1 in 3 Americans have prediabetes. Most don’t know they have it.

According to CDC estimates, more than 37 million Americans are living with diabetes. Roughly 90–95% have Type 2 diabetes, a serious chronic condition that can lead to heart disease, chronic kidney disease, and vision loss. An additional 96 million are headed down the same path with prediabetes.
The good news is Type 2 diabetes can be prevented and reversed with basic lifestyle changes. In this webinar, best-selling author and physician Neal Barnard, MD, cuts through the confusion about diet and diabetes and presents proven, drug-free strategies for preventing and reversing this dangerous disease.

Watch The Replay

Originally aired March 22, 2023

The post Webinar: What Causes Type 2 Diabetes (It’s Not Sugar!) and How to Reverse It, With Neal Barnard, MD, FACC appeared first on Forks Over Knives.

Natural Strategies for Hormone Balance

Did you know that a simple food prescription can help to gently restore your hormone balance? Myriad common health issues, including menstrual pain, weight gain, menopause symptoms, and hair loss are impacted by hormones that have gone haywire.

In this webinar, Dr. Neal Barnard, adjunct professor of medicine at George Washington University School of Medicine, shares his extensive knowledge and practical advice on how food and hormones play a powerful role in overall health. In this webinar, Dr. Barnard:

• Explains what happens when hormones go haywire and how foods can help to bring them back into balance.
• Provides insight into the hormones that are hiding in foods or are influenced by the foods we eat.
• Shares the science behind how common hormone-related conditions—such as weight gain, endometriosis, menstrual pain, and infertility—can be improved with very simple diet changes.

WATCH THE REPLAY

Originally aired April 7, 2020

The post Webinar Replay: Food, Hormones, and Health: Your Body in Balance with Dr. Neal Barnard appeared first on Forks Over Knives.

Can foods help you keep a healthy head of hair? It is a fascinating area of research—and one that is by no means finished. Let me share what we know.

What Causes Hair Loss?

Common age-related hair loss is influenced by genes, of course. In some families, baldness runs up and down the family tree. But the process is entirely dependent on hormones, as was dramatically demonstrated by Yale University’s James B. Hamilton in 1942. Hamilton showed that men who, for whatever reason, had been castrated before puberty never lost their hair. Even if every last male in their family had gone bald, it did not happen to them. Without testosterone, the genes for hair loss did not express themselves.

Hamilton also found that when men who were losing their hair were castrated (for medical reasons having nothing to do with hair loss), their hair loss suddenly stopped. If castrated men were then given supplemental testosterone, hair loss kicked in. If the testosterone treatments were stopped, hair loss stopped, too.

Here is what is going on: In the hair follicles, testosterone is converted to dihydrotestosterone (DHT). DHT is the baldness trigger. In genetically susceptible individuals, it causes hair follicles to gradually shrink the size (length and diameter) of the hairs they produce until finally they stop producing hair altogether.

Some parts of the scalp—especially the front and crown—are particularly sensitive to DHT, while others—the sides and back of the head—resist it. And on the face and chest, DHT has the opposite effect. It stimulates follicles to produce thick, curly hair.

The conversion of testosterone to DHT can be blocked by finasteride, a drug marketed under the brand name Propecia. Rogaine (minoxidil) works differently. It is used topically to keep follicles functioning normally.

Foods and Hair Retention

So, how do foods fit into this? For starters, researchers noticed that baldness was less common among Asians than in whites. But as Asian countries began to Westernize their diets, baldness was one of the conditions that appeared to be increasingly common. Japan is a case in point. As its diet became Westernized in the latter half of the 20th century, many aspects of health changed. Although most of the attention went to the massive rise in breast cancer, diabetes, and heart disease, dermatologists also noted that baldness became more common. The same phenomenon was observed in Korea. Doctors in a dermatology clinic found that baldness seemed to be striking earlier and more often.

A traditional Asian diet is based mainly on plant-based foods, rather than meats and dairy products, and tends to be very modest in fat. A low-fat, plant-based diet encourages your body to build more SHBG—sex hormone–binding globulin. SHBG reins in testosterone and keeps it inactive until it is needed. That’s good. You will have more than enough testosterone for your daily needs, without the excesses that could affect your scalp.

One more thing: In 2009, researchers compared 80 young men with progressive hair loss to 80 men without hair loss. The balding men were more likely to have insulin resistance. Other studies found the same thing: Insulin resistance is linked to hair loss in both men and women. This means that the cells of the body (especially the muscles and liver) have become unresponsive to insulin, as a result of the buildup of fat inside the cells. In turn, insulin resistance causes metabolic changes that affect your whole body. It can impair blood circulation to the follicles and contribute to the loss of the follicles’ ability to produce hair.

This can happen to women, too. Women with polycystic ovary syndrome, in particular, have higher levels of testosterone than usual and often have insulin resistance. Many have thinning hair.

There are other causes of hair loss, too. Thyroid disease and various medications can cause hair loss.

Keeping Healthy Skin and Hair

To maintain healthy skin and hair, I would encourage you to:

1. Avoid animal products.
2. Avoid adding oils in cooking, and favor oil-free foods at restaurants.
3. Avoid oily foods (e.g., peanut butter, avocados) until you know how they affect you.
4. Avoid added sugars. In anecdotal reports, for whatever reason, sugary foods seem to make hair lifeless.
5. Have adequate protein from plant sources. Beans and bean products, such as tofu, tempeh, and soymilk, give you plenty of protein without the negatives of dairy products or meat. Anecdotally, some people have found that having extra plant protein helps keep their hair fuller.
6. Have plenty of vegetables and fruits. Their antioxidants will help protect your skin.
7. Protect your skin from excess sun exposure.
8. Although hormone shifts can have profound effects on your skin and hair, a healthful diet can be powerful, too. See what healthful foods can do for how you look, in addition to how you feel.

Excerpted from the book YOUR BODY IN BALANCE: THE NEW SCIENCE OF FOOD, HORMONES, AND HEALTH by Neal D. Barnard, MD, FACC with Menus and Recipes by Lindsay S. Nixon. Copyright © 2020 by Neal Barnard, MD. Recipes text copyright © 2020 by Lindsay S. Nixon. Reprinted with permission of Grand Central Publishing. All rights reserved. 

The post Diet’s Impact on Hormones and Hair Loss appeared first on Forks Over Knives.

The number of people with Alzheimer’s disease is expected to jump from 5.7 million in 2018 to 14 million by 2050. There is no known cure. Although there is much research to be done on this disease, studies have shown that certain foods are beneficial to the brain and may offer some protection against Alzheimer’s.

Harmful Foods

Saturated fats, trans fats, and excess metals are the biggest threats to brain health. Saturated fats are found in all animal products and seem to encourage the production of plaques within the brain. The Chicago Health and Aging Study reported in the Archives of Neurology in 2003 that individuals with the most saturated fat in their diets had more than triple the risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease when compared with those who generally avoided these fats. Trans fats are another fatty substance that has been shown to increase the risk of Alzheimer’s disease more than fivefold. These fats appear to increase the production of the beta-amyloid protein that collects in plaques at the onset of Alzheimer’s disease.

GET OUR FREE 20-PAGE ULTIMATE PLANT-BASED BEGINNER’S GUIDE

Excess metals in the body, such as iron, copper, and aluminum, build up in the brain, which may lead to Alzheimer’s disease. Excess iron promotes the production of damaging free radicals, while too much copper can impair cognition and stick to the plaques associated with Alzheimer’s disease. Buildup of aluminum has also been found in the brains of Alzheimer’s patients, and because of this, it is recommended to avoid uncoated aluminum cookware and to read labels when purchasing baking powder, antacids, and processed foods.

Brain-Friendly Foods

Good news! There are many ways to help strengthen your brain and protect yourself against Alzheimer’s disease. Vitamin E is bountiful in nuts and seeds, and it has been shown to help prevent Alzheimer’s disease. Almonds, hazelnuts, pine nuts, pecans, pistachios, sunflower seeds, sesame seeds, and flaxseed are all high in vitamin E, and you don’t need to eat mass quantities of these little gems to get the benefits. Have a small handful each day to get your dose of brain-boosting vitamin E.

The beautiful coloring of grapes and blueberries isn’t just for show; it means that these fruits are packed with anthocyanins, powerful antioxidants that help improve learning and recall. Sweet potatoes get their orange hue from another powerful antioxidant called beta-carotene. Antioxidants are important in fighting harmful free radicals.

Eating green leafy vegetables, beans, and legumes daily will ensure that you are getting adequate folate and B6, two very important brain-protecting vitamins. Another B vitamin, B12, is difficult for people to absorb through foods, which is why it is recommended to take a B12 supplement to ensure you are getting the trio of brain-protecting power: folate, B6, and B12.

Exercise for the Body and Brain

Physical exercise has long been recognized as a means to improve longevity and heart health, but it is also beneficial for brain health. Studies have shown that aerobic exercise can help reduce brain atrophy, and it can also improve memory and other cognitive functions. Aim to get at least 120 minutes of aerobic exercise each week.

Learn more about brain health in the Physicians Committee’s Dietary Guidelines for Alzheimer’s Prevention.

Ready to get started? Check out Forks Meal Planner, FOK’s easy weekly meal-planning tool to keep you on a healthy plant-based path.

The post What’s the Best Diet to Prevent Alzheimer’s? appeared first on Forks Over Knives.

Type 1 diabetes is an autoimmune disease. Type 2 diabetes—the most common form of the disease—is caused by insulin resistance and pancreatic failure. Sugar can play an aiding and abetting role in diabetes, but the idea that “eating sugar causes diabetes” is simplistic and interferes with efforts to help the public understand the actual causes of the disease and how to protect themselves and their families. Here is what you need to know:

Sugar is the Body’s Fuel

The human body runs on glucose, a simple sugar. Just as gasoline powers your car, glucose powers your muscles, your brain, and the rest of your body. Glucose comes from fruit and from starchy foods, such as grains, beans, and potatoes, and your body can also produce it when needed. Without it, you would die.

Diabetes means having higher-than-normal blood glucose values. It comes in three common forms: 

• Type 1 diabetes is caused by the destruction of the insulin-producing cells of the pancreas, usually through an autoimmune process. The triggers for this process are under investigation and may include dairy proteins, viruses, or other factors.
  
• Type 2 diabetes typically starts with insulin resistance. That is, the cells of the body resist insulin’s efforts to escort glucose into the cells. What causes insulin resistance? It appears to be caused by an accumulation of microscopic fat particles within muscle and liver cells. This fat comes mainly from the diet—chicken fat, beef fat, cheese fat, fish fat, and even vegetable fat. To try to overcome insulin resistance, the pancreas produces extra insulin. When the pancreas can no longer keep up, blood sugar rises. The combination of insulin resistance and pancreatic cell failure leads to type 2 diabetes.
  
• Gestational diabetes is similar to type 2 and occurs during pregnancy.

What Fuels the Diabetes Epidemic?

In Japan, China, and other Asian countries, the transition from traditional carbohydrate-rich (e.g., rice-based) diets to lower-carbohydrate Westernized eating habits emphasizing meats, dairy products, and fried foods have been accompanied by a major increase in diabetes prevalence. Similarly, in the U.S., a meat-based (omnivorous) diet is associated with a high prevalence of diabetes, compared with dietary patterns emphasizing plant-derived foods. In the Adventist Health Study-2, after adjusting for differences in body weight, physical activity, and other factors, an omnivorous diet was associated with roughly double the risk of diabetes, compared with a diet omitting animal products.

In clinical trials, when people change from an omnivorous diet to a low-fat, vegan diet, diabetes typically improves significantly.

These findings from observational studies and clinical trials resonate with the finding from magnetic resonance spectroscopy showing that fat inside the cells leads to insulin resistance, the first step toward type 2 diabetes.

Sugar is Falling, Diabetes is Rising

It has become fashionable in recent years to blame sugar for health problems, to the neglect of other important contributors. Sugar consumption has actually been falling in the U.S. since 1999, when bottled water and sugar-free beverages began to edge sodas off the shelf. At the same time, consumption of cheese and oily foods has steadily increased, as has diabetes prevalence. This suggests that something other than sugar is driving the diabetes epidemic.

Still, Sugar is not Health Food

So, our bodies actually run on sugar—that is, glucose. Moreover, sugar has only four calories per gram (much less than fats and oils, which have nine calories per gram), and sugar’s calories can be used for metabolic needs or stored as glycogen. So, does that mean that added sugars are innocuous?

Certainly not. Although glucose is an important fuel for the body, there is no physiological need for added sugars. Because sugar dissolves into sodas and snack foods, it is easy to consume surprisingly large quantities of it, contributing to weight gain. In turn, higher body weight can make type 2 diabetes more likely to occur. Some have also suggested that excess ingested sugar, particularly fructose, may contribute to diabetes risk in other ways.

A number of studies have looked for relationships between sugar (especially sugar-sweetened beverages) and diabetes risk. Many have found no significant relationship, apart from sugar’s extra calories that lead to weight gain. For example, the Women’s Health Study, the Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities Study, the Black Women’s Health Study, and the Multi-Ethnic Study of Atherosclerosis found no significant associations between sugar consumption and diabetes risk after adjustment for measures of body weight. Some studies have had mixed results, exonerating sucrose, but indicting glucose and fructose.^, And some studies have shown associations between sugar-sweetened beverages and diabetes that persist after adjustment for body weight.^,

A 2015 meta-analysis summarized the results of 17 cohorts, concluding that, after adjustment for body weight, a daily 250 mL serving of sugar-sweetened beverages could increase diabetes risk approximately 13 percent. These observational studies do not necessarily indicate cause and effect. Sodas are often accompanied by cheeseburgers, chicken nuggets, and other unhealthful foods. That is, soda consumption can be a sign of a diet focusing on fast foods or an overall unhealthful diet. And, sugary snack foods (e.g., cookies and snack pastries) are often high in fat; the sugar lures us in to the fat calories hiding inside. Some, but not all, observational trials have sought to control for these confounding variables. The meta-analysis authors also cautioned that they had identified significant bias, suggesting that public interest in the issue may have led investigators to favor research showing ill effects of sugar and to neglect to publish data seeming to exonerate sugar.

The roots of type 2 diabetes remain in insulin resistance and pancreatic failure, and the blame for the current diabetes epidemic lies in an overall dietary pattern emphasizing meat, dairy products, fatty foods, and sugary foods, rather than simply in sugar alone.

Conclusion

Diabetes is a serious disease. Its most common form, type 2 diabetes, has become a worldwide epidemic as Western eating habits spread. An understanding of its causes is essential to identifying means of combatting it. A diet emphasizing vegetables, fruits, whole grains, and legumes and avoiding animal products helps prevent diabetes and improves its management when it has been diagnosed.

The idea that “eating sugar causes diabetes” is inaccurate. Nonetheless, avoiding added sugars is a helpful step, and it should be taken in addition to a healthful plant-based eating pattern, not instead of it.

This article originally appeared on the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine website and was reprinted with permission. 

The post Does Sugar Cause Diabetes? appeared first on Forks Over Knives.

Which foods do you find most addictive? That’s the question University of Michigan researchers asked. The idea was, which foods lead you to lose control over how much you eat? Which ones are hard to limit? Which ones do you eat despite negative consequences? The researchers surveyed 384 people and here is what they found:

Problem food #5 is ice cream.

Problem food #4 is cookies.

Chips and chocolate were tied for #3 and #2.

But the most problematic food of all was—drum roll, please—pizza. Yes, gooey cheese melting over a hot crust and dribbling down your fingers—it beat everything else.

And here is what matters: The question was not, which foods do you especially like, or which foods leave you feeling good and satisfied. Rather, the question was, which foods do you have a problem with? Which ones lead you into overeating, gaining weight, and feeling lousy? Which foods seduce you, then leave you with regrets?

So, why did pizza top the list? Why are we so often tempted to dig in and overdo it?

Three reasons: salt, grease, and opiates.

As you have no doubt experienced, salty foods can be habit-forming. French fries, salted peanuts, pretzels, and other salty foods are hard to resist, and food manufacturers know that adding salt to a recipe adds cash to the register. A Lay’s potato chips commercial in the 1960s said, “Bet you can’t eat one”—meaning it’s impossible to eat just one. Once the first salty chip passes your lips, you want more and more.

Your body does need some salt—about a gram and a half per day, according to U.S. health guidelines. In prehistoric times, however, salt was not so easy to come by. After all, potato chips and pretzels had not yet been invented. So people who managed to get their hands on salt were more likely to survive. Your neurological circuitry is set up to detect it, crave it, and jump in when you’ve found it.

As you will remember from fifth-grade biology, your tongue is very sensitive to the taste of salt. And brain scanning studies show that your brain is extra attuned to it, too. Deep inside the brain, in what is commonly called the “reward center,” brain cells make the feel-good neurotransmitter dopamine, and in certain situations it floods out of the cells, stimulating neighboring cells. If you find a particularly abundant source of food, your brain rewards you by releasing some dopamine. If you were to have—shall we say—a romantic, intimate encounter, your brain has a similar reaction. It gives you more dopamine. Dopamine rewards you for doing things that help you or your progeny to live on. And scientists believe that dopamine plays a role in our desire for salt.

So is there really a lot of salt in pizza? A fourteen-inch Domino’s cheese pizza has—catch this—3,391 milligrams of sodium. Just one slice delivers 400 milligrams. It’s in the crust and in the toppings, and there is a lot in the cheese. So salt is one of the reasons that pizza attracts us.

Pizza is also greasy, and that greasy-salty combination seems to get us hooked, too, just as it does for chips, fries, and onion rings. But pizza has one more thing. It has cheese, and cheese not only contributes its own load of salt and grease. It also contains traces of a very special kind of opiate.

Casomorphins

[In an earlier chapter of The Cheese Trap], I briefly mentioned casein, the protein that is concentrated in cheese. And casein has some secrets to tell.

If you were to look at a protein molecule with a powerful microscope, it would look like a long string of beads. Each “bead” is a protein building block called an amino acid, and, during digestion, the individual amino acids come apart and are absorbed into your bloodstream so that your body can use them to build proteins of its own.

So the calf digests the proteins in milk, breaking apart the chain of beads and using these amino acids to build skin cells, muscle cells, organs, and the other parts of the body.

However, casein is an unusual protein. While it does break apart to release individual beads, it also releases longer fragments—chains that might be four, five, or seven amino acid beads in length. These casein fragments are called casomorphins—that is, casein-derived morphine-like compounds. And they can attach to the same brain receptors that heroin and other narcotics attach to.

In other words, dairy protein has opiate molecules built right into it.

Opiates in dairy products? What the heck are they doing there, you might ask. Well, imagine if a calf did not want to nurse. Or if a human baby was not interested in nursing. They would not do very well. So, along with protein, fat, sugar, and a sprinkling of hormones, milk contains opiates that reward the baby for nursing.

Have you ever looked at a nursing baby’s face? The infant has a look of great intensity and then collapses into sleep. Of course, we imagine that to be the beauty of the mother-infant bond. But the fact is, mother’s milk delivers a mild drug to the child, albeit in a benign and loving way. If that sounds coldly biological, it pays to remember that nature never leaves anything as important as a baby’s survival to chance.

Opiates have a calming effect, and they also cause the brain to release dopamine, leading to a sense of reward and pleasure.

A cup of milk contains about 7.7 grams of protein, 80 percent of which is casein, more or less. Turning it into Cheddar cheese multiplies the protein content seven-fold, to 56 grams. It is the most concentrated form of casein in any food in the grocery store.

Call it dairy crack. Just as cocaine manufacturers have found ways to turn an addictive drug (cocaine) into an extremely addictive one (crack), dairy producers have found their own ways to keep you coming back. In the Middle Ages, cheese makers had no idea that cheese might concentrate milk’s addictive qualities. But today’s cheese industry knows all about cheese craving and is eager to exploit it. It is doing its level best to trigger cheese craving in vulnerable people.

The post Why It’s So Hard to Give Up Cheese appeared first on Forks Over Knives.

Congratulations to the Los Angeles Unified School District! Earlier this month, school board members unanimously voted in favor of bringing healthful plant-based options to L.A. schools next fall in a pilot program championed by students, parents, and doctors. Lila Copeland, an inspiring 15-year-old LAUSD student, launched the campaign back in 2016. Before board members made their decision, I joined Lila and other LAUSD students in offering a testimony about the importance of this initiative.

Adding vegan options is a tremendous step toward keeping students healthy, but removing unhealthful foods from the menu is equally important. That’s why the Physicians Committee recently filed a lawsuit to stop LAUSD and Poway Unified School District, also in California, from serving students processed meats—including hot dogs, pepperoni, and luncheon meat—which are linked to colorectal cancer.

We’re still working on getting processed meats out of LAUSD. But in the meantime, read my testimony that helped get vegan options in:

I am Neal Barnard, M.D., Adjunct Associate Professor of Medicine at the George Washington University in Washington, D.C., President of the Physicians Committee, and Fellow of the American College of Cardiology.

Thank you for considering giving students access to healthful plant-based foods. There is always controversy whenever you talk about food, of course, but this is a great idea, and you really deserve accolades for it.  

This is actually important for every student—not just those who are already looking for vegan choices, but for every student. Students who have a chance to try plant-based meals gain familiarity with the most healthful foods—completely free of animal fat and cholesterol, and rich in vitamins, fiber, and protein in its most healthful form. And they set the stage for healthy habits in the future.

And those who take advantage of plant-based choices at every meal are adopting the healthiest possible eating pattern. As you know, plant-based diets have been recognized by the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics and by the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee for their health benefits.

Plus, plant-based meals are sometimes the cheapest, because they can be built from beans, rice, and other simple ingredients.

Some people who are not familiar with plant-based diets may ask if they provide adequate nutrition. The fact is they provide better nutrition than is typical of most American diets. Plant-based foods are rich in vitamins, minerals, and healthful fiber, and provide more than enough protein, without the animal fat and cholesterol that children do not need. Meats do have protein and iron, but plant-based diets have more than enough of both in more healthful forms. Dairy products do have calcium, but greens and beans do, too, in a more absorbable form. Meats and dairy products have no fiber and are poor sources of many vitamins, and they tend to push healthful vegetables and fruits off the plate. That’s why plant-based diets stack up much better on structured nutrition rating systems, such as Harvard’s Alternative Healthy Eating Index. 

This initiative shows you really care about your students—all your students. Studies show that children who grow up with plant-based foods have much less risk of becoming overweight as adults. And in a 2009 study, nearly 8 percent of people following typical American diets had diabetes. For people following vegan diets, that figure was just 2.9 percent, and they are also much less likely to develop heart disease, obesity, high blood pressure, and certain cancers.  

If children are unfamiliar with plant-based options and never learned the taste of a meal without cheese and meat, they have one arm tied behind their backs.

Many students have learned that the United Nations and other authorities have called for reducing consumption of meat, dairy products, and animal products in general for the sake of the environment. They understand that beef and dairy cows belch methane into the atmosphere, and that raising feed for chickens, pigs, and other animals consumes an enormous amount of water and fertilizer. When schools ignore these considerations, students feel they are living among climate change deniers. Every student needs a healthy, plant-based option accessible every day.

And there is more to it. The majority of people of color have trouble digesting lactose—the milk sugar—which can then cause bloating and diarrhea. This is not a disease; it’s the biological norm. By the teen years, many children have symptoms that can get in the way of studying, athletic performance, and day-to-day activities. Dairy-free meals and beverages should be available for all children, without forcing them to get a doctor’s note for what is a perfectly normal condition.  

While you do your wonderful work making sure that children are as well-equipped as possible for what life has in store for them, the greatest threats they will face come from physical problems—overweight, heart disease, diabetes, and others. So if your son or daughter were to say, “I’d like to bring more plant-based meals into my life,” or “I really want to help the environment,” or “I want to be compassionate in my eating choices with your help,” I hope your answer will be a resounding “Yes!”

The post Congratulations! Vegan Lunches for Country’s Second-Largest Public School District appeared first on Forks Over Knives.

But you would not know that if you read the New York Times this weekend. On Sunday, the paper published an opinion piece urging Americans to ditch not only sugars, but wheat, rice, corn, potatoes—even fruit—to fight diabetes and obesity. The article also recommended replacing these foods with meat, eggs, and butter.

Advice like this is dangerous. Another recent study of more than 200,000 participants found that consuming large amounts of animal protein increased diabetes risk by 13 percent. But by simply replacing 5 percent of animal protein with vegetable protein—including carbohydrates like potatoes and grains—participants decreased diabetes risk by 23 percent.

Epidemiological studies tell a similar story. Traditionally, minimally processed and unprocessed carbohydrates, including rice and starchy vegetables, were the main staples in countries like Japan and China—and type 2 diabetes was rare. But as time went on, Western diets filled with meat, cheese, and highly processed foods replaced these traditional carbohydrate-based diets, and diabetes rates soared.

So how does it work? Insulin’s job in our bodies is to move glucose, or sugar, from our blood into our cells. But when there’s too much fat in our diets, fat builds up in our cells. Evidence shows that this cellular fat can actually interfere with insulin’s ability to move glucose into our cells, leading to type 2 diabetes. (Watch this video to learn more.)

At the Physicians Committee, we have been putting this idea into practice for more than a decade. Participants in our clinical studies and nutrition education classes eat as many whole, unprocessed or minimally processed carbohydrates as they want—everything from fruit and sweet potatoes to beans and whole wheat pasta—and they soon see improvements in their blood sugar control.

In 2006, we partnered with the George Washington University and the University of Toronto to put these ideas to the test in a clinical setting by pitting a low-fat, plant-based diet against the standard diabetes diet recommended by the American Diabetes Association. The results were remarkable: Participants in the vegan group lowered hemoglobin A1C by 1.2 points, which was three times greater than the ADA group.

These participants also experienced weight loss, lower cholesterol, lower blood pressure, and improved energy. All the side effects were positive. On the other hand, those who follow low-carbohydrate diets are at increased risk over the long term for weight gain, heart disease, and even premature death.

This article originally appeared on the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine website and was reprinted with permission. 

The post Conquering Diabetes with Carbohydrates appeared first on Forks Over Knives.

Katie Couric’s new documentary Fed Up is an eye-opening experience for most Americans. As the film shows, it’s nearly impossible to exercise your way out of eating pepperoni pizza, greasy fries, and a glass of low-fat chocolate milk—typical fare in K-12 school lunch rooms and family restaurant chains throughout the country. Exercise isn’t enough. We need to change what we’re eating.

But that’s where Fed Up misfires. It takes aim at sugar as if it is the sole devil in the lunchroom. But scapegoating sugar removes the much-deserved blame from the avalanche of meat and dairy piling up on the center of our plates – and school lunch trays. No amount of sugar reduction is going to help if people are still going for the meat and dairy.

A gram of sugar has only 4 calories. A gram of fat—from cheese, chicken, beef, or anywhere else has 9.

Compared with a century ago, Americans now eat 75 pounds more meat and 30 pounds more cheese per person, per year. In the last 30 years, consumption of cheese has tripled, fueling our childhood obesity epidemic.

Meat and cheese are the fatty staples of the standard American diet. The same diet has a hold on the National School Lunch Program: The sugar industry spent $9 million dollars lobbying in 2013, compared to the combined $17.5 million from the meat, dairy, and poultry industries.

Local beef burgers, pulled barbecue chicken, and turkey sausage need to come with parental permission slips. Countless research studies, including a recent study from the Harvard School of Public Health, show consumption of meat doubles diabetes risk. One in 3 children born in the year 2000 will develop diabetes at some point in their life. One in 5 now graduates high school with a diploma and high cholesterol, an early marker for heart disease, which remains the number one killer worldwide.

While we work relentlessly to teach our students about strong work ethics, academic integrity, and kindness, I can’t say we offer the same when it comes to federal subsidies and nutrition education programs.

The good news is leading medical organizations, including Kaiser Permanente, and political figures, such as former president Bill Clinton, are revolutionizing the way we think about diet and health. Science continues to show that when we make fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and legumes the center of our plates and remove the meat and dairy, our waistlines dwindle, our health rapidly improves, and our need for medication plummets.

The Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, the largest organization of nutrition experts, updated its 2009 position paper to say that well-planned vegetarian diets are appropriate for individuals during all stages of the lifecycle, including pregnancy, lactation, infancy, childhood, and adolescence. And also finds people who follow vegetarian diets have a lower body mass index, lower risk of heart disease, lower cholesterol levels, lower blood pressure, and lower rates of overall cancer.

Let’s really move plant-based foods to the center of our plates and see what happens.

Article originally published on PCRM.org

The post Fed Up: Let’s Really Move Big Food Out of School Lunches appeared first on Forks Over Knives.

I cited two enormous studies—the 2009 NIH-AARP study, with half a million participants, and a 2012 Harvard study with 120,000 participants. In both studies, meat-eaters were at higher risk of a cancer death, and many more studies have shown the same thing.

How does meat cause cancer?

It could be the heterocyclic amines—carcinogens that form as meat is cooked. It could also be the polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons or the heme iron in meat, or perhaps its lack of fiber and paucity of antioxidants. But really the situation is like tobacco. We know tobacco causes lung cancer, even though no one yet knows exactly which part of the tobacco smoke is the major culprit. And although meat-eaters clearly have higher cancer rates, it is not yet clear which part of meat does the deed.

The tragedy is this: The link between meat and cancer has been known for more than a century. On September 24, 1907, the New York Times published an article entitled “Cancer Increasing among Meat Eaters,” which described a seven-year epidemiological study showing that meat-eaters were at high cancer risk, compared with those choosing other staples. Focusing especially on immigrants who had abandoned traditional, largely planted-based, diets in favor of meatier fare in the U.S., the lead researcher said, “There cannot be the slightest question that the great increase in cancer among the foreign-born over the prevalence of that disease in their native countries is due to the increased consumption of animal foods….”

Over the past century, meat eating in America has soared, as have cancer statistics. USDA figures show that meat eating rose from 123.9 pounds of meat per person per year in 1909 to 201.5 pounds in 2004.

The good news is that many have woken up and smelled the carcinogens. They know there is plenty of protein in beans, grains, and vegetables, and that traditional Italian, Mexican, Chinese, Thai, Japanese foods—and endless other cuisines—turn these plant-based staples into delicious and nourishing meals. Meat eating has fallen about one percent every year since 2004.

If you haven’t yet kicked the habit, now is the perfect time to do it. The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine has you covered with Kickstart programs, books, DVDs, and everything else you’ll ever need. Let’s not wait another hundred years.

Article originally published on PCRM.org

NOW READ: Research Shows That a Healthy Diet Will Slow or Stop Most Cancers

The post 1907 New York Times Article Shows that Meat Causes Cancer. <br> A Century Later, Many People Still Haven’t Heard the News appeared first on Forks Over Knives.