The Life Ledger

Fitness is a way of life.

Doughnut shops next front in trans-fat war (@ cnn.com)

This excerpt pretty much sums up my reaction to the trans-fat movement:

Consumers should not assume, however, that a trans-fat-free doughnut is necessarily healthy, said Marion Nestle, a nutrition professor at New York University.

“My feeling is that the whole trans fat issue is a calorie distraction,” Nestle said. “You think that because it’s trans-fat-free, it doesn’t have any calories. And whatever the substitute is going to be, it’s going to have just as many calories.”

As I discovered yesterday, what the food industry is using to replace trans-fats may very well be as bad, or worse, for our bodies.  Much better to just start cutting those foods out of my diet altogether, either by not eating them anymore or finding organic/natural alternatives.

So, doughnuts are easy to cut - I don’t like them anyway.  But if I were to cut out all foods that contained unpronouncable stuff in the ingredients list, I would have to start growing and raising all my own foods.  The best I can do is start paying attention to the stuff and start getting more educated about what those alien-looking ingredients actually are.  My guess - at least 7/10’s of them are corn-derived.

Corn?  More about that later.

Thank you for visiting The Life Ledger. If you enjoyed this article, check out the related posts below and subscribe to our feed.

Top Ways To Stay In Shape (at Forbes.com)

Interesting article that doesn’t really say much, but has this great quote at the end:

“You don’t have to make drastic change,” Steagall says. “Increase your physical activity, lower your calories. That’s what’s going to work for you over time.”

Of course, if it really were that easy, weight loss wouldn’t be the huge business it is.  It’s a great reminder of really how simple weight loss is though, and how obfuscated and complicated we make it for ourselves.

Here’s a couple of the more interesting trends mentioned in the article:

Everything Organic
The word “organic” on a food’s packaging makes people feel they’re eating something healthy, even when–say, in the case of a bag of potato chips–they’re not. James Kenney, a director of nutrition research and educator at Pritikin Longevity Center & Spa, says it’s cholesterol, sugar and refined flour that’s harming Americans’ health, not pesticides. But he predicts the trend of people buying more organic products to continue going strong in 2007.

Total Body Workouts
Rather than focus on one group of muscles, gym goers may take on routines that work their whole bodies in 2007, such as gyrotonic, which mimics dance movements. The idea is to create a balanced look, which gyrotonic does through moving the body in a series of circular motions while stretching and strengthening muscles, according to master trainer Jennifer McCasland Daly.

Multi-Tasking Foods
One buzzword for 2007 may be “functional light foods,” according to Steagall. She predicts that consumers looking to get more bang for their buck are going to seek out more low-calorie foods with added benefits, such as antioxidants or promises to improve digestive health.

Study: Replacing Trans Fat Is Problematic (from The Post Chronicle)

I mentioned a few days ago how Disney and KFC (among others I’m sure) are reducing trans-fats.  Originally, I thought that was a fantastic thing; after reading this article, I’m not so sure.  The article cites a study published in Nutrition & Metabolism journal comparing trans fats to interesterified fats (apparently one of the front-runners to replace trans fat in the food industry).  Here’s an excerpt from the study:

After 4wk, both PHSO [partially hydrogenated soybean oil, or trans fat - ed] and IE fats significantly elevated both the LDL/HDL ratio and fasting blood glucose, the latter almost 20% in the IE group relative to POL [palm olein - ed]. Fasting 4wk insulin was 10% lower after PHSO (p>0.05) and 22% lower after IE (p<0.001) compared to POL. For the postprandial study the glucose incremental area under the curve (IAUC) following the IE meal was 40% greater than after either other meal (p<0.001), and was linked to relatively depressed insulin and C-peptide (p<0.05). ...
Both PHSO and IE fats altered the metabolism of lipoproteins and glucose relative to an unmodified saturated fat when fed to humans under identical circumstances.

And an excerpt from The Post Chronicle article:

Researchers at Brandeis University and in Malaysia say a new method of modifying fat in commercial products to replace unhealthy trans fats has been found to raise blood glucose and depress insulin in humans — both common precursors to diabetes. Furthermore, as does trans fat, it still adversely depresses the beneficial HDL-cholesterol.

I’m starting to become a big believer in the idea that natural is better than man-made, and we need to moderate our portion sizes on things like fats rather than replace them with stuff we make then have to study for effects on our bodies.  If the adage is correct and I am what I eat, I bet most Americans (me included) are 90% corn, 8% chemicals and 2% human.

Cause of Death: Sloppy Doctors (from Time Magazine)

At first glance, this sounds like a great idea - offer incentives to doctors to start using an electronic prescription program, eRx Now, which “physicians can use to write prescriptions electronically, check for potentially harmful drug interactions and ensure that pharmacies provide appropriate medications and dosages.”  Sounds great so far, right?  Then I read the investing partners include insurance companies, and it starts to sound somewhat more nefarious.

Several months ago, my employer changed health insurance providers.  One of small-print items was new to me - the insurance providers would constantly review my health records and prescriptions to review dosages and generic equivelants of medications prescribed.  If the health insurance provider did not agree with the dosage or medication prescribed, a representative would call my doctor and ask for a dosage reduction or generic equivelant.  In any case, the health insurance provider reserved the right to refuse payment based on their disagreement with dosage or non-generic prescriptions.

If I wanted to place my healthcare in the hands of a desk jockey, I’d save all my money and start self-diagnosing with Google and Wikipedia searches.

We pay doctors to diagnose illnesses and prescribe medications, and we pay pharmicists to oversee filling prescriptions.  Why do we need another piece of technology that wrenches open the backdoor to health insurance providers practicing medicine without a license when we already have precautions built in?

With movements like this moving forward, soon you’ll be going to your local Aetna office for “medical advice”, and your doctor will be an iPhone.

I read a blip on Crunchgear about an interesting service called PumpOne.  The concept sounds great - you can download exercise routines to your Ipod or cellphone/blackberry/doohickey for use anywhere you are.  However, looking at PumpOne’s about page shows a service that seems kind of feature-starved to me - the download consists of a package of JPEG photos that show proper form for the exercises in each routine.  Maybe it’s just me, but it seems it would be much more useful to have a portable version of an exercise video - I wouldn’t need a constantly-playing video necessarily, but having an audio version of a realtime workout following the downloaded routine accompany the set of pictures would be nice.  At a glance, I see they have a video podcast available for download - I’m definitely interested in checking that out.