Take the fight to OBESITY!!

A new study conducted by the Bill and Melinda Gate’s foundation has brought the world’s biggest health-related problem to the forefront. Our world as a whole is OBESE, and the latest data shows that although the rate of children becoming obese is slowly declining, the prevalence of this pandemic is still rising. We as physicians have failed the general public. We have given you diet recommendations (ie: low fat and high carb (condoning high sugar diets)) that were based on weak evidence, and made these recommendations the dogma/doctrine for a healthy diet for the past 40+ years.

Our world didn’t used to require wheelchairs this size!

Africa still only has the need for traditional wheelchairs.

I realized this upon reading Gary Taubes’ “Good calories, bad calories.” This book exposes the physicians of the 50’s and 60’s (especially Ancel Keys) for making recommendations on carefully chosen (dare I say “cherry picked”) evidence. For those of you would like to investigate further without reading the book check out the “Seven Countries Study”.

That being said, in our previous posts (PEPSI and DIET), we gave our best recommendations for preventing cardiovascular disease and the improper release of hormones (ie: insulin) with the consumption of diet beverages. This past week I came across a new study that links both diet and regular sodas to obesity. We must continue to reduce our overall added sugar consumption, as well as decrease our consumption of diet beverages. When we drink diet beverages (brain response to artificial sweeteners), the diet beverage triggers an insulin release in the body in order to break down the sugar we ingested. Unfortunately when we consume these artificial sweeteners, insulin is unable to break down the artificial sweeteners the way it does real sugars. This leads to our body craving more real sugar, and often times we don’t feel too well until we consume some convenient sugar product (ie: cookies, pastries, candy bars, etc.) If we replace sugar sweetened and artificially sweetened drinks in our daily routines with water, or some carbonated flavored water (since studies show our bodies may be addicted to the carbonation), I believe we will not only see a decrease in the prevalence of obesity in the world, but we will also see an overall reduction in chronic diseases, such as, metabolic syndrome, diabetes, hypertension, and arthritis.

My recommendations for cooking from scratch and adopting a “NO BREAD” lifestyle will help our country defeat this epidemic that has been taking the world by storm.

Healthy way to start the morning with bacon, eggs, and avocado!

A healthy lifestyle starts by stocking our pantry the right way. I had the privilege of going on grocery store tour with a preventative cardiologist friend of mine, I noticed that shopping for and preparing nourishing food is extremely difficult in supermarkets dominated by the marketing industry. We put all the wholesome and nutritious foods in the back, so we constantly are walking by less nutritious highly marketed empty calorie items. The term that he used was to shop the periphery of the supermarket and stay away from anything with a shelf life longer than one week.

Make a commitment to yourself today to start living a healthier lifestyle by choosing sustainable, nutrient dense foods, from local markets when available. Eliminating inflammation from your body by avoiding unnatural, heavily processed foods and look the other way from sugar, gluten and grains. By subscribing to my blog today you will be doing exactly that! My future posts will feature healthy dishes to make for the family in addition to the posts I am currently writing!!