Mmm. These oxymorons are absolutely delicious!

I like the word oxymoron. I just saw it in Richard's Blog. As you've probably figured out from reading my Blog, the phrase "healthy low-fat" (usually found just before the word "diet") is to me, a presumptuous oxymoron.

If I type the phrase "healthy low-fat" into Google, I get about 148,000 results. Oh, dear! However...

If I type the phrase "healthy low-carb" into Google, I get about 64,400 results. Yee-haw!

So low-fat may be winning the diet war right now, but the tide is definitely turning. Slowly, slowly, catchee monkey.

Forget Fad Diets.

"Müller Rice makes the perfect low fat snack. Healthy and tasty, it keeps hunger at bay at any time of the day." says Müller Dairy. Let's take a look at the Nutritional information for Müller Rice Apple Flavour (from http://www.mullerdairy.co.uk/) :-

Nutritional information:
	Per 100g				Per 200g serving
Energy	464 KJ				928 KJ
	110 kcal				220 kcal
Protein	3.2g				6.4g
Carbohydrates	19.3g				38.6g
of which sugars	13.7g				27.4g
Fat	2.2g				4.4g
of which saturates	1.3g				2.6g
Fibre	0.4g				0.8g
Sodium	0.1g				0.2g
RDA (per serving)
Calcium	190 mg				23 %
Ingredients:

Milk, Sugar, Rice (7%), Apples (5%), Apple Juice from Concentrate (2%), Egg, Modified Maize Starch, Stabilisers: Carob Bean Gum, Guar Gum; Salt, Acidity Regulators: Ascorbic Acid, Sodium Citrates, Citric Acid; Flavourings.

There's more sugar in it than rice. One 200g serving contains about 6 teaspoonfuls of sugar. Enjoy!

How stuff works.

My last post got a bit technical and delved into the finer points of cell biochemistry. For those who would like to learn more about how cells work, I thoroughly recommend the book Metabolism at a Glance (Paperback) by Jack G Salway, Sen. Lecturer in Medical Biochemistry, University of Surrey. It's crammed with diagrams of metabolic pathways.

I've also got Medical Biochemistry at a Glance (Paperback) by Jack G Salway. EDIT: I thoroughly recommend this book, too.

For more general information on nutrition and metabolism, I recommend the book Introduction to Nutrition and Metabolism (Paperback) by David A Bender, Sen. Lecturer in Biochemistry, UCL.

A good website for medical biochemistry information is MedBio.info by Prof. em. Robert S. Horn.

A good website for enzyme structures is Enzyme Structures Database.

Here's a searchable version of Biochemistry by L Stryer. It's a bit dry, but of interest is Food Intake and Starvation Induce Metabolic Changes and Phosphatidate Is a Common Intermediate in the Synthesis of Phospholipids and Triacylglycerols.

Here's NCBI Bookshelf where you can search many textbooks.

Here's an absolutely humongous diagram in .pdf format of Metabolic Pathways. You need a fast machine to view this.

Update: Here are some cool Animations and Computer-Generated Movies by Harvard University.

Here's a YouTube video of ATP Synthase, which takes a proton gradient and, using a molecular motor-generator, converts ADP + Phosphate into ATP, the energy source that cells use.

Happy reading and viewing!

I have a theory.

I was keeping this theory a bit quiet as it contradicts Gary Taubes , Michael R Eades & Richard D Feinman and Eugene J Fine.

Please note: This post is not criticising low-carb, high-fat diets in any way, shape or form. I'm just trying to point out that if someone on a low-carb, high-fat diet pigs-out on roast lamb/pork/duck etc, they may not lose as much body fat as they expected & they may even gain some.

I don't particularly want to start a sh*t-storm, but as I am in the "a calorie is a calorie" (when it comes to weight gain/loss) camp and a lot of the people whose blogs I link to aren't, I need to go public. So, here it is, copied & pasted from the comments section of Diet, Carbs, Fat and Weight Loss, corrected for spelling.

"I would like to propose a theory which explains how fat cells can acquire glucose (& thus correct a deficiency in glycerol-3-phosphate) even when serum insulin level is basal.

Consider muscle cells undergoing anaerobic activity:-

Anaerobic activity is very inefficient and uses pyruvate at a very rapid rate. A deficiency in pyruvate up-regulates all of the up-stream processes, including Glu-T4 transporters so as to maximise pyruvate production.

This explains why resistance training with weights greatly increases muscular insulin sensitivity and why resistance training with weights when depleted of muscle glycogen can cause precipitous drops in blood glucose level.

Ditto for glycerol-3-phosphate in fat cells. In this case, blood glucose level is maintained by the liver & kidneys, which convert the glycerol backbone of triacylglycerols (fats) and other substrates such as lactate, pyruvate & glucogenic amino acids into glucose."

In plain terms what this means is that, like muscle cells, fat cells can acquire as much glucose as they need, independently of carbohydrate intake.

Therefore, if an excess (beyond what the body is burning) of dietary fat is eaten, this can be stored in fat cells even if serum insulin level does not increase.

There. I've said it. I expect comments! Moderation is enabled. All comments that are free from ad-hominem, straw men & other logical fallacies will be published.

As a lot of people report that they appear to be able to eat lots of dietary fat without getting fat (& actually getting slim), there's obviously something magical going on. Now, it's generally accepted that fat is the least thermogenic of all the macronutrients (protein being the most thermogenic). I'm wondering whether this is the case for all types of fat and all types of people.

Stephan Guyenet blogged on Butyric Acid: an Ancient Controller of Metabolism, Inflammation and Stress Resistance and Coconut Oil (high in medium chain fats) is also reported as being less fattening/more slimming than long-chain fats.

As Christopher Gardner said 39m 34s into his lecture Battle of the Weight Loss Diets: Who's Winning (at losing), insulin resistant people do better on high-fat, low-carb (HFLC) diets than high-carb, low-fat diets. Insulin sensitive people are the other way round.

So it's quite possible that in people who do well on a HFLC diet, kcals out on the right hand side of the Energy Balance Equation increase a lot. So, keep on keeping on!

See also:-
More evidence comes to light that fat is not fattening
Is there such as thing as a ‘metabolic advantage’?
They're all MAD!
Metabolic Advantage of Ketogenic Diets Debunked? An Intriguing Study You Will Want to Read
Is the Fable of Unfettered Fat Burning Derailing Your Low Carb Diet?

See also How stuff works and Enzymes.

Look after your brain, Part 4.

Ketogenic Diet REALLY WORKS!!!
WHAT IF THERE WAS A CURE FOR ALZHEIMER’S DISEASE AND NO ONE KNEW?
High fat, low carb diet may help Alzheimer's sufferers.

The above popped-up when I Googled for "ketogenic diet" alzheimer's.

See also
D-β-hydroxybutyrate protects neurons in models of Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease ,
D-β-hydroxybutyrate rescues mitochondrial respiration and mitigates features of Parkinson disease ,
Ketones: Metabolism's ugly duckling ,
Ketone bodies, potential therapeutic uses ,
Neuroprotective and disease-modifying effects of the ketogenic diet ,
Ketone bodies as a therapeutic for Alzheimer's disease ,
Altered lipid metabolism in brain injury and disorders ,
The ketogenic diet: uses in epilepsy and other neurologic illnesses and
Branched chain amino acids as adjunctive therapy to ketogenic diet in epilepsy: pilot study and hypothesis.

EDIT: Ketones give the brain two fuels to run on instead of one (glucose). This improves mental function considerably. However, it can't repair the damage done to the brain by amyloid plaques, protein tangles etc. Sadly, this damage is progressive and permanent. Therefore, coconut oil can't cure Alzheimer's Disease, Lewy Body Dementia etc. It just delays the inevitable.

It's mum's 80th Birthday today so I'm off to see her now.

Continued on Look after your brain, Part 5.

Look after your computer.

I don't know what I'd do if my lap-top were to die. For starters, I'd stop being an internet smart-arse. I'm on-line virtually all day (& some of the night, too!). I often talk to people on the 'phone with the 'phone in my left hand and my right hand doing 1-finger typing/mousing.

When my 2nd cousin asked me "Can you find out about the osteopath Paul that works in the Foot Pain Clinic, Winchmore Hill?", within a minute I'd found Paul Costin. When my ex-G/F asked me "who's the bloke that was in such & such TV programme?", I immediately went to The Internet Movie Database.

I therefore take PC security very seriously. As I mentioned in a previous blog post, my lap-top has limited memory and, being over 6 years old, limited CPU & graphics processing power. So, anything that can improve what I have is worth a try.

The first utility I shall mention is one that I've been using for ages. It's a watch-dog program called WinPatrol. It prevents programs from altering critical system files and installing start-up programs & services without your permission.

On 1st Jan, I installed Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware (MBAM). It found a load of dodgy stuff in the registry (MyWebSearch & SelectRebates) and deleted it all. The end result was more free memory and a bit more free disk space.

On 2nd Jan, I installed ESET Smart Security 4 (& uninstalled Virgin PCguard) after trying NOD32 Antivirus 4 which detected stuff that Virgin PCguard had missed. I gained ~160MB of free memory and my lap-top ran a bit faster, too.

I test my Firewall from the outside using GRC | ShieldsUP! and from the inside using LeakTest.exe, which I renamed to IEXPLORE.EXE, to try and trick the software. ESET Smart Security 4's firewall, once set to Interactive mode, passed all of the tests.

If I find any other useful programs, I'll let you know.

Mum says....

....that Alpro Soya is full of soya bean goodness. Yes, it's another TV advert! I saw it loads of times in the ad-breaks of a programme I was watching on ITV Player. It looks like Alpro aren't allowed to tell us that their soya (soy in just about every other country) milk is full of soya bean goodness, so they have to use argumentum ad verecundiam/ipse dixit.

Alpro. A tasty blend of water, organic soya beans and concentrated organic apple juice. Watch out for all that sugar. You don't want to become addicted, or get tooth decay!

So, do you trust mum? I would rather trust Drew Price BSc, MASc HFI (ACSM).