Obesity Costs $2 Trillion a Year

The Washington Post via the San Diego Union Tribune, November 22, 2014

We’re big and we’re getting bigger. One estimate from earlier this year found that almost one-third of the world was now obese (That is more than 2 billion people) and that numbers have been rising, significantly for decades.

The world’s growing obesity and the health problems that come with it are a big deal (no pun intended) and come with a significant cost.

A new report from consulting firm McKinsey estimates that the world’s obesity problem cost it $2 trillion in 2012. That’s more than alcoholism, climate change, or even drug use, and almost as much as war and terrorism or smoking.

McKinsey’s report, titled “How the world could better fight obesity”, hopes to outline the ways that things could improve, though he admits that with no major success stories in combating obesity in the past 30 years, we’re left to guess at what actually works.

For the complete article: Click Here

The McKinsey Global Institute (MGI), the business and economics research arm of McKinsey, was established in 1990 to develop a deeper understanding of the evolving global economy. Our goal is to provide leaders in the commercial, public, and social sectors with the facts and insights on which to base management and policy decisions.

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The Dangers of Food Dyes (Part 2)

Cancer and Other Serious Risks from Food Dyes Revealed

In CSPI's summary of studies on food dyes ⁽²⁾, you can see that some of the most commonly used food dyes may be linked to numerous forms of cancer. CSPI reported ^(3).

"The three most widely used dyes, Red 40, Yellow 5, and Yellow 6, are contaminated with known carcinogens … Another dye, Red 3, has been acknowledged for years by the Food and Drug Administration to be a carcinogen, yet is still in the food supply."

In their 58-page report, "Food Dyes: A Rainbow of Risks," CSPI revealed that nine of the food dyes currently approved for use in the United States are linked to health issues ranging from cancer and hyperactivity to allergy-like reactions -- and these results were from studies conducted by the chemical industry itself.

For instance, Red # 40, which is the most widely used dye, may accelerate the appearance of immune system tumors in mice, while also triggering hyperactivity in children.

Blue # 2, used in candies, beverages, pet foods and more, was linked to brain tumors. And Yellow 5, used in baked goods, candies, cereal and more, may not only be contaminated with several cancer-causing chemicals, but it's also linked to hyperactivity, hypersensitivity and other behavioral effects in children.

As CSPI reported ⁴

"Almost all the toxicological studies on dyes were commissioned, conducted, and analyzed by the chemical industry and academic consultants. Ideally, dyes (and other regulated chemicals) would be tested by independent researchers.

Furthermore, virtually all the studies tested individual dyes, whereas many foods and diets contain mixtures of dyes (and other ingredients) that might lead to additive or synergistic effects.

In addition to considerations of organ damage, cancer, birth defects, and allergic reactions, mixtures of dyes (and Yellow 5 tested alone) cause hyperactivity and other behavioral problems in some children.

… Because of those toxicological considerations, including carcinogenicity, hypersensitivity reactions, and behavioral effects, food dyes cannot be considered safe. The FDA should ban food dyes, which serve no purpose other than a cosmetic effect, though quirks in the law make it difficult to do so (the law should be amended to make it no more difficult to ban food colorings than other food additives).

In the meantime, companies voluntarily should replace dyes with safer, natural colorings."

Remember Why Food Colorings Are Added to Foods in the First Place …

If you need further incentive to ditch artificially colored foods from your diet, remember the reason they're added to processed foods in the first place: to make a food that would otherwise be an off-colored mess look appealing.

When foods are processed not only are valuable nutrients lost and fibers removed, but the texture, natural variation and flavors are lost also. After processing, what's actually left behind is a bland, uninteresting "pseudo-food" that most people would find entirely unappetizing.

So at this point, food manufacturers must add back in the nutrients, flavor, color and texture in order to make them desirable, and this is why they become loaded with food additives.

Most commonly, additives are included to:

Slow spoilage

Prevent fats and oils from becoming rancid or developing an off-flavor

Prevent cut fruits from turning brown

Fortify or enrich the food with synthetic vitamins and minerals (which are lost during processing)

Improve taste, texture, and appearance

In the case of kids' foods, bright colors are also added to attract kids' attention and make the foods appear "fun." But in most cases, if a food comes in an outrageous color that is not found in nature, consuming it is not a good idea.

Take one carefully designed, randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study published in the journal The Lancet ⁽⁵⁾. It concluded that a variety of common food dyes, and the preservative sodium benzoate -- found in many soft drinks, fruit juices and salad dressings -- do in fact cause some children to become measurably more hyperactive and distractible.

The study also found that the E-numbered food dyes do as much damage to children's brains as lead in gasoline, resulting in a significant reduction in IQ.

The results of this study were what prompted the British Food Standards Agency (FSA) to issue an immediate advisory to parents ⁽⁶⁾, warning them to limit their children's intake of additives if they notice an effect on behavior. As mentioned earlier, they also advised the food industry to voluntarily remove the six food dyes named in the study back in 2009, and replace them with natural alternatives if possible.

The United States, however, has not followed suit in issuing any similar warnings to American parents, even now two years later.

Stick to Naturally Colored Foods for Your Health

Let me make it clear that your diet should include a range of vibrantly colored foods … but these foods should be the ones that are naturally rich in color. Red bell peppers, purple eggplant, green spinach, blueberries and rainbow chard are all examples of healthy foods whose bright colors are signs of the important nutrients they contain.

These are the food colors you need in your diet … not the man-made varieties found in most processed foods. The good news is avoiding artificial food dyes is incredibly easy -- just stick to whole fresh foods and avoid the processed ones. If you need help breaking an addiction to processed foods, these seven steps will help you wean off of them in favor of healthier, unprocessed, natural alternatives.

(2) Center for Science in the Public Interest, Summary of Studies on Food Dyes (PDF)
(3) Center for Science in the Public Interest
(4) Center for Science in the Public Interest, Food Dyes: A Rainbow of Risks (PDF
(5) The Lancet November 3, 2007
(6) British Food Standards Agency, Food Additives and Hyperactivity (PDF)

Source:http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2011/02/24/are-you-or-your-family-eating-toxic-food-dyes.aspx

For additional information, go to http://www.newsmaxhealth.com/Dr-Blaylock/food-dyes-toxic-substances-processed-foods-DrRussell-Blaylock/2013/09/11/id/525051/

Or http://www.diseaseproof.com/archives/food-safety-dangers-associated-with-food-dyes.html

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THE DANGERS OF FOOD DYES

(Note: This is the first of two articles on the dangers of food dye. Once again, the EU is way ahead of the US. I believe the US lawmakers are more corrupt than our EU counterparts and therefore, big business can’t dictate health and safety concerns to the EU.)

Food dyes are one of the most widely used and dangerous additives. While the European Union has recently placed regulations on labeling food dyes to inform consumers of the health risks, the United States has no such requirement.

Here are some of the most common food dyes used today, according to the Food Freedom Network:

Blue #1 (Brilliant Blue)
An unpublished study suggested the possibility that Blue 1 caused kidney tumors in mice. What it's in: Baked goods, beverages, desert powders, candies, cereal, drugs, and other products.

Blue #2 (Indigo Carmine)
Causes a statistically significant incidence of tumors, particularly brain gliomas, in male rats. What it's in: Colored beverages, candies, pet food, & other food and drugs.

Citrus Red #2
It's toxic to rodents at modest levels and caused tumors of the urinary bladder and possibly other organs. What it's in: Skins of Florida oranges.

Green #3 (Fast Green)
Caused significant increases in bladder and testes tumors in male rats. What it's in: Drugs, personal care products, cosmetic products except in eye area, candies, beverages, ice cream, sorbet, ingested drugs, lipsticks, and externally applied cosmetics.

Red #3 (Erythrosine)
Recognized in 1990 by the FDA as a thyroid carcinogen in animals and is banned in cosmetics and externally applied drugs. What it's in: Sausage casings, oral medication, maraschino cherries, baked goods, and candies.

Red #40 (Allura Red)
This is the most-widely used and consumed dye. It may accelerate the appearance of immune system tumors in mice. It also causes hypersensitivity (allergy-like) reactions in some consumers and might trigger hyperactivity in children. What it's in: Beverages, bakery goods, dessert powders, candies, cereals, foods, drugs, and cosmetics.

Yellow #5 (Tartrazine)
Yellow 5 causes sometimes-severe hypersensitivity reactions and might trigger hyperactivity and other behavioral effects in children. What it's in: Pet foods, numerous bakery goods, beverages, dessert powders, candies, cereals, gelatin desserts, and many other foods, as well as pharmaceuticals and cosmetics.

Yellow #6 (Sunset Yellow)
Caused adrenal tumors in animals and occasionally causes severe hypersensitivity reactions. What it's in: Color bakery goods, cereals, beverages, dessert powders, candies, gelatin deserts, sausage, cosmetics, and drugs.

Every year, food manufacturers pour 15 million pounds of artificial food dyes into U.S. foods -- and that amount only factors in eight different varieties, according to the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI).

These dyes are so common in U.S. foods -- especially kids' foods -- that parents don't think twice about giving their children rainbow-colored cereal or fluorescent blue "juice," and adults don't consider bright orange cheese puffs out of the ordinary, either.

But you might do a double take if these food packages contained warnings detailing what these artificial food colorings may really be doing to your health, and that of your children.

Well, in the European Union at least, they do. As of July 2010, most foods in the EU that contain artificial food dyes were labeled with warning labels ⁽¹⁾ stating the food "may have an adverse effect on activity and attention in children." The British government also asked that food manufacturers remove most artificial colors from foods back in 2009.

In the United States, however, consumers are still snatching up artificially colored foods with fervor, as most are completely unaware of the risks involved … and let me just say, hyperactivity in children is only the tip of the iceberg.

Stay tuned for Part 2

Source: http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2011/02/24/are-you-or-your-family-eating-toxic-food-dyes.aspx

(1) 1 Center for Science in the Public Interest, July 2010

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Cereal Killers - The Movie

By Dr. Mercola

The persistent myth that dietary fat causes obesity and promotes heart disease has undoubtedly ruined the health of millions of people. It's difficult to know just how many people have succumbed to chronic poor health from following conventional low-fat, high-carb recommendations, but I'm sure the number is significant.

In the featured documentary, Cereal Killers, 41-year-old Donal O'Neill turns the American food pyramid upside-down—eliminating sugars and grains, and dramatically boosting his fat intake. In so doing, he improves his health to the point of reducing his hereditary risk factors for heart disease to nil.

Watching people's reactions to his diet brings home just how brainwashed we've all become when it comes to dietary fat. Most fear it. Yet they will consume sugar in amounts that virtually guarantee they'll suffer all the devastating health consequences they're trying to prevent by avoiding fat, and then some!

Fat versus Carbs—What Really Makes You Pack on the Pounds?

The fact is, you've been thoroughly misled when it comes to conventional dietary advice. Most dietary guidelines have been massively distorted, manipulated, and influenced by the very industries responsible for the obesity epidemic in the first place—the sugar and processed food industries.

Shunning the evidence, many doctors, nutritionists, and government health officials will still tell you to keep your saturated fat below 10 percent, while keeping the bulk of your diet, about 60 percent, as carbs.(1)This is madness, as it's the converse of a diet that will lead to optimal health.

A recent Time Magazine (2) article highlighted a report by the Environmental Working Group (EWG), which showed that many breakfast cereals contain more than 50 percent sugar by weight! Cereals marketed specifically to children are among the worst offenders. Kellogg's Honey Smacks and Mom's Best Cereals Honey-Ful Wheat topped the list with 56 percent sugar by weight.

Even diabetes organizations promote carbohydrates as a major component of a healthy diet—even though grains break down to sugar in your body, and sugar promotes insulin resistance, which is the root cause of type 2 diabetes in the first place.

As noted in the film: "If we could get all diabetics to eat a high-fat, high-protein, low-carbohydrate diet, we would cut the insulin requirement so dramatically that it's been estimated that six pharmaceutical companies would go out of business tomorrow." Contrary to popular belief, you do not get fat from eating fat. You get fat from eating too much sugar and grains.

Refined carbohydrates promote chronic inflammation in your body, elevate low-density LDL cholesterol, and ultimately lead to insulin and leptin resistance. Insulin and leptin resistance, in turn, is at the heart of obesity and most chronic disease, including diabetes, heart disease, cancer, and Alzheimer's—all the top killers in the US.

END OF BLOG POST

To learn more about this subject and to see the original article, go to http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2014/05/24/cereal-killers-movie.aspx

The following additional topics are discussed in the article.

• Don't Fear the Fat
  
• Saturated Fat and Cholesterol Are Both Necessary for Optimal Health
  
• There's reason to believe that low-fat diets and/or cholesterol-lowering drugs may cause or contribute to Alzheimer's disease. (3)
  
• Replacing Refined Carbs with Healthy Fat—The Answer to Most of Your Health Concerns
  
• What's the Deal with Protein?
  
• Your Health Is Within Your Control
  
  

(1) US Department of Agriculture, Dietary Guidelines for Americans 2010 (PDF) Time
(2) May 15, 2014
(3) Stephanie Seneff, APOE-4: The Clue to Why Low Fat Diet and Statins may Cause Alzheimer's

_________________________________________

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Drinking Water Protects Against Fatal Heart Attack

Drinking Water Helps Reduce Heart Disease Risk

Want to lower your risk of having a heart attack? Drink more water, and less of everything else, new research reports.

Researchers at Loma Linda University in California found that people who drank at least five glasses of water each day were less likely to die from heat attack than those who drank two or fewer glasses per day.

In contrast, people who drank a lot of other fluids (soda, juice, coffee, tea) were more likely to die from heart attack than those who drank less, with high levels of non-water drinking women associated with more than a two-fold increased risk of death.

Officials at the college said the results reveal that drinking high amounts of plain water is as important as exercise, diet, or not smoking in preventing coronary heart disease. “Basically, not drinking enough water can be as harmful to your heart as smoking,” said Dr. Jacqueline Chan, principle investigator and lead author of the article.

The study followed 20,000 Seven Day Adventists for 6 years. They found that women who drank more than five 8-ounce glasses of water a day were 41% less likely to die from heart attack during the study period than those who drank two or fewer glasses. In high-water consuming men, that risk decreased by 54%.

But when they looked at consumption of other fluids, including coffee, tea, juice, milk and alcohol, the risk was reversed, with women exhibiting a more than two-fold higher risk of dying of heart attack and men a 46% increased risk.

While not glamorous, the degree of benefit from drinking plain water reportedly surpasses drinking moderate amounts of alcohol, taking aspirin, and other preventive measures, with none of the adverse side effects. The researchers think that drinking water keeps the blood thin. Other types of liquid probably do not do this as well, or have a negative effect. Drinks that contain the stimulant caffeine, such as coffee and tea, probably have a diuretic effect. Soft drinks and juices are full of fast sugars. In studies where subjects were made to drink three glasses of grape juice a day, the concentration of triglycerides in their blood rose as a result by fifty percent, and by thirty percent in the subjects who drank the same amount of orange juice. Triglycerides [or fats in ordinary language] in the blood increase the risk of a heart attack.

Drinking more water has no side effects and can only do you good.

Source: http://www.ergo-log.com/waterheart.html

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Obesity's Causes and Repercussions

Obesity's causes and repercussions continue to be topics of research.

Fries and pies aren’t the only reasons Americans are obese.

The following article originally appeared on AlterNet.

Americans have become huge. Between the 1960s and the 2000s, Americans grew, on the average, an inch taller and 24 pounds heavier. The average American man today weights 194 pounds and the average woman 165 pounds. The growing girth has led to the creation of special-sized ambulances, operating tables and coffins as well as bigger seats on planes and trains. Almost a third of American children and teens are overweight, but 84 percent of parents believe their children are at a healthy weight in one study. Why? The adults are probably overweight too.

Still there are scientific reasons why Americans are blimping up and they aren’t limited to eating too much and exercising too little. Here are a few areas under suspicion.

1. Antibiotics in food and as medicine. A recent article in the New York Times confirms suspicions that the antibiotics routinely given to livestock to make them fat do the same thing to people. Antibiotics are thought to fatten by changing gut bacteria to make absorption of nutrients more efficient. In 1974, an experiment was done on several hundred Navy recruits to see if they would gain weight on antibiotics and, after only seven weeks, they did. An experiment was also done, unethically it sounds, on “mentally deficient spastic” children in Guatemala in the 1950s, reports the Times. The children gained an extra five pounds over a year compared with children who were not given antibiotics. Denmark researchers found babies given antibiotics within six months of birth were more likely to be overweight by age seven.

Most researchers blame over-prescription of antibiotics for excessive human exposure; US children get as many as 20 antibiotic treatments while they are growing up, says Martin Blaser, a leading antibiotic researcher at New York University Langone Medical Center. But studies show there are antibiotic residues in US food too, especially in meat and milk, and the government tests for them. That means even if you avoid unnecessary antibiotics from the doctor, you could be getting them from the grocery store.

2. Other livestock fatteners. If antibiotics used to make livestock fat could make us fat, is there any reason to think other weight-producing drugs for livestock wouldn’t do the same?Ractopamine, marketed as Paylean for pigs, Optaflexx for cattle and Topmax for turkeys is widely used in the US and banned in many other countries. It is given to 60 to 80 percent of US pigs, 30 percent of ration-fed cattle and an undisclosed number of turkeys. There is no withdrawal period for ractopamine before slaughter but Big Ag says the drug is not in the meat because it exits the animal as manure. Okay, but what happens to the manure?

Also banned in European countries are the hormones US cattle growers rely upon, such as oestradiol-17, trenbolone acetate, zeranol and melengestrol. Zeranol may have more actions than just making mammals fat. It is a “powerful estrogenic chemical, as demonstrated by its ability to stimulate growth and proliferation of human breast tumor cells in vitro at potencies similar to those of the natural hormone estradiol and the known carcinogen diethylstilbestrol,” says the Breast Cancer Fund. Translation: it may be linked to US breast cancer rates, too.

No wonder Europe doesn’t want our beef.

3. Pesticides and other endocrine disrupters. Some antibiotics and artificial sweeteners are similar molecules to endocrine disrupters—the chemicals used to make fire retardants and plastics that are increasingly in our food and environment. Endocrine disrupters, like BPA (Bisphenol A), banned in some baby bottles, and Triclosan found in Colgate’s Total and many dish detergents, are linked to a host of shocking symptoms like genital deformities in wildlife and infertility, low sperm counts and possible early puberty and diabetes in humans. But they also may be linked to obesity.

As early as 2003, the journal Toxicological Sciences addressed effects that endocrine disruptors have on fetal development that likely play a role in adult obesity. “Obesity has been proposed to be yet another adverse health effect of exposure to endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs) during critical stages of development,” echoes an article in the International Journal of Andrology. Pregnant women with high levels of the endocrine disrupter PFOA (perfluorooctanoic acid used in the manufacture of as Teflon and Gore-Tex) in their bodies were three times as likely to have daughters who grew up to be overweight, reported the New York Times’ Nicholas Kristof.

4. Sugar substitutes. Artificial sweeteners have always been billed as a way to cut calories and lose weight. But recent research shows they may do just the opposite. When researchers at the University of Texas Health Science Center studied 474 people who drank two or more artificially sweetened soft drinks a day they found the people gained five times as much as those not drinking diet drinks. Thanks for nothing!

There are three reasons artificial sweeteners may do more harm than good. One is that some of the sweeteners—which tend to be chemicals like acesulfame potassium and aspartame—may slow metabolism, speculate researchers. Secondly, artificial sweeteners separate “food seeking behavior” from the “reward” of real nutrients and can set up sweets addictions because the reward is never received. They literally “train” people to crave sweets. Finally the presence of artificial sweeteners in a product doesn’t automatically mean natural sweeteners aren’t present too. Some food manufacturers use both. Read the label. Marion Nestle, a professor in nutrition, food studies and public health at New York University and leading food expert, told me she isn’t aware of any convincing evidence that proves artificial sweeteners help people to lose weight. One artificial sweetener, Splenda, has similarities to endocrine disrupting pesticides….

5. Industry and government marketing. Most people are aware of aggressive junk food marketing, especially to children, and everyone from Disneyland to First Lady Michelle Obama has spoken out about it. In a study in the journal Pediatrics, children who tasted identical graham crackers and gummy fruit snacks, some with and some without cartoon characters, “significantly preferred the taste of foods that had popular cartoon characters on the packaging.” Who says advertising doesn’t work?

Researchers who studied 500,000 California middle- and high-school students found those who attended schools located near fast-food outlets—surprise!—weighed more. Still, it is not just the food industry that is responsible for our growing national girth.

The USDA, even though it cautions food consumers about high-fat, obesity-linked foods, plays the other side of the street as well and is linked to a group that seeks to get people to double their cheese intake to help milk sales. Dairy Management, a USDA “marketing creation” with 162 employees, according to the New York Times, has helped Pizza Hut, Taco Bell, Burger King, Wendy’s and Domino’s cheesify their menu options!

“If every pizza included one more ounce of cheese, we would sell an additional 250 million pounds of cheese annually,” rhapsodized the Dairy Management chief executive in a trade publication. Though Dairy Management is mostly funded by farmers, it received $5.3 million from the USDA during one year, for an overseas dairy campaign, which almost equals the total $6.5 million budget of USDA’s Center for Nutrition Policy and Promotion—the group that cautions us about fatty foods like cheese. Yes, the government is talking out of both sides of its mouth when it tells the public what to put in its mouth.

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You Might want to rethink a Gluten free diet

Going gluten-free is all the rage these days. It's the diet of choice for Hollywood starlets and health nuts alike; supermarket aisles are packed full of products touting their lack of the stretchy protein. But for a lot of people, the gluten-free lifestyle may do more harm than good.

What Is Gluten?

Gluten is a sticky, stretchable protein found in grains like wheat, barley, oats, and rye. Formed during the kneading process, gluten chains create a matrix that traps carbon dioxide bubbles produced by the fermenting yeast. This gives bread its chewiness, pizza dough its stretchiness, and acts as a thickening agent in dozens of products from salad dressing to soy sauce. Even beer contains a fair amount.

Gluten is a relatively new addition to the human diet. For a large portion of our species' evolution, humans subsisted primarily on animal protein supplemented with fruits, vegetables, nuts, and seeds. It wasn't until the start of the Neolithic era—around 9500 BC—and the transition to agriculture that we began consuming carbohydrates and gluten in the form of grains. In evolutionary terms, we might as well have started yesterday. Just as our teeth are still built for tearing through meat and plants rather than processed flour, our digestive system has not yet fully adapted to adequately handle complex carbohydrates (the same goes for bovine lactose—milk) and lacks the ability to fully break down gluten molecules into its component amino acids.

For most people, this is no big deal. Even though the body doesn't fully process the gluten or lactose, no harm comes of it and we're no worse for wear. However for the one in seven Americans that suffers from a sensitivity to gluten, consuming it can lead to severe intestinal distress.

And even that discomfort is a walk in the park compared to what happens when someone who suffers from celiac disease—full blown gluten intolerance—eats the stuff. For them, any amount of the protein will trigger a massive autoimmune response within the gut as the body's defenses attack gliadin, a glycoprotein found in gluten. Unfortunately, this response also damages the villi of the small intestine (villi are the tiny structures that absorb nutrients from digesting food) which, if left untreated, can result in symptoms ranging from diarrhea, bloating, and abdominal pain to Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS), intestinal ulcers, intestinal cancer, and a host of nutrient deficiencies.

Once regarded as an rare digestive malady afflicting maybe 1 in 10,000 people worldwide, celiac disease is now considered one of the most common genetic disorders in the western world by the Center for Celiac Disease Research at the University of Maryland. According to a 2003 study published in the Archives of Internal Medicine celiac disease affects an estimated 1 in 133 people in America alone. Being a hereditary disorder, celiac disease runs in the family. Your chances of being diagnosed with it jump from 1 in 133 to 1 in 39 if a cousin, aunt, or uncle has it; 1 in 22 if a member of your immediate family does. Interestingly, celiac disease is far less common for Americans of African, Hispanic, and Asian descent—just 1 in 236. What's more, this disease has shown a marked propensity to occur in combination with lactose intolerance, as well as with type 1 diabetes.

Not Just Another Atkins Diet

Where there is a disease, there is a marketing opportunity. As celiac disease has gained notoriety, an increasing number of people have begun self-diagnosing as gluten sensitive, and consequently have adopted gluten-free lifestyles. It's also been touted as a new-age cure-all for a number of maladies including migraines and fibromyalgia, though there is little scientific data to support such claims. Going gluten-free, unless recommended by a physician, is a bad call according to Carol M. Shilson, executive director of the Center for Celiac Disease Research.

"There's no scientific evidence that it's better for you if you don't have celiac disease," Shilson told the Journal Sentinel. In fact, given the difficulty our bodies have digesting gluten as it is, "it's very hard to go back to a regular diet" after any prolonged lapse in its consumption. Heck, just eliminating gluten in the first place is a challenge given its ubiquitous use as a thickening agent. Consequently, much of the weight-loss benefit brought on by giving up gluten is due to the severely restrictive diet one must follow.

As Mark DeMeo, M.D., director of gastroenterology and nutrition at the Adult Celiac Disease Program at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago told Women's Health, "there's nothing magical about a gluten-free diet that's going to help you lose weight."

In fact, doing so can have the opposite effect. As Shelley Case, R.D., author of Gluten-Free Diet: A Comprehensive Resource Guide and a medical advisory board member for the Celiac Disease Foundation, explained to Women's Health, without gluten to hold baked goods together, food manufacturers will often use fats and sugar instead.

That means, Case continued, going gluten-free can potentially increase your risk of developing a micronutrient deficiency, especially if you rely on hyper-processed and fat/sugar-packed, packaged foods rather than the nutritionally stable and vitamin-packed fresh fruits, vegetables, and gluten-free grains (like quinoa) you should be eating anyway.

While there is no reliable means of testing for a gluten sensitivity, a simple blood test can determine whether or not someone suffers from celiac disease by identifying specific anti-gluten antibodies.

"Because it is a lifelong genetic disease that can be passed on, it's important to get a proper diagnosis," Shilson said. "And you have to be eating a regular diet (with gluten) or all the diagnostic tests will be rendered invalid." And even if the results come back positive, an intestinal biopsy may be first necessary to confirm it. So before you start stocking up on quinoa, make sure to talk to your doctor. And unless your body has a genuine sensitivity, think about limiting your glutens instead of replacing them with stuff that's even worse.

Sources:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gluten
http://www.jsonline.com/features/food/92134239.html
http://www.massgeneral.org/children/services/treatmentprograms.aspx?id=1723
http://www.womenshealthmag.com/health/gluten-free-diet
http://www.mnn.com/food/healthy-eating/stories/what-is-gluten

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For information on nutrition and losing weight, go to Rays Nutrition Center
or contact me at: raybarmore@gmail.com

Ray R Barmore
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The Herbal Guy
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619-876-5273
Skype: barmore4

Other Blog:
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