Addicted to “Food Addiction”

July 21, 2017July 22, 2017MariyaKLeave a comment

I recently wrote a short article on “food addiction” for the Risk Innovation Lab’s CrisBits blog (collaboratively published by Arizona State and Michigan University!). This piece mainly focuses on the scientific side of the issue- I really wanted to broadly cover research on the topic, since so many popular articles on food addiction focus on singular studies (and end up being extremely misleading). Yet I also really wanted to address the topic from an anthropological perspective.

… the notion of addictive foods attracts us on a much deeper level as well

So why are we.. almost addicted to the belief that “food addiction” is a thing? If you read my CrisBits article, you’ll see that there is (as of now) no actual evidence for any food ingredients causing addictive-like responses in humans. The field is highly debated, though: there’s plenty of scholars arguing pro and against. On top of that, the media often does a horrible job sensationalizing food addiction research (well, I suppose it does a great job sensationalizing, but a horrible job communicating the results correctly). All of that can surely create the illusion that science actually supports the food addiction theory. However, the notion of addictive foods attracts us on a much deeper level as well…

Image result for food addiction

The allure of addictive foods

There is a strong cultural appeal in the idea that certain “bad” foods or their components can cause dependence and are thus dangerous (e.g. MSG, casein, gluten). This view of overeating as addiction includes the need to “detox” and instead eat a “clean” diet (e.g. this: The Diary of a Sugar Addict in Detox).

These are not just modern health trends, but a manifestation of a need to understand our world by imposing structure and thus meaning on the untidy experience that is reality. Structure is created by categorizing things into clean/unclean, healthy/unhealthy, pure/dirty- and things that don’t clearly fit into such categories are considered unclean and dangerous. Anthropologist Mary Douglas makes this point in her seminal book, Purity and Danger, as she examines food taboos (cultural rules about what not to eat). Douglas points that prohibited foods are considered “polluting” because they defy easy classification into culturally important categories. The current unease with genetically engineered foods is a fantastic modern example: as a technology that blurs the lines between natural and unnatural domains, it is indeed often termed by opponents as “genetic pollution” or “contamination”.

…prohibited foods are considered “polluting” because they defy easy classification into culturally important categories.

The categories we create to make sense of the world have strong moral overtones, as they allow us to essentially define right and wrong. Indeed, the word “addiction” itself is connected to the moral disapproval of socially undesirable behaviors (e.g. drug abuse). Psychologist Paul Rozin points out how the fear of sugars in American diets, for example, reflects the Puritan belief that things that are very pleasurable must also be bad.

Religious Scholar Alan Levinovitz also emphasizes that people frame eating in terms of morality and religion. He discusses how concepts of healthiness reflect the “myth of paradise past”- the idealistic belief that things were better, healthier, and even morally superior before. From such perspective, novel changes to foods represent our fall from grace- whether via agriculture (e.g. as in paleo diet ideology) or industrialization and technology (as with processed and genetically modified foods).

So, that’s my little anthropological view of food addiction beliefs as a cultural phenomenon. Hope you enjoyed it!

P.S. You might see news reports on studies about food addiction.. but keep in mind that no clinical diagnosis for “food addiction” exists, and most such research uses a self-report questionnaire: the Yale Food Addiction Scale (YFAS). This tool uses DSM-IV’s generic criteria for substance abuse to measure addictive-like eating.

Most importantly, it does not validate the existence of “food addiction” as a true disorder (DSM diagnostic criteria is intended for trained clinicians, not a checklist for self-diagnosis via a simple questionnaire). This is a critical issue to consider, as most food addiction research with humans is based on diagnosing food addiction this way.

Time of Eating & Health: Video

June 13, 2017August 5, 2017MariyaK1 Comment

I made my first science communication video! It took me only ~ 15 hours, no big deal 🙂

It won’t be as time consuming from now on..but there is a lot of work involved nevertheless: writing a good concise script, sketching all the images that could go along with it, setting up the recording (can be so tricky!), recording yourself draw (and redraw.. and redraw) every frame.. Then editing all those videos, recording the audio (and re-recording..and re-recording again), and finally matching video to audio (as well as finding some free background tunes to go along!). Check it out:

I chose this topic because i’ve been craving to cover it for some time now. Since my dissertation work focused on lay models of healthy eating across cultures (so: people’s beliefs about what it means to eat well), I did not address the scientific accuracy of any perceptions. But oh I wanted to! And that is because one of the most fascinating findings from my interviews was that eastern European (EE) participants considered “how you eat” (i call these “eating styles”) to be more important for health than American respondents.

Eastern Europeans (EE) judged statements about EATING STYLES (such as time of eating) as more important for health…

Specifically, EE participants rated the statement “it is important to avoid eating late in the day” significantly higher than Americans (and this was true from my past survey-based studies!).

This is what the image below shows, but let me explain the method behind it: I conducted >70 interviews in the U.S., Romania, and Ukraine where I asked people to look at 42 different statements about “healthy eating”. Among other activities, they had to indicate how much they personally agreed with each statement (from “4” agree completely to “-4” disagree completely; I used Q Methodology for this, by the way ).

Screen Shot 2017-06-13 at 11.01.58 AM — So, between Americans and eastern Europeans, 1 statement about eating styles (or “context” as I referred to it in this chart) that was **more** important for the latter: not eating late.

So, out of ALL 42 cards, only “avoid eating late in the day” got a statistically significantly higher agreement score from eastern Europeans. AND when prompted to explain their views, my respondents gave an explanation that was amazingly close to the actual science of circadian rhythms!!

Why did EE folks seem to know about circadian rhythms way more than Americans?

I didn’t analyze why EE folks seem to know about circadian rhythms way more than Americans, but this knowledge is something they knew from childhood.. It was part of general recommendations and “common sense” while growing up in the USSR. It fact, importance of eating styles is prominent in traditional beliefs about health (like in Japan and China).. perhaps all the focus on nutrients that’s possible with modern science is taking our attention away from this old wisdom?

perhaps all the focus on nutrients that’s possible with modern science is taking our attention away from this old wisdom

Now that nutrition science is paying increasingly more attention to eating styles as well (CHRONO-NUTRITION!), I assume American folks will begin incorporating beliefs about importance of food timing also!

Cognition paper published!

March 6, 2017MariyaKLeave a comment

Ta-da! Finally. Mine and Dr. Hruschka’s paper is finally out in the Journal of Cognition and Culture. This survey work was done over 2 years in both Eastern Europe and Southwestern U.S. So glad to see it in print!

HERE is the PDF: CognitiveDifferences_Paper2017. Also, if you don’t feel like reading it, i just recorded a 5-minute overview of the paper (recorded between meetings.. after 2 cups of coffee.. sorry if I talk quickly!).

Are we all just food-selecting zombies?

September 20, 2016September 26, 2016MariyaK1 Comment

It was a Saturday afternoon- I spent all morning writing one of my dissertation articles. It was unfortunate that i had to be on campus instead of enjoying my morning coffee at home, but some syncing error got me panicking as I couldn’t find my latest saved draft.. So here I was with only 25 minutes before my aerial fitness class: I made a quick stop at an empty campus store, grabbed something to eat and rushed out to my car, still deeply pensive over some changes I should make- I am writing about lay interpretations of healthy eating context.

I looked down to see what it is I was holding in my hand, because it seemed like i made my snack choice in some auto-pilot mode: fullsizerender-20

OK, it made sense. Considering the context. And then I thought- I just spent 4 hours writing up my article on healthful eating beliefs.. how would I go about finding out what rationale was behind my food selection right now?

I pretended to ask myself in an interview format- “why did you choose these items?”- and immediately imagined a word cloud of my transcribed answer: there was a whole bunch of stuff there, but several most salient words stood out: calories, protein, satiety, light. The transcribed text would read:

“…so I was not starving yet, but it was almost 1pm and I had an intensive aerial class that I anticipated i’d want energy for… i needed to feel full but not physically full (so, light)- can’t eat anything big before hanging upside down on the aerial hoop! I know protein is satiating, and I like this bar because it’s damn delicious (i’m aware of the halo effect that “protein” has in this situation – extrapolating the “goodness” of protein to unrelated product characteristics, such as it’s overall healthiness… it’s really just a candy bar! but the health claims on the package do pacify the guilt splendidly). I also know that sweetness may provoke hunger on it’s own, so I have to balance the taste with the umami-ness of string cheese. This combo is also just about 300 calories, which is my upper limit for a snack (I gage it, though I know i’m exactly on point with the number despite not checking the nutrition label)… I don’t really count calories- I think it’s not a helpful behavior and one can become fixated on it, which might get detrimental for your dietary quality. Yet I also can’t help being somewhat vigilant- I know eating gets more “fun” later in the day, so I want to leave enough of an energetic allowance to indulge in my evening netflix/playstation time. Calories definitely matter- i’m so tired of people’s hopeful attempts to fight this truth and discover a loophole in the first law of thermodynamics. Sure, there are nuances- cooking and processing can change the availability of calories to your body, but those are just nuances to me- at least that’s my current stance based on the literature.”

Wow, that’s a whole lot of rationale for an “auto-pilot” choice that took 20 seconds without conscious effort. Of course, eating perceptions and choices are my research topic, so I am quick to self-reflect in detail. Yet for many respondents, who hold their own complex mental models of healthy eating, this can be like pulling teeth- it’s not easy to explain things that seem obvious or natural to us (unless maybe you’re writing a dissertation on it). My reasons are good examples of cognitive heuristics- “rules of thumb” used to make choices in complex situations, such as eating (we make about 200 eating decisions daily, according to Dr. Wansink- too lazy to give you the specific study name.. just google it 🙂 ) The “Protein- satiety- good” connection is a simple heuristic, the “power” and “energy” words on the bar signaled appropriateness of this snack before a workout, the familiarity of the products (I know this bar and it’s taste; bought it before) also played a role.

But anyway: I’m almost done writing my first chapter now. I’m in the process of shortening it actually……… by about 10,000 words :S It’s such a painful process to let go of your findings- perhaps I’ll post a bunch of interesting results here in the coming months! I could be sporadically posting cool quotes on twitter or Instagram too, but honestly- that’d get attention of maybe 10 people. Meanwhile my latest quick sketch of a friend pulling off an aerial trick just got more than 1000 likes… So forcing myself to tweet the dissertation is lacking in motivation at the moment. In the meantime- enjoy whatever it is you might be eating right now! Don’t overanalyze it, I suppose?

UPDATE:

I stopped by the campus store on this fine “dissertating” morning, and got the protein bar again + another item to illustrate my previous point. This probably won’t shock anyone, but i’d say i was quite correct in stating 2 days earlier “it’s really just a candy bar!”

The protein bar’s serving size says “1 COOKIE”. Cookie! Kit Kat has the decency to refer to itself as 1 package 😀 Surely, *both* are just candies.

At least if you consider the energy content and, really, majority of ingredients (i will admit- “monk fruit” sounds mysteriously awesome, though it is the last ingredient (so there’s like a trace amount of it).

Now, obviously there’s a difference- and that’s the difference that drives the high price point of the protein bar (as well as it’s healthiness message): the power bar has more protein (13 g vs. 3) and less sugars (5g vs 21g). On another hand, the power bar has a bit more saturated fat and cholesterol. That last point is most likely less relevant to an average reader- so far, my interviews and surveys show people vilify sugar much more than fat (again, you’re probably not shocked and i’m definitely not the first one to notice- the low fat fad is over, it’s been all about the horror of carbs for awhile).

Now, protein appears to be more satiating than sugar, according to a bunch of studies (go check out Google Scholar), so perhaps you indeed might eat more later after the Kit Kat, despite eating the same amount of calories as from the Power Bar. And something like that can be tested in a nicely designed experimental study (probably has been). Despite all of this, next time i make a quick stop at the store, i’ll probably still reach for the Power Crunch bar. Buying a Kit Kat is too bizarre- I don’t eat candy! And though i know the bar is really just another candy- well, it just leads to less cognitive dissonance 😛

The “other countries banned it” argument

August 12, 2016September 26, 2016MariyaKLeave a comment

Posts like these.. drive me just slightly crazy these days.

Screen Shot 2016-08-12 at 1.34.33 PM

I don’t blame anyone for getting affected by them.. but let me tell you a little story about banning “bad” stuff by other more enlightened countries who are apparently less evil and profit-driven than US (insert eyeroll).

This summer I interviewed participants in Ukraine as part of my project on food and health perceptions. Several of my respondents happened to be lawyers.. One of the topics under discussion was GMOs (genetically modified organisms). The non-GMO stickers have been put on foods in the country since at least 2013 Screen Shot 2016-08-12 at 1.34.56 PM when I visited last. Anything from foods to chewing gum to water bottles boasted the round green NO GMO sticker. Most people I discussed it with actually acknowledged it was simple marketing and didn’t place much trust in the stickers anyway..

So when this July my interviewees mentioned that “well, you HAVE to have the non-GMO label in Ukraine”, I thought they meant that brands just needs to keep up with the competition in hopes of selling more of their product under the illusion of naturalness and purity (big deal for Ukrainians, who still live with the Chernobyl accident of 86, and still worry about environmental pollution in foods).

Well, No- i was told. Ukraine in fact passed an actual law somewhat recently forbidding the import, export, production, or sale of foods with any GMOs. So if you want to place a product on the shelves of Ukrainian stores, they simply have to be certified non-GMO. Screen Shot 2016-08-12 at 12.38.56 PM

Oh! OK… what about reality? In actuality, if you’re placing that product on Ukrainian shelves.. you just pay to get the label put on. Ta-da, it’s non-GMO!

It is all so political, that discussions of population health are mostly for decoration..

Posts like that mentioned above are designed to get you thinking with indignation “I can’t believe my country is so interested in profits!.. they sacrifice our health while other countries actually care about their people’s well being..”. But why do you think Ukraine banned GMOs? It’s to make $ off the new certification and labeling procedures, it’s to look cool in front of Europe (we really want to be accepted to EU, mkay), it’s to keep our image as a serious exporter of quality agricultural products (hey, Ukraine wants to stay the famous breadbasket of Europe! And demand for “clean” or eco agriculture is big. You can’t afford to lose your place in that market)…

It is all so political, that discussions of population health are mostly for decoration (not like absolutely nobody cares, but that’s not the main reason for any of these policies). And of course this is not just Ukraine- I’m just telling you a short specific story. Either way, poor regulatory practices in the country mean that anyone can buy that non-GMO label: nobody’s testing anything and nobody is checking compliance, guys.

The Sci Files #1: Importance of Carbs in Human Evolution

August 28, 2015October 21, 2015MariyaK2 Comments

Note: This Fall I decided to attempt even more science communication! The Sci Files (imagine the x files theme playing) will be a collection of health & food-related research articles that I summarize in plain(er) language. I became quite passionate about breaking down hard-to-understand research for the public audience and I’ll try to do my best, considering I’m no expert! Yet 5 years of graduate courses- statistics, research methods, nutrition psychology, evolution & medicine- at least give me skills to understand a lot of the material that might be overwhelming to a lay reader. I will try to keep the summary to one page (~500 words), possibly followed by extra material that could be interesting 😉

For the first Sci File, i’m looking at a paper discussed yesterday during a lecture on the paleolithic diet. It’s published in 2015 in The Quarterly Review of Biology and the title intrigued me “The Importance of Dietary Carbohydrate in Human Evolution”. I’ve heard multiple talks on how the various “paleolithic” diets could have included starchy foods, but I didn’t think they were substantial parts of such diets.
Original paper: Hardy, K., Brand-Miller, J., Brown, K. D., Thomas, M. G., & Copeland, L. (2015). The importance of dietary carbohydrate in human evolution. The Quarterly Review of Biology, 90(3), 251-268.

Short summary:

Apparently, you can delete the “NO” and still keep calm 😉

The authors propose that carbohydrates- particularly cooked high starch plant foods like tubers & roots- were essential in the evolution of our species- especially for the quick expansion of the human brain. They support this by showing that (1) critical development of this large glucozse-hungry organ required digestible carbohydrates, and eating cooked starch would really increase this energy availability to the brain (+ other glucose-hungry tissues such as red blood cells and the developing fetus).

They also show that the mutation in the enzyme for digesting carbs (salivary emylase, AMY1) co-evolved with both cooking and eating starchy carbs, giving an advantage to early humans. To put it in simpler terms: carbs were quite important, as shown in our increased ability to digest cooked starch (otherwise, why retain this mutation if we did not rely on cooked starches for a substantial amount of time?). A meat-heavy diet wouldn’t have provided sufficient glucose or energy to the growing brain + 1) large amounts of protein are in fact toxic and 2) providing sufficient amount of animal-based food would require too much effort:

“the energy expenditure required to obtain it may have been far greater than that used for collecting tubers from a reliable source”

Some Context:

There is no clear agreement on what constituted a “Paleolithic diet”, but it makes sense to assume that our current physiology should be optimized to the kind of diet we had during our evolutionary past. Some important features in our evolution are considered linked particularly to key changes in diet: smaller teeth, smaller digestive tract (1.8 mln years ago), larger brain size (began ~2 mln yrs ago; accelerated around 800,000 yrs ago), and better aerobic capacity (ability of the heart and lungs to get oxygen to the muscles) about 2 mln years ago.

Early hominins include modern humans, extinct human species, and all our immediate ancestors

Some have argued that these changes happened because humans transitioned from a diet based on fibrous plants to mostly meat-based diets.. But this paper offers evidence that both plant carbohydrates (carbs) and meat were crucial in human evolution. In their words:

“We contend that in terms of energy supplied to an increasing large brain, as well as to other glucose-dependent tissues, consumption of increased amounts of starch may have provided a substantial evolutionary advantage to Mid-to-Late Pleistocene omnivorous hominins“.

carbs2 — This photo is missing some starches!

Actual physical remains of early hominins are quite rare, so there is a lot of uncertainty about their lives. As already mentioned, there were several important changes in hominin morphology (size, shape, and structure of an organism) related to the appearance of Homo erectus (teeth, digestive length, brain). Anthropologists propose that they occurred with a change from a “high-volume, low-energy diet” (lots of fibrous plant material that’s not very calorie rich), to a low-volume, high-energy diet (so foods that are more packed with energy like meats and starchy roots & tubers).

It looks like climate fluctuated between moist and dry periods, which required flexibility in diet (omnivory).. Increased meat consumption has been suggested as an important buffer against such environmental change (and helped expend into new unfamiliar environments), but high starch plant foods might have also been a very common and important part of the diet- especially when cooked. The timing of widespread cooking is not known, but it is argued that it was long enough ago to allow for biological adaptations to take place.

Note: Secure evidence of the use of fire to cook dates to about 400,000 years ago, though some suggestive evidence for a relationship between humans and fire dates to at least 1.6 mln years ago.

The fact that early hominins ate starchy foods is supported by various evidence (the paper goes through rather wordy technical anthropological examples that I fail to summarize in a simpler way). But while meat-eating evidence usually survives (e.g. animal remains with cut marks suggesting being butchered), evidence for plant foods doesn’t, which makes it hard to reconstruct ancestral diets based on physical remains alone (and biases them towards exaggerating meat eating).

Co-evolution of cooking & carb-digesting genes

Humans have the ability to digest starches with the help of enzymes in saliva- salivary amylase! AND humans are quite unusual as we have high levels of these enzymes, suggesting an adaptation to diets rich in cooked carbohydrates. Also, people from populations with high-starch diets have generally more AMY1 copies than those that have traditionally low-starch diets (hey! adaptation!).

Amylase (salivary amylase or AMY1)- enzyme that begins digesting starches in the mouth as it’s present in the saliva. Authors hypothesize that cooking and variation in the salivary amylase gene copy number are correlated.

The variation in copy numbers of salivary amylase genes is an important point of the paper – these enzymes are pretty much ineffective on raw starch, but cooking substantially increases their potential to provide energy/calories. So multiplication of the salivary amylase (AMY1) would become selectively advantageous only when cooking became widespread. (It’s been estimated that the three human AMY1 genes have been evolving separately for less than 1 million years). The authors theorize a gene-culture co-adaptation scenario here: cooking starch-rich plant foods (cultural evolution) coevolved with increased salivary amylase activity in the human lineage (gene evolution). Without cooking, eating starch-rich plant foods probably couldn’t meet the high demands for preformed glucose noted in modern humans.

Note: A mutation that is selectively advantageous means a change in DNA that gives a survival advantage to a particular genotype under certain environmental conditions. SO in an environment where starches are available (e.g. you can find a lot of roots and tubers) and humans have learned to cook, having more copies of the AMY1 gene that aids in digesting cooked starch would allow those folks to survive more (e.g. in times of food crisis when they can’t hunt or gather other sources of food, etc.) vs. folks who don’t have that mutation.

To further test the paper’s hypothesis, we need “a convergence of information from archeology, genetics, and human physiology”. So let’s stay tuned 🙂

Well, i’m at around 900 words, which is more than the summaries i hope to do in the future! In my defense, this paper was FULL of fantastic information, often rather technical and challenging to explain in less words. I do have some extra content below i found fascinating if you found this summary interesting!

Continue reading →

No need for RAW (food) stress ;)

January 30, 2015September 14, 2017MariyaKLeave a comment

Most of my present acquaintances are unaware that I used to be a huge proponent of raw foodism. “Huge” meaning I spent hundreds (thousands, actually) of $$ traveling to get certified as a chef and an educator (centers in Chicago, Atlanta, and northern California), taught “cooking” classes at the local co-op, was a private chef for months, etc.

In fact, check out some of the raw vegan dishes I used to make!

Is this amazing or what? I’m still quite proud of my raw culinary past. The recipes used soaked nuts, dried fruits, sprouted items (like buckwheat) and of course lots of vegetables and fruits. While fun & unique, it was also very time-consuming, rather expensive, and not necessarily healthier. It did fit well with people who have allergies (since raw recipes don’t use soy, wheat, peanuts or many other problematic foods).

I almost spend all day writing down why exactly I have concluded raw veganism is unnecessary and based on false beliefs… But that would be a true waste of time (and rather dull to me) so I’d rather redirect you to already well-written articles!

False belief 1: We are meant to be plant-based because our physiology shows we’re herbivores!

NO. (my previous blog post). And it’s a good reminder not to attempt to compare our diet to that of other animals and insects (insects! people make the point that insects and animals don’t cook food! insects & animals also can’t perform surgery or produce toilet paper)
Another thing worth mentioning is the incorrect assumption that vegetarian/vegan folks are healthier than others because they avoid meat. Majority of big studies I went through in my nutritional epidemiology class compared meat-avoiders with people on a standard american diet…and didn’t do a good job controlling for the fact that they compared health-conscious vegetarians with generally regular unhealthy folks. Luckily i don’t have to write more, because THIS ARTICLE did it for me AND gave citations (woohoo!). Pay attention that health benefits of meat-eaters is more correctly attributed to other healthy behaviors (avoiding refined sugar and grains, oils and trans fats, avoiding smoking and so on).

False belief 2: Cooking is unnatural.

First of all, let me point out that some types of cooking of some foods produce potentially carcinogenic compounds. HERE is my post on acrylamides. Like with other valuable claims from raw foodists- this is not supposed to mean you should never eat baked potatoes. It means having antioxidants in your diet from other plants is very important. The new genetically modified potato, by the way is designed to decrease acrylamide content. Unfortunately, generalized anti-GMO sentiments might win over that benefit.
How Cooking Made Us Human Read this wonderful New York times article on the Catching Fire book and how cooking was instrumental in our evolution! I remember I was aghast when i heard of this book- you mean turning food into murderous evil toxic stuff that kills cute kittens made us human?? I’m clearly joking here, but not actually over-exaggerating too much. Many of us in the raw community would absolutely avoid the healthiest of soups, since cooked was equivalent to “toxic” and “addictive” in our heads.
Humans are adapted to controlling fire & using it to cook. See part of the “Human adaptation to the control of fire” paper here (click on pics to enlarge). For full paper, here is the citation but it might not be free unless you have university affiliation- Wrangham, R., & Carmody, R. (2010). Human adaptation to the control of fire.Evolutionary Anthropology: Issues, News, and Reviews, 19(5), 187-199. TRY HERE.

Here is a fun piece of “fake information” online. I have to address this…
Author states:
“Fire was only discovered a relatively short time ago”
No- fire was controlled prior to emergence of homo sapiens. In fact, the earliest convincing evidence of fire use for cooking appears the 780,000-400,000 years ago.
Animals show that anatomy can adapt very quickly to a change in diet. With human populations that have a history of dairying (like northern Europe), ability to digest lactose into adulthood has evolved at least twice in the last 7000 years. For people with a recent history of eating starch-rich foods, they exhibit higher copy numbers of the gene encoding for a certain enzyme.

Author states:
“Out of the millions of species of animals and insects on the Earth, only people intentionally eat cooked food”
*cricket sounds*……….. What is this supposed to argue? There is no way to discredit a completely illogical statement.
Real point here: humans are adapted to cooked diets. Reductions in masticatory and gastrointestinal anatomy show that. See Wrangham article cited earlier.

3. False belief 3: We need to eat an all-alkaline diet (or high raw plant diet)

First of all, just to clarify: your body can’t actually get “acidic” (see photo & citation*) though dietary acidosis is a thing. Acidosis is a proces s or trend toward acidaemia ( blood pH of less than 7.35) but without necessarily reaching a pH of less than 7·35″. ** Increasing fruit and vegetable intake, reducing processed junk and not making your diet heavy on meat is a great recommendation to avoid the trend towards acidaemia, though it’s unclear it actually benefits bone and kidney health:

“Both dietary interventions (lowering protein and increasing fruit and vegetable consumption) and nutritional supplementation (with K and Mg salts) have been shown to normalise acidosis, but with discordant results on whether this is then associated with clinical improvement in bone, muscle or other physiological or pathophysiological conditions. A positive NEAP [net acid load] diet results in increased urine Ca, N and bone marker excretion, and predisposes to kidney stones. Whether or not, over the longer term, this translates to lower bone density, increased bone and muscle loss with ageing is unclear and requires further investigation.”**

This does not necessitate eating a raw vegan diet though– it necessitates being reasonable and, like recommended by parents, governments, and nutritionists, make sure to eat your fruits & vegetables and minimize high-caloric processed foods. This also doesn’t mean eliminating animal foods at all. Here is a great article*** that estimates the “acid load” of diets of hunter-gatherers (HG) and modern diets. They find the HG diets were neutral (e.g. not “too acidic”, if you prefer) and contribute elevated diet acidity of modern diets to processed cereal grains. Great idea to minimize on processed products anyway!

*Deng, G., & Cassileth, B. (2013). Complementary or alternative medicine in cancer care [mdash] myths and realities. Nature Reviews Clinical Oncology,10(11), 656-664.

** Pizzorno, J., Frassetto, L. A., & Katzinger, J. (2010). Diet-induced acidosis: is it real and clinically relevant?. British journal of nutrition, 103(08), 1185-1194.

*** Sebastian, A., Frassetto, L. A., Sellmeyer, D. E., Merriam, R. L., & Morris, R. C. (2002). Estimation of the net acid load of the diet of ancestral preagricultural Homo sapiens and their hominid ancestors. The American journal of clinical nutrition, 76(6), 1308-1316.

4. False belief 4: Raw Food is superior because it has all the enzymes intact

There’s no scientific support for this, and that’s about it. **** In fact, this was my turning point in adhering to this lifestyle: I realized this very foundational claim has no basis.
The evidence raw proponents cite is a 1985 book called Enzyme Nutrition. That’s 30 years ago… good science is self-replicating so I would expect there to be more studies on such a potentially fascinating subject if there is something to it.. I don’t see any.

**** Hobbs, S. H. (2005). Attitudes, practices, and beliefs of individuals consuming a raw foods diet. Explore: The Journal of Science and Healing, 1(4), 272-277.

CONCLUSION!

None of this is supposed to go against the fact that eating a lot of fresh fruits and vegetables is very important and very healthy! HERE is a nice Scientific American article giving examples when some vegetables are better and worse when cooked.

But this is supposed to discourage you from forming a belief system that humans aren’t “supposed” to eat cooked and animal-based food***** or that there is a need to stick to eating raw plants only. It is also supposed to prevent damaging thinking- e.g. a hot chicken soup is toxic; cooked food is addictive; non-organic food is dangerous. Humans have a tendency towards monotonic thinking- it’s hard for us to be OK with the fact that something we consider “bad” is only bad at high doses and is actually essential and beneficial at lower doses (e.g. fat, salt in the diet for some people). Considering this lifestyle takes a lot of time and effort, does not necessarily results in weight-loss (and when it does- it’s just because you eat less calories, not because raw food is magical.. if you go heavy on the nuts & oils you will gain wait), and there is absolutely no reason to consider this eating natural or superior I believe this dietary approach is unnecessary and attempting to stick to a highly raw food diet results in a lot of stress for no reason.

EXTRAS

Note:I am intrigued by the possibility that this approach might have therapeutic benefits. It’s not based on any present science, folks, but I would be excited to see studies of this eating plan as a medicinal diet for improvement of certain conditions!!

You are welcome to comment on the blog and ask questions or challenge some of the statements! I’m not anti-raw as much as I am pro-science and evidence. I’d love to research very specific topics so please comment with a specific concern 🙂

***** As a good friend of mine noted- it’s important to remember that vegetarianism/veganism is not only a choice to be healthy..but it’s also a choice due to environmental and ethical concerns. I’m unqualified to cover those in detail, but it is obviously an important reason some people avoid animal products and I’m not arguing against it!

p.s. Links to all sorts of websites debunking some raw food ideas or talking about its shortcomings, etc. Just stuff that came up after 2 minutes of Googling 😉

http://www.veganhealth.org/articles/cooking
http://www.takepart.com/article/2013/05/08/jane-says-raw-foodism-raw-deal
http://www.mindbodygreen.com/0-13454/3-reasons-no-one-should-be-on-a-raw-foods-diet.html
http://www.hellawella.com/top-10-annoyingly-stubborn-nutrition-myths-debunked/9645
http://www.fredericpatenaude.com/blog/?p=2036
http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/simply-raw-making-overcooked-claims-about-raw-food-diets/
http://news.sciencemag.org/evolution/2012/10/raw-food-not-enough-feed-big-brains
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-katz-md/raw-food-diet_b_2015598.html
http://renegadehealth.com/blog/deathofraw
http://www.beyondveg.com/tu-j-l/raw-cooked/raw-cooked-1b.shtml

No, we are not carnivores. But we’re no apes either.

December 12, 2014January 31, 2015MariyaK1 Comment

I often read on vegan health groups that humans are not meant to eat meat because our guts are long like those of the apes (who are predominantly plant-eating) vs. the short guts of carnivores (meat-eating animals). In fact, I used to argue this way myself in my vegan days. 🙂

However, once you understand a topic a bit better, the simplified and incorrect statements about it simply irritate you.

WHAT OUR GUTS SAY ABOUT US..

Human guts, when compared to those of existing apes, have similarities AND differences. Humans and apes show the same gut anatomy- simple acid stomach, a small intestine, etc.. However, humans stand apart from all apes: more than half of human gut volume is found in the small intestine while all apes have by far the greatest total gut volume in the colon; also the overall size of the human gut in relation to body size is small in comparison to that of apes.

What this means is that humans have adapted to a “high quality” diet. Here high quality means a calorie and nutritionally DENSE diet, which includes animal foods and tubers. A high quality diet for humans means that we need to eat a smaller volume of food to obtain the nutrients and energy we need.

The way our gut differs from apes says a lot. Most large primates have expanded colons, which is an adaptation to fibrous low-quality diets [“low-quality” here = highly fibrous foods such as leaves and bark]. The large colon allows fermentation of low-quality plant fibers (which allows extraction of additional energy in the form of volatile fatty acids). Our relatively enlarged small intestine (the principal site of nutrient digestion & absorption) and smaller colon reflects an adaptation to an easily digested diet that is nutrient-rich.

There is a general consensus that current hominoids (apes and humans) come from a strongly plant-eating ancestry. Apes, however, evolved into larger bodies that allowed to sustain themselves on lower quality diets. By eating both animal matter [to satisfy requirements for essential nutrients] and plant sources [primarily for energy] humans were able to avoid the constraints imposed by body size increases in apes (such as lower mobility and sociality in apes). Simply speaking: the bulkier they get and the more time they spend eating, the less they move around and the less social they are, which is a disadvantage compared to humans.

MMM… BRAINS

This dietary change in humans (adding animal and other dense foods), which departed from known plant-dominated diets of the apes, was eventually reflected in our brain size (much larger), overall form of our guts (shift in gut proportions, overall gut size) as well as dentition (smaller teeth, jaws). Concerning our particularly large brains: our brains are particularly energetically “expensive” as we expend a larger proportion of our daily energy on brain metabolism than other primates (in comparison to other primates, our brains are 3 times the size). Paleontologists believe that fast brain evolution happened about 1.8 mln. years ago and was associated with important changes in diet and foraging behavior (some argue it is specifically the addition of meat that allowed for such large brains to evolve). Apart from switching to high quality nutrition, humans show other adaptations to having a larger brain- compared to other primates we are “undermuscled” (less skeletal muscle) and fattier. Greater level of body fatness in human infants in fact helps grow a large brain by having stored energy and reducing energy requirements of the rest of the body (that has less muscle mass).

THUS…

The point is: no, we’re definitely not “meant” to be vegetarian. Also, the point is not to say that vegetarianism doesn’t make sense for many of us. There are plenty of great reasons to avoid animal foods (ethics, environment, etc.), plus it’s easy to have an adequate veg. diet for adults with availability of supplements (vegan diets are not recommended for small children, though, considering brain development; the several vegan PhDs I know did not raise their children vegan specifically because of this) … but stating that we are not meant to thrive on both animal and plant sources is incorrect. Contrasting us with true carnivores [like cats] to show how very different we are (e.g. hey we don’t have claws and sharp teeth… um.. we however do have large brains to allow for sophisticated tool creation that replaces those) is also a terrible idea- we are not true carnivores either and have a dual dietary strategy [plants + animal sources].

Lastly, all this material should not support the notion that we ought to eat bacon 10 times a day.. meat clearly has a place in our diet, but this shouldn’t be used to justify a purposeful meat overload (I’m not sure what the benefit is for advocating heavily animal-based diets, considering modern animals are fattier and less packed with phytochemicals than the wild ones + there’s the whole issue of antibiotic and hormone use at the minimum. Unless, of course, you go on the “carbs are evil” side, but I am not in favor of that view… or you imagine our ancestors ate predominantly meat, which does not look to be the case since the diets varied dramatically depending on environmental circumstances).

(Note: I’m not pretending to actually be an expert on any of these topics; I simply read peer-reviewed articles and hang out with evolutionary anthropologists 🙂 ).

References:

Milton, K. (2003). The critical role played by animal source foods in human (Homo) evolution. The Journal of nutrition, 133(11), 3886S-3892S.

Leonard, W. R., Snodgrass, J. J., & Robertson, M. L. (2007). Effects of brain evolution on human nutrition and metabolism. Annu. Rev. Nutr., 27, 311-327.

P.S. The bottom line is: these t-shirt designs are both incredibly dumb (disclaimer- i laughed a bit..but immediately felt guilty :D)

Healthy Eating- Real or Imaginable??

December 12, 2014November 30, 2015MariyaK3 Comments

111111111 — The lobby of one of the conference hotels during non-busy time. The hallways were overflowing with anthropologists all over the world just hours later 😀

This December I presented on my research at the American Anthropological Association in D.C. (woohoo!) What a blast! The conference was bursting with anthropologists all over the globe; the 5-day event was so packed with presentations that the program which included just names of talks & authors ran about 500 pages.

Anyway, one of the interesting moments from the trip was a scholar (I believe she did some work in Latin America but I don’t know what kind of anthropologist she was), who was seemingly bothered by our session on food and nutrition. Our talks focused on “healthy eating” as a social construct [a social phenomenon created and developed by society; a perception or idea that is ‘constructed’ through cultural or social practice]. My talk was on how perceptions of what healthy eating means differs among and within cultures (Ukrainians & Americans in my study), while other presenters talked about how food is discussed in the Canadian Arctic and among those following a traditional “paleo” diet plan.

12121212 — Presenting on my Ukrainian study!

The question this lady asked was why we spoke of healthy eating as something created and perceived by humans as if there is no objective healthy diet supported by science.

It’s a bit funny to hear someone being surprised that concepts are discussed as a social creation vs. an objective reality at an anthropology meeting.. but that shows how food and healthy eating can be quite emotional when one is health conscious! I would bet this scholar was someone who personally cares about eating well for her own health. Understandable. Food is a very emotional topic- it is not only good/bad for health and looks, it also represents our identity, our culture, our experiences, etc.

Part of my answer to her was that science might not be able to give her what she is looking for- the objective healthy diet. Not because science sucks, but because nutrition studies are lengthy, complicated, and costly (see my post on why nutrition science doesn’t suck HERE). My favorite example of why nutrition science is hard to rely on is SUGAR. Look at this World Health Organization 2003 report (see full report).

The common sense might tell you that added sugar can’t be good- it adds calories, maybe it makes you hungrier or disrupts bodily processes, maybe it’s just unnatural. People I interview often mention that sugar is one of the main causes of weight gain. Common sense, right? Well, look at the WHO report and check out Free Sugars (= all monosaccharides and disaccharides added to foods by the manufacturer, cook or consumer, plus sugars naturally present in honey, syrups and fruit juices). The only convincing evidence from scientific studies is that free sugars increase the risk of dental caries. Not weight gain, not diabetes, not heart disease. Does this mean sugar is only bad for teeth? No, it means there isn’t evidence that it causes other disease with the studies that we have. So if you want to state with complete confidence that added sugars lead to chronic disease and obesity, you might have a hard time backing it up.

Thinking that there is no such thing as a healthy diet is unsettling. We want clarity. :S Saying that “healthy eating” is an idea constructed socially, however, doesn’t mean that there is no such thing as healthy eating. It does mean that there are multiple ways one can eat well to avoid disease- it can be vegetarian, vegan, paleo, regular calorie restricted diet, Mediterranean diet, etc. etc. etc.

Historical perspective on what good/healthy eating is.

The official stance on a healthy diet is not purely unbiased either- the political and historical context shapes what is officially recognized. I heard a very interesting talk on the differences in nutrition perceptions between Denmark and Germany during 1940-1945 by Dr. Jensen (University of Copenhagen). She talked how in the early 20th century macronutrients, salts, water and ash were believed to be the sole constituents of food. Then vitamins were discovered resulting in growing scientific interest in identifying new “micronutrients”, a development that altered (diminished) the perceived importance of the macronutrients (protein, fat, carbs). So as in Denmark micronutrients became the focus, good nutrition became about vegetables- the source of many micronutrients. In Germany, however, a country experiencing hunger during WWII, macronutrients remained as most important considerations in nutrition textbooks (with protein considered the primary element of food- for the satiety and strength it provides, especially for a country at war!). The point is- the scientific (and thus public) perceptions of what good eating means is shaped by societal circumstances.

It all just depends…

34343434 — Baklava- a middle-eastern dessert I am absolutely insane about. My friends sometimes wonder how I can study health yet eat something so “unhealthy” as a high sugared dessert. IS it unhealthy? Turkish people love their sweets, yet traveling around Turkey will show you that the population is not plagued by obesity and chronic disease.

Back to whether an objective healthy diet exists or not. If we ignore for a second that people disagree on the details of what one should eat to stay healthy (is carb or fat evil? is animal protein toxic? should you go vegan? avoid gluten like the plague?), most folks at the minimum agree that eating “real” or whole foods is important (or in other words- avoiding or limiting modern processed foods and focusing on the less modified foods). I suppose we could say that this definition of a healthy diet is generally accepted. If we move on from processed vs. whole, though, here are a couple of examples of when something generally healthy might not be good for you or vice versa:

– Cabbage! A wonderful plant full of micronutrients (vitamin K! Vitamin C!) that protect one from various diseases; the plant is often stated to have anti-inflammatory and anti-cancerous properties. Awesome. Unless you have hypothyroidism since cabbage is one of the foods that interfere with the thyroid function.

– Dairy! Gets a lot of bad rep from the paleo community and others. While recently thought as very important for bone health and what not, there is a lot of talk that we have not evolved to tolerate it quite well and it is thus an unhealthy substance to consume. Our genes are still adapted to the pre-agricultural diet (before ~10,000 yrs ago), as many paleo proponents will argue. Yet there is evidence to challenge the assumption that humans are essentially unchanged since the Paleolithic era. E.g. “recent” evolution of lactase persistence and variation in the number of genes that code for amylase production tied to starch consumption. In other words, mutations have occured that allow many folks to digest and thrive on dairy and grains just fine.

– Phytates. Plants have a lot of great ingredients that generally affect us positively (e.g. vitamins protecting from disease), but it depends.. For example, phytates in grains and nuts are usually viewed as bad for us because they can bind to certain dietary minerals leading to deficiencies (iron, zinc, etc.).. In West Africa, many Hausa plants contain substantial amounts of these phytates (especially in cereals and legumes) but these botanical chelators have a potential malaria-suppressive effect (awesome!!). However, this anti-malarial effect may be antagonized by antioxidants in other foods (e.g. such free radical traps as Vitamins C, E, beta carotene, selenium). Antioxidants is something many of us try to increase in the diet..yet if you are living in malaria-prone regions of the African continent, you might want to concentrate on the opposite dietary strategy- phytate-rich and antioxidant-poor foods.

So is there an objectively healthy diet? Generally- all eating is healthy since it is required for survival.. undereating and overeating is not good.. lacking a variety nutrients is not good.. and that’s mostly it. Of course, different things work for people- someone might not tolerate dairy, others might feel miserable on a vegan diet; some thrive on salads others can’t digest raw plants well. If only we could all grasp the wonderful concept of moderation and apply it in our lives without struggle. In fact, it is because self-control is so hard to maintain that we want simplified solutions- a diet plan, a list of “bad” foods to simply avoid, etc.

Happy Holidays– don’t overeat on most days, yet don’t let yourself stress so much about what you’re eating that you are unable to enjoy life! 😉 *grabs a big fat piece of dark chocolate and kicks back*.

Online Health Wars: Science vs. Public

August 29, 2014August 14, 2017MariyaK1 Comment

Since my research includes asking questions about why people think what they do about health, I spent a lot of time reading various discussion boards and comment sections on different health topics. In the last several days I’ve had such an overload of insane online discussions about vaccines, GMOs, and diets that I almost want to quit… 10559827_1659644964260681_5735123775899498101_n And yet the often entertaining arguments keep me coming back! The science folks vs. lay folks debates are also interesting since I am myself an ex anti-science alternative health believer who has now “switched sides” on many issues (or as I prefer/hope to think: turned much more moderate in my views based on understanding scientific evidence better).

Have you ever seen a conversation between a “concerned mom/dad who follow their gut” and a “science proponent with experience in the lab” discussing vaccinations? It is sad and funny as you see things like these:

– science person providing links to peer-reviewed literature (really just abstracts, folks can’t access the full text most of the time), questioning parent’s credentials, attempting to explain herd immunity, claiming they lack understanding of science and suggesting to take an into to epidemiology course, blaming them for increasing rates of preventable disease…and as last resorting to calling them stupid, biased, etc.

– concerned parent shares links to blogs and anti-vaccine websites, calls the science person’s degree “useless”, emphasizes their credentials as a parent who “just knows” and does their research (via blogs and specific sites), and very often attacks the science guy/girl as being paid by Monsanto or FDA, being dogmatic and inflexible as their degree was provided by corrupt institutions, being stupid, etc.

Nobody ever appears to switch sides, understand where the other person is coming from, or take their evidence seriously. The process of reading such conversations is often sadly hilarious yet less often informative. But most importantly it shows people’s biases.