Monday, November 11, 2013

bacon love

Of course i love bacon -- duh.  I believe i've heard it claimed that it's the food that most tempts veg*ns back to the "dark side."  Adding some improves the hell out of almost every dish imaginable -- even some desserts. Just don't try to pretend that it's the ultimate healthy choice.

When manufactured from conventionally-raised hogs, the fat in bacon is full of omega-6 that promotes fatty liver and ruins your physiological insulin resistance -- that property of muscle cells that keeps them from taking up more than their share of blood glucose, and therefore making you more hungry on a low-carb diet.

Remember when i wrote before that a very clever study showed that the thyroid works best in the presence of plenty of saturated fat in the diet, and less well as the degree of saturation goes down?  Pork AND poultry NATURALLY contain less saturated fat and more unsaturates even when they're pastured.  Add to this predilection the fact that almost all birds and swine raised for sale get extra feed beyond what they forage, and you can bet the farm that it won't be as good for a weight-loss diet as ruminant meats, especially grass-finished ones.

When CICO-promoters point out that low-carbers frequently still fail to meet their weight-loss goals, and attribute it to "unsustainability" or simply the incorrectness of the philosophy, i think they're on the wrong page.  I believe that the failure is rooted in the insistence upon using Atkins-approved but deleterious dietary choices -- WHICH ARE INDIVIDUAL in applicability.  Yes, Virginia, we ARE unique snowflakes (or as good as unique, in our individual rarity).

Because of genetic predilection, the diets of our mothers and grandmothers before us, our exposure to a huge variety of potential toxins, parasites, viruses and bacterial infections, our history of particular injuries and allergies, our microbiome, and factors we don't even know about yet, our tolerances to diet are all different.  So are the ideal choices for each of us, to promote the best health we can achieve.  These are things we have to discover for ourselves.  BUT...

...Biology is biology.  We KNOW how certain processes work in the body, and even if they're screwed up in some of us, we can logically predict how some things will work -- things like linoleic acid promoting certain biochemical processes, and palmitic tending toward others.  Things like dairy fats being problematic in weight loss even though butyric acid is our friend.

We all make trade-offs that promote quality-of-life over the HEALTHIEST choice:  i have a pretty good idea of how "clean" my diet OUGHT to be, but i choose to use alcohol pretty regularly and to have dairy products, sugar sources, and even gluten grains from time to time.  I KNOW i'd feel better without all of these, but again -- it's a quality-of-life thing.

But tell myself that these foodstuffs are harmless?  Tell myself i can eat all the bacon, cream, nuts, etc that i want, and they're perfectly healthy?  NO.  I may be ignorant of a lot of things, but i ain't stoopid.

16 comments:

  1. If Atkins was still living and working, I think there would be significant changes to his approach to keep up with modern research. He might have restricted his recommendations for fat to natural fat, encouraged people to stay away from non-nutritive sweeteners, encouraged people to avoid soy and gluten-containing grains, etc. And he never would have let his name be put on the crap being sold under the Atkins label.

    But in essence he is frozen in his time (the subsequent books by others have never quite caught on), and the advice he gave was OK for his time but is not holding up well today.

    I feel sad for people that still cling to his old recommendations as justification for keeping total crap in their diet (canola oil, soy, artificial sweeteners, etc.).

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. i've long thought the same as you -- that he was brilliant enough to change as the state of science evolved! as much as i deplore a few of the things he advocated, and a LOT of the things his "heirs" do, i still salute the good doctor's perceptiveness and STUBBORNNESS to hang in there when so many people were against him!

      Delete
  2. Hi Tess,
    I've been following and enjoying your blog for some time now. The last four paragraphs of this post struck me as a very pithy summary of your 30,000' view of this nutrition thang. Consider putting these in something like a 'my philosophy' or 'read this first' tab on your page.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. thank you, Aaron! :-D ...i hadn't thought of such a thing, but i will now.

      Delete
  3. Tess, but the amount of necessary bacon to cook, for example, eggs, is very little , like one slice per two eggs . It is almost a seasoning.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. oh yes, but it IS so delicious, who will stop there? :-)

      Delete
    2. Hm, two eggs fried in a bacon usually stop people from coming for seconds, but I may underestimate the force of the love inspired by a bacon.

      Delete
  4. Stoopid you aren't, no. :)

    Personally Atkins doesn't work as well for me as strict, very clean keto. (no peanuts, no artificial sweetners, almonds...etc) I never feel well after I eat a meal of chicken or pork. I envy those who are able to lose weight while still piling back almond flour cakes, LC cookies... etc. Guess some of our metabolism is just more "special" than others. :)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. exactly! some people seem to do BETTER with pork and poultry ... but i'm not one of them. some (like me) thrive on an almost-ZC beef/lamb regimen, and other people feel bad on it. Atkins was a great place to START, but staying there would have been a mistake for me.

      Delete
  5. We've always loved bacon, don't eat it every day - but yes two slices with a fried egg for breakfast .... perfect!

    All the best Jan

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. :-) double that for me -- and my husband likes an extra egg with his.

      Delete
  6. I guess I'm lucky---to an extent. I really love bacon but its a self-limiting food for me. I might have a slice or two with breakfast but I don't want anymore until the next day at the earliest.

    I've always envied the people who can lose weight while consuming lots of sugar alcohols...

    Its been over a decade since I read the Atkins book but my takeaway was more along the lines of: eat meats and veggies and occasional cheese and nuts. I definitely didn't feel he promoted bacon and lots of it all the time but I guess he didn't outright forbid it either.

    I just wish that I :
    1.) Knew where to buy grassfed meats
    2.) Had the money to buy them.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. it IS interesting to look at the Atkins diet's changes through the decades -- he seemed capable of learning as he went along, and revising recommendations upon observing people's experiences, and not every diet guru CAN.

      I think the tricky bit is, what one can succeed with when FIRST starting low-carb, isn't infinitely helpful. plenty of cheese, nuts, cream, LC breads, artificially-sweetened desserts, etc help one make the transition from the SAD to a "real food" regimen, but for difficult-losers and easy-regainers it has to be much more strict.

      to find GF meats in your area, googling would probably help more than anything. not letting "the perfect be the enemy of the good" is most important, though. conventional meat is better than pasta and bread ANY time, and TBH we use it most of the time ourselves, out of convenience. ;-)

      Delete
    2. The easiest option for a grass-fed meat is a NZ lamb,shoulder stakes are less expensive than a prime conventional beef, my local Publx carries it, when it is on sale, I buy a lot and freeze. It is possible to locate a natural food store in your area which sells meat, which is expensive, but I usually get organ meats and a grass-fed fat, which I add to a lean conventional meat (I own a meat grinder).
      Some people buy half of a cow and put it in a freezer.

      Delete
  7. I have my own issues with food as well. I cannot tolerate sugar alcohols and do best with a beef/lamb/duck diet...non-starchy veggies and very rarely nuts. I get a lot of grief from the uneducated about lc diets, but I'm never ill and have truckloads of energy, labs are super. What can I say? ;)

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. :-) i've gotten "funny" about educating people on LC.... sometimes i speak up and sometimes i don't! depends on who it is, how old they are, gender, and ... the moon's sign!

      Delete