Brad Pilon.com

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BP

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Quick post today, but I wanted to remind you of something that is very important…

I’ve always said that “Health” is a very vague term, that means many different things to many different people.

That being said, there is one version of the word “Health” that has a concrete definition -

To many people, HEALTH IS AN INDUSTRY.

As Nick Reminded me last night:

The Food industry is makes about 165billion US$ and the weight loss industry 60billion US$, so they get you coming AND going.

And in the food industry, it is Organic, Health and Functional foods that are consistently making the biggest gains in sales from year to year.

So make no mistake, any health information you read comes with a bias.

Bottom line, just remember, to many people, your health is just part of the money game.

BP

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That’s our new Eating Responsibly slogan – WWGS?

Firstly, as you may or may not have noticed, I play with the the look of my blog…a lot.

Most likely this is to compensate for the fact that the www.EatStopeat.com site is a bloody nightmare (damn you iweb).

So I apologize for all the color changes etc..but it’s keeping me sane.

OK, now..onto nutrition.

Last post I talked about how eating responsibly is basically listening to your grandma.

For me, this meant

No treats before dinner, but if you eat all your veggies you can have dessert.

No chocolate for breakfast.

Did I mention eat your veggies?

Etc.

Then I had the idea..actually, scratch that, I’m lying…

Then Daniel emailed me with the idea that we should collect up as many grandma sayings as possible on this blog.

GREAT IDEA.

So I’ll start..grandma words of wisdom..or WWGS?

With all apologize to my American Friends, I would never EVER have gotten away with soda pop for breakfast, diet or regular it wouldn’t matter.

Grandma would NOT approve of a 500 ML of diet coke for breakfast.

OK, now your turn…

WWGS?

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Lately I’ve noticed that a lot of people seem to HATE milk.

Weird.

Apparently this stems from an ongoing attack against milk, mostly from fitness personalities and raw food / vegan lifestyle advocates.

Typically, the anti-milk talk looks something like this:

Here’s some of the nasty surprises hidden in your milk:

• Pus
• Synthetic growth hormone
• Dangerous Antibiotics

Plus, did you know that Pasteurization kills most of the enzymes in your milk rendering it practically indigestible?

Now here’s my issue:

This seems like a classic case of Parrot Phenomena…

People just echoing what other people said because it sounds good.

However, whether you are a Journalist or a Scientist..you know it’s of UTMOST IMPORTANCE to always check your references.

After all no one wants to be caught up in Food libel lawsuit.

(In many US States it is illegal to disseminate misinformation about foods…think of back when Oprah
Winfrey was sued by Texas beef producers for questioning the safety of hamburger meat.)

I mean, if it’s true, it’s true…but you need to be able to back it up.

Now I’m not a big milk drinker, but I’m not exactly an anti-milk person either.

(To tell you the truth, this just isn’t an area of my life put a lot of though into.)

So this is what I did..I contacted experts in Dairy Science and the part of the Canadian Government responsible for regulating Milk.

Then I contacted the Dairy Association, and then some ‘Dairy Industry insiders’ (people who work in the industry but do not speak on the industry’s behalf)

Within days I received several excellent responses.

I then cross-referenced these responses with the available scientific literature, and government regulations.

Here is what I have found:

A very big part of the reason for every one’s confusion is that the laws and regulations differ from Country to Country.

So the laws in Canada are different then the laws in the US and the laws in Europe or Australia.

(part of the problem with the on-line world…we’re a global community, but our food is not)

In Canada, Antibiotic use in Milk are completely monitored with zero tolerance.

The milk from any animal being treated for an infection like mastitis needs to be withheld from the milk supply for a specified withholding time (dependent on the drug, but typically between between 72 and 96 hours) after the last treatment.

Additionally and as a measure of control, a sample of individual producer bulk tank milk is taken at the time of milk pick-up. That milk sample is tested for milk components and presence of antibiotics in individual farmer’s milk. If presence of antibiotics is discovered, milk is discarded from the food chain and hefty penalties apply to the producer.

There are huge penalties for antibiotic residue in milk.

Canada does not allow the use of growth hormone (BST – bovine somatotropin). So in Canadian milk, this is a non-issue.

So already much of the information being spread about milk is factually INCORRECT in the country of Canada (however, this doesn’t mean it’s incorrect where you live).

The concept of milk being ‘full of pus’ is absurd.

Yes, there is an allowable Somatic cell count (Typically neutrophils), but this doesn’t mean “pus” (there’s somatic cells in human breast milk too). It’s true that the US allows a much higher somatic cell count that most countries (including Canada)…but this does not mean that your milk is streaking with pus.

And while it is very important to monitor the Somatic cell count of milk the use of the term pus is pejorative, basically….scaremongering.

Lastly, I can’t help but wonder if the people who are scared of the somatic cell count of milk eat meat…seeing as I’m pretty sure that the meat from an animal would be particularly high in somatic cells.

Bottom line of this fact is that, YES it sounds gross. YES it is an important part of the milk production system that needs to be monitored closely. And YES it makes me a little uncomfortable knowing that the amounts allowed in the US are much higher then in other countries. But these facts are also being used as SCAREMONGERING – Using terms and imagery to emotionally influence your opinion of milk.

In this sense I think the tactics being used are far worse than the actual item being discussed.

As for the idea of milk being “practically indigestible”, there is an easily accessible amount of research showing amino acids entering the blood stream after ingestion of milk, of insulin levels increasing after the ingestion of milk, blood glucose levels increasing, Calcium levels increasing as well as many hormones altering in response to the components of milk entering the blood. If the components of milk were not making it into the blood stream this would not occur.

Bottom line: I have no idea whether or not milk is good for you, but its fine for me. And, the laws that govern milk where you live may be different than the laws where other people live.

Regarding things like filtration and pasteurization, Here is an important fact to consider. Well it may or may not change the nutritional quality of milk, it does protect a food supply for over 330 Million people (Canada and US)…

While slightly less nutritious milk doesn’t sound great, salmonella, e.coli etc sound and feel much, much worse.

You may not drink milk, or only drink organic or  even raw milk, and you have your reasons, but there are a lot of people who drink or are only able to drink normal grocery store milk, I believe keeping them safe if important.

Milk isn’t perfect (I hate the fact that typical cream has dextrose, carrageenen and locus bean gum in it), but it’s not ‘evil’ at least, not to me.

Bottom line: This post wasn’t meant to address the 2 million reasons people seem to have for drinking or not drinking milk, just the four I mention above.

In my opinion, based on what I have learned, You don’t need to drink milk, and I don’t believe you need to avoid milk either, it’s a food like any other food – The poison is in the dose.

Lastly, if you write on-line, check your facts. I’d hate to see anyone in a food libel suite just because you were too lazy to actually check the information you are sending out to millions of people around the world (The key here being around the world…what’s true in your backyard may not be true in mine)…hence, the title of this post.

BP

PS-

Here’s a good way to enjoy milk (if you want to) and lower the risk of any of these bad things…Eat less.

Seriously.

I once had breakfast with Pro Body Builder who drank over 10 GLASSES OF MILK during breakfast alone.

I  might have 10 glasses over a week or two week period.

Simply Eating less (and taking breaks Eat Stop Eat style) make a lot of these ‘is it good for you or bad for you arguments’ obsolete.

The poison is in the dose.

**Note: The point of of the post is to share what I have learned about milk. I’m all for healthy discussion, but I will not be responding to any “Milk sucks, you suck” comments – let’s keep this civil.

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Check out this POST regarding a General Mills Cereal ad from 1943 on the ‘health benefits of Breakfast’…then give this a look….

Really, it’s just like fashion… we just keep going in circles.

BP

PS- I don’t hate breakfast. Not in the slightest. Pancakes and Bacon for me any day. The point is I don’t like the implied message…which is Eat, Eat, Eat.

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I’m right in the middle of a series of home renovations. There is dry wall dust everywhere, but it is finally coming together starting to really take shape.

Since we are finishing our basement, one of the things I had to do was to move all of my files from the basement into their TEMPORARY home in my office (Temporary – because they’re going back into the basement as soon as possible!)

In amongst all of the papers, I found a series of notes from my first year nutrition classes.

Curious, I started reading through the notes. Guess what I found?

WAY too many scientific papers. WAY too much minutia. WAY too much ’small picture’ type stuff AND a whole bunch of OCE thinking.

Really, my first year notes were full of enzyme pathways, redox reactions and some hard core biochemistry.

This was FIRST YEAR UNIVERSITY!

Talk about putting the cart before the horse.

If I could design a nutrition course…I’d start basic, really basic.

We would study super basic concepts, and build a strong foundation.

Then we would study the application of statistical analysis.

Then we would study scientific methodology and how to design a study.

Then (and only then) we would finally investigate the origins of our current nutritional beleifs, studying research from as far back as the 1890’s.

Finally (maybe after 2 or 3 years) we would start reviewing more current studies, when we finally have enough statistical, historical and methodological background to actually UNDERSTAND how these studies fit into the TOTAL BODY OF NUTRITIONAL SCIENCE.

Nutrition (like any science) is like a pyramid – you need a STRONG foundation to build upon. If you only ever investigate what’s on top you never get the big picture.

And if you don’t know the foundation, and only ever write about the small little top portion – well that’s how we get pseudoscience nonsense.

In fact, if I had my way, this would be the very first test you would get in first year Nutrition 101.

(CLICK ME)

Simple and easy, and starts with a basic philosophy to build upon. It includes basic science, an understanding of the psychology behind eating and it meets the need for practicality in our nutrition and diet recomendations.

With out a proper foundation we get scientific illeteracy in the people promoting health.

Very scary.

If you are studying nutrition, or reading diet books always try to determine whether or not the author understands the basic fundamentals, or if they are just blinding you with scientific nonsense.

BP

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When it comes to nutrition and weight loss research, the first question everyone always asks is “Were the results significant”.

Unfortunately ‘significant’ isn’t what it used to be.

So what does significant mean anyways?

The use of significant research can often be very misleading, sending you down the wrong path in your quest for ‘research proven’ weight loss.

Some background…

In statistics, a result is called ‘statistically significant’ if it is unlikely to have occurred by chance.
That’s all it means.

So the commonly used significance P value of <0.05 simply means there is less than a 1 in 20 chance that the results found in the study were just a fluke and happened by complete chance.

What it does NOT mean is that the difference is necessarily large, important, or ‘significant’ in the common real-world meaning of the word.

Finding SIGNIFICANCE doesn’t mean the results were SIGNIFICANT.

How confusing is that?

The truth is, having statistical significance says nothing about the practical significance of the findings. Yet, for some reason, we are led to believe that significance is the ‘holy grail’ of scientific research.

Basically, if it is significant, it is right.

I’m not sure how this happened.

I think it has something to do with the use of scientific research as legal evidence in court cases. To me, this is when it no longer mattered if the results were applicable in the real world to real people; it only mattered if they were legally defensible.

The other tricky thing about significance it that significance DOES NOT mean causation.

In other words, just because the results of a study were found to be significant, it does not mean that one thing in the study actually caused the other.

This is Causation and it is actually EXTREMELY difficult to prove.

In fact, a good scientist will point out that causality can ONLY be proven by demonstrating a mechanism. Statistics and significance alone can never prove causality.

To even SUGGEST the idea of causation, you need to have certain evidence…

The relationship has to be strong, consistent, specific, plausible, follow a logical time sequence and shows a dose-response gradient.

It is VERY RARE that one scientific study can prove all of these things, and certainly being ‘significant’ proves NONE of these things.

Often, journalists and bloggers get so geeked up by a finding that is statistically significant that they all but ignore the practical importance or relevance of their findings.

“Scientifically proven to cause X”

If you see a claim like this, it’s probably wrong, or at least greatly oversimplified.

Significance tests are NEVER the whole answer. They are just one single piece of a very large puzzle. Statistical significance is irrelevant if the effect is of no practical or real-world importance.

So why did science ruin the word significance? Well significant used to mean “important; or something of consequence.”

Which I would argue it no longer means. It is an overused, overhyped term that is more science-marketing than it is science.

So we need a new word to describe the findings of research and whether they apply to the real world.
I nominate ‘Remarkable’.

Especially if you define something that is remarkable as  “worthy of notice or attention.”
So instead of asking if the results of the study were significant (which they almost always are these days) ask if the results of the study were remarkable.

More importantly whenever you read about research you need to ask yourself did the story give you enough information to determine whether or not the findings were remarkable. If they couldn’t give you enough information to make this decision easy, it probably wasn’t.

Or, if you don’t have the background needed to decide whether the results were remarkable, but feel like they SHOULD be, this is probably just an example of great science-marketing.

Remarkable…it’s the new significant.

BP

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When it comes to on-line resources of health and fitness information, I have no problems with people sharing ‘what worked for them’ – after all, this is EXPERIENCE, and it is a useful tool for us all to learn from.

What is becoming a major trend on-line is mistaking EXPERIENCE for EXPERTISE.

Learning from your own personal experience and telling people what worked for you is absolutely fine.

Learning from your personal experience and telling people WHAT worked and WHY it worked, without having the proper scientific background to do so, well that’s a whole other story.

When reading health and nutrition information, we need to ask ourselves, “is the source qualified to be reporting this information?”

For instance, someone who has transformed their body by losing a large amount of weight is a valuable resource for anyone who is also trying to transform their body by losing a large amount of weight.

This person has EXPERIENCE that he or she can share.

Now, if this same person starts sharing WHY things worked, without the scientific background to do so, this is simply an example of lying (if done on purpose) or arrogance (if done without knowing it was deceitful).

And this trend is what is very quickly watering down the value of the information that is available on-line (or off-line for that matter).

Bottom line – Being lean, having a monstrous bench press or being a manager of a gym does not mean you are qualified to interpret scientific data. Having a background in statistical analysis and methodology as well as an understanding of the scientific history within your SPECIFIC FIELD qualifies you to interpret scientific data.

Even scientific education is limited in its scope of EXPERTISE.

I have an undergraduate degree in human nutrition, 7 years experience working in clinical research overseeing weight loss and muscle building studies, and a graduate degree in human biology and nutritional sciences were I concentrated my research on the metabolic effects of fasting and its use in weight loss.

So even though my background is in an area of human health, this does not mean I should comment on the science of shoulder injury prevention.

Similarly, I have a colleague who is a PhD in athletic therapy with expertise in shoulder injury prevention, and thus while an expert in his own field knows not to comment on the usefulness of fasting for weight loss.

in 2009 I believe we should begin to openly question the qualifications of the sources that are trying to provide us with weight loss EXPERTISE.

In the scientific community there is nothing wrong, demeaning or rude about asking someone for their qualifications, and I believe this should the same within the on-line community.

If you’re not sure, there is no harm in asking.

BP

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So its Jan 1st…again.

For many people this means new years resolution time…and like a bad case of deja vu…it’s typically the SAME resolutions EVERY YEAR.

“I’m going to lose weight”

“I’m going to eat healthy”

“I’m going to go to the the gym every SINGLE DAY”

The problem with these resolutions is that..well..they are boring.

So this year, lets shake it up.

First..let’s combine the first two “traditional” resolutions ..”I am going to eat healthy and lose weight”..throw it out, and replace it with:

I am going to commit to getting results by doing nothing

Way more fun…and if you think about it, that’s exactly what happens when you follow Eat Stop Eat…all of your weight loss success come from…doing NOTHING!

Next, lets take the traditional resolution of “I will go to the gym every single day” and replace it with something much easier and FAR more effective:

I will record my workouts in a journal, and will try to improve with each workout

Like I said, much easier, and 100 times more effective.

Lastly, lets add one more resolution to the mix:

I will commit to one strength goal this year

I like this one becuase it really focuses your workouts, and because strength in the gym is a great measure of improvement.

For me, I commit to doing a standing barbell shoulder press with 225 pounds. It has been a goal of mine for a while now, but 2009 is going to be the year that I accomplish this.

So there are three health and fitness resolutions that are not traditional, not boring, but are super effective.

BP
PS- My own personal new years resolutions are to explore the first resolution to its fullest

I will commit to getting results by doing nothing

I am starting to think that this may have a far greater reach than simply intermittent fasting and weight loss.

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After finally finishing Michale Pollen’s latest book “In defense of food” and reading a fantastic article by Trisha Gura in this months Scientific American Mind, I think it is time to revisit my one golden rule of eating.

“Eat less but enjoy the foods you eat. Eat lots of fruits and vegetables, and lots of herbs and spices. And maybe most importantly, spend less time stressing over the types of food you are eating.”

I know my grammar could use some work, but this credo still remains as true to me today as it did when I first wrote it over three years ago. In fact, looking at it now, I think the first part is even more important than I ever realized…

“Eat less but enjoy the foods you eat”

Here is my simple suggestion for today. If you ever plan to go on a diet, or change the way you eat, get a pen and paper and simply write the following statement.

“I will eat less, and I will enjoy the foods I eat”

Trying to do the first (Eat less) without the later (enjoying the foods you eat) is what many of us are still doing wrong with our eating habits. Food should be about enjoyment not deprivation.

BP

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