Also, "A landmark systematic review and meta-analysis of observational studies showed no association between saturated fat consumption and (1) all-cause mortality, (2) coronary heart disease (CHD), (3) CHD mortality, (4) ischaemic stroke or (5) type 2 diabetes in healthy adults.1 Similarly in the secondary prevention of CHD there is no benefit from reduced fat, including saturated fat, on myocardial infarction, cardiovascular or all-cause mortality.2 It is instructive to note that in an angiographic study of postmenopausal women with CHD, greater intake of saturated fat was associated with less progression of atherosclerosis whereas carbohydrate and polyunsaturated fat intake were associated with greater progression.3" [2]
There's plenty of evidence, however that sugar is a much more dangerous driver of CVD [3], which is obvious when you look at the pandemic levels of obesity and metabolic syndrome (and co-morbidity and lack of decline in CVD) that coincided with the demonization of saturated fats (and replacement with much worse trans-fats and high n6 PUFAS [4])...
[1] https://health.clevelandclinic.org/why-you-should-no-longer-...
[2] https://bjsm.bmj.com/content/51/15/1111
The problem with industries muddy the water by claiming “cholesterol” is bad without distinguishing between ldl and hdl. It’s similar to what the sugar industry does with “diabeties” when they don’t distinguish between type 1 and type 2.
Since then, and because the lipid hypothesis was deemed as institutional truth, we've been chasing a white rabbit that didn't exist. First it was saturated fats, then cholesterol, then LDL, now LP(a) and Ox-LDL... In the meantime, since saturated fat was public enemy number one, even worse replacements (trans-fats, industrial seed oils, even potentially worse and unstudied new FA isomers now) were introduced as replacements and sugar consumption increased dramatically from fat-phobia (as the defacto remaining macro as red meat and protein were also tarred with the same brush), leading to where we are now (a global metabolic disease pandemic).
What's interesting is in the past two decades especially, the amount of very interesting nutritional and metabolic research (biomechanistic research in animal models, RCTs and other human trials) has been staggering, and I think there's overwhelming evidence (and now some momentum even) in scientific/medical circles strongly pointing out that nutritional policies and "common wisdom" as being flat out wrong, but in the general public (which includes most medical practitioners, sadly) there's a huge lag. Which is too bad, considering obesity rates are likely above 40% in US adults now (39.8% in 2015-2016 [1]).
Let's not suggest that parents don't have almost complete control over their kids at this age.
I can reconcile your anecdote against how I was raised: My school didn't have free food, so I didn't have a choice and your scenario was impossible. I either ate breakfast and packed a lunch or went the day hungry. I preferred the former. My parents didn't buy poptarts. I had to learn to enjoy healthy food for breakfast and a ham sandwich for lunch, and I'm very thankful for that.
>I either ate breakfast and packed a lunch or went the day hungry.
Yes, a lot of kids will actually fast and make themselves ravenous, have blood sugar crashes, be unable to concentrate, act badly towards classmates, etc. rather than eat the food they don't prefer. Some will lose weight. One of mine in particular will fast for _days_ until eventually someone will feed him something sweet. It's a real problem. In his case he'll sometimes eat a dinner one day, then a week later refuse the same food, until we wear him down until he will finally take a bite, then he'll realize he likes it, and eat a full meal. If he is not actually with us, though, we can't force his behavior like that.
This is especially true of kids who are "on the autism spectrum," and I suspect that a lot of HN readers have kids on the spectrum, as I do.
We feed the kids the healthiest food we can at home, almost all the time except for occasional special occasions. But _other_ well-meaning people at churches, schools, playdates, etc. can really screw up the eating habits a parent tries to instill.
the advice is the same but if you believe it carries more weight coming from a pediatrician and father of 8...here is a link to Thornburg Pediatrics, I recommend signing up for their newsletter.
Then again, thinking back, we all drank chocolate milk in school, since you needed something to cover the awful taste of the underlying milk, so I guess I shouldn't be too surprised.
Dietary cholesterol’s role in heart attacks has been largely disproven, but “fake news” is malicious disinformation, not mistaken conclusions from flawed decades-old research.
It took me a long time to realise that milk was sugary. I'd grown up worrying about the fat content of milk, but all milk, whether full fat or skimmed, has like 5g of sugar per 100ml, a pretty similar sugar content to Gatorade.
We know milk has lactose but we don't usually think of lactose as a sugar like we do with sucrose or fructose.
The other thing is if you don’t buy organic milk then your milk is also loaded with the antibiotics that we give to dairy cows which attaches to the fat in the milk. So a good rule is if you go organic get whole milk (because it is a good source of fat) but if you buy regular milk get skim (to avoid some of the antibiotics).
https://www.fooddialogues.com/antibiotics-hormones-milk-dair...
Nothing prevents dairy farmers from treating cows producing "organic" labeled milk, but just like "normal" milk, they are removed from sending milk into the food chain.
https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2015/03/08/391248045/fd...
But yes, you could spend your time arguing organic farmers load up their dairy and meat cows with antibiotics and put it in the stream of commerce without any evidence of the same, if that’s what gets you going.
We spring for the non-homogenized minimally processed stuff, and the skim doesn’t taste gross and watery (we usually buy whole milk fwiw).
I assume it doesn’t go through the oil-refinery style processing you speak of.
Long time no see!
Sure, they’re processed grains, and you’re eating them with milk, but it’s still a massive improvement over downing some Cinnamon Toast Crunch with a Pop Tart on the side.
The marketing reality is a big problem. We can’t keep with the status quo of kid’s TV channels filled with ads for sugar. It’s no different than having TV ads for cigarettes touting their benefits to your lifestyle and enjoyment.
A lot of parents think these foods are fine because the commercial said so. The reality is that it’s really no more difficult for a busy parent to serve some oatmeal with fruit or something of that sort.
Yes, the reality is that children take time and effort.
But if parents can’t spare 15 minutes to invest in their kids health and wellness and instead opt for convince at the cost of priming their bodies for obesity, fatty liver disease and type2...there are other issues to consider.
Take eggs. Boil in water. Place in refrigerator.
Voila, you now have bacon and eggs in the morning for multiple days with zero effort.
Another easy one - McDonald’s style Egg McMuffin:
You’ve got your frozen English muffins because you’re lazy and don’t want to deal with moldy bread. Throw one in the microwave for 30 seconds. Remove and place in toaster to toast. In the meantime crack an egg into a cereal bowl and microwave to poach. I think that’s 30 seconds? Now your egg and muffin are done, add cheese and ham or that frozen bacon from the above, microwave to melt the cheese and such.
Not the healthiest stuff out there but it’s by no means difficult. I think many people wanting to transition from buying pre-made food to making actual food need to do so in baby steps.
I hate cooking bacon, especially in the morning, because the smell sticks to my clothes and my hair.
No more "awful" than a McDonald's McMuffin. Since that's literally what they do.
Bacon surprisly reheats in the microwave well. Its better fresh. With that being said, I can feel the oil and grease so I'd personally prefer not to eat bacon every morning.
Eggs taste fine cold, so I personally go with the boiled (but currently cold) egg.
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At minimum, something as greasy as bacon gives me pimples if I eat it every day. I can't imagine bacon each morning is healthier than even Cinnamon Toast Crunch (which has less sugar than most people realize...)
http://smartlabel.kelloggs.com/Product/Index/00038000787225
https://www.crazysquares.com/products/cinnamon-toast-crunch/...
Cinnamon Toast Crunch has 9g of Sugar. Special K Oats and Honey has 11g. Granted, Special K has a bigger serving size (31g vs 42g), but the sugar content is actually comparable between the two.
Unsweetened/barely sweetened cereals like plain Special K and Rice Krispies are much better for you than CTC or equivalents.
Also, just about nobody eats one single serving of any of these cereals, either. Probably multiply by 2 for a typical person. They have basically no protein or fat so they don't fill you up. 1.33 grams of protein per cup for Cinnamon Toast Crunch. Breakfast cereals don't make you feel full for a long time.
Obviously bacon isn't necessarily something to consume a lot of. You could substitute a lot of other similarly easy to consume proteins.
Let's go with another easy one: plain greek yogurt. Per 150G container, it's got 80 calories, 6g carbs, and 15g of protein. It's got exactly the same amount of sugar as 1 1/4 cups of unsugared cereal like Rice Krispies (before adding milk), while giving you 15x more protein. It's going to keep you full a lot longer than that bowl of cereal. As a bonus, yogurt is even easier to prepare than cereal.
The extra joy of going from zero to bacon in 30-seconds is particularly awesome.
I'll be 5 minutes later to work rather than eat non-food.
It's quicker and more efficent to stay in bed than it is to go to work. What of it?
Life is to be lived.
So yes, the cereals are easier but the saving in time is really not more than about five minutes.
I still prefer having bread, butter and jam
Or milk and biscuits
Many here in Italy skip breakfast or have a cornetto (croissant with no butter) and cappuccino at the bar
It's the dose that makes the poison
The opposite of too much sugar it's the right amount of sugar to go through the morning till lunch, not completely avoid sugar
The vast majority of cereals simply are not food. They are a treat.
At most, perhaps some porridge with fruit for sweetness.
Even the unsweetened stuff like corn flakes - sure, it has less refined sugar, but you're basically eating cardboard. Get some real green vegetables in you!
A big issue is that many people eating low fat actually don't get enough protein or especially fat. Most natural sources of protein (particularly meat) come with around 0.5g of fat per 1g of protein. Lean sources are quite a bit lower. Without enough fat, many will see issues with their gal bladder over time. There's also more insulin response to protein without accompanying fat.
Another issue is refined vegetable oils have more linoleic acid, which leads to more carb absorption in general.
In general, most people are now getting too much carbohydrate, often not enough protein, and almost always not enough fat.
Wait what? I was under the impression that most gal bladder issues came from fat, not from not enough fat. Or is it one of those "both extremes are bad" thing?
Even as many doctors subscribe to the myth that eating
fat and cholesterol leads to gallstones, research
indicates that eating too little fat and too many
carbohydrates in the form of grains, sugars and
starches actually leads to gallbladder ailments. ...
[1] https://www.atkins.com/how-it-works/library/articles/dealing...
[2] https://www.webmd.com/digestive-disorders/news/20041004/more...
So im curious how this particular extreme affects the galbladder.
However, they can form nitrosomenes when cooked at a high heat alongside protein, aka fried bacon, which are considered carcinogenic (but concentrations vary on how much is actually harmful).
Eat oven baked/microwave bacon every once in a while, and its fine.
Eggs seem reasonably healthy, but last time I ate that every morning, my cholesterol readings spiked. Bacon has higher fat, saturated fat, and preservatives than fresh eggs. I would imagine that bacon is worse.
This thread is an exercise in food fashion. What is "healthy" is more about a fashion trend rather than hard science. In any case, the scientifically recommended diets to high-blood pressure patients (what US People suffer most of) is the "DASH" diet. And unlike other fad diets, the "DASH" diet is actually scientifically studied. Bacon is certainly off the Dash diet, since it completely blows up your salt intake for the day.
There has been a demonization of sugar recently, but no doctor has ever recommended to me a low-sugar / glycemic index index diet. It doesn't seem like I'm personally at risk for Diabetes (while I'm high-risk for High-blood pressure). So I'll stick to my doctor's advice for me personally, rather than take some internet opinions.
[1] http://pcrm.org/health/cancer-resources/diet-cancer/facts/ba...
[2] https://nutritionfacts.org/2015/08/20/what-do-eggs-do-to-our...
There's even more research on eggs (I also checked the author information, these are real academics, not just industry shills as your reference implies must be behind all pro-egg research) - you can also see my other citations in this thread to see references on how dietary cholesterol has little impact on serum cholesterol, and also how high cholesterol has very little to say about CVD (also eggs actually raise HDL which is a good thing if you're looking at cholesterol sub-fractions, you really need to be looking at the research on Lp(a) and Ox-LDL). Anyway, overall consensus, seems to be that eggs are not absolute garbage:
* 2015 Egg Consumption and Human Cardio-Metabolic Health in People with and without Diabetes https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4586539/
* 2016 Eggs and Health Special Issue https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5188439/
* 2016 Eggs: good or bad? https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/27126575
* 2017 Intake of up to 3 Eggs per Day Is Associated with Changes in HDL Function and Increased Plasma Antioxidants in Healthy, Young Adults. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28077734
* 2017 Consuming Two Eggs per Day, as Compared to an Oatmeal Breakfast, Decreases Plasma Ghrelin while Maintaining the LDL/HDL Ratio https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5331520/
That's nice. No pro-egg shills are ever involved, huh?
Also the processed meat/red meat/nitrate and cancer connection was brought forth by the World Health Organization. Not exactly a pop science source.
Further, Dr. Greger is a highly respected physician, author, and academic - his interpretation of the data absolutely matters.
But sure, since he's "highly respected" this Dr Greger sounds like a stand-up guy with no axe to grind, let's see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Greger as a "professional speaker on public health issues, particularly the benefits of a whole-food, plant-based diet and the harms of eating animal products" and the vegan publisher of the web site you cite as well, you don't say.
But, he's an academic? Let's see what he's published (lots of peer reviewed work on nutrition and metabolism I'd expect): https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Michael_Greger
Oh hmm, maybe I have the wrong guy, it's just a couple animal welfare papers.
Hey, up to you where you want to get your scientific information (same goes w/ the WHO, which I agree isn't a pop science source - it's a ... public health agency/policy advisory body). I'll just read the peer-reviewed literature, thanks.
Here is an idea...get rid of the sugary cereals and sugary milk entirely and feed your kids bacon and eggs for breakfast, with water.