Nutritionism: Food is More Than the Sum of its Nutrients

In a nutshell, "nutritionism" is the idea that the healthfulness of a food is based on the sum of the nutrients it contains.  I learned about this concept from Michael Pollan, who you may have heard of... he wrote "The Omnivore's Dilemma" and "In Defense of Food", both phenomenal books that I highly recommend.  Pollan makes the argument that this is a reductionist philosophy that assumes we know more about the composition of foods and the inner workings of the human body than we really do.  I couldn't agree more.

Take the carrot, for example... we all know carrots are good for us.  You've probably heard that they're high in beta carotene.  Well, when researchers have taken beta carotene out of the carrot and given it to people in pill form, it turns out it doesn't do jack shit.  Is beta carotene useless?  Or is it just useless outside the context of the food it comes from? Context matters.  We're not as smart as we think we are, and we don't have it all figured out.  Studying individual nutrients outside the context of a real food tells us very little about what we should eat, and sometimes it just makes things more confusing.  We don't eat nutrients, we eat food.

If we want to learn how eating a carrot affects our health, then we need to study carrots.  Yet, as obvious as that may sound, we don't often study nutrition in this way.  We study the nutrients on their own, and then decide whether a food is good or bad based on which nutrients it contains.  There are plenty of examples where this paradigm has led us astray... here are just a few.

How to Prevent Osteoporosis and Fractures

Osteoporosis.  You might be thinking, "I'm not an old lady, this doesn't concern me, I'm going to go back to watching Honey Boo Boo and snacking on mayonnaise."  Wrong.  Whether you're a man or a woman, young or old, you need to know about osteoporosis.  It may be more common in post-menopausal women, but it happens in men too, and how you live in your 20s could have a HUGE impact on whether you fall and break a hip in your 70s.  So listen up.  There's a lot of misinformation around this topic, and I don't want you popping calcium, vitamin D, and Boniva pills and thinking everything will be okay.  Ready?  Let's go.

First, some basics.

Osteoporosis:  A disease characterized by low bone mass and structural deterioration of bone tissue, leading to bone fragility and an increased susceptibility to fractures, especially of the hip, spine, and wrist.

In other words, having osteoporosis means you have weak bones that'll break on you a whole lot easier than they should.  Osteoporosis is responsible for more than 1.5 million fractures each year.  That's a lot.  What's more, up to 1/3 of hip fracture patients die within one year of their fracture, and up to 75% never walk independently again (1).  Obviously, the vast majority happen to older adults.  But it may be your bone health in your 20s that best predicts your bone health in your 70s.  Why?  Peak bone mass.

Top line = men, bottom line = women

Peak bone mass is just what it sounds like:  the point in life at which you have the thickest, densest, healthiest bones.  And that point is in your late 20s.  After that, it's very difficult/impossible to build more bone mass, and so it slowly declines into old age.  Key point... the more bone mass you can develop in your 20s, the more you'll have to work with when you're older.  It's never too early to start.  How do you do that?  You ask and I answer... 

Vitamin K2: The Missing Link to Perfect Health

Almost a century ago, in the early part of the 20th century, a dentist named Weston A. Price performed some of the most important research in the history of nutrition and health science.  As a dentist, he was concerned about the epidemic of dental deformities, like crooked teeth and cavities, so he set out to find traditional societies all over the globe didn't suffer from such problems.  Sure enough, he found several "primitive" societies isolated from the industrialized world who, despite a complete lack of dental hygiene, had perfectly straight teeth and little to no tooth decay.  And beyond that, chronic diseases like cancer and heart disease were completely absent.  He showed that, like all other animals, humans are healthy and robust when they eat, move, and live the way they're designed.  Then, he watched as these healthy societies became civilized, adopted white flour and sugar, and their health declined. 

Traditional Swiss: ornery because they got all them teeth but no toothbrush

Modernized Swiss: even West Virginia doesn't want them

That is Weston A. Price in a nutshell, but I encourage you to read his book "Nutrition and Physical Degeneration" for the full story.  Although the societies Price studied ate a variety of diets, he noticed something that they all shared... all of these diets were particularly high in three fat-soluble vitamins:  A, D, and something he called "Activator X".  He determined that these three vitamins were critical and worked in synergy for tooth and bone formation, as well as general health.  After returning to America, Price applied what he had learned on his own patients.  He used a combination of high-vitamin butter oil (Activator X) and cod liver oil (A and D) to successfully prevent and reverse dental cavities in many of his patients.  Pretty amazing huh?  These three vitamins, when used in conjunction, can reverse cavities.  Fast forward to today... has anyone in the medical profession ever heard of this research?  Probably not.  To them, crooked teeth are just genetic, and the only way to fix a cavity is to get a filling.  Oh how wrong they are...

Why Skim Milk is Stupid

As promised, in today's article I'll be focusing on dairy fat.  Full-fat dairy has been on the shit-list now for several decades because of its high saturated fat content; 2/3 of its fatty acid profile is saturated.  Since the creation of the very first dietary recommendations set forth by the U.S. government, we've been told to avoid anything high in saturated fat because it will clog our arteries and kill us.  (In case you missed it, your arteries will be fine.)   Well, people have listened:  we now consume approximately 1/3 the whole milk we did in 1970, and our butter has largely been replaced with margarine (see below).  We clearly consume far less dairy fat today than we have in the past, but that's not a good thing.  Not only does the research show no connection between dairy fat consumption and chronic disease, but grass-fed dairy fat appears to be highly beneficial, and may even actively prevent arterial plaque buildup.  Welcome to the fascinating world of dairy fat...  it's time to embrace whole milk and butter once again.

Let's open it up with a meta-analysis.  This one, done by Dr. Ness and colleagues in the UK, examined 10 cohort studies in which the consumption of milk, or the intake of calcium from dairy sources, has been related to cardiovascular disease (1).  Their conclusion?  "Cohort studies provide no convincing evidence that milk is harmful. While there still could be residual confounding from unidentified factors, the studies, taken together, suggest that milk drinking may be associated with a small but worthwhile reduction in heart disease and stroke risk."  So the people who drank the most milk experienced reductions in heart disease and stroke risk.  Sounds great, but with a reduction in cardiovascular risk like that, they must have been drinking low-fat and skim milk right?  No sir/ma'am.  As the researchers state in the conclusion of the article, because all of the reviewed studies were set up at times when low-fat milk was unavailable, "it would seem reasonable to assume that the risk estimates obtained relate largely to the consumption of whole milk."  BOOM!  Whole milk associated with a consistent reduction in cardiovascular disease?? You don't say...

But that's not it... here's another one showing dairy fat prevents cardiovascular disease (2); this one says dairy fat promotes healthy LDL and HDL levels (3); this one says dairy fat reduces your risk for diabetes, keeps you lean, and lowers your triglycerides (4); and this one shows butter is wayyy better than margarine (5), even though the researchers wouldn't quite admit it (6).  Blah blah blah etc etc etc, the bottom line is that these benefits are the result of dairy fat.  Not fat-free dairy.  Not even low-fat dairy.  Full-fat dairy.  Whole milk, real cheese, full-fat yogurt, and butter.  Dairy fat is good for you.  It is not the devil we're led to believe it is.  But there's still more to the story... because there's something even better than dairy fat out there.  Meet grass-fed dairy...