The great debates about Fat, Salt, Chocolate, what is too much OR TOO LITTLE?

If a little is good, more is better, right? That does seem to be the American way. We can have too little of good things and miss the benefits. Unfortunately, we can also get too much of even a very good thing. Well-meaning but misguided government agencies often lead us to one extreme or the other. To find the right balance can mean investigating beyond the headlines. Here are 3 cases in point:

  • For decades, the public was warned that fat in foods was the enemy. That silly advice resulted in a slew of unhealthful carb-loaded fat-free foods and an explosion of obesity and diabetes. My easy-read little book on the subject (Fat Free Folly) explains how that occurred and gives science-based advice about choosing good fats vs. the bad ones. Implementing a smart-fat / low crap-carb* diet is now a lot easier. Our friend Fred Pescatore, MD just published an exciting book detailing the advice that he gives to his red-carpet worthy celebrity patients. The A-List Diet: Lose up to 15 Pounds and Look and Feel Younger in Just 2 Weeks contains 100 delicious recipes, and easy-to-follow meal plans.
  • Chocolate. When I was in natural foods retailing years ago, I remember that chocolate was supposedly bad for us. (Maybe it was the puritanical principle that if it tastes / feels good it must be evil.) Therefore, many manufacturers began to substitute carob (from the pea family) for chocolate. While carob is healthful, it is certainly no competition for chocolate in the flavor department. Now we know that chocolate contains powerful antioxidants and is, for example, associated with potentially reducing inflammation and blood pressure as well as lowering the risk of various cardiovascular events. We also all understand that dark chocolate is better than milk chocolate although some studies do not differentiate. Less well known is that science has shown that benefits peak at a certain intake and then begin to decrease. STUDY of men. STUDY of women. With really high consumption chocolate can even become a liability! The sweet spot (yes, I noticed the pun) may be something like 3-5 servings a week of an average portion size**. I use muscle testing as a double check and find that after having chocolate a couple of days in a row, my body wants a day off.
  • Salt / sodium. Let’s start with the fact that animals will travel distances to find a “salt lick”. Like the other minerals in those deposits, salt is an essential nutrient. Sodium helps balance fluid inside and outside cells as well as being important to the function of nerve tissue and muscles. There was an article this week in the Dallas paper on the trial of a man who murdered 4 women. The defense explained that this guy had brain injury from sports-related concussions, post-traumatic stress disorder and was on a cocktail of psychiatric medications. This was already a setup for a perfect storm, but the insanity plea also noted that the final trigger for the rampage was low sodium levels. The lack of salt contributed to swelling in the brain and confusion. (I have heard of the “Twinkie defense” but the “Low sodium defense” is a new one to me.)

Dogma has it that folks with high blood pressure should reduce sodium intake. However, a recent large scale study calls that idea into question. ARTICLE. This quote is from that article, but I added the emphasis: “the researchers found that the study participants who consumed less than 2,500 milligrams of sodium a day had higher blood pressure than participants who consumed higher amounts of sodium.” I have grave misgivings about the government’s push to force lower sodium intake. (Should we take their advice with a grain of salt?) But, I also worry about people who get a huge amount of sodium from eating processed foods. Besides the uncertainty about the health effects of gigantic amounts of salt, those foods pose other problems and are typically low in potassium which balances sodium.

Moderation in general may be the key rather than trying to force any component of the diet to artificially high or low levels. Also, each person is Individual and generalized rules may not apply.

* (“crap-carb” is my highly scientific term for the refined carbohydrates (e.g. sugar and starch) that have become a blight on the American food supply.)

** I only had access to the whole study on women. That one said the average portion of chocolate for women age 62 and over was 19 grams which is like the standard US portion size, 20 grams (3/4 ounce). Younger women in the study averaged 30 gram portions. For a moment, I thought maybe the younger females ate more because of monthly cravings, but the youngest in the study was 48. Note: this study did not separate milk chocolate from



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