Component Analysis

I’ve been working my way through a lecture called Sugar: The Bitter Truth, and Ancel Keys’ Seven Countries Study came up. The discussion at hand was about the fact that the conclusions drawn were clearly incorrect and that its data could not easily easily be subjected to regression analysis because it pre-dates computers. This doesn’t matter much in this case, because it fails the main test – it does not predict the future. We’ve followed the advice, and wound up fatter and sicker than ever. (The freshest data I can get is 1998.)

We eat 3% more calories than we did before conventional wisdom started striking us over the head with the idea that eating saturated fat is akin to worshipping satan, but you can see where the changes are. We eat less meat and less fat and as a result, we eat more carbohydrates. A lot of this is in the form of what the USDA calls “fruit drinks and ades” and some more of it is from soda, but we do eat 10% more fruits and vegetables (mostly because we eat more *fruit*) and grains (44% more than 1977). We consume 47% less whole milk than in 1977 and 230% more skim milk (no one drank skim milk before, apparently). We have shifted 50% of our meat consumption from red meat to poultry and fish.

We did what we were told to do, and low and behold, the future was NOT sunnier. The future is instead full of fat Americans. Poor people and children are even fatter and sicker as a group then Americans on the whole. Kids, of course, eat a lot more government provided meals via WIC and school lunch programs. If Keys was right, we should not have wound up where we are today.

This yogurt is part of the problem:

People who are healthy and therefore eat a healthy diet eat more fiber, therefore we will be healthier if we eat more fiber. Why would we think this is true? We eat more fiber than we used to – fruit and grains (whole or not) both contain fiber. We also eat 14% more legumes and 17% more nuts and seeds than we did in 1977, so there’s more fiber there too…and yet we still aren’t healthier.

I will posit that people with more fiber in their diet are healthier because they also happen to be eating less food out of boxes, bags and cans. Once you take foods apart into components to process them, they taste worse because they lose their more subtle flavors, so salt and sugar are added to make them palatable again. Most grain products lose virtually all their fiber during the process. Processed food has very little fiber because that makes it spoil faster. Even 100% whole grain breads have added sugar (well, high-fructose corn syrup anyway) because it retards spoilage.

The solution is always to add more of some magical component, in this case, fiber.

Look at olive oil, for instance. We were told that the Mediterreanan Diet is very healthy and since they eat a lot of their fat in the form of olive oil, having us switch to more olive oil is healthy. This data comes largely from the Seven Countries Study, but what you don’t know is this: 60% of the study participants [warning! PDF!] were members of the strict Greek Orthodox Church that prescribes almost 180 days of fasting per year. This was the easiest way I could make my main point here: they follow a system through their culture and lifestyle, and eating more olive oil, fish and yogurt doesn’t even come close to emulating that.

We often hear about the “French Paradox.” While I like wine as much as the next girl, I really doubt an entire country is being protected from heart disease because they drink more wine than we do. French culture has a system of eating that values culture and tradition. If you check that article, you’ll find that most of the French women questioned claim they just eat less, ultimately. That may be true, but their meal size and order is actually quite different from ours.

They start their days earlier than we do, and they eat a Continental Breakfast. That term separates it from the idea of an English Breakfast, which is a closer to what Americans consider to be traditional breakfast. When you’re offered a “free” Continental Breakfast in a hotel in the U.S., it’s generally of much lousier quality than what a French person would be willing to eat, but in any case, they eat early and their pastries are smaller. The French eat their largest and most leisurely meal at lunch time, and that’s not the middle of the afternoon. If you don’t eat when you’re supposed to eat, you aren’t eating because restaurants close in the afternoon. The French eat slower, take food more seriously and eat a smaller dinner. They certainly eat fewer processed foods than we do, and as a result, that breakfast contains butter, not some ersatz-low-cholesterol-processed-crap that you’d find at a Residence Inn. Lunch isn’t a microwaved Lean Cuisine, and it also includes wine. Americans don’t drink at lunch, for the most part, but maybe a glass of wine at lunch reduces stress in the afternoon.

I wouldn’t discount *any* of these things. Getting up early and eating lunch on time probably play a part too.

Adding red wine is not going to help all by itself. Switching out olive oil for butter isn’t going to make much difference, and adding fiber for the sake of fiber is not going to help either. Eating less saturated fat hasn’t caused us to get thinner – it’s had the opposite effect. Taking whole milk away from children over two (yes, that’s what the government says is good and proper) seems to have the opposite effect.

We’re told that we are just not following the USDA recommendations perfectly enough. We’re always told the next component change will make the difference. Kids cereals are now having whole grains added because they can be made palatable and be preserved by the buckets of sugar that are already in there. So, conventional wisdom says that kids will be healthier just because they eat more fiber. I can hardly wait to see the results.