Why Your Growing Child Needs to Eat More Fat

The low-fat craze of the 90's just won't die.  I thought we were past low-fat at this point, yet every time I go to the grocery store I'm still bombarded with the fat-free message.  It's worse at Whole Foods, my place of employment. We even have a whole line of "healthy" fat-free salad dressings at our salad bar. And in my current school lunch rotation (part of the joyful road to becoming an RD), fat is being pulled from the menu like never before in favor of whole grains, vegetables, and skim milk.  New York City schools have gone as far to ban butter (!?!?). For the average consumer, the message is loud and clear: fat is bad, mmmkay? We've gotta eat more vegetables! Eat your broccoli, eat your salad! Throw out the butter and oil! Fat's killing the kids!

But there's a problem with that. A big one. Of course vegetables are full of nutrients, but eating them without fat renders their fat-soluble vitamins (mainly vitamin A) useless. And you do NOT want that, especially if you're a little cherub in the 1st grade. Read on now, ya hear?

The Poor Man Diet: 10 Complementary Foods

Back to the Poor Man Diet.  If you missed last week's post, you should probably read that first.  Otherwise none of this will make any frickin' sense.  In the last post, I talked about 5 of the best choices you can make if you're compromising cost and health.  They're not the healthiest 5 foods in the world, and they're not the cheapest 5 foods in the world... but they're just about the most nutritious foods you can find for the least amount of money.  It's all about compromise.

Today, though, I'm giving you 10 complementary foods.  I've given you a solid base, but it's the complementary foods that can make or break your diet.  If you're eating pop-tarts and ho-ho's on the side, you could be in trouble.  These aren't foods you need to eat every day, and because of that I'm being a little more forgiving on the cost end of things and leaning more towards nutrient-density.  Still, you won't find lobster tail here, or raw oysters, or white truffles... okay nevermind I'll stop blabbering and get on with it... here you are, 10 nutritious complementary foods for your Poor Man Diet.


1. Chicken Thighs
$1.29/lb (bone-in), $1.99/lb (boneless)
$0.50/serving
You're in luck.  Since everyone has gone chicken boob crazy, that's left chicken butt on the sidelines.  Little does everyone know, chicken thighs are much juicier and more flavorful than breasts... and there's nothing wrong with a little more fat in your life, especially if you're looking to get the most food for your dollar.  In terms of nutrition, they're a great source of protein, B vitamins, and zinc.  Probably your most cost-effective source of meat!

The Poor Man Diet: 5 Healthy Foods That Won't Break the Bank

If you've ever tried to eat healthy, and if you're reading this you probably have, then you've noticed the gaping hole in your wallet.  Real food can be expensive; naturally raised meat, fresh organic produce, extra virgin olive oil, nuts... healthy food ain't cheap.  The cost has been one of the main obstacles for me in eating a real food, paleo-style diet.  Even though I make food a high priority in my life, I'm still a poor college student.  I can't always afford top-quality food.

But luckily, there are healthy, dirt-cheap foods out there that even I can afford.  Sure, you've gotta make some compromises; you just can't eat optimally on a budget.  But you can make a damn good stab at it. Not poor you say?  Just looking to save some money on food to keep fueling your hookers and cocaine habit?  No problem.  I'm here to help.  Here are 5 healthy, inexpensive foods that you can base your diet around.

1. Kale
$0.99/lb
$0.25/serving

Kale is everyone's darling health food.  Some say it's even the most nutrient-dense food on the planet.  I wouldn't go that far, but it's a great food nonetheless.  Fiber, vitamin C, vitamin K, lutein, zeaxanthin, calcium... Kale covers all of your vegetable needs in one little package, and at a great price.  It's versatile too.  You can steam it and eat it on its own, put it in your eggs, add it to a smoothie, or use it in a stir fry.  It works in everything.  You can even eat it raw in a salad if you're up to it, although I personally don't like the taste unless it's cooked.  But maybe that's just me.  Give it a try!  (If you really hate kale, substitute it with another green like swiss chard or collard greens, the difference is negligible.)

Voting With Your Food Dollar: A Story of Three Foods

Just a quick rant today. I've been thinking a lot lately about the concept of "voting with your food dollar". Voting with your food dollar is just what it sounds like... when you buy a particular food, you're essentially "voting" for it. You're telling producers that you like it and you want more of it. But beyond that, you're supporting the entire process that made that food available to you at your local grocery store. This is obviously true of anything you buy in a free market system. You have the opportunity to vote every time you buy anything. Anything at all. Whether it's fitness equipment, a new leather purse, or the new Justin Timberlake album, your dollar essentially votes for what you buy. Just think of the consequences if nobody bought JT's new album (which I know isn't true since I already bought it)... Justin would end up a complete failure. He'd likely enter a downward spiral involving drugs, Taylor Swift, and his first emo album, until he's finally relegated to neighborhood bar gigs opening for Good Charlotte.  But worst of all, nobody would adopt his new hairstyle.

Okay a little off topic there.  Where was I?  Oh yes, when you buy a food at the store, you support everything that went into putting that food on your grocery store shelf.  In addition to supporting the food itself, you support the production methods, the processing, and the transportation costs.  I'd like to take this opportunity to go through a few different food options and talk about what it means when you choose to buy them.

1) Doritos
One of my favorite childhood foods.  I could eat an entire bag of this stuff as a teen.  Of course they're yummy, but let's talk about where Doritos come from.  Here's an ingredients list...

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.

When Eating Junk is Good For You, or, Keeping Health in Perspective

Junk food is good?  Well sort of.  This is something that's been on my mind for a while now, and it's time I put it to paper.  I wouldn't call it a rant.  It can't be, because I had to write it and rewrite it 3 times before it came out the way you see it now. I suppose you could call it a life lesson.  From a wise old man.  I did recently turn 27 after all.  You see I've done a lot of experimenting with my diet.  I've done low-carb diets, low-fat diets, paleo diets, strict autoimmune protocol paleo diets, plant-based diets... all of which had major restrictions on the food I could eat.  It takes a lot of willpower to stay on a strict diet, and society doesn't help either, always pushing junk food on us.  But the hardest part of staying on a diet?  For me, it was the social consequences.  Being on a strict diet has a tendency to make you a weirdo.  And I hate being the weirdo.

But I'll get back to that weirdo thing.  Let me first say this:  if you're trying to optimize your nutrition, there are some foods that you should never eat.  I truly believe that everyone would benefit from eliminating grains, refined sugars, factory-farmed animal products, refined vegetable oils, and processed foods.  But there's a problem.  These foods are everywhere.  In fact, these are the five foods that our American diet is based on.  You don't even have to take my word for it... here's a list from the 2010 USDA Dietary Guidelines of the top 25 sources of calories in the United States.  Give it a looksie, it's a pretty sad list.  In fact, all 25 items in the list are based on one of those five foods mentioned above.  ALL of them.

In my opinion, we would all do better on a diet made up of fruits, vegetables, pastured animal products, wild fish, coconut, tubers, and potatoes.  You can call it real food, paleo, primal, ancestral... whatever floats your boat.  But no matter how you slice it, these foods aren't readily available in today's world.  You can't go to 7-11 and get a grass-fed rib eye, complete with a side salad made of organic veggies and an extra-virgin olive oil dressing.  Chances are you can't go anywhere within a reasonable distance and get that.  In addition, most of your friends don't eat this way, so it might be difficult to eat healthy in social situations.  It takes planning and effort if you're going to eat well.  It's the unfortunate truth... our food culture is set up for ease and convenience, not health.

But these societal norms do exist.  They're real, and they matter.  And it's because of these realities, that I make this statement... sometimes you're better off eating junk.

Bacon Ice Cream, Counting Fat, and Shut the F Up

A couple of things have been irritating me on this Thursday morning.  First, the clouds.  Today was supposed to be sunny, at least according to my iPhone.  I was planning on spending the morning outside and soaking up some vitamin D.  Thank you iPhone for lying to me, and thank you clouds for being sons of bitches.  Secondly though, is Burger King's new Bacon Ice Cream Thingy.  Who in holy hell came up with this thing?  Bacon on ice cream?  That's retarded.  But do you want to know what's even more retarded?  The author of that article's concern about the fat content of the Bacon Ice Cream Thingy.  Oh my god, 510 calories and 18 grams of fat!  That's even more than a bacon cheeseburger! (Her claim, not mine, that's a little hard to believe honestly.)  Sure, she mentions the 61 grams of sugar, but she stressed the fat.  They always stress over the fat.  And I'm sick and tired of it.  There's no reason for it.  Just shut the F up. 

You see, everyone's got this phobia of fat making them fat.  They think that if they eat the fat on that pork chop, or put butter on their potato, or drink whole milk, that they'll get fat.  That's not how it works.  Fat in the diet doesn't make you fat any more than other calories do.  In fact, natural fats are very satiating, and would probably even help you eat less and lose a couple pounds.  There are a lot of reasons someone might gain weight.  Eating fat isn't one of them.  Neither is eating carbohydrates or protein.  Eating too many total calories on the other hand... will get you nice and fat.  Focusing on one particular nutrient completely misses the bigger point.  What makes us fat is not carbs or fat per se...  but if I had to design a food to make you fat, I would design exactly this Bacon Ice Cream Thingy.  Are you confused yet?  I think I may have confused myself there.  The Bacon Ice Cream Thingy WILL make you fat.  But it's not because it has 18 grams of fat, or because it has 61 grams of sugar.  It's because it's loaded up with so much hyperpalatable goodness that you'll eat the whole frickin' thing even if you're not hungry.

What I'm All About

Do you believe in evolution?  The idea of evolution has been accepted as fact by most in the biology field and has been the guiding ideology of that field for years.  All organisms change over time; some fail to adapt to a changing environment and die out while others succeed and adapt or evolve to form a new species.  This is the fundamental guiding paradigm of biology.  So when it comes to studying human nutrition, a sub-discipline of biology, the logical thing to do would be to use human history and evolution as a guide, right?  Tell that to nutritional science.  Researchers have been shooting in the dark for decades trying to figure out exactly what constitutes a healthy diet, creating paradoxes like it’s their job.  Unfortunately, they have no guiding paradigm; it’s as if they’re trying to build a house with no blueprint.  That won’t get you very far.  While people generally accept that animals like cows, horses, or tigers have evolved to eat a specific diet, these same people never bother to recognize that we are animals too.  And just like every other animal out there, we evolved eating a certain way.

This blog will chronicle my ongoing quest for knowledge, exploring the complex science of nutrition as well as related fields like fitness and natural medicine.  My opinions will always be based on good science, but I will also use the lens of evolutionary biology and good old common sense.  Of course I always reserve the right to change my mind about anything, and I expect to.  I’m learning new things all the time, and often times I have to admit that something I thought I knew was wrong.  That will happen, and should happen.  Question everything.  You may be surprised how little you really know.