting a large animal and dragging it to camp, getting resources required a lot of effort.  Therefore, our bodies are imprinted with the expectation that energy expenditure (burning calories) is related to consuming them – as opposed to a sea sponge, for example, that is designed to sit in one spot all day and eat.

What did acquiring food used to look like?  Here is a quote from Professor Loren Cordain:

• “Our Paleolithic ancestors exerted themselves daily to secure their food, water, and protection.

• Our remote ancestors participated in various physical activities daily.  They walked and ran 5 to 10 miles daily as they foraged and hunted for their food sources.

• They also lifted, carried, climbed, stretched, leaped, and did whatever else was necessary to secure their sustenance and protection.

• Days of heavy exertion were followed by recovery days.  In modern terms, these people cross-trained with aerobic, resistance, and flexibility exercises.

• Even in times of caloric excess, hunter-gatherers avoided weight gain in part because they were extremely physically active.

• Although modern technology has made physical exertion optional, it is still important to exercise as though our survival depended on it, and in a different way it still does.

• A sedentary existence predisposes us to obesity, hypertension, the metabolic syndrome, diabetes, and most types of cardiovascular disease, whereas regular exercise decreases the risks of developing all these diseases.

• We are genetically adapted to live an extremely physically active lifestyle.“

-Cordain, Loren, O’Keefe, James H. Cardiovascular Disease Resulting From a Diet and Lifestyle at Odds With Our Paleolithic Genome: How to Become a 21st-Century Hunter-Gatherer. Mayo Clin Proc. 2004;79:101-108

 

Today there is a much different situation when it comes to acquiring food.  Today, food is much more plentiful, energy dense, and easier to obtain.  Check out this history of the energy involved in getting food today.  Think about it:  how many opportunities are there in your town to get your hands on a meal without ever leaving your car?

What is a Calorie Exactly?
A calorie is a unit of energy.  Technically, it is the amount of energy required to raise the temperature of one kilogram of water by one degree Celsius.  A typical human diet can consist of anywhere from under 2,000 to over 3,000 calories of energy consumed in food per day.

Of course, your body has specific fuel sources it can use for energy.  Your body is designed to metabolize, or burn, three categories: fat, carbohydrate and protein.  Fat is the most energy-dense energy source.  Fat contains 9 calories for every gram of fat.  Protein and carbohydrate both contain 4 calories per gram.

Calorie-Dense Foods
When you eat food, it contains a certain amount of calories.  However, there are other substances in food that do not contain calories.  Water and fiber are two of the most important of these.  Other nutrients in food that are present in smaller amounts are vitamins, minerals and phytochemicals.

Some foods are more calorie dense than others. Meaning that for the same volume of food, the calorie content can vary widely.  A hundred calories can come in the form of a large head of lettuce, or in the form of a small candy bar.  Good fuel sources are typically lower in calorie density than processed foods. Good fuel sources typically have a high fiber and water content.  Processed foods tend to be very low in fiber and water, and also tend to have lots of toxic additives as well.

Energy Imbalance
The result of these changes in energy acquisition and energy consumption has led to an energy imbalance.  In other words, we are too often consuming more energy, or calories, than we are expending.  The occurrence of this energy imbalance problem is at the root of the world-wide obesity epidemic.

 

Grass-Fed vs. Industrial Farmed Beef

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They say you are what you eat, but what about what it has been eating?  With modern and unnatural ways of farming and growing food, we do not have the luxury to only think about what we eat.  We must also think about the animals that we eat and the diet and lifestyle that created them.  Humans are animals, and all animals express their physiology based on how they eat, how they move and how they think.  Animals that eat the natural foods that they were intended to are healthier.  Animals that are deficient or toxic in the foods they eat are sicker.  Animals that are raised on unnatural industrial farms and feedlots with their lack of movement, abundance of toxic fattening foods, and incredibly stressful environments create sick animals.  Sick animals make for sick people when consumed, regardless of whether they taste good with BBQ sauce.

The chemical composition of a wild animal consuming a wild and natural diet, getting plenty of exercise, and being taken care of by its pack is considerably different than the chemical composition of an animal raised in inhumanely tight and stressful quarters, consuming an unnatural diet of corn and soy, getting no activity whatsoever, and being separated from its natural parents within the first week of birth.  These two types of animals are so different in fact, that one actually makes you healthier when you eat it, while the other makes you sicker.

Just as humans evolved to eat a varied, natural diet of fruit, veggies, nuts, seeds and lean meats, so did cows evolve to eat a varied diet of grass.  Every species on earth was created and/or evolved to eat a species specific diet.  What happens to a human being when he or she is fed corn and soy products?  Well, as you can see from this graph on Obesity in America over the last 25 years, they get fat.  It is the exact same thing with cows:  when fed an unnatural diet of corn and soy, they get FAT.  And this happens at an astonishing rate, about 4 times as fast.  A cow grown in a feedlot gains 3-4 pounds each day, whereas a cow raised on a natural grass diet gains 1-2 pounds per day.

Imagine you are a cattle farmer selling your cows by the pound, with no regard for their health or the health of those who consume your cows.  This is a great deal, because it means more profit for you and the appearance of cheaper meat to the consumers.  However, because the government (tax dollars) subsidizes corn and soy, the consumer really is paying twice:  once with their tax dollars and once at the checkout line. So it’s actually not cheaper at all.

The huge amounts of unnatural corn and soy in their diets also wreak havoc on their immune systems, (again just like a human on an unnatural, processed food diet).  This is why so many of the antibiotics used in this country are used on the industrial animal farms on their sick animals (THE ONES YOU WE FEED OUR CHILDREN!!!).  This is crazy!  Who wants to eat sick animals?  Jo Robinson explains in her book, Grass Fed Basics, that the industrial beef farmers ship their cows to industrial slaughter houses.   On top of this being incredibly stressful to the animals, now the slaughter houses wash much of the meat in ammonia to kill the huge amounts of microforms that infest these sick animals.  This is the meat that Americans feed their children!

The Grass-Fed Difference:

Besides being fed their own natural food source, grass-fed cows are typically treated like living, breathing creatures, not just products traded for dollars.  In Michael Pollan’s book, The Omnivore’s Dilemma, he describes his experience at Polyface Farm a grass-fed and natural (species-specific) diet and lifestyle farm run by Joel Salatin.  Pollan describes:

“What distinguishes Salatin’s system is that it is designed around the natural predilections of the pig rather than around the requirements of a productions system to which pigs are then conformed. Pig happiness is simply the by-product of treating a pig as a pig rather than as ‘a protein machine with flaws’…” Happy animals are healthier just like happy people are healthier people.

Below is the quick guide to the differences between healthy grass-fed cows and unhealthy feedlot meat:

Grass-Fed Cows Grain-Fed Cows
# of Cows/farm About 100 1000s and 1000s
Place Open pasture/barns Crammed feed lots
Feeding Eat grass when hungry Force-fed unnatural foods
Drugs 0-1 Vaccinations Antibiotics, vaccines, hormones by the truckload
Time Calf Spends with Mom 8-10 months Few hours to a few days
State of Health Healthy Sick
Cost More. Anywhere from $4-35/lb. depending on place of purchase and amount purchased.Bulk is ~$4.50-6.50/pound. Great for quality, health and your longevity. Less. Tax payer dollars subsidized corn = cheap, unhealthy meat.  But how much does cancer, diabetes and heart disease cost??
Farmers Caring; cows are treated with an understanding of their physiology and needs. Inhumane treatment. Treated as products.
End of Life Euthanized on lot, or humane slaughter house Slaughter House (herded by tractors, very stressful death.)
Overall Life PLEASANT/WELL-CARED FOR TERRIBLE
Overall Result for Us Healthy Unhealthy

Find grass-fed meat near you!


Healthy Lifestyle – The Essential Components

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Exercise and Disease Prevention/Avoidance

The two main factors that will determine whether a person will die prematurely of a preventable disease, such as heart disease, cancer, diabetes or obesity-related diseases, are:

1. Diet
2. Exercise

The scientific research is irrefutable in these two areas of lifestyle habits and disease prevention/avoidance.  Eating perfectly doesn’t replace the need for exercise and vice versa – exercising will not offset bad dietary choices.  You know those obsessive athletes who think that they can get away with eating donuts because they work out all the time?  They’re wrong!

What Does The Science Say?  Here’s a fascinating illustration.  In general, most people associate cancer with bad genes, or random chance, or simply bad luck; it’s rare that people will associate a cancer death with lifestyle choices.  However, when it comes to skin cancer, there’s an overwhelming association with sun exposure as the cause.  However, when we look at all cancer as a health issue, a different picture emerges.

Exercising reduces the risk of skin cancer?

“Thus the majority of deaths from chronic health conditions in the United States are of environmental origin. Physical inactivity is the third leading cause of death in the United States and contributes to the second leading cause (obesity), accounting for at least 1 in 10 deaths.

“There is now unequivocal evidence in the literature supporting the notion that all environmental factors combined, including physical inactivity (defined here as the activity equivalent of <30 min of brisk walking/day), account for the majority of chronic health conditions. Sedentary men and women had a 56% and 72%, respectively, higher incidence of melanomas that those exercising 5-7 days/wk.”

Booth FW, et al. Waging war on physical inactivity: using modern molecular ammunition against an ancient enemy. J Appl Physiol 2002; 93: 3-30. view article

Interesting to note that the study was regarding skin cancer – that means that exercising less than 4 days/week did not prevent the melanoma cancer – THAT’S PROFOUND!

Fresh Fish vs. Farm Raised Fish: How to Choose the Healthiest Source

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Old MacDonald’s farm did NOT have a fish here nor there!!!

There has been a lot of talk about industrially raised beef versus grass-fed cows, but what is also getting some press recently is farm-raised fish.  Overfishing has been an issue in some areas, and these farms have been popping up to help with the shortage of fish as well as to control the supply.  Is this really a good thing, though?

First let’s look at practices – how could someone actually farm fish?  Well, this is usually done with cages in the ocean, lakes, ponds and even rivers.  There have been some concerns that when any living thing is forced to live and grow unnaturally that there are consequences.  It is the same with fish.  When these fish are raised in such close quarters, they are said to be “so confined that they’re essentially stewing in their own feces,” says Don Coleman, 42, from Berkeley, Calif., a volunteer from the nonprofit Friends of the River.

As well as often being fed an unnatural diet of…any guesses?  Soy and corn!  “But wait,” you may be thinking, “I don’t think fish eat corn…I’ve never seen corn growing in the ocean!”  Sadly that is often a large part of what they’re being fed because government subsidies make corn and soy cheap.

Just as with cows who are fed an unnatural diet and kept in unnaturally close quarters, these fish have chronically suppressed immune systems, and therefore are sick often.  Industrial farming has treatments for symptoms, not corrections for causes.  They also have antibiotics and pesticides to keep the fish alive long enough to reach market size.  Then they are shipped off to restaurants and grocery stores, and end up feeding your children.  Keep in mind:  when you eat sick things, you get sick.

So how do you navigate these murky waters when dining on seafood?  There are a few things to remember that will help you make informed and healthy decisions for you and your family:

  • Always avoid farmed salmon and shrimp unless they are organically farmed.
  • Not all farmed fish are raised inhumanely, nor do they all produce sick fish.  Certain types are grown inland; with enough room to be healthy, tilapia (for example) is a fish that is farmed but still okay to eat.
  • Watch out for big fish such as albacore tuna and swordfish – they usually contain bio-accumulated mercury.

 

Want more info?  Here are two great guides that you can print out to put in your wallet or purse, showing you exactly what types of fish are good, just okay, and bad for you and the environment.

Monterey Bay Aquarium Pocket Guides

Food and Water Watch

Essential Supplementation

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Critical Thinking:  For our bodies to be healthy, the cells of our bodies need to be healthy.  For the cells to be healthy, optimal amounts of proper nutrients must be supplied – from what we eat and drink in the form of fresh, organic, whole foods and purified water, and, if necessary, by taking nutritional supplements.

Best Practices:  Take fish oil (Omega-3), probiotics, and a whole food supplement every day.

Vital Behaviors:

• Create the routine of taking supplements with breakfast (fish oil now comes lemon-flavored and makes a great addition to smoothies, either fruit smoothies or green smoothies).

• Make a rule that you cannot leave the house without taking your supplements.

• First action upon entering your kitchen each morning is to set out your supplements (yes, even before making coffee).

• Put your car keys in the fridge, next to the probiotics, so that you can’t leave the house without touching/taking your supplements.

As we eat, a balanced combination of nutrient-dense, whole foods makes it unnecessary to take a whole slew of vitamins or supplements.  As a matter of fact, as outlined in the Bonfire Health ideal diet, there are a limited number of essential supplements.  In order for a nutrient to qualify as an Essential Supplement, it must be an essential nutrient (it cannot be made by the body, and therefore it must be provided through our diets) and it must be difficult to consume adequate amounts in even the best diet.  Remember, these are supplements, not replacements!  Follow the Bonfire Health ideal diet and add the following:

1. Omega-3 Essential Fatty Acid (fish oil)

2. Probiotic

3. Whole Food Supplement

Supplements can fill in major gaps in your nutritional regimen; however, many people mistakenly believe that supplements can make up for poor eating habits.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  Supplements are meant to supplement your whole food diet, not act as replacements.  At Bonfire Health, we have narrowed this concept down to what is called essential supplementation.  Essential supplements are those that are either impossible or nearly impossible to get through the foods you eat.

Traditionally or historically, “vitamins” have been formulated from bulk pharmaceutical chemicals such as vitamin A, vitamin B, etc.  Unfortunately this has resulted in very few nutrients being identified, labeled or included as critical nutrients or “vitamins.”  We now know though that all fresh, whole foods contain dozens, if not hundreds, perhaps even thousands, of nutrients.  That’s why it’s so critical to take a supplement made from whole foods, not over-the-counter “vitamin formulas” like Centrum or “One-A-Day” brands, which are made from bulk pharmaceutical chemicals.

What we now know is that there are literally thousands of compounds or nutrients that exist in food, in nature.  An apple, for example, may contain perhaps a thousand or more “phytonutrients,” none of which have been isolated or named, per se as a “vitamin” (see side bar on right).  This is why it’s critical to only put into your body food, or things made of food; this includes your “vitamins” or supplements.

1)  Essential Fatty Acids (EFA):  There are a group of critical nutrients called essential fatty acids (commonly known as “omega fatty acids”).  They play a role in virtually every cellular function within the body:

“The dietary fatty acids of the omega-3 series are rapidly incorporated into cell membranes and profoundly influence biological responses. In well-controlled clinical studies, consumption of omega-3 fatty acids has resulted in reduction of cardiovascular diseases including arrhythmias and hypertension, protection from renal disease, improvement in rheumatoid arthritis, improvement in inflammatory bowel diseases, reduced episodes of rejection, and protection from infection.”

[Alexander, JW, Immunonutrition: the role of omega-3 fatty acids. Nutrition July 1998, 14 (7): pp. 627-633 view abstract]

Modern man in general, and Americans in particular, are severely deficient in this group of critically essential nutrients called fatty acids.  Not only are we deficient, but what fatty acids we do take in through our diet are dangerously imbalanced.  Fatty acid balance is one of the “seven fundamentally altered nutritional characteristics of our ancestral (genetically congruent) diet.” [Mann NJ, Paleolithic Nutrition: What can we learn from the past? Asia Pacific Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 2004; 13 (suppl.): S17] view article

To simplify, there are two primary essential fatty acids:  Omega-6 and Omega-3 EFA.  Within the body, they should exist in an approximate ratio of 2:1 (Omega-6 to Omega-3).  Current estimates show a severely disproportionate amount of Omega-6 from the modern diet, now creating a ratio between 15:1 and 22:1.  What makes this even worse is the modern diet is now toxic with unhealthy forms of Omega-6 EFA found in hydrogenated and partially hydrogenated oils, and fried foods.

Again, to simplify this discussion, the focus is really on deficiencies in Omega-3 EFAcombined with an overabundance of Omega-6 EFA.

So What’s The Answer?
Take an Omega-3 essential fatty acid supplement; meaning purified fish oil.  The good news is that fish oil now comes lemon-flavored, so it’s tasty by itself or as an excellent ingredient in smoothies.  It also must be said at this juncture that it’s equally critical to minimize your intake of grains because one of the primary causes of an imbalance in Omega-6 comes from an excessive dietary intake of all grains, especially refined grains (i.e. wheat flour products like bread, cereals, pasta, crackers, cookies, cakes, etc.), as well as grain-fed meats.

2) Probiotics:  Probiotics are the natural “friendly” bacteria living within our bodies which play a critical role in immunity (current science has estimated that 80% of your immune system is located in the digestive system), digestion and nutrient synthesis and delivery.  Our bodies should have trillions of healthy probiotic bacteria present mainly in our large intestine, and to a lesser degree the stomach, small intestine, mouth, and vagina.  The problem is that today, modern man has deviated so far from eating fresh, high fiber fruits and vegetables, that “the daily present-age consumption of bacteria is a million times less than what was consumed by our Stone Age (Paleolithic) ancestors.” [Bengmark S, Immunonutrition: Role of biosurfactants, fiber, and probiotic bacteria. Nutrition Journal1998: 14:585-594]. The important fact here is that we are genetically identical to the Stone Age ancestors that Bengmark is referring to.

The Functions of Probiotic Bacteria:

• Eliminate harmful viruses, bacteria and yeast
• Reduce inflammation
• Fermentation and digestion of fiber
• Promote proper digestion, absorption and elimination
• Prevent diarrhea, bloating, gas, and constipation
• Protect mucosal lining of the stomach, small and large intestines, and vagina
• Support healthy immune function
• Increase resistance to infection
• Help keep skin healthy
• Assist in the production and delivery of vitamins

The critical functions of probiotics include:  digestion (especially the digestion of fiber), the synthesis and delivery of several vitamins (thiamine, folic acid, nicotinic acid, pyridoxine, and B12), as well as enzyme production, and inflammatory and immune response.

3)  Whole Food Supplements:  Most people know they should take a “vitamin.”  Any nutrient we put into our bodies should be made from food, not chemicals made to resemble what’s found in nature or what’s been isolated and fractionated from the “real thing.”  Brands such as One-A-Day or Centrum are NOT the answer.  These types of “vitamins” are made from bulk pharmaceutical chemicals.  The only supplements we should ever take MUST be made from whole foods, not isolated chemicals.

When formulating a whole food supplement, various plant foods, such as fruits and vegetables, sea vegetables, herbs, nuts, seeds, and grains are either juiced and dried, and/or ground up to be formulated into capsules or a powdered drink.  The obvious limitation to any supplement, even whole food supplements, is that it’s not the real thing (meaning fresh, whole food); that being said, the vitamins, minerals, and trace elements that are found in whole food supplements are significant and can go a long way in augmenting one’s nutritional status and health.

Ideal Weight: How to Achieve Your Healthiest Body Weight

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Achieving or maintaining an ideal weight has become like the search for the holy grail – an almost unattainable goal. And rightly so – every age group, from the youngest children to teenagers to adults, has seen increases in weight over the last 30 years. In the meantime, the weight loss industry in this country rakes in 400 billion dollars per year. Clearly, the focus on losing weight has not been successful.

A New Goal:  Your Ideal Weight
While most people will become slimmer getting to their ideal weight, losing weight isn’t synonymous with gaining health. There are many, many ways to lose weight that will not make you a healthier person. Yo-yo diets have become synonymous with failure. Rather than focusing on weight loss, focus on gaining health. If you make the right choices in eating, moving and thinking to bring you toward health, you will also move towards achieving and maintaining your ideal weight. Following the Bonfire recommendations will move you toward a fit, lean, healthy, ideal weight.

What Does an Ideal Weight Look Like?
First, it is important to understand what an ideal weight looks like. Your ideal weight means much more than simply being at a number on the scale. Being at an ideal weight means having muscle tissue capable of supporting functional movement and activity levels. It means not carrying excess fat. It also means having a healthy skeletal system free from the ravages of osteoporosis. It means being properly hydrated. Being at your ideal weight is a component of being truly healthy, fit and functional. It is not just a matter of appearance.

While today losing weight, melting away fat, and avoiding weight gain are the hottest topics in health, historically speaking, until very recently the challenge would have been very different. It would have been finding enough food to stay alive. Our body is designed to burn energy by obtaining food that was often in small supply.

Your body has a powerful motivation to maintain an ideal weight. Hunter-gatherer populations in both ancient times, and current tribes living a genetically appropriate lifestyle, consistently show that humans maintain ideal weight levels outside of the stresses of modern life. The hormonal and nervous system control of body weight are so powerful that when allowed to function properly, your body will regulate its weight within 0.15% over the period of a year.  This means that when you consistently make genetically congruent lifestyle choices, your body regulates hunger and activity levels perfectly.  Excess weight is a sign of bad health, because a healthy body regulates ideal body weight.

Storage of excess food intake as fat was very rare. Its only purpose was to prevent starvation. Therefore, your body was never designed to carry around fat stores created during periods of excess intake. To find food, we were continuously active, almost never having periods of time when we were regularly inactive. For millions of years, finding enough food to consume to meet the demands of a high activity level was the challenge.

Continuous, incremental weight gain as we age is the result of our modern environment and lifestyle. Therefore, being away from an ideal weight is an abnormal, unhealthy stress on our body. Carrying excess fat stores is not something that our body is designed for. This excess fat, stored around our organs in our midsection, is called visceral fat, or omentum. This specific type of fat creates inflammation in your body that is linked to almost every disease process.

Keep up the right behaviors that support your health. Sometimes patience is a key virtue necessary to achieve your body’s true health. There are important reasons why your body is doing what it is doing; remember that your body is intelligent, and take care of it properly so it will take care of you.

Micronutrients vs. Macronutrients: The Secret to Understanding Food Breakdown

by admin

Grandma was right:  you are what you eat.  Literally.  Your body has the amazing ability to take the foods you eat and turn them into you.  How incredible is that?  Whether you eat an apple, a steak or a kale salad, your amazing body is able to break that food down into its chemical parts and reassemble those parts into your cells and the energy you use all day.  That is miraculous.  Outside the plant and animal kingdom, there is nothing else that can do that!

Here is the catch:  your body is only as amazing as the material it has to work with.  The quality of the food you put into your amazing body has a huge impact on your health.  An apple is not just an apple, nor is a steak just a steak.  As stated above, your body is able to break those foods down into their chemical parts, like macronutrients and micronutrients.

Macronutrients are the structural and energy-giving caloric components of our foods that most of us are familiar with.  They include carbohydrates, fats and proteins.

Micronutrients are the vitamins, minerals, trace elements, phytochemicals, and antioxidants that are essential for good health.

The quantity and quality of these nutrients vary greatly, depending on not only what types of food you eat, but also the quality of those foods.  Processed foods tend to have more macronutrients than natural foods at the expense of micronutrients.  This is because processing food strips the foods of many of the vitamins, minerals, and phytochemicals and gives the food a longer shelf life.  So cereal grains, breads, candy and sweets, dairy products, much of fast foods and other processed foods give you tons of calories without much micronutrient content – and that type of eating is responsible for many of the lifestyle diseases that are killing 75% of Americans.  At Bonfire Health, we recommend eating a natural diet, packed with micronutrients similar to our hunter gatherer ancestors.  So, switch to eating high-quality, natural foods from the earth.  Skip the stuff that comes in packages that can sit in your pantry for months and not spoil.  Eat lots of fruits, veggies, nuts, seeds and meat.

It is important to keep in mind that there is a difference in the quality of those foods as well.  Earlier it was stated that an apple is not just an apple and a steak is not just a steak.  Depending on where your food was grown, or how your meat was raised, the quality of its macro and micro nutrients can be incredibly different.  Focusing on local foods ensures that you will get the most bang for your buck in terms of fruits and veggies loaded with micronutrients.  Focusing on eating healthfully-raised animals like grass-fed cows and free range chickens will ensure that the meat you feed your family was ethically raised. It will have fewer antibiotics and hormones, it is better for the planet, and it ensures that you and your family are building your bodies with the best possible components.  If you are interested in thriving and not simply surviving, the types and amounts of these nutrients are critical.

 

The Secret to Living Your Healthiest Life: Understanding Our Hunter-Gather Ancestry

by admin

 

Our (Hunter-Gather) Heritage
Picture a world without any obvious evidence of humans – a world without buildings, automobiles, cities, factories, gyms, schools, freeways, airports, shipyards, even a world without electronics. Picture this land before time, and in it, try to visualize the different landscapes: the jungle, with its huge trees and intense animal noises, a vast savanna, with many types of prairie grasses growing and different big game animals roaming in huge packs, and the desert, with its own unique geography and animals, specifically adapted to its seemingly inhospitable climate. These are all places that throughout time humans have called home, and it was the selective pressures in these places that shaped our genome, our heredity, what makes humans humans. The human genus (Homo) has existed for some 2.5 million years, and our specific species originated in Africa some 200,000 years ago. From there we spread out all over the globe.  Humans have lived in almost all regions of the earth with varied climates, such as the mountains of Switzerland, the plains of America, and the deserts of Australia.

And through all of that and in all of those places, there was one thing that was common to all humans:  their lifestyle. Every human being on the planet, until the advent of agriculture, depended on a lifestyle of hunting and gathering for survival. Humans depended on what animals they could kill and what produce they could gather from nature for roughly the last 100,000 generations. It was only until about 500 generations ago (10,000) years ago that agriculture and the domestication of animals entered into our way of life, slowly changing everything about our lifestyle.

Before the advent of agriculture and then the subsequent industrial revolution, further mechanizing food growing and procuring, there was a direct relationship between energy expenditure and eating. Think about the land before time – there were no grocery stores, no fast food joints, no refrigerators.  Everything that kept humans alive throughout their life had to be sought out or hunted on a regular basis.  Food didn’t keep, there were no food processing plants, everything was fresh, and so it spoiled quickly and had to be gathered every few days and eaten quickly.  It was that lifestyle of hunting and gathering that shaped us; constant and daily activity was stamped into our genes, as was a dependence on fresh foods (the only kinds that were available). The needs for community and support and the values that would make us a productive part of a tribe were also stamped in. Social deviants would not have been tolerated in the small tribes that existed before agriculture. Times were so tough and without the important social skills that we still hold dear (love, trust, loyalty, bravery, intelligence, compassion, leadership, humor…) that a deviant member would have been excluded from the tribe. In that world, exclusion would have meant death, causing their genes to disappear from the earth.The time and way of life that shaped our genome was so incredibly different than it is now, it is almost as if we are on another planet.  Here is the catch: our genes are the same now as they were then.

 

“…today’s humans arose through a multi-million year evolutionary process.
… Since the appearance of agriculture 10,000 years ago and especially since the Industrial Revolution, genetic adaptation has been unable to keep pace with cultural progress”

Eur J. of Clinical Nutrition 1997 51; 207-216.

Although the lifestyle change that came along with the advent of agriculture was HUGE, it did not cause humans to die before they were able to reproduce, and therefore, there has been very little change in our genes in the last 50,000-100,000 years.

What does this mean for us today?
It means that we are hunters and gatherers who never hunt or gather.  It means that our bodies are the same bodies that were designed, created or evolved to move (exercise) daily in a vigorous manner, eat only fresh, local, unprocessed foods that come from the earth (fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds and meats – no grains), and live with community support in happy, positive and relatively chronic stress-devoid lives with the occasional acute stressor.

It means that modern humans are using the awesome living machine that is their body incorrectly.  What happens when a machine or a tool is used incorrectly or for the wrong task? IT BREAKS DOWN MUCH FASTER.  It is the same for us!  Our genetically incongruent ways of living account for all lifestyle diseases from cancers to heart attacks, to auto immune diseases, to acne, and more.

“These conditions (heart disease, diabetes, cancer, obesity, hypertension etc.) have emerged as dominant health problems only in the past century and are virtually unknown among the few surviving hunter-gatherer populations whose way of life and eating habits most closely resemble those of pre-agricultural human beings.”

Eaton M.D. & Konner Ph.D. Paleolithic Nutrition: a consideration of its nature and current implications. 1985: N. Eng. J. Med. 312, 282-289.

“There is increasing evidence that the resulting mismatch fosters “diseases of civilization” that together cause 75% of all deaths in Western nations, but that are rare among persons whose lifeways reflect those of our preagricultural ancestors.”

Eaton, Konner & Shostak. Stoneagers in the fast lane. 1988. Am J. of Med. 84, 739-49.

If we wish to live long, happy and healthy lives, we must adopt the principles that were carved into our genes; we must live as close to a hunter-gatherer lifestyle as possible, by eating, moving and thinking in genetically congruent ways.