Okinawa: The island of pork

The original inhabitants of the Ryūkyū Islands, of which the island of Okinawa is the largest, are believed to have the highest life expectancy in the world.

One of the staples of their diet is sweet potatoes. The carbohydrate percentage of a sweet potato is about 20; that is, each 100 g of sweet potato mass has about 20 g of carbohydrates. Sweet potatoes have a medium-high glycemic index, and are often avoided by those with impaired insulin sensitivity, and certainly by diabetics.

The other main staple of their diet is pork, as you may have inferred from the title of this post. The quote below is from the first of the three links provided below the quote.

Pork appears so frequently in the Okinawan diet that to say "meat" is really to say "pork." [...] It is no exaggeration to say that the present-day Okinawan diet begins and ends with pork.

        http://www.wonder-okinawa.jp/026/e/pork.html

        http://www.okinawaindex.com/index/?tid=2&cid=250&id=2

        http://ci.nii.ac.jp/naid/110000220190/en

So, what is the secret of the Okinawans’ longevity? Maybe it is the diet. Maybe it is the lifestyle. Maybe it is the fact that their mothers and fathers are Okinawans (the heritability of longevity has been estimated to be about 33%, and to be higher among females than males). Here are some interesting points that are worth noting:

- Their diet is not only of meat, but includes plenty of it.

- Their diet is not particularly low in saturated fat, and maybe it is high in it.

- Their diet is not particularly low in dietary cholesterol, and maybe high in it, since they eat the pig whole, including the parts (e.g., organs) rich in dietary cholesterol.

- Their diet is not a no carb diet, not even a typical low carb diet, but it seems to be very low in refined carbs and sugars.

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Muscle loss during short-term fasting

This is an issue that often comes up in online health discussions, and was the topic of a conversation I had the other day with a friend about some of the benefits of intermittent fasting.

Can the benefits of intermittent fasting be achieved without muscle loss? The answer is “yes”, to the best of my knowledge.

Even if you are not interested in bulking up or becoming a bodybuilder, you probably want to keep the muscle tissue you have. As a norm, muscle takes a long time, and effort, to build. It is generally easier to lose muscle than it is to gain it. Fat, on the other hand, can be gained very easily.

Body fat percentage is positively correlated with measures of inflammation markers and the occurrence of various health problems. Since muscle tissue makes up lean body mass, which excludes fat, it is by definition negatively correlated with inflammation markers and health problems.

As muscle mass increases, so does health; as long as the increase in muscle mass is “natural” – i.e., not caused by things like steroids, for instance.

In short-term fasts (e.g., up to 24 h) one can indeed lose some muscle as the body produces glucose using muscle tissue through a process known as gluconeogenesis. In this sense, muscle is the body’s main reserve of glucose. Adipocytes are the body’s main reserves of fat.

Muscle loss is not pronounced in short-term fasts though. It occurs after the body’s glycogen reserves, particularly those in the liver, are significantly depleted. This often happens 8 to 12 hours into the fast, depending on how depleted the glycogen reserves are when one starts fasting.

When the body is running short on glycogen, it becomes increasingly reliant on fat as a source of energy, sparing muscle tissue. That is, it burns fat, often in the form of ketone bodies, which are byproducts of fat metabolism. This state is known as ketosis. There is evidence that ketosis is a more efficient state from a metabolic perspective (Taubes, 2007, provides a good summary), which may be why many people feel an increase in energy when they fast.

The brain also runs on fat (through ketone byproducts) while in ketosis, although it still needs some glucose to function properly. That is primarily where muscle tissue comes into the picture, to provide the glucose that the brain needs to function. While glucose can also be made from fat, more specifically a lipid component called glycerol, this usually happens only during very prolonged fasting and starvation.

You do not have to consume carbohydrates at all to make up for the glycogen depletion, after you break the fast. Dietary protein will do the job, as it is used in gluconeogenesis as well.

Dietary protein also leads to an insulin response, which is comparable to that elicited by glucose. The difference is that protein also leads to other hormonal responses that have a counterbalancing effect to insulin, by allowing for the body's use of fat as a source of energy. Insulin, by itself, promotes fat deposition and prevents fat release at the same time.

When practicing intermittent fasting, one can increase protein synthesis by doing resistance exercise (weight training, HIT), which tips the scale toward muscle growth, and away from muscle catabolism.

This may actually lead to significant muscle gain in the long term. Fasting itself promotes the secretion of hormones (e.g., growth hormone) that have anabolic effects.

The following sites focus on muscle gain through intermittent fasting; the bloggers are living proof that it works.

  http://bradpilon.com/

  http://leangains.com/

Muscle catabolism happens all the time, even in the absence of fasting. As with many tissues in the body (e.g., bones), muscle is continuously synthesized and degraded. Muscle tissue grows when that balance is tipped toward synthesis, and is lost otherwise.

Muscle will atrophy (i.e., be degraded) if not used, even if you are not fasting. In fact, you can eat a lot of protein and carbohydrates and still lose muscle. Just note what happens when an arm or a leg is immobilized in a cast for a long period of time.

Short-term fasting is healthy, probably because it happened frequently enough among our hominid ancestors to lead to selective pressures for metabolic and physiological solutions. Consequently, our body is designed to function well while fasting, and triggering those mechanisms correctly may promote overall health.

The relationship between fasting and health likely follows a nonlinear pattern, possibly an inverted U-curve pattern. It brings about benefits up until a point, after which some negative effects ensue.

Long-term fasting may cause severe heart problems, and eventually death, as the heart muscle is used by the body to produce glucose. Here the brain has precedence over the heart, so to speak.

Voluntary, and in some cases forced, short-term fasting was likely very common among our Stone Age ancestors; and consumption of large amounts of high glycemic index carbohydrates very uncommon (Boaz & Almquist, 2001).

References:

Boaz, N.T., & Almquist, A.J. (2001). Biological anthropology: A synthetic approach to human evolution. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.

Taubes, G. (2007). Good calories, bad calories: Challenging the conventional wisdom on diet, weight control, and disease. New York, NY: Alfred A. Knopf.

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A Winter Carnival: Wrapping up Christmas

A Winter Scene: Sutton Hoo, nr Woodbridge in Suffolk

Ho, ho, ho! Well Christmas is now done and dusted, Twelfth Night has come and gone and Britain is now covered in a blanket of snow. It's a good job we've had to take down the decorations. At least it's been one way of keeping warm during this wintry spell.

But forget about the weather. Today I am asking how did you get on with your rubbish...or perhaps I should say....your festive resources over what is the most wasteful time of the year?

Did you recycle them, or bung them in the bin? Of course, I know you wouldn't have done the latter. Maybe you've kept a few things for re-use? After all, there are lots of free things that enter your home during Christmas, including ribbons, cards, paper and boxes and so much can be done with them before you even think about recycling.

This carnival celebrates a range of fabulous posts from some lovely bloggers, showing what they've been all getting up to, with ideas ten-a-penny. And the photo you see below is my own contribution. It's a fishtank that I made with my creative 5-year-old on Boxing Day, from an empty Christmas Cracker box, featuring bits of fir tree, sweetie wrappers, old fabrics and some crepe paper he'd got as a present.




But that's enough from me. Here's over to some of the gorgeous bloggers who have been busy with their imagination over the festive period:


The fabulous Mrs Green over at MyZeroWaste has a whole host of tips on how to recycle your festive bits & bobs. Visit How to recycle your Christmas for lots of inspiration.

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And if you have other thoughts in mind, here are some more excellent ideas from MyZeroWaste, about reusing for greeting cards, even for things as simple as notecards.

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Nixdmix never fails to make me giggle, especially this time with her post Wrapping paper: reindeers can't cross their legs. It really is a lovely story.

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I love this idea from Cathy at NurtureStore who reveals how she's used Christmas cards to make a Jigsaw and Memory Game. What a great idea to keep kids entertained when out and about in restaurants or around at friends. Free and simple!

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And last but not least, here's another creative idea for reusing cards from Jude at Artful Adventures. I'm sure you'll be impressed with how she makes some gorgeous cards from old greetings cards. Check out her ideas in her post Creative ways to recycle Christmas cards.

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I'll most definitely be keeping my favourite cards for re-use next year. As well as making new cards and games, it will save me from the drastic action I took this Christmas, which was to cut up some 2009 cards for reusing as some emergency tags. Cheeky I know, but eh ho!



So thanks to everyone who contributed to this Carnival. I apologise for it being late. With schools closed due to the snow, the children kept me too busy to blog. However, I'd like to wish you all a Happy New Year, and if anyone is interested in some other practical tips, check out this post which I published last week: Packing your Christmas Away with the R-Word.

For the reasons stated above I have postponed my decluttering posts until next week, but do come back on Monday when I will be kicking off Week 1 of the 2010 Rubbish Diet Challenge.
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2010: Looking Backwards & Forwards and Onwards & Upwards

It's been two years since I made a tiny new year's resolution to smarten up my domestic landscape and stated unassumingly that I intended to reduce the amount of waste we sent to landfill.

With a memory like a fish, I needed a system to remember my reusable bags, I wanted to cook more and find a way to stop my husband from throwing so much crap in the bin including holey socks and unused presents. In short, I think I needed a miracle.

"It's decluttering" he'd say.

Witnessing unworn slippers being chucked away, my defence was limited to gurning and with an imaginary kick up the backside and a slap around his head with a wet fish, I would just slope off and leave him to it. Who was I to argue? After all it was me who topped up the rest of the rubbish with food waste and my lazy ways. And that was our life!

Then in January 2008 up popped St Emundsbury Borough Council with its Zero Waste project, offering a helping hand. It's almost as though they'd heard my plea for sanity. And I can't thank them enough, because two years later I've now thrown away in one year what I would have done in just one month...one wheelie bin's worth of rubbish.

And by shopping more carefully, using up leftovers and switching to reusable products, we've also saved around £2500, a £1000 of which has been by reducing food waste. I was never really frugal, but when I look at these figures, I can't help rubbing my hands and shouting "LOADSAMONEY" despite it bringing a shudder down my spine with memories of that obnoxious Harry Enfield character from the eighties!

It really has been an amazing couple of years and back then I had no idea how important this thing would become. And having succeeded in reducing my own rubbish, I've enjoyed challenging others along the way too.

Take last year. I had a great time with my friends over at British Mummy Bloggers, helping to inspire them to take part in WRAP's Recycle Week, which was a fabulous success thanks to all the bloggers involved who helped spread the word. Even James Hazell and Sal from BBC Radio Suffolk were up for a laugh with their rubbish too, with lots of on-air fun and frolics. Although James didn't quite give it his full oomph, Sally managed to get to zero waste.

And do you remember Ruby, Jo and Mrs Green, the original "Recyclettes" from 2008? In each case, all I did was get them to do a bin audit and offered some initial suggestions, then left them to their own devices.

While Ruby and Jo successfully managed to slim their bins by 50%, Mrs Green went onto achieve rubbish reducing levels of immense proportions. With environmental concerns at the heart of her ambitions, she even set up her own website at MyZeroWaste and worked hard to move from a full bin load and several side-bags each week to just one small bin in the last year! And for 2010, Mrs Green aka Rachelle Strauss is aiming for total Zero Waste.

Now that will be amazing to follow. I on the other hand, have long since found my comfortable weight and I daren't even try to slim our own rubbish beyond our monthly carrier bag's worth. With my husband's very settled habits it could make me a prime candidate for divorce. And I am not sure who would file for it first.

But for 2010 I will be supporting that hubby of mine in his urge to declutter. After stopping him in his tracks for two whole years, I the Queen of Clutter have finally signed up to some top tips from ClutterClearing.net and will be going head-to-head with he who rules: the King of Declutter himself. If you've ever watched Kramer vs Kramer, you'll get a sense of what life will be like in the Almost Average household, only this will be about rubbish, or the intended lack of it. We've already had cross words over what should be binned or recycled, so for the next three months you can expect war.

So what else can you expect from The Rubbish Diet this season?

On a calmer note, I will be getting away from the blog a lot more, still talking rubbish of course. With more speaking engagements on the horizon and a few collaborations in the pipeline, I'll be hoping to get people revealing their rubbish in the most unlikeliest of places, including having a nosey behind the scenes at one of London's most prestigious hotels to show that a luxurious lifestyle doesn't have to create waste.

And of course the exciting Seven Suffolk Streets waste reduction project is going to be a huge focus for this spring, with Suffolk County Council encouraging my whole street - and six others around the county - to reduce our rubbish by half in March.

But my priority over the next few months is to do what I love doing most and that's to help even more people slim their blimmin' bins AND have a giggle while they're doing so. Whether it's to save money, make life more convenient, learn more skills or become greener, I'll be lending a hand to help folk kickstart this year with a lighter load and enjoy cost benefits too.

So if this sounds like a challenge that appeals to you or your friends, then make sure you pop by each week for a whole load of tips that could help you slim your bin in just eight weeks. Yep, eight weeks! That's how long it took me and you'll be amazed how easy it can be to knock things off your Rubbish list. But what's needed are small, gradual steps, not to attempt everything at once. This is a gentle diet, not a full-blown crash diet!

But as with all diets, you'll need to do a weigh-in first, so click below for my online guide to conducting your very own waste audit. There are some words on Rethinking Rubbish too, which may just keep you motivated should you happen to get the wobbles.

Here it is. You'll find everything you need at

http://tinyurl.com/TheRubbishDietChallenge

Please feel free to share extra tips in the comments below and once you've sorted out your rubbish, pop by next Monday for the beginning of Week 1, where I will be sure to ease you in gently.

And the great news is we've got one volunteer already, Pippa from A Mother's Ramblings, who's challenged herself to take up a Zero Waste Week in March. So if you have a mo, do pop over to her blog to offer your support.

You know, I have a feeling this will be a very exciting new year.
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Eating fish whole: Smelts

Since different parts of a fish have different types of nutrients that are important for our health, it makes sense to consume the fish whole. This is easier to do with small than big fish.

One of my favorite types of small fish is the smelt; the photo below shows a batch of smelts that I prepared using the recipe below. Another small fish favorite is the sardine. Small fish are usually low in the food chain, and thus have very low concentrations of metals that can be toxic to humans.

Many people dislike the taste of smelts, but will eat them if they are well seasoned and their texture is somewhat hard. Here is a recipe that will get you that.

- Steam cook the smelts for 30 minutes to 1 hour (less time = harder texture).
- Spread the steam cooked smelts on a sheet pan covered with aluminum foil; use light olive oil to prevent the fish from sticking to the foil.
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit.
- Season the steam cooked smelts to taste; I suggest using salt, chili powder, garlic powder, and herbs.
- Bake the smelts for 30 minutes, turn the oven off, and leave them there for 1 hour.

There is no need to clean, or gut, the smelts for the recipe above. Since they feed primarily on plant matter, and have a very small digestive tract, there is not much to be “cleaned” off of them anyway.

They will be ready to store or eat cold. There are several variations of this recipe. For example, you can bake them for 40 minutes, and then serve them hot.

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Saturated fat intake not associated with heart disease – Dr. Cordain’s article

I would like to comment on a recent article co-authored by Dr. Loren Cordain, and published in the journal Current Treatment Options in Cardiovascular Medicine, in 2009. Dr. Cordain is probably the leading expert today on the diet of our Stone Age ancestors.

The importance of this article comes from the fact that in the past Dr. Cordain has argued that our Stone Age ancestors have not consumed large amounts of saturated fat, because of the relatively low percentage of fat in the flesh of wild animals. This led, according to Dr. Cordain, to an evolved body design that is not well adapted to the consumption of significant amounts of saturated fat.

Yet, many other researchers have argued that saturated fats are beneficial to our health, with ample empirical evidence to back up their statements. The researchers at the Weston A. Price Foundation have been particularly prominent voices in favor of saturate fats.

Now, this acknowledgement that saturated fats (or saturated fatty acids) are not detrimental to health, particularly heart health, was made with qualifications. And, Dr. Cordain is not the first author of the article. Page 293 of the article states that:

Replacement of SFAs, especially palmitate, with MUFAs may provide moderate cardiometabolic benefits, and is unlikely to do harm. However, SFA reduction does not appear to be the most important dietary modification for CHD risk reduction.

(Notes: SFA=saturated fatty acids=saturated fat, think greasy steak and egg yolk; MUFAs=monounsaturated fatty acids, think olive oil and lard; CHD=coronary heart disease.)

Palmitate refers to palmitic acid, of which meat, butter, eggs, and dark chocolate are all good sources. Even salmon is a good source of palmitic acid, although it is also an excellent source of DHA and EPA omega-3 fat acids. EPA is eicosapentaenoic acid, and DHA is docosahexaenoic acid; both of which are found in fish.

So, the caution in the statement above does not make much sense given the mounting evidence that palmitic acid (especially when consumed with a low carb. diet, in my view), may have cardio-protective effects.

Nevertheless, this is a major shift from Dr. Cordain’s previous position that saturated fats cannot be part of a healthy diet because they do not fit well with what we currently know about the diet of our Stone Age ancestors.

Maybe those ancestors ate a lot of saturated fat after all, and that consumption led to adaptations that make saturated fat consumption healthy; again, in my view, as long as it is not accompanied by high consumption of refined carbs. and sugars.

Saturated fat was probably the most readily available type of fat to those ancestors, a rich source of calories, and virtually impossible to avoid given the main component of those ancestors’ diet – meat.

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Intermittent fasting and reduced inflammation

A recent post on the Primal Wisdom blog led me to do go back to some of the research on an approach to dieting that I tried myself, with some positive results. The approach is known as intermittent fasting (IF). I also found an excellent blog post by Dr. Michael Eades on IF (see here).

Typically IF involves fasting every other day. On the non-fasting days, food and water consumption is not restricted in any way. On fasting days, only water is consumed. Variations of this approach usually involve replacing water with juice, and having an eating window of only a few hours within longer periods – e.g., fasting 19 hours and then eating during a window of 5 hours, for each period of 24 hours.

IF is different from calorie restriction (CR), in that in the latter total daily calorie intake is restricted to a somewhat fixed amount, below one’s basal metabolic rate (the number of calories needed to maintain one’s current weight). In CR the calorie restriction is not normally achieved through fasting, but through careful portion size control and selection of foods based on calorie content. Having said that, some prominent CR practitioners also practice IF.

One interesting aspect of IF studies is that often they do not involve any calorie reduction in the participants' diet; that is, individuals consume the same amount of calories that they would if they were not fasting at all. In other words, they consume 2X outside their fasting window; where X would be their normal caloric consumption without fasting.

Yet, the benefits of IF are still achieved. For example, during Ramadan, the levels of inflammation markers and factors, such as C-reactive protein (CRP) and homocysteine, go down, and remain low for several weeks after IF is interrupted. These inflammation markers and factors are known to be strongly associated with heart disease.

In fact, animal studies suggest that virtually identical benefits can be obtained through IF in terms of increased lifespan and disease resistance, as those normally associated with CR. Again, this is somewhat surprising because often IF does not involve any reduction in calories consumed.

Fasting promotes increased levels of growth hormone in humans. A decline in growth hormone levels is associated with aging. Thus, increased circulating growth hormones may be one of the mechanisms by which IF may affect lifespan.

There have been some reports of IF being associated with negative effects on health, but I suspect that they are associated with gorging on refined carbohydrates and sugars during the eating window. Refined carbohydrates and sugars promote inflammation, and IF reduces inflammation. It is conceivable that a very high consumption of refined carbohydrates and sugars during the eating window may completely negate the benefits of IF, particularly if one is doing a half-hearted version of IF to start with.

A combination of IF and a diet low in refined carbohydrates and sugars probably makes sense in terms of our evolved physiology. Our Stone Age ancestors had to fast on a regular basis, based on the availability of food – there were no refrigerators or grocery stores during the vast majority of our evolutionary history as a species. When food was available, it was consumed to satiety. In other words, our Stone Age ancestors practiced IF, against their will. Because of that, this is the state in which our body evolved to operate optimally.

If you watch enough episodes of the TV show Survivorman, you will probably notice that it is very unlikely that our Stone Age ancestors had access to enough calories to survive on plant foods only, assuming that they faced problems similar to those in the show.

Our digestive tract has evolved over millions of years from a mostly vegetarian diet, practiced by our Australopithecine ancestors, to a primarily carnivorous diet, adopted by human ancestors as far back as Homo erectus, and probably Homo habilis. Given that, only the recent invention of refined carbohydrates and sugars has given us access to enough dense carbohydrate sources of calories.

So, a combination of IF and a diet low in (or devoid of) refined carbohydrates and sugars makes evolutionary sense, and is probably why so many people who adopt Paleolithic diets see so many improvements in health markers such as inflammation markers, blood pressure, and HDL cholesterol.

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