Foods to Avoid

[doodle]

I'm going to be trying to put together a simple and repeatable diet with moderate diversity. Before I do so, I would appreciate it if anyone could post foods that they think I should either entirely eliminate from my diet or eat in extreme moderation. I don't want to make something the foundation of my diet that could potentially cause health problems. Im not allergic to any food and don't have any gluten intolerances or anything so Im not a sensitive eater. Thanks!!

[dualstow]

It seems to me that if you put enough diets together and avoid everything they proscribe, there'll be nothing left to eat!
Still, some foods keep coming up on the list:

Refined wheat flour, like what you will find in bagels and white bread.

Some forms of soy, like textured vegetable protein (TVP) are taboo in a lot of modern diets, though I don't know why. Fermented soy, like tofu and tamari (soy sauce without the wheat), are better, just as beer is better than unfermented wheat.

[smurff]

Avoid meat and eggs from animals fed an unnatural diet or kept in inhumane conditions.

Avoid genetically modified organisms in food.

[Pointedstick]

Avoid sugary drinks such as soda and fruit juice.

Avoid heating vegetable oils to high heat.

Avoid processed wheat and things made from it.

Avoid beans that have not been soaked, sprouted, or fermented (soaking is not hard at all FYI)

Avoid "foods" made largely from non-food products (e.g. artificial sweeteners, corn syrup, hydrogenated oils, hydrolized soy protein, red 8, etc)

Avoid Taco Bell. 

[MachineGhost]

The Big Three: Omega-6, Fructose, Grains/Legumes/Nuts/Seeds.  Basically, don't eat like a vegetarian/vegan.

As a side note, in India since companies now produce fake ghee made from trans-fats or other refined oils instead of saturated fats, heart disease and diabetes is skyrocketing.  Probably obesity too but I haven't seen any reports of that.  Indians tend to be very skinny historically.

[moda0306]

The Big Three: Omega-6, Fructose, Grains/Legumes/Nuts/Seeds.  Basically, don't eat like a vegetarian/vegan.

Wait what about almonds?  I heard these are phenomenal for you.

[doodle]

Im thinking a burrito bowl type diet...in other words keeping these ingredients on constant supply and just mixing them together in one bowl in the approximate proportions and eating this twice a day or so...

A base of rice or some other grain like buckwheat or quinoa (30%)
Beans of some sort...lentils, blackbeans, etc. (10%)
Nuts...(10%)
Meat or eggs (20%)
Vegetables (30%)

[dualstow]

Beans of some sort...lentils, blackbeans, etc. (10%)

I love lentils. One billion Indians can't be wrong.

[Benko]

Doodle,

Eating the same food twice a day forever MAY be just fine for many people with totally healthy guts, but for other people reading this, doing that forever may be a good way to CAUSE food allergies in susceptable people.

dualstow

Neither Kresser (see other thread) nor GUmby (based on his food choices in his post) consider lentils bad (at least in the sense of bad for everyone).

[doodle]

Doodle,

Eating the same food twice a day forever MAY be just fine for many people with totally healthy guts, but for other people reading this, doing that forever may be a good way to CAUSE food allergies in susceptable people.

Why would that cause food allergies...provided you werent allergic to the food to begin with?

[MachineGhost]

Why would that cause food allergies...provided you werent allergic to the food to begin with?

When you eat too much of the same food that causes a leaky gut, your body eventually develops antibodies to it and hence you develop allergies over time.  So, if you're going to be fooling around with Grains/Legumes/Nuts/Seeds then do it on a rotation diet and only eat this category every 4 days (3 days in-between) so your gut has a chance to heal and your immune system not overreact.

[dualstow]

dualstow

Neither Kresser (see other thread) nor GUmby (based on his food choices in his post) consider lentils bad (at least in the sense of bad for everyone).

I'd eat them happily anyway, but I am glad to hear the news.
Now if you could tell me that bacon is good for me, I'll be ecstatic. Or even, that bacon is not to be avoided. That'd be good enough.

[MachineGhost]

Now if you could tell me that bacon is good for me, I'll be ecstatic. Or even, that bacon is not to be avoided. That'd be good enough.

Bacon is pork, but it is cured.  Judgement call.

Not to poop on anyone's parade, but I react to lentils too.  They are no different than any other legume in my sore experience.  Just as peas are no different from peanuts.

[rocketdog]

You didn't say what your goal was.  Losing weight?  More energy?  Better overall health?  Longevity?  Your goal will impact the advice people give you. 

But as a general rule, avoid anything patently unnatural: highly refined foods, heavily preserved foods, foods with ingredients you can't pronounce, foods with more than about 5 ingredients (unless those ingredients are herbs and spices, aside from salt). 

And most important of all, eat a wide variety of foods, to minimize the chance of over-exposing yourself to something harmful. 

[Benko]

Not to poop on anyone's parade, but I react to lentils too.  They are no different than any other legume in my sore experience.  Just as peas are no different from peanuts.

Kresser didn't say that legumes ( e.g.Lentils) were good for everyone, or that no one reacted badly to them.

What he said was:  "...legumes and nightshades. They aren’t Paleo, but I haven’t seen any evidence to convince me that these foods play a significant role in the modern disease epidemic.

As I've said, the gut lining is made of rapidly dividing cells which quickly replace themself.  Perhaps the offending foods irritate the gut lining to varying degrees with some foods being more irritating than others, and people having more irritation resistent (or not) guts.  So some people can probably eat the worst irritating food daily without problem, but many cannot. Many probably can't even tolerate mildly irritating foods.  Finding out what works for you, is the key.  ANd it is important to remember that emotions play a whopping role in fucking up the gut.  So dealing with one's emotions can make the gut deal better with many of these things (MUCH easier said than done).

[MachineGhost]

Don't know why this hasn't been posted here before!

[align=center][/align]

Moda will be happy about the nuts!  I guess I stand corrected on that one.

[rocketdog]

Avoid vegetable oils but eat tallow and lard?  What genius came up with that?!   FInd me their address so I can send them a get-well card after their heart transplant. 

[Pointedstick]

Avoid vegetable oils but eat tallow and lard?  What genius came up with that?!   Find me their address so I can send them a get-well card after their heart transplant. 

Methinks you have some more reading to do. What exactly makes you think that the animal fats are bad for you but that the vegetable oils are okay? Vegetable oils are very delicate and prone to spoilage and oxidation. And some them are basically reprocessed industrial lubricants (canola oil, for example). You really gotta read up on this stuff.

[moda0306]

Avoid vegetable oils but eat tallow and lard?  What genius came up with that?!   FInd me their address so I can send them a get-well card after their heart transplant. 

Rocketdog,

This is going to sound condescending, but swallow the red pill and visit the site or the Perfect Health Diet.  It's the PP of diet IMO... That feeling of being pissed as hell because you either feel you've been lied to your whole life or are being lied to right now is just what I felt.  Beans, whole grains, and avoid red meat and you'll be fine right?  No.

I know the feeling.  I've swallowed the red pill.  It's like MR or the PP...  A big epiphany will happen.  I promise.

[Ad Orientem]

I am not a fan of crazy diets. I think most dietary issues are common sense. That said here is what I cut out on my way from 250+ lbs  down to around 190 today.

1 Soda. Niet nine none notta zilch exnay.
2. Desserts potato chips candy pastries donuts and sugary junk food. Extremely rare treats only.
3. Ice cream. OK I cheat a little on the ice cream, but only a little.
4. Most fast food. Subway might not kill you but most of the rest of the stuff is crap.
5. Fried foods. Rare treats only.
6. Red meat (i.e. beef). Treats and special events are OK. But not part of the regular diet. I prefer poultry and pork, grilled is best. Fish is also very healthy though I never acquired much of a taste for seafood.

[Gumby]

I am not a fan of crazy diets.

Depends on your point of reference. If you told someone in the 1800s that people in the future would shun fat, they would have thought you were crazy.

Turns out the "low fat" recommendations we all grew up with were dreamed up by food industry lobbyists who convinced a few senators to make those recommendations. There wasn't any "science" behind those recommendations.

6. Red meat (i.e. beef). Treats and special events are OK. But not part of the regular diet. I prefer poultry and pork, grilled is best. Fish is also very healthy though I never acquired much of a taste for seafood.

There is very little scientific evidence to condemn red meat. If you looked into it, you would lose your faith in "evidence-based science". It's a joke.

See Kresser's 9-part series debunking every meat myth you can think of:

http://chriskresser.com/the-truth-about-red-meat

And consider that (grass-fed) red meat has been eaten for millions of years. Carnivores eat meat — literally all the time — and there's nothing particularly special about carnivores that keeps them healthier than omnivores like us when consuming red meat (same acid/pepsin-based stomachs and small cecums). (However, too much of anything is not good for you. It's not recommended to consume more than 1 Lb of total meat per day as it can contribute towards ammonia toxicity — but that's a lot more meat than most people can tolerate).

Pork and Poultry are often high in Omega-6 (depends on the diet of the pork/poultry), but I still eat them a few times a week (all locally sourced) and my Omega 3/6 ratio has been fine. Wouldn't make them my staple meats though.

Fish is good, of course — provided it's from clean, sustainable sources. Fish is high in good polyunsaturates (i.e. Omega-3s), but it's best not to abuse those polyunsaturates. So, don't over-heat them and maybe avoid alcohol with fish consumption (since alcohol+polyunsaturates seems to be correlated with liver toxicity). It's gets tricky when you start thinking about food combinations like that!

[rocketdog]

Avoid vegetable oils but eat tallow and lard?  What genius came up with that?!   Find me their address so I can send them a get-well card after their heart transplant. 

Methinks you have some more reading to do. What exactly makes you think that the animal fats are bad for you but that the vegetable oils are okay? Vegetable oils are very delicate and prone to spoilage and oxidation. And some them are basically reprocessed industrial lubricants (canola oil, for example). You really gotta read up on this stuff.

Eating animal fat as part of the animal itself (such as the fat marbling in beef) is one thing.  My impression was that the recommendation is to use tallow or lard in place of all vegetable oils. 

I've read enough articles, books, and studies on dietary issues over the past 25 years to have a very solid perspective on it.  In fact, all that research is what convinced me to become vegetarian in 1991.  As a result my health has improved more than even I would have believed. 

I used to get strep throat every year (sometimes twice a year), but I've literally never had it again since becoming vegetarian.  My physical exams are the stuff of legend at my doctor's office (after one particularly thorough physical exam, my doctor remarked that if all his patients were like me he would be out of a job ). 

My wife is not a vegetarian, but she naturally gets exposed to a lot of vegetarian meals with me around.  When I moved in with her before we got married, at her next physical exam her doctor was surprised to see that her numbers had all markedly improved and asked her why.  (Hint: it wasn't my charming personality. )

[rocketdog]

Avoid vegetable oils but eat tallow and lard?  What genius came up with that?!   FInd me their address so I can send them a get-well card after their heart transplant. 

Rocketdog,

This is going to sound condescending, but swallow the red pill and visit the site or the Perfect Health Diet.  It's the PP of diet IMO... That feeling of being pissed as hell because you either feel you've been lied to your whole life or are being lied to right now is just what I felt.  Beans, whole grains, and avoid red meat and you'll be fine right?  No.

I know the feeling.  I've swallowed the red pill.  It's like MR or the PP...  A big epiphany will happen.  I promise.

I view the body of literature as a whole to see what the professional consensus is, and replacing vegetable oils with lard and tallow is not the consensus.  Not by far.  Now, if that's where the consensus eventually leads, then I'll be happy to revisit the topic.  But right now it's a decidedly fringe idea, one that I'm concerned will lead many unsuspecting people towards long-term health problems down the road.  And with an aging baby boomer population entering their golden years just as Obamacare is about to kick in, an unhealthy citizenry is the last thing we need. 

I know it's an appealing proposition:  "You mean I can skip eating beans and instead eat lots of animal fat with no ill health effects?!?!  Yahoo!!!"  But to overturn decades and decades of research on the optimal human diet will take more than a few researchers touting a diet plan that they know all-too-well will have immense appeal to the average person who doesn't want to be denied their favorite foods. 

That said, everyone is free to eat whatever they want, and I guess we'll all eventually find out which diet is better.  Of course, by then it will be too late for any of us to do anything about it. 

[moda0306]

rocketdog,

I have a much, much harder time avoiding grain/corn based food than avoiding fats.  It's brutal. 

Further, I'm pretty vehimently against the Atkins Diet.  It's way too unbalanced and there's no focus on whether the mea you're eating was properly raised.

Do you have any curiosity at least around Omega6/Omega3 ratios?  How about the idea that at the very least, phytates, if not downright destructive, at least contribute to very little of the micro-nutient value in grains getting into our system.

I mean what can grains truly provide that can't be better obtained by eating potatoes and other vegetables?

[Gumby]

Eating animal fat as part of the animal itself (such as the fat marbling in beef) is one thing.  My impression was that the recommendation is to use tallow or lard in place of all vegetable oils.

Tallow is full of fat-soluble vitamins (A,D,E and K) and conjugated linoleic acids (CLA). Lard from pastured pigs is the second richest source of vitamin D (Cod Liver Oil is #1) and lard is over four times richer in vitamin D than its nearest competitor, herring.

Interestingly, lard's fat profile isn't too distant from olive oil:

- Lard is approx 48% monounsaturated, 40% saturated fat and 12% polyunsaturated fat.
- Olive oil is approx 75% monounsaturated, 13% saturated fat, 10% omega-6 linoleic acid and 2% omega-3 linolenic acid.

Both lard and tallow are very stable and don't oxidize very easily — which is why they are naturally solid at room temperature. Unlike vegetable oils — which are unstable, and liquid at room temperature. Most vegetable oils are oxidized through the refinement process before they are even placed in the bottle. If you knew how vegetable oil was made, you'd never want to eat it again.

As a result my health has improved more than even I would have believed...I used to get strep throat every year (sometimes twice a year), but I've literally never had it again since becoming vegetarian.

Not to be crass, but if your previous diet was a Standard American Diet (SAD) your health would have improved dramatically even if you transitioned to a high quality dog-food diet (the biologically appropriate ones are actually very nutrient dense). Anything is better than SAD. You shouldn't assume it was the lack of meat. More likely it was the reduction of processed foods.

Also, vegetarians tend to have a "healthy user effect". The fact that you started training for a "marathon" after converting to vegetarianism corroborates that effect (i.e. you took other steps to improve your health that had nothing to do with diet).

My physical exams are the stuff of legend at my doctor's office (after one particularly thorough physical exam, my doctor remarked that if all his patients were like me he would be out of a job ).

What your doctor believes, and reality are two different things. Let me guess, you have low cholesterol? Yes, the "consensus" is that low cholesterol is better. Unfortunatelty that ideology is based on a myth.

Gary Taubes explains:

...Statin drugs like Zocor and Lipitor lower LDL cholesterol and also prevent heart attacks. The higher the potency of statins, the greater the cholesterol lowering and the fewer the heart attacks. This is perceived as implying cause and effect: statins reduce LDL cholesterol and prevent heart disease, so reducing LDL cholesterol prevents heart disease. This belief is held with such conviction that the Food and Drug Administration now approves drugs to prevent heart disease, as it did with Zetia, solely on the evidence that they lower LDL cholesterol.

But the logic is specious because most drugs have multiple actions. It’s like insisting that aspirin prevents heart disease by getting rid of headaches.

Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/27/opini ... .html?_r=0

In other words, it's never been proven that lowering cholesterol is what prevents heart disease. Not by a long shot. All that was shown is that statins happen to lower the "relative risk" of heart attacks (by reducing inflammation) while also lowering cholesterol. The government took this data and literally applied it to diet without proving the relationship. The entire myth was actually shattered in recent years when a number of other pharmaceuticals (torcetrapib, Vytorin, estrogen therapy and others) lowered LDL while increasing the incidence of heart disease.

Sure enough, if you avoid looking at mythical "risk factors" and actually look at the raw public data (in this case, from the British Heart Foundation cross referenced with the World Health Organization), we see that higher cholesterol (<260) is associated with longevity in all-causes of mortality — including heart disease:

[align=center][/align]

So much for conventional wisdom.

The real data suggests that people with "low cholesterol" don't live as long as people with higher cholesterol. And this makes sense, since cholesterol is used for many different things in the body — including fighting infections, building cell walls, and as a precursor to Serotonin (the "happiness" hormone) to name a few. Most family doctors learn about cholesterol from pharmaceutical companies, so it's no wonder the myth lives on.