Protein Requirements May Be Higher Than Current Recommendations For Athletes and Older Adults

The recommended daily allowance of protein is 0.18 grams per Kg of ideal body weight (0.4 grams per pound). If you’re currently overweight, your ideal weight is what you’d like to get down to. Physically active individuals need more, so multiply this by about 2 for serious strength trainers (who need protein to repair and … Continue reading Protein Requirements May Be Higher Than Current Recommendations For Athletes and Older Adults →

Fitness is More Important Than Age in Predicting Longevity

86 Year old triathlete Lew Hollander In my previous post I discussed how researchers at the Cleveland Clinic associated performance on an exercise test with all-cause mortality and concluded the better your performance, the lower your risk of mortality. Researchers also looked at the same data to determine whether estimated age based on performance on … Continue reading Fitness is More Important Than Age in Predicting Longevity →

How Much Exercise Is Too Much? – Revisited

Recently I discussed the notion that there can be too much of a good thing with exercise. Some doctors believe there is a U-shaped curve of exercise and health. Health benefits increase, and risk of mortality from all causes decreases, as amount of exercise increases- up to a point. With too much exercise the benefits … Continue reading How Much Exercise Is Too Much? – Revisited →

The Gamechangers- Interesting Movie Exploding Myths About Plant-Based Eating

I saw this interesting and entertaining movie in a special showing recently. Unfortunately that is now the only way it is available. You can find out if it's playing by you, and get tickets, at the Gamechangers website. The website says it will be out in DVD soon. There is also a lot of useful … Continue reading The Gamechangers- Interesting Movie Exploding Myths About Plant-Based Eating →

Exercise Is Even More Important For Cardiovascular Patients

An important recent study [1] shows physical activity is even more important for people with cardiovascular disease than everyone else. I learned about it in Tony's blog One Regular Guy Writing about Food, Exercise and Living Past 100. Thanks, Tony. The chart showing relative risk of death vs “Met-minutes per week” is especially interesting. It … Continue reading Exercise Is Even More Important For Cardiovascular Patients →

“Plant-Based” and Unhealthy? – Tufts

“Plant-based” is currently in vogue as a healthy way of eating. It’s interesting how the terminoloy has evolved. There started out being a controversy over whether vegan is healthy. There are many healthy vegan foods like fruits and veggies, beans, and whole grains, but oreos, beer, and french fries are also vegan. So “whole food, plant-based” was introduced to emphasize minimally processed food made from plants and not junk made from plants. “Whole food” is still a little ambiguous. I get that it’s better to eat an apple than drink apple juice. But even steel-oats are processed. Dr Greger’s site has some good info to make sense out of this.

But lately some people has dropped the “whole foods” and just started saying “plant-based” as if all those foods are healthy and we’re back to the issue that this implies oreos and french fries are healthy. Most recently there has been the advent of highly processed meat alternatives, like the “Beyond Burger” and “Impossible Burger”. These may be better for the planet because making them takes less resources than beef, but it is controversial whether they are healthier. I think it is especially concerning to nutritionists that we might go to Burger King and order a meal of an “Impossible Whopper”, fries, and a soda and think we’re being healthy.

The Tufts article is a good discussion of all of this. I do think the section on helpful animal protein is debatable. I’ve previously discussed health aspects of animal foods, and refer you to Dr. Greger’s site for more information on this controversial point. Nevertheless, I think the Tufts article agrees, and there is good consensus in among nutritionists, that we would all do well to make sure we’re eating more healthy plant foods like fruits, veggies, and legumes (I like the sentence “make plants the star of your plate”), and cut back on animal foods. Elsewhere I quoted the statistic that the average American is eating 1.5 times as much meat and seven times as much cheese as in the early 1900s, a time when all of the population except for the wealthy was lean [1].

References

[1] http://www.ers.usda.gov/amber-waves/2010/march/guess-who-s-turning-100tracking-a-century-of-american-eating

One Regular Guy Writing about Food, Exercise and Living Past 100

Plant-based dietary patterns are becoming highly recommended, but not all “plant-based” foods are healthy, according to experts at Tufts Health & Nutrition Letter.

brown fish fillet on white ceramic plate Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

Experts agree plants should make up a large part of a healthy dietary pattern. Humans eat plant roots (carrots and radishes), stems (asparagus and celery), leaves (leafy greens), seeds (including whole grains), flowers (broccoli, cauliflower, artichoke), and the seed-bearing “fruits” of plants (including fruits, vegetables, beans, and nuts). All are packed with important health-promoting nutrients, and countless studies have found associations between consuming diets higher in unprocessed plant foods and lower risk for a wide range of disorders such as cardiovascular disease, cancer, obesity, and diabetes. But recommendations to eat a “plant-based” diet can be misleading. “I really dislike the term plant-based to describe a preferred or healthy diet,” says Dariush Mozaffarian, MD, DrPH, dean of Tufts’ Friedman School of Nutrition Science…

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