Friday November 13, 2009
Sometimes I come up with recipes just because I don't feel like going to the store, and I look around to see what's in the pantry. Could I make pancakes out of pecans? And wouldn't pumpkin taste good in them? Answer to both questions: yes! It turns out that if you put pecans in your blender or food processor, you have the start of some really tasty pancakes! With pumpkin, cinnamon, and nutmeg, they really taste like autumn. Try my
Low-Carb Pecan Pumpkin Pancakes this weekend for a nice treat!
Photo © Laura Dolson
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Wednesday November 11, 2009
Oh, my, the science reporters are at it again.
A new study was published this week in the Archives of Internal Medicine about diets and mood. Basically what happened over the course of a year was that both the low-carb and low-fat groups had modest elevation of mood over the first 8 weeks. The low-fat group on average sustained the elevated mood, where the low-carb group, on average, returned to the mood they had at the beginning. From this we get headlines such as "
Low-Fat Diet Makes People Less Angry Than Low-Carb, Study Says" (neither diet "makes you angry"), "
Low carb dieters more grumpy" (no more grumpy than they started out!) and even "
Low carb diet may land you in depression" (oh, puh-lease).
As I explained to Courtney Hutchinson, reporter for ABC News, many many people have reported improvements in mood in the long-term while following a low-carb way of eating. So, how can we explain this result? There are a few possibilities which occur to me:
- The study limited calories in both groups. We know from previous research and experience that limiting calories is not needed to lose weight on a low-carb diet. One of the positive aspects of low-carb eating is that people are able to follow their natural appetites once the carb cravings are elminiated by low-carb eating. Could it be that limiting both carbs and calories is a problem?
- We aren't told what people were eating before the study started, or at any point in the study. The "low fat" group was eating 45% carbohydrate, which is lower than usual for a low-fat diet. This probably was a reduction in the amount of carbohydrate the participants were eating. So people that would benefit from a mild carbohydrate reduction could have benefited from this probably unintended effect.
- The diet stayed very low in carbs throughout the year. One of the strengths of diets such as the
Atkins Diet is that they help people zero in on the best amount of carbohydrate for that individual. 40 grams of carbohydrate is less than optimal for many people over the long-term.
Of course, we don't know what the reason was for the difference in the groups in this study, which the researchers admit in their paper. They speculate that low-carb eating is too much of a change from the "normal Western diet".
What do you think? Answer in the comments below.
Photo: Dimitri Vervitsiotis/Getty Images
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Sunday November 8, 2009
Do you ever wonder how much a meal raises your blood glucose? Unless you're a diabetic who monitors your blood glucose, you probably don't know. The
glycemic index can give us somewhat of a guess, but there are a lot of
problems with the glycemic index.
Recently, this issue came to the attention of Trent Smith, an economist at the University of Washington. He became aware of how
refined carbohydrates are causing health problems by raising blood sugar, but also how foods made with these carbohydrates are inexpensive and plentiful. He became curious about how various meals would affect his own blood glucose and embarked on a project he called "Lunch Science". The results are fascinating, and he has
posted them on the Web (PDF) (don't get put off by what looks like a 55-page report - it's in slide form and each slide takes several "pages". Also, there are a couple of economically-oriented slides in the middle that you can just skip if you want). He ate thirteen very different (and mostly hearty, high-calorie) lunches, and recorded his blood glucose at half-hour intervals after each meal. Many were from various fast-food restaurants. Interestingly, one of the lowest-calorie lunches, the Subway low-fat lunch caused the highest glycemic response!
Dr. Smith is interested in swapping similar data with other people. Monitoring blood glucose is something I recommend for people who are sensitive to carbs. I am prediabetic, and I keep tabs on my fasting blood glucose and also after meals, especially if it's a new food.
I find it motivating and helpful.
Thanks to
Jimmy Moore of the
Livin' La Vida Low-Carb Blog for pointing me to Dr. Smith's project.
Photo © Richard Cano
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Thursday November 5, 2009
The great documentary "Food, Inc." is out on DVD, and I highly recommend it. One of the big revelvations is how hidden much of the process of producing our food is. The filmmaker,
Robert Kenner has said in an interview that he spent more in legal fees doing this movie than his past 15 films combined, and "I think I could have had greater access if we were doing a film on nuclear terrorism than if we were doing a film on food." This is truly an eye-opening and important movie in many ways. Check out
my description and review of "Food, Inc.", and then go rent it!
Image Courtesy of River Road Entertainment
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