Complex carbohydrates, such as fruit and pasta, were not associated with the increased risk of heart disease. This suggests that the problem is not carbohydrates per se, but rapidly absorbed carbohydrates.
The information comes from a study of about 48,000 people who were asked about their diets in detail. Previous studies have also shown a similar link between simple carbohydrates and heart disease risk. It is not a mystery that eating many refined carbohydrates -- bread, rice, cereal, bagels, etc. -- is not a smart move for your heart.
When you eat more carbohydrates than can be used, the excess carbohydrate energy is converted to fat by your liver. This process occurs to help your body maintain blood sugar control in the short-term, however it will likely increase triglyceride concentrations, which will increase your risk of cardiovascular disease.
Also, insulin, stimulated by an overabundant consumption of grains, starches and sweets, is the cause of many problems.
It's responsible for many bulging stomachs and fat rolls in thighs and chins, and even worse, high insulin levels suppress two other important hormones -- glucagons and growth hormones -- that are responsible for burning fat and sugar and promoting muscle development, respectively. So insulin from excess carbohydrates promotes fat, and then wards off your body's ability to lose that fat. Excess weight and obesity not only lead to heart disease but also a wide variety of other diseases.
Refined Carbs More Than Double Your Heart Disease Risk
In the above study, women who ate the most high glycemic foods had more than double the risk of developing heart disease as women who ate the fewest. Previous studies, including an excellent one published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, have also linked high-carb diets, and their tendency to induce liver fat production and insulin resistance, to heart disease.
Your body is simply not designed to process large amounts of refined sugars and grains, which explains the myriad of health effects that occur when you overindulge in foods like bread, pizza, pasta, bagels, rice, pancakes and waffles without serious metabolic consequences:
- A study of more than 2,300 Italians found that high bread consumption significantly raises your risk of renal cell carcinoma, the most common type of kidney cancer.
- In postmenopausal women, the risk of breast cancer was raised by 87 percent in those who ate the most refined sugars and grains.
Why Refined Carbs are Among the Worst Out There
Along with the problems with liver fat production, insulin resistance and increased triglycerides, refined carbohydrates are nutritionally devoid foods, meaning they do nothing positive for your health.
For instance, when flour is refined, the most nutritious part of the grain is removed, so the flour essentially becomes a form of sugar. Then it is typically brominated which produces toxic disinfection byproducts. Whenever you eat a slice of toast, a bowl of cereal or a half a bagel made with commercial brominated flours, picture yourself dipping directly into your sugar bowl and gulping down a spoon or two, because that’s essentially what it amounts to.
What else gets lost in the refining process?
- Half of the beneficial unsaturated fatty acids
- Virtually all of the vitamin E
- Fifty percent of the calcium
- Seventy percent of the phosphorus
- Eighty percent of the iron
- Ninety-eight percent of the magnesium
- Fifty to 80 percent of the B vitamins
And many more nutrients are destroyed -- simply too many to list. White flour is often bleached during the refining process as well, a step that adds a potentially dangerous chemical poison to the end product on top of everything.
Is the Glycemic Index a Reliable Tool to Choose Your Carbs?
The glycemic index became very popular several years back during the low-carb diet craze, when both Dr. Atkins of The Atkins Diet and Dr. Agatston of the South Beach Diet began advocating the use of this index in choosing foods.
In a nutshell, the glycemic index rates foods on a scale of 1 to 100 depending on how quickly or slowly the carbs impact your blood sugar levels. Those ranked below 55 are said to be low-glycemic index foods, while those 70 and over are high. You’ll now see many studies that divide foods according to their glycemic index and use it as a baseline for determining the role of carbs on various health problems.
The underlying premise, that some foods can seriously raise your blood sugar and as a result cause harm and damage in your body, is true. But the main problem is that the glycemic index is not a valid tool to use to determine which foods will do that for you.
A classic example is fructose, which ranks very low on the glycemic index, yet is a disaster for your health.
The fact is that numerous factors play a role in how a specific food will affect your blood sugar. The glycemic index doesn't, for example, measure how a food, or a specific ingredient, affects you over time.
Moreover, it fails to take into account the harm chemicals like sucralose, sorbitol and refined fructose contained in supposedly low-GI foods do to your body; they convert directly into triglycerides and adipose tissue instead of blood glucose, accelerating obesity, diabetes, hypoglycemia and heart disease.
Rather than using the glycemic index, you would be better off using more reliable means, and for this I recommend nutritional typing.
Your Nutritional Type Can Help You Determine Which Carbs are Right for You
Refined carbs (again, the white bread, white sugar, pizza, bagels, etc.) are not a healthy choice for virtually any one. So when I speak about “choosing your carbs” these will not be on the list.
Further, no matter what your nutritional type is, if you suffer from the following diseases you would best be served avoiding ALL grains, even whole grains:
· High cholesterol
· High blood pressure
· Diabetes
· Overweight
· Cancer
There are also many people who suffer from gluten intolerance without even realizing it. This condition can cause an array of symptoms from fatigue and depression to abdominal pain and anemia, and if you have it you should avoid all gluten-containing foods in your diet.
It is believed that about 75-80 percent of ALL people would benefit from avoiding grains, even whole grain and sprouted grains, because, typically, grains rapidly break down to sugar, which causes rises in insulin that exacerbates health problems.
The only consistent exceptions would be those whose nutritional type is a carb type and who don’t suffer symptoms of gluten intolerance. However, it’s still important to realize that there is a major difference between vegetable carbs and grain carbs, even though they’re both referenced as "carbs." Unlike vegetables, grains convert to sugar, which is not something anyone needs in their diet in high amounts.
In short, most people are consuming far too much bread, cereal, pasta, corn (a grain, not a vegetable), rice, potatoes and baked goods, with very grave health consequences.
Yes, this even includes organic stone ground whole grains. That said, if you are going to eat bread, you should certainly stick with high-quality whole-grain products. You can tell whether the loaf you’re looking at is truly whole grain before you even read the label by first picking it up. Authentic whole-grain breads are dense and relatively heavy -- avoid imposters that are light and fluffy.
Did you know there are two types of ‘raw milk’ in America?
As Mark McAfee explains, there’s the raw milk intended to be consumed raw, and then there’s the raw milk intended to be used for pasteurization, and contrary to popular belief, they are NOT the same.
When buying raw milk, it’s very important to make sure you’re buying milk that has been produced with the intention of being consumed raw, and not just raw milk from conventionally-raised cows that hasn’t gone through the pasteurization process yet.
There’s a vast difference between the quality and safety of milk from organically-raised, grass-fed cows, and conventionally-raised, grain-fed livestock.
How Can You Identify High-Quality Sources of Raw Milk? Right now, only six states permit the retail sale of raw milk:
1. California
2. Connecticut
3. Maine
4. Pennsylvania
5. Washington
6. Arizona
However, it’s important to realize that each state sets their own standards. California, specifically, has its own special set of standards for raw milk for human consumption, in which farmers must meet or exceed pasteurized milk standards, without pasteurizing.
You can find raw milk retailers in California by using the store locator available at http://www.organicpastures.com/, and for other areas, check out the Campaign for Real Milk Web site.
You can also look here to find out the legal status of raw milk in the U.S. state or country where you live.
However, since many raw milk producers are very small farms, and the standards that do exist vary from state to state, how do you go about identifying solid, high-quality producers of raw milk if you can’t just buy it in a store nearby?
This is a complex question since the environmental conditions will vary from location to location, and from season to season. However, there are a few general conditions you should look for, including:
- Low pathogenic bacteria count (ie does the farmer test his milk regularly for pathogens?)
- The milk is quickly chilled after milking
- The milk comes from cows raised naturally, in accordance with the seasons
- The cows are mainly grass-fed
- The cows are not given antibiotics and growth hormones to increase milk production
- Cows are well cared for
Only Healthy Grass-Fed Cows Produce Healthy Raw Milk
Naturally, fresh grasses for foraging are not available year round in many areas of the US, so it’s also important to take a look at what the cows are being fed during winter months. According to McAfee, acceptable winter feed includes dried alfalfa, timothy grass, and other cut pasture or forage that has been dried.
A key point to remember is that cows that are fed a lot of grain and raised under substandard conditions will likely produce milk that is unhealthy to drink raw because grains, antibiotics, growth hormones, and filthy living conditions change the pH balance and the natural bacteria present in her gut, which in turn affects the natural bacteria and pathogens present in her milk.
This is particularly problematic because so many Americans have depressed immune function, leaving any pathogen introduced into your gut free to wreak havoc.
Says McAfee:
“So, as an American citizen going out and finding raw milk, if you have a depressed immune system there is an exceptional challenge there, whereas somebody who is searching out raw milk in California, who has been on raw milk before and their immune system is in pretty good shape, it’s less of a problem.
But if you’ve got a really depressed immune system and… find some bad milk from somebody who is intending their milk to be pasteurized… that’s kind of a marriage made in hell. That’s not a good thing at all. And that’s where I think a lot of the outbreaks happen. "
Why the FDA Doesn't Want You to Have Raw Milk
For a fascinating review of what the current position of the FDA is regarding raw milk I would strongly encourage you to read this recent enlightening article that will reveal some of their hidden agendas
The Many Health Benefits of Raw Milk
Organically-raised, grass-fed milk naturally contains hundreds of healthy, “good” bacteria, including lactobacillus and acidophilus. There are also several coliform families of bacteria. It’s important to realize that there are over 230 different kinds of E. coli., and only two or three of them are actually pathogenic and will cause you to get sick. The rest are actually beneficial for your gut.
Raw milk also contains vitamins, which are virtually eliminated by the pasteurization process of commercial milk. But it’s the presence of beneficial bacteria are what make raw milk such an outstanding food source to promote the growth of healthy bacteria in your intestine, which in turn has a significant, beneficial impact on your overall immune function.
Other health promoting ingredients in raw milk include:
- Valuable enzymes that are destroyed during pasteurization. Without them, milk is very difficult to digest. So if you have lactose intolerance, it may very well disappear once you start consuming raw dairy products.
- It also contains phosphatase, an enzyme that aids and assists in the absorption of calcium in your bones, and lipase enzyme, which helps to hydrolyze and absorb fats.
Enzymes are deactivated when you get above 120 degrees. By the time you get to 150, 160 degrees, almost all of them are completely inactivated, which is why you will not get ANY of these benefits from pasteurized milk. - Natural butterfat, which is homogenized or removed in pasteurized milk. Without butterfat, it becomes very difficult for your body to absorb and utilize the vitamins and minerals in the water fraction of the milk. Butterfat is also your best source of preformed vitamin A, and contains re-arranged acids with strong anti-carcinogenic properties.
- Healthy unoxidized cholesterol
- Conjugated linoleic acid (CLA), which fights cancer and may help reduce your body fat.
- High omega-3 and low omega-6 ratios, which is the beneficial ratio between these two essential fats
Pasteurizing milk, on the other hand, destroys enzymes, diminishes vitamins, denatures fragile milk proteins, destroys vitamin B12 and vitamin B6, kills beneficial bacteria, and actually promotes pathogens.
Unfortunately, the FDA and other health agencies do not acknowledge the inherent differences between pasteurized milk and raw milk. They claim raw milk and pasteurized milk have precisely the same kind of nutritional values, completely disregarding the value of enzymes, the probiotic value of beneficial bacteria, and the importance of healthy fats.
It truly is imperative to recognize that nutrition is a holistic thing.
You cannot take bits and pieces of nutrients and think you’re going to end up with good health. It is in fact the food as a whole that makes it good for you in terms of nutrition.
What about Raw Milk for Vegans?
As for vegans and strict vegetarians, unfortunately many of them end up not getting sufficient amounts of healthy fats in their diet, which can have a very detrimental effect on their nervous system.
Yes, the plant kingdom does offer some very important fats, but other fats are entirely animal-based, and they complement each other on a functional level. When all animal-based foods are excluded from your diet, you run the risk of developing a deficiency, which can have both physiological and psychological consequences.
In terms of consuming an animal-based food that is humane, drinking grass-fed milk from an organic dairy farm is perhaps one of your healthiest alternatives for the best of both worlds.
Pasteurized milk, on the other hand, does not offer any of the benefits available from raw milk, such as healthy fats, and a good case can be made that it does not fit the nutritional needs of humans.
Until next time, stay healthy and happy
JD Roma
The information on this blog is provided for educational purposes only. It is not a substitute for professional medical care, and medical advice and services are not being offered. If you have, or suspect you have, a health problem you should consult your physician.
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