Wednesday, May 31, 2023

Refined Carbs Might Be Making You Dumb

 I found this article, at The Federalist interesting. The meat is bad and grains and vegetables are virtuous ideas have permeated our media and our medical research since the early 1960s. Rarely does an article come out that suggests that carbohydrates and sugar are bad for you. Oh, you find books like Nina Teicholz book Big Fat Surprise, where literally half the book is footnotes, that proves that the dietary fat leads to heart attacks hypothesis is a flat out lie. The lie was created and propped up by intimidation, silencing of critical voices, by Big Pharma abd Big Food dollars to support Big Pharma and Big Food profits. In any case, the article in question is Refind Carbs Might Be Making You Dumb.

I have been on a ketogenic diet for some time. When I get off it, though, I find that I have some brain fog. But staying in ketosis is not easy, and surprising things cause your insulin to rise, kick you out. Recently, taking up Dr. Ken Berry's challenge to go full carnivore and eat nothing but beef, butter, bacon and eggs (called the BBB and E diet) for a month, I have found more energy and clarity than I have felt in a long time. I also find I am less anxious in general. I am about two weeks in, but I find I don't need to eat as often, nor as much.

According to the article, by Tristan Justice:
A new study out of France this month linked consumption of refined carbohydrates with lower cognitive function.
In their paper published in the journal Personality and Individual Differences, French researchers studied the relationship between carb consumption and cognitive performance in 95 healthy young adults between 20 and 30. Of the 95 participants, 48 were women, and 47 were men.
The French team of scientists found negative impacts on cognition across both genders. The consumption of foods with a high glycemic index, mainly refined carbohydrates such as white bread and many ultra-processed foods, “is associated to a decrease of cognitive performance.” Individuals’ cognitive performances were measured by the Wechsler’s digit symbol substitution test.

Of course, looking at the study, one finds that it includes a limited data set, only 95 people. Such studies are easily dismissed, but Nina Teicholz intensive research points to a number of things that might be associated with eating a higher saturated fat diet. Weight loss if you are plagued with the typical "wheat belly" for starters, but also lowering diabetes symptoms, building stronger bones, more musculature, a bigger brain, and elimination or lessening of a number of the "diseases of civilation." Dr. Berry describes the elimination of exzema and dandruff among other complaints when he started the carnivore diet.

Now, while Berry and others talk about eating nothing but BBB and E, the real culprits are both refined carbohydrates, specifically grains and sugars, and polyunsaturated vegetable/seed oils. They point out that our brain size began to grow about the time we adopted the hunter/gatherer lifestyle and began mostly living off animals and animal fats. We spcifically went after the fattest parts of the animal including the brains, livers, and bone marrow.  Moving around with the herds of animals, we didn't grow grain crops. Furthermore, in the wilds there are very few edible plants. Anthropological studies show that our ancient ancestors became super preditors, and were large, well muscled, and had very few modern illnesses such as dental cavities. Heart attacks were unheared of.  About 10,000 years ago we began cultivating grains. Our brains shrank in size, and we began to enounter the diseases of civilization including obesity, diabetes, dental cavities and cancer. Our lifespan shortened as a result.

I am not a doctor, nor an anthropologist, so don't take my word for any of this. But as someone who has had a problem with weight gain since I was 10 years old, I have studied various diets and books about dieting for a long time. The first diet I was put on was around the age of 12, when my mother tried to put me on what was called the "Mayo Clinic Diet."  It consisted of spinach, dry toast, and hard boiled eggs. Yuck.  It was, as you might suspect a low calorie, low fat diet, and thus not very sustainable.  If one was confined to a hospital and unable to find other food, it might have worked.  

I remember reading with alacrity Dr. Atkin's Diet Revolution in the 1970s, and Drs. Michael and Mary Dan Eades Protein Power. Even then Eades tells us that his diet was really about eating more fat, but that it wouldn't have been published if it was called Saturated Fat Power. Since then I have learned that eating a diet high in saturated fats and eggs was known to physisans to induce weight loss  since...well...ever. William Banting wrote a book detailing how, using this approach, he was able to reduce the weight of his portly body, and is probably the first dieting book. It was wildly popular, as more sugar and refined grains entered the English diet in the 19th century.

I encourage you to obtain and read Nina Teicholz book, Big Fat Surprise to discover just how much various special interests have manipulated our politics for their own gain. The food industries selling your children sugar for breakfast, selling vegetable oils and trans fats, shortening and margerine, and highly processed snacks is appalling. Big Pharma selling statins, which arguably were worse for your health than the colesterol is eqully cynical. But they have made a killing on statins and other products, many of which we did not need. And in the process, sound, evidence based medicine has been sacrificed to passing out pills and surgery. It is shocking, but a necessary wake up call. As Teicholz makes abundantly clear, no one in the vast enterprise was looking out for you and me. They could care less if they ultimately killed the patient, as long as they made their billions.

We find ourselves being manipulated by these same bad actors yet again. At first it was a nudge, then a push, and soon the velvet glove will come off and we will be forced to accept yet more devastating dietary skullduggery. We will be forced to eat an even higher carb diet, soy based pseudomeats. while real food is slowly made more and more expensive until only the very rich can afford it. We will be made to eat ze bugs and like it. We will be made sick and stupid, and this is by design. This helps no one except a few billionaires at the top, and of course, Big Pharma, who will have pills for what ails us. This is all being done under the great climate scam, of course, just as it was done before under the great heart attack epidemic. Do not fall for it, guys.

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