Why We Eat (Too Much)

  Figure 16.1 The five original blue zones Source: Adapted from an idea in Dan Buettner (2008), The Blue Zones. National Geographic.

  The blue zones are located in Okinawa (Japan), Nicoya (Costa Rica), Sardinia (Italy), Ikaria (Greece) and Loma Linda (California). When you check these places out on the map, they have something else in common – they are all coastal areas and would have had an abundance of fish in their diet. If you look closer, these healthy communities had no problems with obesity. My guess would be that, in the presence of so much fish and vegetables in their diet, and the absence of man-made polyunsaturated vegetable oils, the omega-3 to omega-6 ratio of the populations would be normal (1:1 to 1:4), compared with the increased incidence of omega-6 in the Western diet, contributing to the health of the inhabitants. The cell walls of the people in these areas (every cell in every inhabitant that had lived there for some time) would have taken on the imprint of the food they were growing, catching and consuming. With such a healthy ratio of these fatty acids on board, the incidence of inflammatory Western-type diseases would be minimized, and this would explain the longevity of the population. It would also explain the lack of obesity.

  In Step 3 of this programme we will try and mimic the food environment of the blue zones, and in doing so we should try and get our own cellular omega-3 to omega-6 ratio back down to normal. This will result in a lowering of the weight set-point as insulin starts working more efficiently (therefore you will need less of it) and leptin begins to be sensed by the brain, meaning that the message that you may be carrying too much weight will finally get through to the weight-control centre in your brain (the hypothalamus). This will result in an effortless increase in your metabolism and a natural reduction in your appetite – resulting in weight loss down to your new set-point. The other bonus is that you will have significant (or improved) protection against any Western-type inflammatory disease. Are you ready to get healthy and slim?

  If you have followed Steps 1 and 2 you will already have given up sugar and highly refined carbohydrates (like wheat) and you will now be sleeping for eight hours per day. However, the omega-3 to omega-6 ratio in your body is likely to be significantly out of kilter, with a massive excess of pro-inflammatory, obesity-stimulating omega-6. Your current ratio is probably in the region of 1:15 to 1:20, maybe even more. In this step, we will try and redress the balance by consuming a more natural ratio of the omega-containing foods. Once we do this, our bodies will, as we have previously stated, take on the imprint of the food in our present environment that we are consuming.

  The ‘Fat’ Vitamins

  As a reminder, there are two fats in nature that we are unable to make inside our body – that is why they are called essential fatty acids. These two fats have important metabolic and inflammatory functions in our cell walls. If we do not have them in our diet, we get very sick. They are the fat equivalent of vitamins.

  We need to bear in mind when talking about the omega-3 to omega-6 ratio in our bodies that these two fatty acids, the flexible but easily oxidized omega-3 and the more rigid but more stable omega-6, compete with each other for space on each of our cell’s walls. This is critical: if one of the omegas is taken into your body in excess, it will dilute the other omega fatty acid, even if your consumption of the other fatty acid seems adequate – and the composition of the cell wall will change.

  Imagine that the cell walls in your body are like the walls in a room that you need to paint. You want to paint the wall a sky-blue colour to match the colour of an Ikea cabinet you have just made. To do this you have to bring into the house and mix together exactly the right proportion of blue and white paint – the colour depends on the ratio of the two paints to be used. If you bring too much blue paint into the house, you will have a wall that is too dark and doesn’t match the colour you wanted. Think of the fatty acids omega-3 and omega-6 as being like different coloured paints on your cell walls. Too much of one or the other and the colour will be wrong. At this moment in time you have a dramatic excess of omega-6 in your cell walls – which will drown out the ‘colour’ of omega-3. The rigid and pro-inflammatory omega-6 fatty acid has transferred from the food that you have eaten onto your cell walls, drenching them in the wrong colour for optimal health.

  This part of our dietary plan aims to rectify the balance. Just as in our paint analogy, we have to bring into our bodies the correct amounts of each of the omegas. We have to consume foods that will make our cells shine with just the right omega colour to stimulate our metabolism, improve our general health and lower our weight set-point even more.

  Sunshine Food

  It is relatively straightforward to recognize foods with high levels of omega-3 or with greater levels of omega-6. As we saw in chapter 9, omega-3 is found in chloroplasts, the cellular engines in plant leaves (and algae) that convert sunlight into biological energy. It’s a message to our bodies that summer is here and food is plentiful. So any foods that contain green leaves will have great omega-3 levels. Any animal (or fish) that has consumed leaves (or algae) will also have high omega-3 levels.

  Omega-6 foods – the ones that you should be aware of and cut down on – are the autumn foods that might cause a slower metabolism and pre-winter weight gain. Omega-6 is contained in nuts and seeds (which includes all grains).

  We learned in chapter 9 that an excessive but artificial quantity of omega-6 fatty acids has entered our food supply in the form of vegetable oils. The emergence of these oils coincided with government advice to cut down on saturated fats – they are derived from easily grown seed crops that are not natural human foods (sunflower seeds, rapeseed etc.). They have to be refined in a similar way to crude oil in order to make them safe, yet they have been labelled healthy on the back of flimsy nutritional research, and they are now well and truly entrenched in our food supply.fn1 1

  It is not just in the large bottle of cooking oil in your kitchen, containing massive amounts of omega-6 which will soon be inside you, creating metabolic and inflammatory havoc. No, these types of oils infuse most Western processed foods – from margarine, fried foods (chips, doughnuts) and baked foods to snacks (such as crisps) and vegetable shortening. The beauty of omega-6 oil, from the food industry’s point of view, is that it is relatively stable so it can be added to foods that need to be transported long distances and sit on the shelves of shops for months waiting to be sold. Omega-3 fatty acids, on the other hand, need to be taken out of these foods as they make the food go off too soon (affecting the food company’s profits).

  The reason for the massive disparity in the omega-3 to omega-6 ratio seen in Western populations is not, then, a sudden deficiency of omega-3-containing foods (like fish). The problem is the massive excess of omega-6 in our diets – in the form of vegetable oils and processed foods. Many health commentators suggest that we should increase our consumption of omega-3 foods in order to solve the problem, but this logic is flawed. If we are taking in such a massive load of omega-6, then increasing omega-3 slightly will have minimal effect – it will still be heavily diluted.

  A Splash of Corn Oil

  To get the amount of omega-6 in these oils into perspective, let’s look at an average serving (2 tablespoons) of corn oil used for shallow frying. This contains 14,000mg (14 grams) of omega-6 and only 300mg of omega-3. If we take a generous serving (150 grams) of Atlantic salmon (one of the highest omega-3-containing foods available), we take in 3,000mg of omega-3 and minimal omega-6. Therefore, every time we fry food using corn oil, we would need to eat four large portions of omega-3-rich salmon to match the amount of omega-6 in the oil. Alternatively, we could take omega-3 capsules (usually 500mg per capsule) from the chemist – and take twenty-eight of them! You can begin to see why our omega-3 to omega-6 ratio is so high when we consume foods containing vegetable oils.

  There is a simple way to even out your omega-3 to omega-6 ratio (simpler than force-feeding yourself fish or cod liver capsules) and that is to replace your vegetable oil. Natural cow’s butter (saturated f
at) or virgin olive oil (monounsaturated fat) have much less omega-6 than vegetable oils. So, to begin with, I would suggest frying and baking foods using these traditional alternatives.

  ‘What about canola oil?’ you may ask. The label on the bottle says it is high in omega-3. If you look at the quantity of omegas in a tablespoon of this oil (1,200mg of omega-3 and 2,600mg of omega-6) the ratio of 1:2 is not too bad. It certainly does contain a fair amount of omega-3. The problem arises when you start to cook with this oil. At the high temperatures required for frying, most of the omega-3 will be degraded and will not be useful – the omega-3 health claims on such bottles are therefore just a marketing ploy to persuade you to buy it.

  Rule 1

  Use butter and olive oil instead of vegetable oil to fry and bake with.

  Remove vegetable oil from your home

  Buy butter and olive oil.fn2

  Vegetable oils hide themselves, in large amounts, in many other foods that are common in the Western diet. Remember that the cannabinoids in omega-6-containing foods can also be slightly addictive, so you may have to use the psychological tricks we outlined in chapter 14 to help free yourself from these foods.

  Rule 2

  Do not eat foods that contain, or have been cooked using vegetable oil:

  fast foods

  crisps, fried snacks, health bars

  ready-made cooking sauces

  margarines and oily spreads.

  Fast food from the high street is cooked in, and therefore contains large doses of, omega-6. Examples include:

  KFC chicken (13,500mg)

  Burger King onion rings (10,500mg)

  Burger King Double Whopper with cheese (10,300mg)

  Domino’s Pizza (approx. 3,000mg/slice)

  fries (around 4,000mg)

  sauces, e.g. McDonald’s Creamy Ranch Sauce (10,700mg per ½oz).

  You might expect that a Subway tuna sandwich would be a reasonably healthy omega-3 to omega-6 choice. Unfortunately, this tops the list of omega-6-containing fast foods with 14,000mg per serving (vegetable oils are used to make up the mayonnaise in the tuna salad).

  And it is not just the obvious fast-food high-street shops that you should be wary of. Many delivery or fast-dining restaurants, such as Indian and Chinese restaurants, use vast quantities of vegetable oils in their foods and sauces.

  Snacks can also contain large amounts of omega-6 – such as potato crisps (8,900mg), tortilla chips (8,800mg) and granola bars (4,600mg). Microwave popcorn (22,000mg) and crisps manufactured from dried potatoes (18,000mg) are particularly toxic.

  There are many ready-made cooking sauces now available in supermarkets. They make cooking a delicious meal easy – just fry the meat and add the sauce and you have a meal. However, you should also be wary of these as they contain copious quantities of vegetable oils – and therefore omega-6. This is why it is much better if you can learn to make food from wholesome ingredients. Sauces can be made at home using butter, milk, olive oil etc. OK, you can’t store them on your shelf after you have made them for six months, but that is because they are real foods containing fresh healthy ingredients. Remember fresh food lasts for a matter of days; foods containing omega-6 last months. This is how you can tell the difference.

  Rule 3

  Avoid food containing very high omega-6:

  Meats and meat substitutes

  Other foods that you should be aware contain omega-6 in significant levels include cured meats and tofu. For example:

  chicken sausage (5,900mg in each)

  frankfurter (2,100mg)

  salami (3,600mg/100g)

  tofu (fried, 10,000mg per 100g).

  Nuts

  A special mention should be made of nuts and dried seeds, and foods made up predominantly of nuts and seeds, sold as ‘healthy’ snack bars. The omega-6 content of 50 grams (equivalent to a small packet) of the following nuts is:

  sunflower seeds (18,000mg)

  almonds (6,500mg)

  cashews (4,200mg)

  peanuts (roasted, 8,500mg).

  Walnuts are regularly mentioned in the press as a great source of omega-3. They do indeed contain a lot – in fact 50 grams of walnuts contain around 4,500mg of healthy omega-3 (double the amount contained in a fillet of salmon). There is one catch though (usually overlooked in health articles). Walnuts also contain a massive 19,000mg of omega-6 (per 50 gram serving). So the large quantities of healthy omega-3 that walnuts contain are rendered useless by the omega-6.

  Rule 4

  Choose meat and fish with higher omega-3 levels:

  grass-fed beef (check the label carefully)

  lamb (usually 100 per cent grass-fed)

  line-caught fish (if they are fed in a fish farm, their diet will be grains and they will have higher omega-6 levels)

  canned fish (in brine, not oil: very healthy omega-3 profile)

  avoid grain-fed chicken.

  Omega-3 comes from green-leaved plants (and green algae in the sea) and any animal or fish that eats leaves, grass or algae. Remember that many farms feed their livestock an unnatural grain-based diet, containing omega-6, in order to make them grow bigger faster (it works for animals as well as humans). The livestock from these farms will contain meat that has a poor level of omega-3 and a high level of omega-6 (just like us humans). Therefore, meat from these farms should be avoided if possible. Unfortunately, farms that feed their livestock grains are now the norm and you will have to source grass-fed animal meat carefully. Almost all chicken and pork and most beef are fed grains, so try and avoid these. Most lamb is still left to graze on grass, so this is a better option.

  Fish farms are also very common. Just like land-based animals, salmon that has been fed grain will have a much poorer omega-3 to omega-6 profile than line-caught fish from the ocean.

  Rule 5

  Eat as many fresh vegetable and dairy products as you wish.

  Vegetables and dairy products have low levels of omega fats and their ratios tend to be healthy, so eat these foods in abundance.

  Summary

  To optimize your omega-3 to omega-6 ratio, follow some simple rules. Eat lots of greens, and eat lots of meat and fish that have eaten their greens; you can also include dairy products (and, yes, butter is OK). Cut out vegetable oil, seeds (including grains) and processed foods. Because the good foods tend to be fresh for only a short period of time, you will have to shop regularly and you will have to cook.

  Michael Pollan, in his great book In Defence of Food, suggests some simple-to-remember rules when out shopping.

  Don’t buy anything that your great-grandmother would not have recognized as food

  Don’t buy food that doesn’t go off

  Don’t buy foods that are packaged – especially if they contain more than five ingredients, or are labelled as healthy: ‘low fat’, ‘no added sugar’ or ‘low cholesterol’ are typical health claims to be wary of.

  The Greengrocer, Butcher, Fishmonger Diet

  My simple eating rule would be to try and buy all your food from the greengrocer’s (a traditional one that just sells fruit and vegetables), butcher’s (one that sells dairy products as well as fresh meat) and fishmonger’s or fish counters. If most of the food you consume is made up of fresh vegetables, meat, fish and dairy products, and is home-cooked (without vegetable oil), you will be on the right track to improving your cellular metabolic health.

  STEP 4 – TONE YOUR MUSCLES

  Can regular exercise lower your set-point and therefore your weight?

  Those who adhere to the energy in/energy out equation see exercise as just as important as calorie intake – they think it’s all about counting. This is why the gym industry is such big business. However, we know that metabolic adaptationfn3 can be more powerful than any gym membership, accounting for many hundreds of calories extra, or less, per day, every day. If your body doesn’t want to shift body weight, it will adapt to exercise and go into energy-conservation mode. In addition, we know that if you exercise too heavily
then it is likely that your body will direct you to refuel by increasing the production of the appetite hormones. This is the reason there is a juice bar or snack bar attached to most gyms.

  The Hunters vs the Office Workers

  A famous study compared the amount of energy expended by hunter-gatherer tribes in Tanzania (the Hadza) to Western city dwellers (in New York and London), using the most accurate measure of energy expenditure, a technique called doubly labelled water.2 We know that hunter-gatherers spent a large part of their day active – walking or running – whereas the average city dweller is sedentary – maybe having a short walk from the car or the station to the office. When scientists compared the total amount of energy burned over a thirty-day period, they found that there was no difference! The Hadza hunters and the city dwellers used up the same amount of energy despite one being active and the other being sedentary.fn4 The researchers concluded that the Hadza tribesmen became hyper-efficient when resting, burning much less energy at night than the city dwellers. What the scientists failed to address was that the city dwellers were probably hyper-metabolizing throughout the day to compensate for over-eating. My hypothesis (as explained in chapter 3) is that further research would have revealed that city dwellers were hyper-metabolizing – burning their excess calories through an activated sympathetic nervous system (leading to high blood pressure) and through adaptive thermogenesis (leading to loss of energy to heat).