Nutrition

By Mike Geary

I’ve been doing more reading of the fascinating book, Wheat Belly, by Dr. William Davis, and I found an interesting passage that I wanted to share with you…

Dr. Davis basically did actual blood sugar tests on himself before and after consuming a modern whole grain wheat bread vs the type of ancient wheat that existed in the wild and began to be used as a crop between 5000-10,000 years ago — einkorn wheat.  The results I’ll discuss below are shocking.

Einkorn wheat is the ancient type of wheat that existed and was eaten for several thousand years before modern agricultural scientists began doing hundreds of hybridizations of wheat over the last 50 years.

These hybridizations were done to increase crop yield and other characteristics of wheat with no testing or consideration for whether these hybridizations affected our health at all, or how our body digests and processes this biochemically different wheat.

Dr. Davis states, “…despite dramatic changes in the genetic makeup of wheat and other crops, no animal or human safety testing was conducted on the new genetic strains that were created.”

After more details on the biochemical changes in modern wheat, he continues, “Wheat gluten proteins, in particular, undergo considerable structural change with hybridization. In one hybridization experiment, 14 new gluten proteins were identified in the offspring that were not present in either parent wheat plant.”

It’s no wonder that us modern day humans have so much prevalence of wheat and gluten intolerance as the source of so many digestive problems… we’ve had a mere 50 years for the human digestive system to try to adapt to these new foreign gluten proteins that were never present in the ancient human diet.

Now for the blood sugar tests that Dr. Davis conducted…

In order to make a bread out of einkorn wheat, Dr Davis actually had to obtain the grain from another country.  It’s not easy to find.  He then ground the ancient einkorn type wheat into flour and made a loaf of bread out of it.

He then used modern day organic whole grain wheat and ground that into a flour and baked a loaf of bread exactly the same as the ancient einkorn wheat bread.

Then, on two separate days, he conducted blood sugar testing on himself from a fasted state, testing the ancient einkorn wheat bread on day 1 and testing the modern day whole wheat bread on day 2.  Check out the shocking results:

Day 1:
Fasting blood sugar: 84 mg/dl
Blood sugar after consuming 4 oz. ancient einkorn wheat bread:  110 mg/dl

That would be a fairly normal response to the amount of ingested carbs.  However, look at the shocking blood sugar spike caused by modern day whole wheat…

Day 2:
Fasting blood sugar: 84 mg/dl
Blood sugar after consuming 4 oz. modern day wheat bread:  167 mg/dl

Now you can see actual results showing that modern day wheat, after 100’s of hybridizations and changes to its nutritional biochemistry, is a far cry from ancient wheat that was eaten over 5000 years ago by our ancestors.

If you remember from a few of my articles in recent weeks, the higher your blood sugar goes more frequently, the more advanced glycation end products (AGEs) that your body produces, and the faster your body ages (your organs, skin, etc) including how old you LOOK.  You can read item #7 on this article to see how eating too much wheat has the unique ability to age you faster (not good!)

One thing I try to do personally is to follow a fairly low-carb (paleolithic style) nutrition plan most days of the week (except for 1 cheat day) … This means a focus on proteins, healthy fats, and fibrous veggies and a purposeful lack of grain-based foods and sugary foods as much as possible.

Another trick I use whenever I do eat a higher carb meal is to use certain herbs and spices before my meal or mixed in my meal to help control blood sugar response.  Cinnamon and cayenne are two noteworthy spices that can help to control your blood sugar response from a meal.

by Mike Geary

Do you eat these harmful foods that AGE you faster?  Some are even deceptively marketed to you as “healthy” by giant food corporations.  Avoid or minimize these and look 5-10 years YOUNGER than your real age.
Due to biochemical reactions in your body that occur with every type of food you eat on a daily basis, some foods age you FASTER than your real age, while other foods help to FIGHT aging.

Eat the wrong foods regularly, and you can look and feel 10 or more years OLDER than your real age (not fun!) … but eat the right foods, and over time, you can start to look 5-10 years YOUNGER than your real age.

Three of the processes that go on inside your body that have a MAJOR impact on your rate of aging are called “glycation”, “inflammation”, and “oxidation”.  When we talk about aging, we’re not just talking about wrinkles on your skin or how thick your hair is… we’re also talking about factors that you can’t see, such as how well your organs function, and whether your joints are degrading.

Yes, I’m sure you’ll agree this is much more important than just how you look on the surface (although we’ll show you how to improve BOTH!)

So let’s dig right in and I’ll show you how your rate of aging can be directly related to the foods you might eat every day, and how to protect yourself…

Food #1 that ages you faster: Wheat (yes, even “whole wheat”)

Before I tell you why wheat can actually speed up the aging process in your body, let’s clarify some simple biochemistry in your body…

This deals with “glycation” in your body, and substances called Advanced Glycation End Products (AGEs).  These nasty little compounds called AGEs speed up the aging process in your body including damage over time to your organs, your joints, and of course, wrinkled skin.

So with that said, what is one of the biggest factors that increase production of AGEs inside your body?  This may surprise you, but high blood sugar levels over time dramatically increase age-accelerating AGEs in your body.  This is why type 2 diabetics many times appear that they have not aged well and look older than their real age.  But this age-increasing effect is not just limited to diabetics.  It can affect everyone.

So, let’s get back to how “whole wheat” relates to this…

Here is a little-known fact that’s often covered up by the massive marketing campaigns by giant food companies that want you to believe that “whole wheat” is healthy for you… but the fact is that wheat contains a very unique type of carbohydrate (not found in other foods) called Amylopectin-A, which has been found in some tests to spike your blood sugar higher than even pure table sugar.

In fact, amylopectin-A (from wheat) raises your blood sugar more than almost any other carbohydrate source on earth based on blood sugar response testing.

This means that wheat-based foods such as breads, bagels, cereals, muffins, and other baked goods often cause much higher blood sugar levels than most other carbohydrate sources.  As you know now, the higher your average blood sugar levels are over time, the more AGEs are formed inside your body, which makes you age FASTER.

You’ve probably heard about the potential health-damaging effects of gluten (also found in wheat) in the news recently, but this blood sugar aspect we just covered is not talked about that often, and is yet another reason to reduce or eliminate wheat-based foods in your diet.  Your body will thank you by aging slower and looking YOUNGER!

In fact, my own dad, who is in his mid 60’s now, just removed 95% of the wheat from his diet about 3 months ago (aside from a little bit on 1 cheat day per week), and he’s noticed that his chronic joint pain has completely disappeared!  Not only that, he also commented that he’s finally lost those “love handles” on his sides that have been plaguing him his entire adult life…All by reducing his wheat intake!

Another problem with wheat-based foods and aging…

As it turns out, baked wheat products contain carcinogenic chemicals called acrylamides that form in the browned portion of breads, cereals, muffins, etc.  These carcinogenic acrylamides have been linked in studies to possible increased risk of cancer and accelerated aging.  Note that acrylamides are also found in high levels in other browned carbohydrate sources such as french fries or any other browned starchy foods.

Don’t worry though… There’s a trick that you can use to protect yourself from these carcinogenic acrylamides, and it has to do with eating the RIGHT foods that COUNTERACT damage from these nasty chemicals.  I’ll show you how to find the EXACT foods that protect your body on the next page!
Food #2 that ages you faster:  Corn-based foods — corn syrup, corn cereal, corn chips, corn oil

This is quite a variety of stuff that you might eat every day… we’re talking corn chips, corn cereals, corn oil, and also the biggest health-damaging villain that gets most of the media attention, high-fructose corn syrup (HFCS).

We already talked in detail in the last section about wheat regarding the blood sugar process and it’s relation to age-accelerating formation of nasty “AGEs” in your body.

Well, corn-based starchy foods such as corn cereals, corn chips, etc also have a big impact on blood sugar levels and therefore can increase AGEs in your body and accelerate aging.

But here’s another nail in the coffin for corn… it turns out that scientists have found out that the fructose in HFCS causes 10x more formation of AGEs in your body than glucose!  Yes, that’s right… that means the HFCS you consume daily in sweetened drinks, and most other processed foods (yes, even salad dressings and ketchup) contribute to faster aging in your body… as if you needed yet another reason to avoid or minimize HFCS!

We’re not done yet with corn… it gets even worse…

Another major issue with corn-based foods and corn oils is that these foods contribute excessive amounts of omega-6 fatty acids to your diet, which causes an imbalance in your omega-3 to omega-6 ratio and leads to inflammation and oxidation within your body.

Once again… another example of corn-based foods aging you FASTER.

My advice:  Avoid or reduce corn-based foods like corn chips and corn cereal as much as possible. These aren’t as bad as wheat in relation to blood sugar, and they don’t contain gut-damaging gluten like wheat does, but they are still bad for you.  When it comes to corn syrup or corn oil, avoid as much as you can if you want to stay lean and young looking.

 

Food #3 that ages you faster:  Sugar, sugary foods, certain starchy foods
Again, we get back to the relationship between your average blood sugar levels and blood sugar spikes over time, and how that can increase those age-accelerating compounds called AGEs in your body.

Sugar is an obvious one to avoid.  You’ve heard how bad it is for you 1000 times before for many other reasons, including your waistline and developing type 2 diabetes.  But now you also understand the aging effect of sugar.

Instead of sugar, consider using a natural non-caloric sweetener like Stevia in your daily coffee, tea, in baking, or other sweetening needs.  This dramatically helps you control your blood sugar response and thereby help slow aging.

So this also means to think twice about sugary desserts, sugary cereals, candy, and other sweets that are contributing to aging you faster.

My personal trick to satisfy my sweet tooth is to only have 1-2 squares of dark chocolate after dinner instead of a normal full dessert that most people choose.  You only get about 2 grams of sugar in 1-2 squares of dark chocolate as opposed to 40-80 grams of age-accelerating sugar in a typical cake, ice cream, or brownie type of dessert.

Keep in mind that some starchy foods like white rice, oatmeal, and white potatoes can also have significant impacts on your blood sugar and thereby can increase formation of AGEs in your body.  These foods are best kept in smaller portions if you decide to eat them, and balanced with healthy fats and protein to slow the blood sugar response.

 

Food #4 that ages you faster:  Soybean oil, canola oil, or other “vegetable oils”
I know these have been marketed to you over the years by giant food companies as “healthy”, but if you understand a little biochemistry about how these highly-processed oils react inside your body, you would quickly see how false that is.

First, anything labeled soybean oil, canola oil, corn oil, vegetable oil, or cottonseed oil (these are in a LOT of processed foods you probably eat) most times have undergone a refining process under extremely high heat and use of chemical solvents such as hexane.

This leaves you with an oil where the polyunsaturated fats have undergone a lot of oxidation and are therefore VERY inflammatory inside your body, producing free radicals, damaging your cell membranes, contributing to faster aging, heart disease, and other possible health problems.

If you want to avoid the health-damaging effects of soybean, canola, corn and other “vegetable oils”, make sure to avoid them as much as you can, and instead opt for truly healthy oils and fats such as extra-virgin olive oil, avocado oil, virgin coconut oil (a healthy source of MCT fats), and grass-fed butter (a great source of healthy CLA fats).

by Mike Geary’s

The hottest thing in nutrition over the last few years is the “Paleo” style of eating (aka, Paleolithic nutrition).  In some ways, it’s a simple concept, and it’s common sense… eat a similar hunter-gatherer diet like our ancestors did for over 1.9 Million years, and since this is the diet that the human digestive system is most adapted to during 99% of our existence, good health will follow, and getting a lean body becomes easier.

Some paleo authors though forbid even tiny amounts of grains and dairy in their recommendations, while other mainstream health authors and experts just aren’t convinced yet (or haven’t been explained the science yet) that whole grains can possibly be bad for you in any way.

My thought on this is that not all grains are necessarily bad for you, but some are a LOT worse than others… this is where I see “paleo” nutrition in a slightly different light than some very strict Paleo authors that advise to 100% eliminate ALL grains.  I don’t quite see it that way.

A couple things that I keep in mind in terms of deciding on the healthiest paleolithic nutrition plan:

1.  For people that are extremely active such as long distance bikers, runners, and athletes that do intense activity for several hours per day, the extra calories from starch that grains give can be useful. The extra calories and carbs from grains can also be useful to those looking to build muscle mass.

However, there’s no reason at all that these types of people can’t fuel their carb needs with potatoes, sweet potatoes, fruit, squash, quinoa, and other non-grain carb sources, and still get the calories and carbs they need without getting all of the gluten and other problematic anti-nutrients that are in many popular grains.

2.  Some grains are worse than others.  For example, rice and oats still have anti-nutrients, but have a lot less anti-nutrients than wheat does.  Rice and oats also don’t contain gluten (unless they contain traces from processing machines that also processed wheat or barley), and as you know, chronic gluten intake can irritate the gut and cause internal inflammation in a large majority of us, even if we’re not Celiac.

This means that rice and oats are more “neutral” than wheat is, and if you’re extremely active and burn boatloads of calories with hours of exercise each day, then rice and oats can be a reasonable source of calories, although still not necessarily the “best” carb source per se.

However, if you’re an average person that exercises a couple days a week, and not daily for hours each day, there’s really no need for the extra calories and carbs that even “neutral” grains provide.

3.  It’s important to know that grains are NOT “essential” to the human diet in any way.  After all, before agriculture started approx 10,000 years ago, grains were just a very tiny % of the human diet, dating back almost 2 Million years.

Currently, it’s estimated that the average modern day person obtains 67% of their total calories come from only 3 foods — wheat, corn, and soy and their derivatives.

However, ancient paleolithic humans most likely only consumed about 1 or 2% of their total calories from wild grains that they could have gathered.  Mass produced grains to make bread, baked goods, and pasta that are modern day staples simply didn’t exist back then.

This means that for 99% of human existence, humans only ate grains in a very tiny fraction of their total calories, and for the last 1% of human existence, we now eat 67% of our total calories from wheat, corn, and soy alone (although technically, soy is not a grain…it’s a legume, but soy has it’s own health issues as well).

Ancient paleolithic humans were very active hunting and gathering each day (and probably fighting off predators too in most locations!), yet somehow us humans managed to “fuel our bodies” for almost 2 Million years without the need for large amounts of grains like modern day athletes resort to as the go-to carb source.

Although I’m not personally a competing athlete in anything, I’m a very active skier, mountain biker, hiker, and weight lifter.  But I don’t fuel my body on grains, and I don’t necessarily fuel my body on primarily carbohydrates either.  And I feel amazing every single day!

I tend to prefer to fuel my body primarily from healthy fats like avocados, nuts, egg yolks, seeds, olive oil, coconut oil, and grass-fed butter and cream.  But I still also fuel my body with small to moderate amounts of carbs each day from eating loads of veggies, raw honey in my morning or afternoon tea, maybe a few potatoes or sweet potatoes each week, squash, and one or two pieces of fruit a day.  This type of plan replicates the ancient paleolithic hunter-gatherer diet much more closely than these modern plans loaded with grains at every meal.

I’m sure we’ll talk more about this topic in upcoming newsletters, but let’s look at the big picture here…

The way I see it is that you can probably find a lot of examples of people you know that eat a lot of grains and yet remain lean, and seemingly healthy.  This doesn’t mean that gluten and other anti-nutrients they are consuming daily aren’t causing at least some form of moderate internal inflammation, blood sugar problems, or minor digestive problems though in many of these grain-eaters.

I personally don’t avoid grains altogether, but I would say that I only eat grains about 1 day per week, and I try to get variety when I do instead of only one type of grain, so that I’m not always consuming the same types of anti-nutrients which might affect specific minerals from being absorbed in the body.  This can lead to some mineral deficiency with over-consumption of certain grains too often.

With all of this said, I think the nutrition community is starting to become more acutely aware of some of the health problems of eating too much grains, specifically modern-day hybridized wheat and GM corn (which is 90% of the corn products in the store).

13 Healthy (and Delicious) FAT-BURNING Snack Ideas for Between Breakfast, Lunch, and Dinner

by Mike Geary,

I receive a lot of questions from my readers where they have been doing much better at choosing healthy breakfasts, lunches, and dinners, but they are still struggling to find good ideas for healthy and quick “mid-meals”… especially a quick small meal or snack that can be brought to the office or on road trips (so you can avoid the fast food junk!).

Some people may call these “healthy snacks”, but I prefer to consider them meals because they should be similar in size to your breakfasts, lunches, and dinners, if you want to spread your calorie intake out over the full day to “graze” so to speak.

After all, I’m sure it’s no secret by now that eating 5-6 small meals per day is a much better strategy (for blood sugar control and appetite control) for getting lean compared to the traditional “3 squares” a day (which for most people, turns into only 2 big meals/day as many skip breakfast).

The problem that I see most people having is being prepared enough to bring healthy “mid-meals” with them to work for the day. If you don’t plan ahead,  and bring something healthy and balanced with you when you’re out and about for the day, or at work, you’re going to end up choosing the junk food at the vending machine or corner store.

So here are some of my favorite natural foods based mid-meals that I’ve used for years with great success and that lots of my clients love too. I want to keep things simple here, so I’m just gonna give a couple of my easiest, quickest, and healthiest…

Quick, healthy snack ideas to keep your body lean:

• Apple or other fruit with almond butter
• Hummus with carrot sticks or sliced red/yellow/orange peppers
• Guacamole with carrot sticks or sliced red/yellow/orange peppers  
• Ricotta cheese (grass-fed if possible) mixed with cocoa powder, stevia, and vanilla extract (delicious high protein, low carb snack!)
• Cottage cheese mixed with yogurt, berries, and walnuts or pecans
• A couple hard boiled eggs with carrot and celery sticks and hummus (roasted red pepper hummus is my favorite)
• Celery sticks with organic peanut butter or almond butter (a classic quick healthy snack)
• My famous healthy chocolate FUDGE recipe
• Avocado slices wrapped in nitrate-free deli turkey breast (one of my favorite quick snacks)
• A piece of sprouted grain toast (sprouted-grain preferred nutritionally over “whole grain”) with almond butter or pecan butter and berries
• Fresh sliced pineapple with a handful of macadamia nuts
• a bowl of blueberries mixed with raw almonds
• my quick and healthy fat-burning chocolate pudding recipe
• Cottage cheese with cinnamon, apple slices, and walnuts (mmm, mmm good)

That should give you some ideas to start working with.  Now you have ZERO EXCUSES for resorting to junk food snacks on the road or at the office, when you have all of the delicious and healthy fat-burning snack ideas right here!