The New Optimum Nutrition Bible

by Patrick Holford

  Protein quality and quantity.

  Described by the microbiologist Professor Richard Lacey as “fake meat,” much of what is for sale in supermarkets and butcher’s shops contains growth hormones, antibiotics, and pesticide residues and, at worst, could be infected with BSE.

  BSE—is it a serious risk?

  The infectious agent thought to be responsible for BSE is called a prion. It latches on to proteins in the brain, changing them and thereby triggering disease. It is now proven to pass from species to species and into humans.

  At the time of writing over 130 people have died of new variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD) in Great Britain, and the leading theory as to the source of vCJD is that it results from eating infected beef. The amount of infected meat that needs to be eaten to get vCJD is unknown, as is the incubation period in humans. Some models have estimated that up to one hundred thousand people may eventually fall victim to vCJD, though increasingly, as time goes by, these estimates are being revised downward, and Dr. James Ironside, a member of the British CJD Surveillance Unit, whose paper was published in The Lancet in 1997, believes that “a total number of cases over the whole course of the disease will be in the hundreds, rather than thousands.”

  With considerable uncertainty persisting about the nature of both BSE and its link to vCJD in humans, it’s worth noting that there has never been a case of BSE in an organically born and reared cow. Organic farmers stopped the unnatural practice of feeding cows to cows long before the BSE epidemic began in the 1980s and are also prohibited from the conventional practice of pouring warble-fly insecticide along the animals’ spines, which is also thought to make cattle more susceptible to BSE. Only time will tell how big a health problem BSE and vCJD will eventually be, and in the meantime the safest option is to eat only organic beef.

  Hormones—a growing problem

  Most meat today, whether chicken, beef, pork, or lamb, has received hormone treatment of one kind or another. Milk, too, is a rich source of hormones, particularly estrogen. Some hormones used widely in the United States are banned in Europe, although there are commercial pressures to rescind the ban. These hormones, including synthetic estradiol and testosterone, are used to force growth rates and increase milk yields. These are the same chemicals that are at the center of the concern about “estrogen dominance,” an increasingly common syndrome found in men and women with hormone-related disease. So far, breast cancer, fibroids, ovarian cancer, cervical cancer, prostate and testicular cancer, and endometriosis have all been linked to excessive estrogen levels.

  Of course, it is not easy to find out what long-term effects the introduction of hormones into our food is having. Dr. Malcolm Carruthers, a specialist in male hormone-related disease, investigated one thousand cases of patients exhibiting symptoms of “male menopause” over seven years. The most common symptoms are fatigue, depression, loss of libido, testicular atrophy, impotence, and breast enlargement. Of these one thousand cases, the highest occupational risk group was farmers, the “front-line” troops in the agrochemical arms race.

  According to Carruthers, “For some the causative agent appeared obvious. They had worked on farms caponizing chickens or turkeys with estrogen pellet implants, to make the birds plumper and more tender. Unfortunately, though it might be considered poetic justice, they must have taken in large amounts of estrogen which caused them to become partly caponized themselves.” Farmers less directly exposed to hormones—and to pesticides, which are also known to interfere with male hormone balance—were also at high risk of “male menopause” symptoms.

  Is your meat bugged?

  Antibiotics are in widespread use in both humans and animals. Over five hundred tons are dished out every year in Britain alone. Unlike human medicines, which are given for a limited period for the treatment of an infection, antibiotics are routinely added to animal feed to prevent infection and enhance growth: the aim is higher profits faster. The consumer, however, is being hit with a double whammy.

  Antibiotic residues are frequently found in samples of meat, fish, and eggs. So are infectious agents that have become resistant to antibiotics—superbugs. There is growing concern about a strain of Enterococci faecium, a dangerous bacterium found in chickens that is resistant to vancomycin, one of the strongest “last resort” antibiotics. Fortunately, infection with enterococci is rare compared with salmonella or Campylobacter. With 1,500,000 cases of salmonella and 2,500,000 cases of Campylobacter infection from meat and eggs per year in Britain, it’s potentially a huge problem that these common strains of bacteria causing food poisoning are becoming resistant to antibiotics.

  The World Health Organization has called for a reduction in the use of antibiotics in agriculture because of the risk to human health, while the American Medical Association has warned that “The risk to human health from antibiotic resistance developing in micro-organisms is one of the major public health threats that will be faced in the twenty-first century.”1

  Too much meat could be bad for your health and your bones

  Meat eaters have a low health rating. The risk of heart disease and cancer, particularly cancer of the stomach and colon, is directly related to meat consumption. So too are other diseases of the digestive system such as diverticulitis, colitis, and appendicitis. Even more likely to result in cardiovascular disease is a high consumption of milk and dairy products. Overall, a meat eater is likely to visit the doctor, or be admitted to the hospital, twice as often as a vegetarian and is likely to suffer from degenerative diseases ten years earlier than a vegetarian, according to a survey by Professors John Dickerson and Jill Davies from the University of Surrey (England).2

  Most people are in more danger of eating too much protein than too little. Excess protein is a contributor to osteoporosis, overacidity, and many other common health problems. Protein-rich foods—including calcium-packed dairy foods—produce acid when broken down (or metabolized) by your body But we cannot tolerate substantial changes in the pH of blood, so our bodies neutralize or “buffer” this effect through two main alkaline agents—sodium and calcium. When body reserves of sodium are used up, calcium is taken from the bone. Therefore, the more protein you eat, the more calcium you lose.

  The negative effects of too much protein have also been clearly demonstrated in people with osteoporosis. This disease is reaching epidemic proportions—the rate of hip fractures has more than doubled in the last fifty years, even after you take into account the aging population. Yet the traditional risk factors—menopause (when estrogen, the hormone that assists the retention of calcium in bones, ceases to be produced), lack of calcium in the diet, and a couch-potato lifestyle—account for less than half of all hip fractures. This data has been collected by the Study of Osteoporotic Fractures, which is the largest research project of its kind to date and has followed nearly ten thousand elderly women since 1986. “Dietary acid load is probably up there at the top of the list of risk factors,” says Uriel Barzel, an endocrinologist at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York.

  Of course, this raises the question as to whether eating a lot of dairy products, high in both protein and calcium, would be protective or contribute to osteoporosis risk. A twelve-year study that involved over 120,000 women throughout the United States found that women who drink two or more glasses of milk per day actually had a 45 percent higher risk of hip fractures and a 5 percent higher risk of forearm fractures than women who drank less. The director of the study, Diane Feskanich, says, “I certainly would want women to have adequate calcium in their diets, but I would not rely on that as the prime prevention against osteoporosis.”3

  Why high-protein, high-fat diets are dangerous

  Kidney problems

  Protein produces breakdown products that are hard work for the kidneys. If your kidneys are healthy and your protein excess isn’t too high, no problem. But, how far can you push it? U.S. researchers tested 1,624 women aged between forty-two and sixty-eight and found that almost one in thre
e had less than ideal kidney function. In the women who had normal kidney function, high protein intakes caused no decline in renal function. However, those who already had a mild kidney problem who ate a high-protein diet, particularly one high in meat protein, showed a further deterioration.4 Dairy or vegetable protein was not associated with worsening kidney function. The Atkins diet involves even higher protein intakes than were used in these studies, so you can see the problems it may cause.

  Bone problems

  Protein is acidic. Too much in the blood has to be neutralized. The Nurses’ Health Study recently found that women who consumed 3.1 oz. (95 g) of protein a day compared with those who consumed less than 2.2 oz. (68 g) a day had a 22 percent greater risk of forearm fractures.5

  “Consumption of a low-carb/high-protein diet for six weeks delivers a marked acid load to the kidney, increases the risk for stone formation, decreases estimated calcium balance, and may increase the risk for bone loss,” said Dr. Shalini T. Reddy from the University of Chicago, who conducted a six-week study on ten healthy adults on a low-carb diet.6 Volunteers lost an average of 9 pounds (that’s 1.5 pounds a week), but most developed ketones—compounds that are formed when the body uses its own fat as fuel and can raise acid levels in the blood. Acid excretion, a marker of acid levels in the blood, rose by 90 percent in some volunteers. There was also a sharp rise in urinary calcium levels during the diet despite only a slight decrease in calcium intake. Urinary citrate, a compound that inhibits kidney stone formation, decreased. While it is not clear from the study whether bone mass was affected, the findings indicate that such diets may increase the risk of bone loss over the long term.

  The meat muscle myth

  Whether you eat steak, in which 52 percent of the calories come from protein, or spinach (the reputed source of Popeye’s strength), in which 49 percent of the calories come from protein, surely you need more to make strong muscles. According to Dr. Michael Colgan, Sylvester Stallone’s former nutritionist and adviser to many U.S. Olympic athletes, this is a myth. He points out that, with hard training, the maximum amount of extra muscle you could build in a year would be less than 8 lb. (3.6 kg). That represents a gain of 2.5 oz. (70 g) a week, or 0.3 oz. (9.5 g) a day. Muscle is only 22 percent protein, so an increased consumption of less than a tenth of an ounce, or 2.8 g a day, equivalent to a quarter of a teaspoonful, is all that is needed to bring about the greatest possible muscle gain! So instead of loading in unnecessary protein, which taxes the body more than it helps it, follow the rules of optimum nutrition to ensure that you make proper use of the protein in your diet.

  Fish

  While there is no doubt about the immense value of protein and essential fats in fish, fish is contaminated with man-made nonbiodegradable toxins that tend to accumulate up the food chain (from plankton to small fish to bigger fish that eat the small fish, and so on). The same, of course, is true for animals that eat animals that ate pesticide-laden feed. A survey of salmon, published in 2004 in Science magazine, showed that all salmon have some contamination with PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls) and dioxins—industrial pollutants that don’t biodegrade—and with dieldrins and toxaphene, which are pesticides. Fish caught in the Pacific have consistently lower levels than fish caught in the Atlantic. The survey also showed that farmed salmon consistently had higher levels than wild salmon.

  While I generally recommend eating more fish, it’s easy to get confused by recommendations to avoid fish because of contamination with PCBs, dioxins, and other toxic chemicals. In the case of dioxins and PCBs, these contaminants are in the food chain, and both wild fish and farmed fish eat fish or fish feed. Toxaphene, dieldrin, and other pesticide residues are likely to accumulate more from feed fed to farmed fish. You can buy “organic” fish, which are fed less-contaminated feed, though at least half the feed must be of aquatic origin, meaning other fish, which may also be contaminated to some degree with PCBs and dioxins, depending on the sea in which they swim.

  Then there’s the mercury question. All fish contain mercury, and generally the larger the fish, the more the mercury. So, for example, the highest content is found in shark (0.68 mcg per pound), followed by swordfish (0.64), marlin (0.49), and tuna (0.18). Salmon and trout tend to be very low (around 0.02 mcg). Where does the mercury come from, you might wonder. Contrary to popular opinion, most of it isn’t from man-made pollution. Humans have always been exposed to mercury from volcanoes, and there are plenty on the ocean bed. We all consume, on average, 1 mcg of mercury a day from food, water, and air. Researchers from the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston studied children in the Faeroe Islands, north of Scotland, who eat large amounts of fish and mercury-laden whale meat. At age seven they had a slower transmission of electrical signals along a particular circuit in their brain than normal, and it had worsened further by the age of fourteen.7

  The problem of mercury is substantial only if either you are eating a lot of large, carnivorous fish, or you are already mercury toxic, possibly from a mouthful of amalgam fillings, which can further add to your load. In this case, you should decrease your large-fish consumption and double or triple my recommendations for supplementing zinc and selenium—and consider having your mercury amalgam fillings removed.

  So what’s the bottom line on fish? Given that it’s a great source of protein and essential fats, my advice is to limit large fish such as tuna and swordfish (by eating them only twice a month) and, where possible, eat wild Pacific salmon, followed by wild Atlantic salmon, followed by organic farmed salmon or other, smaller carnivorous fish three times a week. Sardines are an excellent choice—because they’re small they are less likely to have accumulated toxins than other, larger fish.

  Milk

  Milk and other dairy products are the mainstay of the American diet. It is considered an essential source of protein, iron, and calcium. So beneficial is it to our health, according to the National Dairy Council, that you may wonder how we ever existed without it. So why do some authorities not encourage milk drinking if it is such a good source of minerals?

  Ignore the hype

  The truth is that milk is not a very good source of many minerals. Manganese, chromium, selenium, and magnesium are all found in higher levels in fruit and vegetables. Most important is magnesium, which works alongside calcium. The ideal calcium to magnesium ratio is 2:1—you need twice as much calcium as magnesium. Milk’s ratio is 10:1, while cheese is 28:1. Relying on dairy products for calcium is likely to lead to magnesium deficiency and imbalance. Seeds, nuts, and crunchy vegetables like kale, cabbage, carrots, and cauliflower give us both these minerals and others, more in line with our needs. Milk is, after all, designed for young calves, not adult humans.

  Not recommended for babies

  Another common myth is that a breast-feeding mother needs to drink milk in order to make milk. This, of course, is nonsense. The move away from breast-feeding led to the substitution of human milk with cow’s milk. Cow’s milk is designed for calves, and is very different from human milk in a number of respects, including its protein, calcium, phosphorus, iron, and essential fatty acid content. Early feeding of human babies on cow’s milk is now known to increase the likelihood of developing a cow’s milk allergy, which affects close to one in ten babies. Common symptoms include diarrhea, vomiting, persistent colic, eczema, hives, catarrh, bronchitis, asthma, and sleeplessness. The American Society of Microbiologists has suggested that some crib deaths may be attributable to cow’s milk allergy. Cow’s milk should not be given to infants under four months.

  Conversely, breast milk is nothing but good news. A breast-fed baby has, on average, a four point higher IQ.8 This advantage can be doubled by giving the pregnant and breast-feeding mother a supplement of omega-3 fish oils.

  Milk, heart disease, and breast and prostate cancer

  Milk consumption is strongly linked with increased risk for cardiovascular disease and also breast and prostate cancer. The higher a country’s intake of milk, the higher its incidenc
e of cardiovascular disease.9 Why is this? Well, contrary to popular opinion, it may not be because of the fat content in milk. A candidate for why milk increases heart disease is its poor calcium to magnesium ratio—more than any other mineral, magnesium protects against heart disease. Another candidate is the discovery of a link between heart disease risk and the presence of an antimilk antibody in the blood. Our bodies actually produce an antibody against milk, which certainly suggests it isn’t an ideal food. On top of that, 70 percent of people stop producing lactase, the enzyme to digest milk sugar, once they’ve been weaned. Is nature trying to tell us something?

  Even more insidious than the link to heart disease is new research suggesting that dairy consumption may be the main reason that people in the West have a massive risk of breast and prostate cancer, while Asians don’t. The figures for the chances of women in China dying from breast cancer are one in ten thousand, as opposed to close to one in thirty-three for the U.S. For prostate cancer, the difference is even greater. In rural China, the incidence is 0.5 in one hundred thousand, yet it is estimated that, by 2015, one in six men in the U.S. will have a diagnosis of prostate cancer at some point in their lives. Why is a disease that is virtually nonexistent in China ruining and often prematurely ending the lives of so many men in Britain? Is it genes, diet, or environment? It is obviously not genetics since Chinese men emigrating to Europe soon end up with similar risk. Is China more rural, with less urban pollution? This too is unlikely to be the main reason, although it may be part of the problem. In highly urbanized Hong Kong, the rate of breast cancer rises to one in every three hundred women, but that’s still along way off one in ten in the West. So, is it diet and, if so, what is it about our Western diet and lifestyle that is tipping us toward breast and prostate cancer?