Month: November 2007

Improving SLD

Seth Roberts9 Comments

John Tukey once said that a good way to have new ideas is to tell others the ones you have already. This was part of why I wrote The Shangri-La Diet: It would be much easier to get better ideas about weight loss if I told people the ones I already had. Call it open source weight control.

I think it’s working. In the SLD forums, Sean Curley, who tried SLD before the book (thanks, Levitt & Dubner!), made this brilliant post:

Two years ago (before the book came out), I lost about 27 lbs on SLD, using fructose water. In hindsight, I probably lost too much weight going from 183 lbs to 155 lbs (I’m male, 6′ 1″). I stopped doing what had worked, and got sloppy about SLD in general, and put most — but not all — of it back on over the course of a year or so. So, now I’m doing it again, but having read about how hepatoxic and lipogenic fructose is, started doing oil instead — ELOO, Walnut Oil and Canola, usually mixed in equal parts, and usually not breathing through my nose when I drink it to avoid any flavor at all.

My MO, historically, and what worked well for me, was doing — don’t gasp — 750 calories/day of SW (previously) and then oil (more recently). Both worked well, although truth be told, I think SW worked even better. Because of my concerns about fructose, and sugar in general, that’s not really an option for me anymore. My one concern about SLD has always been, am I replacing too many regular, “nutritious” calories with calories that aren’t? (Although I am aware of the healthy benefits of the oils.) I have tried various protein powders — whey, rice, and some soy — with noseclips followed by a mouth rinse, but haven’t had good AS with that (maybe negative AS, actually). Not sure if it’s too much residual flavor, too “simple” in its form, but for whatever reason, they just didn’t work well for me. Also tried Tim Beneke’s flavorless mush balls, but too much of a hassle, and just a little awkward for me.

I’ve always wondered if “real” protein in some flavorless, non-processed form wouldn’t be even more effective, but for some reason, I never got around to trying it until three weeks ago. I thought that eating full-fatted cottage cheese, which is very high in protein, and pretty bland, with noseclips on, might be worth a try. And, wow, did it work! My approach to SLD has always been to have the first 750 cals of my day as flavorless, going to dinner time on nothing but flavorless calories — as needed, in 50 calorie “doses” (oil or SW), and then allowing myself to eat whatever I wanted after that. But, it usually took 750 calories to get me there, sometimes a little less, but not usually. So, 750 flavorless calories was my “benchmark.”

The first day I tried the nose-clipped cottage cheese, It took only 420 calories to get to dinner time, with a MUCH greater feeling of fullness and AS than I had ever experienced on SLD. That effect has held consistent for the last two or three weeks, sometimes needing as few as 360 cals to dinner, but never more the 560, although usually 425 is the number. That’s a substantial reduction (43%) in the number of flavorless calories required to get the same (probably better, actually) AS effect. Then, two days ago, I thought: I wonder how bland, plain chicken breast meet would work? (again with noseclips). The answer, after two days, appears to be even more effective –more on the order of 360 calories required to get the same effect.

In both cases, I use nose clips, and typically eat about 60 cals at a time, as needed for hunger, AND I rinse my mouth out two or three times before I take the noseclips off to wash out any residual flavor.

For me the effect of going from oil to flavorless “real” protein has been as remarkable as the effect I got from going from pre-SLD to SLD originally.

As I posted there, the theory behind SLD is all about regulation of energy storage. You want to store neither too little nor too much — and you want to store more when food is cheap. But food is more than energy. It is also building blocks. Which means protein, mostly. So it is quite plausible that there is a whole regulatory system designed to get the right amount of protein. Sean’s observations suggest exactly that.

Besides the conceptual plausibility the details of the new method are excellent:

1. The raw materials (cottage cheese and chicken meat) are readily available and easy to eat.

2. The notion of eating the first calories of the day flavorless and then anything for dinner matches what’s clear about self-control: We have a lot more earlier in the day. This method uses self-control when it is plentiful and not when it is scarce.

I’m not going to stop drinking flaxseed oil (nose-clipped). But I am going to try adding chicken meat (nose-clipped).

Omega-3 and Snake Oil

Seth Roberts1 Comment

Julia Powell, the inspired Julia/Julia blogger (the first blog to be made into a movie), wrote in the Washington Post she was “almost 95 percent sure that Seth Roberts, author of THE SHANGRI-LA DIET: The No Hunger, Eat Anything Weight-Loss Plan (Putnam, $19.95), is a snake-oil salesman.” Almost 95%?

How about 100%? Snake oil, it turns out, is high in omega-3.

Recently in Japan, a group of scientists at the Japanese National Food Research Institute led by Nobuya Shirai turned their attention to snake oil . . . Shirai and his team evaluated the effects of Erabu sea-snake oil on a number of outcomes in mice, including maze-learning ability and swimming endurance. In both cases, snake oil significantly improved the ability of the mice in comparison with those fed lard. . . .The original Chinese purveyors of snake oil offered something that probably did exactly what they claimed it would do: help fellow workers relieve the pain of their labors.

Thanks to Tucker Max.

Better Nutrition, Better Behavior

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Here is an abstract of an enormously interesting and already famous 2002 study of the effect of better nutrition on the behavior of prison inmates. The supplements included omega-3 fats.

The study was very innovative and no doubt extremely difficult. About as far from studying lab rats or college students as you can get. Here are the key results:

Those who received the active capsules committed on average 11.8 infringements per 1000 person-days, a reduction of 26.3% (95% CI 8.3-44.3%) compared to those who received placebos. This difference between groups was statistically significant at P<0.03 (two-tailed).

In spite of a huge effect — huge at least in practical terms — the statistical significance was marginal. There isn’t anything wrong with that, it indicates that we need a way of studying these very important issues that isn’t incredibly hard. Of course the “easy” method will be “deficient” (according to overly critical critics) in a dozen ways; that’s the price you pay. The authors of this article don’t entirely understand this point. “Further investigations should include assessments of nutritional status from blood before and during supplementation,” they write. Uh, no, you don’t always follow a very difficult thing by trying to do an even more difficult thing.

Nothing is said about the difficulty of the study, which is extremely important, in this report. The difficulty of a scientific study is always important but almost always goes unmentioned in scientific articles. If you (the reader) have done similar studies you can guess okay but with an innovative study like this few readers could have any clear idea.

Thanks to Dev Rana.

Omega-3 Without Fish

Seth Roberts3 Comments

Here is a very important omega-3 paper, titled “High Omega-3 Essential Fatty Acid Status in Nigerians and Low Status in Minnesotans,” that a reader named Melissa linked to in the comments. It shows you can have much more omega-3 in your blood than Americans even if you don’t eat fish.

Rural and urban Nigerians had similar omega-3 levels. Here’s what they eat:

The major carbohydrate-rich staples are the starchy tubers such as yams, cocoa-yams and cassava, the cereals rice and maize, and minor foods such as plantains and bananas. The major protein staples include legumes such as beans and pulses, seeds, nuts, cereal proteins and leaf proteins, some of which are rich in 18:3w3. Animal protein sources such as milk and eggs are virtually nil for rural communities, and are very limited for the urban population. Meats and fish . . . are in limited supply. Crayfish and dried fish are important but cost constraints limit intake.

The effect:

Nigerians have more than twice as much essential w3 EFA in their plasma lipids as do Minnesotans.

There was a negative correlation between blood levels of omega-3 and blood levels of omega-6. Perhaps raising omega-6 levels lowers omega-3 levels, even when the amount of omega-3 in the diet is constant. The theoretical mechanism is competition for the same enzyme. I haven’t yet studied this via self-experimentation; I will.

Thanks, Melissa.

The Preposterous Files

Seth Roberts3 Comments

The BBC has a most intriguing radio show (on Radio 4) that they are curiously hiding from potential listeners. It is called “ The Preposterous Files” and is about “cases that show up Civil Service bureaucracy.” It was on their Listen Again page yesterday but was taken off yesterday. Its Listen Again button (pre-disappearance) replayed a segment about fiddling, alas.

So far there have been 5 shows. Perhaps that’s all there will ever be. (How unfortunate!) Here are their topics (taken from the show’s archives):

1. Deciding on the design, location and function of the police telephone box proved a dauntingly complex process. One difficulty was that most of the public had never used a telephone.

2. In 1900, the North of England press began to report a mysterious epidemic that was affecting thousands of beer drinkers. The medical profession declared that it was an outbreak of peripheral neuritis provoked by excessive alcohol consumption, but a sceptical chemist, working alone from a makeshift laboratory, thought otherwise.

3. In 1912, cost-conscious HM Customs replaced Falmouth’s steam launch with a former sailing boat fitted with an auxiliary motor. Unfortunately, the motor proved unable to cope with the strong currents off the Cornish coast.

4. In 1954, stevedores reported finding an unconscious young man on board a Polish ship berthed at Bermondsey Docks. Was he an asylum seeker or a stowaway?

5. The transcript of the court martial of Flying Officer DR Kenyon, who retracted his plane’s undercarriage whilst still standing on the runway prior to taking off for a bombing mission during the 1956 Suez crisis, makes extraordinary reading.

Is Nutrition a Science?

Seth Roberts2 Comments

In John Tierney’s blog, Gary Taubes is very critical of nutrition researchers:

The last place you want a science to find itself is where obesity research is today, with hypotheses of causation that can explain none of the pertinent observations, but yet are believed so fervently that no one can challenge them without being ostracized or declared a quack.

Fair enough. But Taubes (and Tierney) make the usual mistake of being too critical and not enough appreciative. I figured the real wisdom would be in the comments, and I was not disappointed. Taubes thought physics functioned better than nutrition. One comment:

It’s not that the scientists [in physics and nutrition] are any more or less skeptical, or that it takes any longer for the truth to emerge, it’s that the public is more likely to be paying attention [to nutrition] in the meantime. And human beings as a group are extremely bad at reasoning under uncertainty.

Quite right. If Taubes and Tierney have trouble seeing the big picture (although Good Calories Bad Calories is a big-picture book) surely most people, and other journalists, do much worse. Another comment:

People like the old “correlation does not equal causation” slogan, but it’s not correct to translate that as “correlations are completely uninformative,”

Well put. (I blogged about this.) My favorite comment, however, was not wise:

Tierney stresses the errors and biases of nutrition science – but what of its successes? [Good start.] . . . As Tierney surely knows, there is a solid body of research that cumulatively demonstrates the positive effects of a balanced diet, lots of fresh fruit and veggies, avoidance of saturated fats, moderate consumption of calories and regular exercise. This is common sense, and science backs it up.

The history of nutrition teaches the opposite. The most helpful findings have not been “common sense”. Folate supplementation greatly reduced birth defects. Not common sense. Eat oranges to cure scurvy: Not common sense. Pellagra due to nutrition rather than infection: Not common sense. The whole notion of vitamins: Not common sense (deficiency diseases were attributed to poisons). “Common sense” approaches to losing weight, such as “moderate calorie intake”: Failed miserably.

It’s true that traditional foodways often turn out to be very healthy, but they can’t be called “common sense” because they vary so much from one place to another.

Thanks to Dave Lull and Tim Beneke.

Mark Todd, the Cheese Dude, on Gourmet Food Business

Seth Roberts2 Comments

Mark Todd (thecheesedude at aol dot com) is a cheese expert who lives near the Russian River. Today he was in a local store demoing a cheese (Chiantino) that he and his business partner import from Germany. We had a long and utterly fascinating conversation. He has met most of the chefs who appear on the Food Network. His favs:

The best cook: Jacques Pepin “hands down”.

The most knowledgeable food expert: Alton Brown. “He knows ten times more than all the rest of them put together.”

How did he become a cheese expert, I asked. “Persistence,” he said.

The details of that persistence were not what I expected. When he was 30, his dad, who was 58, died of a massive heart attack. At the time, he was a lawyer. He hated it. What do I really want to do? he wondered. Something with food. He and his wife moved from crowded Palo Alto to near the Russian River. At a food event in the months that followed, he met someone who was paid to carve cheese. Wow, you can get paid for that, he thought. He asked the guy if he needed help. No, he didn’t. He and his wife hung out with the guy and his girlfriend. Several months later, the guy told him he needed help at an upcoming event in Monterey. He went down and helped and was paid $500/day in addition to free hotel for him and his wife and conference admission (usually $750). After the conference, he contacted the guy’s boss. “I want to do this,” he said. “What do you know about cheese?” he was asked. “Nothing,” he said. “Well, then you’re no use to us,” he was told. Two weeks later he called the boss again. “I’ve read four books about cheese,” he said. “Do you have any work for me?” No, he was told. “I really want to do this,” he said. He called the next day. And the next day. And the next day. And the next day. And the next day. Finally the boss said, “I get it. You really want to do this.” And he was hired for six figures a year to go here and there and talk about cheese. Now he works for many cheese organizations. Next week he’s going to China to teach them about California cheeses.

I told him I was interested in how people come to appreciate “fine” food. Exposure, he said. “Are some exposures more powerful than others?” I asked. “Peer exposure,” he said. When he was a sophomore in college (at Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo), he didn’t like beer. He decided he wanted to learn about wine. One of his roommates had been to Napa and come back with notes. Teach me about wine, he said to his roommate. It takes time, his roommate said. They decided that Wednesday would be Wine Night. Every Wednesday for the next two years, he, his roommate, and another guy went to Safeway and bought three versions of the same varietal — e.g., three Chardonnays. Then they did blind tastings. His palate became better than most of the guys in the wine business, he said. Side-by-side tastings are crucial, he said. If you taste 500 cheeses on 500 different days, you won’t know much. But if you taste those cheeses side by side, you’ll learn a lot.

As wallpaper patterns, store displays, and millions of graphic designs reveal, we like to see similar things side by side. I have blogged here, here, and here about side-by-side comparisons and human evolution.