I'm going to start posting some pictures of my culinary adventures. The food I make isn't always artistic looking, but I make sure that it always fulfills these standards:
- Tastes delicious
- Provides nutritious fuel
- Is cost effective
- Doesn't take too long to prepare
Vegetables Sautéed In Butter, Fried Eggs, Steak w/ Spices
This is today's breakfast. Took some green beans, a serrano pepper, handfull of mushrooms, a zucchini, and a sumer squash and sautéed everything in 4 tbsp of melted butter. After those were done, I fried 3 eggs in the remaining butter, then took the eggs out and cooked the sliced up steak in the remaining fat with some mexican spices. Very easy, little prep work, and tastes delicious.
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How many calories is this meal? I know that the 4 tablespoons of butter is over 400 calories all saturated fat. Have you put this meal in MyDietAnalysis4.0 and gotten a readout out for nutrient value?
ReplyDeleteSandy
I haven't put it in to MyDietAnalysis, primarily because its real-world usefulness is limited when I don't have a scale to weight and measure my foods.
ReplyDeleteWhat are you concerns over the saturated fat content? Generally the more I eat it, the better I perform and feel.
I forgot to mention this but, I got full and didn't completely finish the meal. There was about 1/4 of the steak left over after. Snack for later!
ReplyDeleteThis is not a meal that I would eat. There's too many saturated fats, steak, eggs, butter. Way too many calories for me. I thought the point of our class was to know what and how much we were eating and the nutrient value thereof, so we could eat to protect our bones and muscles. And...then how does this post relate to Essential Fatty Acids which I thought was your topic. Am I mistaken?
ReplyDeleteI chose to use this blog not just as a class project, but an actual educational resource for others, a place to organize my thoughts, and a way for me to look at new research. See the first post if you want one on EFA's.
ReplyDeleteThe saturated fats issue is huge. It's too complex to explain in a single post, but basically because of political expediency, economics, and misinterpreted information, saturated fats have been falsely implicated in a variety of disease. The data and evidence simply does not support the idea that saturated fats are bad for humans; in fact, it shows that saturated fats are largely beneficial for humans. Take a look at my blood chemistry if you don't believe me.
Let me know if you want further resources on this issue. Here's a link to the full text journal article discussing this topic, brand new from September 2010:
http://download.journals.elsevierhealth.com/pdfs/journals/0899-9007/PIIS0899900710002893.pdf
Here's an article from last week also discussing this:
http://download.journals.elsevierhealth.com/pdfs/journals/0899-9007/PIIS0899900710002893.pdf
Oh, I've been exposed to those thoughts by Stephanie Alexandre from Alexandre Family Dairy here in Smith River. Here's the website address for a link that discusses something similar to what you are talking about:http://www.westonaprice.org/. I view it as kind of fringe science although I highly respect what the Alexandre family is doing environmentally and they are really, really nice people. Here is the address for their dairy:http://www.ecodairyfarms.com/index.html. However, I don't see how you are going to meet the requirements of the class by posting recipes like that above but that's your business.
ReplyDeleteThe Weston A Price Foundation is a great source of information.
ReplyDeleteSandy, I know it's hard to believe because we have been brain-washed for our whole lives about what is a "healthy diet", but if you really examine the EVIDENCE and DATA from physiology, biology, biochemistry, anthropology, and epidemiology, you can see that the diets humans have been eating for 2.5 million years, without ANY degenerative diseases is not at all what we eat now.
Why is it that so many hunter-gatherer societies are free from "western" diseases (obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, etc) while eating their indigenous diets of meat, animal fat, nuts, and seeds, but when the switch to a standard american high-carb diet, they develop all of these diseases within a generation?
Why is it that obesity in America has skyrocketed AFTER the release of the Dietary Guidelines for America in 1979 that recommended a low-fat, high-carb diet?
I urge you to really look at the EVIDENCE, and not the "conclusions", because more often than not, the evidence DOES NOT support the ADA's or USDA's conclusions.
I can assure you, if evidence supported any other way of eating as being the healthiest, I would be writing about it!
And for an example of the real-world effectiveness: My latest client has lost 30 lbs of fat and is feeling better than he has in his whole life, eating exactly how I recommend.
Thanks for commenting and keep an open but skeptical mind.
Tyler
I just completed a series of genetic tests to determine what my genotype is and the dietary and exercise suggestions. One of the tests for weight management indicated my diet should NOT be low carb or low fat but rather a balanced intake of 55% carbs, 25% fat, and 20% protein in a lower kcal plan based on the nutrigenomic research. It also suggested that my genotype will respond better to a higher MET exercise than moderate MET exercise. Thus, I believe that the skyrocket in obesity has little to do with the Dietary Guidelines but more to do with our genotype. And of course, placing the blame on the Dietary intake of Americans and not looking at the other mitigating factors including technology, exercise, etc., is just as problematic as not questioning the ADA or USDA's conclusions. I find nutrigenomics interesting....although I am still reserving judgement until I have a chance to learn more about it.
ReplyDeleteWho administers such a test? I know that at the end of last spring there was new research that has just been released saying that each person benefited from an individual mix of protein, fat and carbs for weight maintenance-that the high carb thing didn't work well for everyone. I assume that this is similar to what you are talking about. This dietetics stuff is extremely complicated to me. And, while I may find some of Tyler's recipes tasty, my weight would go out of control if I ate that way. On the other hand, my grandmother (lived to be 88) and my dad (currently 88) never have used any dietary restrictions and have eaten copious amounts of full fat, cholesterol ridden foods with few problems with weight.
ReplyDeleteI'm also interested in this testing... can you post a link so we can learn more about it?
ReplyDeleteI have to disagree that our skyrocketing obesity has little to do with our dietary guidelines. The human genome developed for 2.5 million years as hunter-gatherers. Isotopic analysis and surveys of worldwide HG groups show that 73% of groups subsisted on >50% animal foods, whereas only 13.5% of HG groups derived >50% of calories from plant foods. This indicates a diet relatively high in fat and protein, with seasonal carbohydrate use. These groups were also free of degenerative diseases such as diabetes, obesity, and heart disease.
This is why I have a problem with the Dietary Guidelines for America- they recommend a high-carb, low-fat diet as the healthiest diet for everyone, when evidence clearly shows that the selective pressures that created our genome do not align with these guidelines.
History shows that it is certainly possible to thrive on a high-carb diet- the kitavans lived off of sweet potatoes and coconut and were extremely healthy. The problem is that the TYPES of carbohydrates so commonly available now (sugars, grains) seem to be factors that lead to metabolic derangement, and the inability to handle dietary carbohydrate.
Sandy- you might already know this, but in women cholesterol levels are positively associated with longer life. In other words, women with lower cholesterol have increased mortality.
ReplyDeleteWell, I would be interested in links to the research on women and cholesterol if you have them. My dad's cholesterol is really, really low and he eats an unhealthy diet of too much sugar. My grandmother probably never had her cholesterol tested. She didn't believe in those types of tests. However, I do know that she ate copious amounts of full fat milk and lots of butter on home made bread.
ReplyDeleteMany people in past civilizations didn't live to consume anything because they starved to death early on. My grandmother emigrated from Finland because there wasn't enough to eat on the farm. Much of the food had to go to the livestock so that the people would have milk and cheese and sometimes meat to eat. Bread was the other food staple.
Here's a couple quotes from Gary Taubes book, 'Good Calories, Bad Calories'
ReplyDelete"in 24 years of observation, the Framingham Heart Study found no relationship between cholesterol and sudden cardiac death" [in men and women]
The other point is better described by the graph that goes along with it. I will try to describe it: it is a graph of womens cholesterol levels vs all cause and cardiovascular mortality in the 24 yr framingham study. The graph show women with the highest levels of cholesterol having the longest life. "for women, if anything, the higher their cholesterol, the longer they lived" If you get the book, its on page 81-82.
In people over 50 years old, there is no association whatsoever between cholesterol levels and mortality.
Some of the basic concepts our dietary guidelines are founded on are very poorly understood by the people that make the guidelines apparently.
If there is no connection between cholesterol levels and mortality in people over people, then what age group is this study concerned with. We should be careful throwing around this information that people with high cholesterol live longer because a lot of research makes the very polar opposite point.
ReplyDeleteI must not be aware of this research. This information is from the Framingham Heart Study The Framingham Heart Study is an ongoing observational study started in 1948 of over 5000 adults and is now in it's third generation of people. For 60 years the study has been tracking dietary intake, health markers, and causes of death. It is widely regarded as being one of the best studies on cholesterol and health.
ReplyDeleteHere Stephen Guyenet summarizes the findings of the study after several decades:
"If you're 80 or older, and you have low cholesterol, it's time to get your affairs in order. Between the age of 50 and 80, when most heart attacks occur, there's no association between cholesterol level and total mortality. At age 50 and below, men with higher cholesterol die more often. In the youngest age group, the percent increase in mortality between low and high cholesterol is fairly large, but the absolute risk of death at that age is still low. There is no positive association between total cholesterol and mortality in women at any age, only a negative association in the oldest age group. "
read here for more: http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2009/07/diet-heart-hypothesis-little.html
What he is saying is that the best observational study on cholesterol and mortality ever done shows no positive association between cholesterol and mortality in any age group of women.
My goal was to point this out, that in women higher cholesterol does not cause earlier death.