Pasta, Not Bacon, Makes You Fat. How Fructose Turns ON Your “Fat Switch”. Why Skim Milk Will Make You Fat and Give You Heart Disease. Pompeii, Italy. Clinic Visit.

For “Foodie Friday”:

Pasta, Not Bacon, Makes You Fat. But How?

“A wonderful infographic (see below) based on Why We Get Fat by science writer Gary Taubes, explains exactly why eating fat doesn’t make you fat -- but eating carbs can kill you

Overeating carbohydrate-rich foods can prevent a higher percentage of fats from being used for energy, and lead to an increase in fat storage. It also raises your insulin levels, which in short order can cause insulin resistance, followed by diabetes and other chronic diseases.

According to experts, carbs should make up only 20 percent of your diet, while 50-70 percent of your diet should be healthy fats.  Fat is far more satiating than carbs, so if you have cut down on carbs and feel ravenous, this is a sign that you haven't replaced them with sufficient amounts of healthy fat.”     Read more at: http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2012/02/18/pasta-not-bacon-makes-you-fat-but-how.aspx

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Carbs or Fat? The Battle Continues...[Infographic]

“A few months back, Massive Health and Column Five Media designed “Carbs are Killing You,” a graphic depicting how your body digests carbohydrates and fat.  After much online discussion and debate about the science behind it, the two groups have now created a new visual to help further describe how fat and carbs are processed.

“Our previous infographic about the impact of carbs produced a high level of engagement and conversation, on our own blog and with the publications that carried the image,” describes Andrew Rosenthal of Massive Health. “Based on that conversation and some of the questions we got about the biomechanics of processing carbs versus fats, we set out to take a complex textbook description and make it simple and digestible.”

“A Tale of Two Meals” shows the difference between digesting a breakfast of eggs and bacon versus a bagel and low fat cream cheese.  Based on data from the Department of Heath and Human Services, Anne Collins, and Livestrong.com, the graphic shows how the carbs in a bagel flood your body with glucose, creating insulin and telling your body to store fat.”

More at: http://www.forbes.com/sites/bethhoffman/2012/04/16/carbs-or-fat-the-battle-continues-infographic/

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How Fructose Turns ON Your “Fat Switch”

“If you have ever struggled losing weight and keeping it off, you already know what a challenge that can be. In his new book, The Fat Switch, Dr. Richard Johnson overturns age old paradigms about diet and obesity by revealing how fructose turns your body into a fat-storage machine—not by way of excess calories but by turning on your “fat switch”.  He addresses the myth that large portions of food and too little exercise are responsible for weight gain

Hibernating animals regulate their body weight with distinct periods of gaining and losing fat and that has been an enormously useful adaption advantage. This appears to be regulated by a switch in the mitochondria that is turned on and off by a common food that no longer provides survival advantage to humans living in contemporary society

Contrary to the traditional view, which says that breakfast is the most important meal of the day, the reality is that breakfast may be one of the LEAST important meals, because skipping it may allow you to enter into a more efficient fat burning phase.”   

“... I should mention that natural fruits also have fructose.

In my original book, The Sugar Fix, I was quite concerned about that, because it was another source of fructose. And we can show that fructose does a lot of bad things. But the good news is we’ve done subsequent studies, and we’ve been able to show that natural fruits, although there’s some fructose there… there are so many wonderful things in natural fruits like vitamin C, antioxidants, resveratrol, flavonols, quercetin, and all these things that actually neutralize some of the effects of fructose. Because of that, natural fruits do not seem to carry the same degree of risk.””

Complete article at: http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2012/08/18/fructose-and-the-fat-switch.aspx?e_cid=20120823_NewWNL_art_3

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Why Skim Milk Will Make You Fat and Give You Heart Disease

Joke: How do you dramatically increase sales of a new or unpopular food product to the American public? Answer: Call it a health food!

“Prior to World War II, Americans didn’t ever drink skim or lowfat milk. Drinking such a product to stay “thin and healthy” would have been laughable. Americans would only drink whole milk. In fact, the larger the creamline on their milk, the higher quality the milk, and the more likely the consumer was to buy it. Milk wasn’t homogenized in those days, so a consumer could easily see the distinct creamline on the milk to determine quality.

Cream has been considered a true health food for centuries. In Ancient Greece, Olympic athletes drank a bowlful of cream to give them strength and endurance before competition. Why? Because cream steadies blood sugar for an extended period of time. No ups and downs in insulin when your diet has lots of wonderful saturated fat in it. It is only when you eat lowfat that blood sugar issues such as diabetes and hypoglycemia tend to arise.

The body is able to MAKE saturated fat out of sugars, hence the sugar cravings that are impossible to control when you eat a lowfat diet that includes skim milk.  Try it! Eat tons of butter, whole milk yogurt and whole milk cheese for a few days and watch your sugar cravings rapidly diminish!

Another big secret is that Big Dairy adds skim milk powder to skim milk. Here’s an excerpt from “Dirty Secrets of the Food Processing Industry” from the Weston A. Price Website: http://www.westonaprice.org/modern-foods/dirty-secrets-of-the-food-processing-industry  Scroll down to ‘Milk”.

A note on the production of skim milk powder: liquid milk is forced through a tiny hole at high pressure, and then blown out into the air. This causes a lot of nitrates to form and the cholesterol in the milk is oxidized. Those of you who are familiar with my work know that cholesterol is your best friend; you don’t have to worry about natural cholesterol in your food; however, you do not want to eat oxidized cholesterol. Oxidized cholesterol contributes to the buildup of plaque in the arteries, to atherosclerosis. So when you drink reduced-fat milk thinking that it will help you avoid heart disease, you are actually consuming oxidized cholesterol, which initiates the process of heart disease.

One parting fact: pig farmers love feeding skim milk to their pigs. Why? It makes them REALLY fat! Still want to drink your skim milk? I hope not.”

More at: http://www.thehealthyhomeeconomist.com/2010/02/why-skim-milk-will-make-you-fat-and/

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On This Day:

Eruption of Mount Vesuvius begins, Aug 24, 79:

“Mount Vesuvius near Pompeii, Italy, begins to erupt on this day in the year 79; within the next 25 hours, it wipes out the entire town. Hundreds of years later, archaeologists excavated Pompeii and found everything and everyone that had been there that day perfectly preserved by the volcano's ash.

Pompeii, about 90 miles south of Rome, was established in 600 B.C.E. in the shadow of Mount Vesuvius, which stood approximately 6,500 feet high. Apparently, no one was aware that Vesuvius was an active volcano, even after an earthquake in February of the year 63.

The preserved remains of Pompeii are not the only evidence of the disaster. Two authors who witnessed the eruption also recorded their observations. Pliny the Elder was across the bay from Vesuvius on the morning of August 24 when a large cloud was noticed emanating from the volcano. He dispatched several ships to the coastal town of Resina to investigate, but the ships could not land because they were pelted by flaming rocks from the volcano. Pliny the Elder headed toward the town of Stabiae, where ash continued to fall through the night. By the following morning, the ash even obscured the sun from view. On August 25, Pliny the Elder died, apparently overtaken by sulfur gases released from the volcano.

Pliny the Younger, just 18 years old at the time, was also a witness to the eruption. He reported people climbing through waves of ash to escape. His account of the tons of pumice, rock and ash that Vesuvius pumped out over a 25-hour period, combined with the evidence left in Pompeii, indicates that about 2,000 residents of Pompeii survived the initial eruption of Vesuvius on August 24. It was the following morning when another, more powerful eruption killed everyone in an instant. When rain mixed with the ash, it formed a sort of concrete, preserving the city. The town of Herculaneum was also buried on August 25, but by a mudslide set off by the eruption and accompanying tremors. It is estimated that 13,000 people in total died from the eruption.

It was not until 1595, during the construction of an aqueduct, that Pompeii was rediscovered. Unfortunately, what can be viewed today is only a small fraction of what was found then, as looting and pillaging over the years has greatly reduced the archaeological value of the site. Some scientists believe that there may still be other villages buried by Vesuvius that have yet to be discovered.”

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Yesterday:

As Jay didn’t call with his usual “Are you on schedule”, I didn’t call him.  Muffie’s Dad had postponed her grooming appointment, and I was very relieved.  He had wanted me to groom her before she went to the vet for her allergy shot, but took her there anyway.  She will be easier to groom after the shot.

I had made up my mind that I needed to spend the free morning doing something useful, so as soon as I had Misty, Prime and myself sorted out, I called the clinic to make an appointment. I knew that if I didn’t go right then, that I wouldn’t go.  They said that they had ‘walk-ins’ until 10.00AM, so I drove down there.  The clinic had moved into a new building that was difficult to find, even with a map, but I finally found it. 

As a walk-in, I didn’t have much hope of being through quickly, especially as it is back-to-school time.  The receptionist had me fill out the usual papers, and then told me to wait in the Purple Room, a while later I was told that I would be seen quicker if I waited in the Green Room.  I was very glad of the Reader’s Digests that I keep in the van for such occurrences. Neither of these waiting rooms had a lot of waiting patients, that’s always a good sign, but sometimes they have them already stashed in exam rooms!   Then I was measured for weight, height, BP, etc., and ushered to an exam room.  It wasn’t long before a very sweet lady resident took time to ask me lots of questions, and seemed very thorough.  She looked in my nose, ears, throat and listened to my chest, and made her diagnosis, but that had to be confirmed by another sweet resident lady doctor. They called in a prescription to my local Kroger's. I was at the clinic for just under two hours, and I liked my first experience there. 

At Krogers Pharmacy, I was told that the prescription was not covered by my insurance, so the pharmacist recommended that I bought the generic that was $2.44 with my Kroger discount.  I have just taken my first dose, as it has to be taken in the mornings, so we will see how it works.

About 6.00PM Kenya called me on her way home from the vet with the pups and their Mom.  They were all doing well since their spaying and neutering.  Streaker couldn’t be operated on just yet as one testicle hasn’t descended, so his surgery will have to wait for a later day.