Health Science and Food Choices PDF

Bayesianbodybuilding.
com
HEALTH SCIENCE
What is a healthy diet?
lecture
An introduction to dieting and health
1
Bayesianbodybuilding.com
Is bodybuilding healthy?
lecture
Is bodybuilding healthy?
Note that the negative effects of being contest lean are temporary. Even women that
completely lose their menstrual cycle normally fully recover their hormonal health during a
subsequent bulking phase.
2
Detox diets
Detox diets are all the hype these days, but there are a few misconceptions the fundamental
principle of ‘detoxing’. For one, in contrast to lay wisdom, it's not the case that some things are
toxic and others are not. In toxicology, a basic principle is "The dose makes the poison." For
example, if you consume tons of water, you get water poisoning/toxicity. So each and every
one of us is in fact loaded with substances that can become toxic in greater quantities.
Secondly, your body is very good at detoxing itself. Your liver and kidneys are working around
the clock to metabolize or excrete potentially harmful substances from your body.
The basic conclusion here is that the best 'detox diet' for a generally healthy person is just a
regular 'healthy diet'. You don't need water fasting or liters of tomato juice or any other such
extreme fad diet we see these days. To quote a recent research review on this topic: "Although
the detox industry is booming, there is very little clinical evidence to support the use of these
diets. "
3
How does processing affect the nutritional value of your food?

Heat processing
Food heat processing, like cooking, almost universally reduces the nutritional value of your
food.
However, it often also improves the bioavailability of the food by making it easier for the body
to absorb and digest the nutrients, often including protein.
Moreover, it is primarily the water soluble vitamins that are lost during heat processing and
those are easy to consume enough of in a good diet.
As such, heat itself, within the realms of regular cooking techniques such as baking and stir
frying, is generally not a major concern for your health and there’s no need to eat all your
foods raw.
However, the intense heat produced during deep friying or industrial heat processing can be far
more damaging. Polyunsaturated fats exposed to the heat of deep frying form trans fatty acids,
which are notoriously unhealthy. Artifical trans fatty acids can distort cell membranes and their
consumption is associated with serious brain and heart toxicity, including coronary heart
disease, depression and Alzheimer’s disease [2]. If you value your health, artificial trans fat
should be avoided at all cost.
Fortunately, regular baking and stir frying do not result in the formation of trans fat.
4
Recommended reading
How cooking affects the nutrient content of foods
Freezing
Freezing tends to have little impact on the nutritional value of food.
Moreover, frozen plant foods – e.g. fruit and vegetables – are often actually more ripe than
‘fresh’ plants, as the latter have been picked days or weeks ago before they were fully ripe to
account for the transportation process. (See the section on organic food for the relevance of
purchasing local food.)
As such, buying frozen food is generally an excellent way to save money on whole foods and
not a concern for your health.
Recommended reading
Fresh vs. frozen fruit and vegetables – which are healthier?
Juicing
No, this isn’t the steroids topic. I’m talking about fruit and vegetable juices. Blending vegetables
is a very easy way to consume a lot of them. In theory at least. In practice most vegetable
shakes are disgusting. To make them palatable, you often need a ton of fruit or carrots and then
you end up with not many actual vegetables that you’re mostly interested in for your health,
like spinach. Zero calorie sweeteners and protein powder can help a lot though.
5
Another major concern with juicing is that you can destroy and waste a lot of the fiber from
the plants. Even if you consume all the pulp, which has most of the fiber, instead of throwing it
away, you still often alter fiber’s structure, which can reduce its benefits. Combined with the
change in texture, this generally decreases the satiety of the meal considerably and actually
makes many vegetables shakes quite caloric. As such, vegetable shakes are generally only
convenient when bulking.
My overall experience is that a small minority of individuals find vegetable juices to be a great
way to make sure they consume enough vegetables. Most people don’t keep them in their meal
plans for long and in general, whole foods still reigns supreme. It’s worth experimenting with
some recipes though if you have trouble consuming enough vegetables. Then again, I’d say
you’re better off investing in your cooking skills or by hiring ManageMyMealPlan.com.
Recommended reading
Juicing: good or bad?
General conclusion
In practice, how you prepare your food doesn’t matter much and it’s a minor consideration in
comparison to taste or finances. People sometimes obsess over these minutiae and lose track
of the bigger picture: it’s much healthier to consume a lot of frozen-then-cooked-and-juiced
vegetables than to eat raw vegetables but fail to eat enough of them in the first place. Similarly,
I’d much rather have a client eat enough frozen or canned fish than to eat not enough ‘fresh’
fish.
6
A notable exception is intense heat processing of polyunsaturated fat, which results in the
formation of trans fat. It is therefore advisable to strictly avoid all deep fried, hardened or
hydrogenated oils with a significant polyunsaturated fat content, particularly vegetable oils.
7
Sodium
What most people call ‘salt’ or ‘table salt’ is chemically termed sodium chloride (NaCl). It’s 40%
sodium (Na) and 60% chloride (Cl). Certain varieties of salt, like Himalayan sea salt, also contain
trace amounts of other minerals, and have some color, often a pinkish glow. This is the result of
less processing, as salt is produced by evaporating (sea) water.
When salt became commercially available on a large scale in the West, it quickly became
enormously popular. Salt not only increases the flavor of food to a completely different level,
it’s also very useful as a preservative due to its anti-microbial function.
But salt’s reputation as “this stuff’s too good to be true” has taken a turn for the worse. These
days, most people’s knowledge of salt goes no further then “it’s bad, right?” Salt’s notoriety is
fuelled by many government organizations. According to the American Heart Association, the
vast majority of the population would be best served to reduce their sodium intake to <1500
mg/day to improve health parameters and prevent the onset of disease. This includes adults
above ‘middle age’ (45 – 65 years), all African Americans and anyone with hypertension. The
remaining population is advised to keep their daily intake below 2,300 mg. This is bad news,
because many people that don’t actively monitor their sodium intake end up with a sodium
intake of at least 3 g a day, often twice as much as the official recommendation.
Should we all start becoming more sparing with our salt and accept more bland food?
It’s true that a high sodium intake has been associated with increased blood pressure,
cardiovascular disease (CVD) and stroke. However, much of the research on health effects
comes from epidemiology: it’s cross-sectional, observational research, with less support from
the scientific gold standard: randomized controlled trials. Since it’s primarily highly processed
junk foods that have very high amounts of sodium, correlations in observational research beg
8
the question if it’s really specifically the sodium intake in the diet and not just the overall diet
that puts these individuals at an increased risk of heart-related incidents.
Even worse, many government organizations derive their final recommendations from ‘expert
opinion level C’, not scientific consensus. The bulk of the actual evidence relies on the finding
that a high sodium intake increases your blood pressure.
And indeed an abundance of research supports that high sodium diets increase blood pressure.
A meta-analysis found that salt reduction by ~4.4 g/d leads to a significant reduction in blood
pressure. Case closed: sodium is bad, right?
Not so fast. Statistical significance is not the same as practical significance. The mean changes in
blood pressure were −4.18 mm Hg for systolic blood pressure and −2.06 mm Hg for diastolic
blood pressure. Rather unimpressive when taking the reference ranges for blood pressure into
account. Blood pressure is considered normal when systolic blood pressure does not exceed
120 mm Hg and diastolic blood pressure does not exceed 80 mm Hg. The blood pressure
categories (prehypertenstion, hypertension state 1, hypertension stage 2 and hypertensive
crisis) are divided by 20 mg Hg intervals for systolic blood pressure and by 10 mm Hg intervals
for diastolic blood pressure. So the blood pressure reduction that can be achieved by salt
restriction is only about one fifth of the interval defining each blood pressure category.
9
Unsurprisingly then, the increase in blood pressure from a high sodium diet does not
consistently translate into an increase in cardiovascular health incidents. And if you have
hypertension (excessive blood pressure), a low salt diet alone is very unlikely to get you to the
healthy range.
A subsequent systematic review of the randomized controlled trials concluded that salt
restriction does not have any clinically meaningful benefits. This conclusion was unchanged from
a previous systematic Cochrane review on salt restriction’s health effects and the famous
NHANES I large-scale observational study. A recent review paper even directed itself at various
government organizations: “Dietary salt restriction in heart failure: where is the evidence?”
They found no good evidence for sodium restriction even in heart failure patients, let alone the
healthy population at large.
Moreover, in the NHANES II follow-up study, there was in fact an inverse relation between
sodium intake and both cardiovascular disease (CVD) mortality and all-cause mortality: people
with a low sodium intake were at an increased risk of dying from any cause and heart-related
causes in particular. Specifically, individuals who consumed less than 2.3 g sodium per day had a
10
37% higher CVD mortality and 28% higher all-cause mortality than those who consumed more
sodium.
Another prospective population study supports the finding that lower sodium intake is
associated with higher CVD mortality.
Many other studies have found serious negative health consequences of restricting sodium
intake to the low levels recommended by many governments.
 Increased serum inflammation levels and deterioration of kidney functioning in heart

failure patients.
 Increased heart rate and resting sympathetic activity (fight-or-flight-response) in healthy
adults.
 Increased insulin resistance. Salt-restricted diets have the potential to increase insulin
resistance through activation of the renin-angiotensin-aldosterone and sympathetic
nervous systems. Low salt diets were reported to increase serum aldosterone and
plasma noradrenaline concentration by at least 4-5 fold compared to a higher salt diet.
In one research study, dietary sodium restriction was associated with a median 15%
reduction in insulin sensitivity. Not only a severe, but already a moderate salt reduction
from 5.4 g to 1.7 g sodium/d aggravates both systemic and vascular insulin resistance.
The aldosterone increase on a very low sodium diet is accompanied by a drastic
reduction (up to 22-fold) in urinary sodium excretion in order to keep serum sodium
levels constant. This means that drastic changes in sodium intake have minimal influence
on sodium concentration in the blood stream.
 Hyponatremia, a condition in which serum sodium sinks to life-threatening levels.
11
All in all, in so far as there is any evidence whatsoever to reduce sodium intake, there is an
optium level of sodium intake, not a maximum. Less sodium certainly isn’t always better for
your health. The sodium sweetspot (no pun intended) for cardiovascular health appears to be
around 3-5 grams per day [2]. This is very well in line with how much sodium people naturally
end up consuming, suggesting there is generally no need to monitor sodium intake.
The ideal sodium intake
Exercise greatly increases sodium requirements: aerobic exercise in the heat can cause sodium
losses in sweat of up to 5.5 grams of sodium per hour(!) A regular indoor strength training
workout tends to cause 1-2 grams of sodium loss.
In conclusion, sodium restriction for strength trainees is more likely to be harmful than helpful.
Our sodium requirements for optimal health are likely over 5 grams a day, over 3 times as
12
much as many governments recommend. If you consume salt to taste without any restriction
and avoid very high sodium junk foods, your sodium intake should naturally end up in the ideal
range and there is no need to obsess over your exact sodium intake.
13
Water
Water is often called the most important nutrient. It’s the only nutrient we can’t do without for
even a few days. Dehydration of over 7% of bodyweight puts you at acute risk of dying. It’s not
surprising then that milder dehydration can already impair your performance in the gym. So the
traditional advice is to drink a ton of water during your workouts. A gallon (3.8 L) is commonly
heard.
However, it’s mainly endurance exercise that is easily impaired by water loss.
 2.5% of bodyweight dehydration from playing baseball in the sun did not reduce
anaerobic power output.
 Progressive dehydration by jogging in the heat only affects isokinetic leg extension
strength after 2.6% of bodyweight dehydration. Vertical jump performance, muscle
activation and more rapid isokinetic leg extension strength weren’t affected by even
3.9% dehydration. However, isometric leg extension strength was already affected after
1% dehydration.
 3.4% dehydration from a sauna impaired isometric leg extension strength, but 3.8%
dehydration from using a diuretic did not.
 4% hypohydration from hours of exercise in a warm room did not generally affect
muscle strength.
 2+% dehydration caused no change in muscle activatin or motor control of the biceps.
 2.3% of dehydration did not impair repeated maximal cycling power output in boxers.
 5% dehydration by exercise-heat stress and fluid restriction did not affect vertical jump
height, jump squat power output or isometric back squat strength in strength trained
men. However, after 2.5% dehydration, central neural drive was impaired and total
work across 6 sets of back squats at 80% of 1RM suffered in 2 of the sets (4 after 5%
14
dehydration).
 1.5% dehydration from spending 2 hours in a sauna decreased 1RM bench press
strength. However, letting the subjects consume water ad libitum for 2 hours after the
sauna undid the performance loss.
 3% dehydration reduced total work by ~1-2 reps per exercise during a strength training
workout of 3 sets each of the bench press, lat pull down, overhead, press, barbell curl,
triceps press and leg press until failure. Heart rate was elevated as well and there was a
weak trend for an increase in perceived exertion (RPE; interestingly, a case when
physical performance was significantly impaired but RPE was not).
Overall, the effects of dehydration are mild enough that it’s often worth it for athletes to cut
water before a competition. The majority of combat sports medal winners undergo marked
dehydration before the weigh-in, which isn’t fully reversed yet at competition time. In general,
the more explosive the type of exercise, the less it is affected by dehydration. Exercise of 15
seconds or less in duration isn’t generally affected by dehydration at all. Only exercise lasting
15
more than 30 seconds per bout is affected consistently by dehydration. Strength training
performance is not commonly affected up to 2.5% of bodyweight dehydration. That’s 2 kg (4.4
lb) of weight loss from hypohydration for someone weighing 80 kg (176 lb), a far cry from “I’m
a bit thirsty.” Even 3-4% dehydration leads to only a 2% average loss in strength.
Interestingly, dehydration may have a more negative effect on the upper than the lower body.
Graph source: Judelson et al (2007).
Hormonal responses are in line with performance during dehydration. 5% dehydration

significantly reduces testosterone secretion after strength training and increases cortisol and
norepinephrine levels but 2.5% dehydration did not, though there was a trend for similar
negative effects.
In contrast to popular belief, this level of dehydration won’t commonly occur if you’re not
actively restricting your fluid intake. Research on half-marathon performance found that race
time remained constant no matter if the subjects drank a commonly prescribed volume or self-
selected their fluid intake. Even though the self-selected fluid volume was about 3.5-fold lower
than the volume of the prescribed drink (~ 440 ml vs 1,560 ml), the reduced fluid intake had no
16
negative effect on running performance. Another study on 20 km race runners in the heat
confirms that self-selected fluid intake has no negative effect on performance despite a
significantly lower ingested fluid volume and higher body weight loss compared to a control
group.
In conclusion, unless you’re going out of your way to get dehydrated by actively limiting fluid
intake, exercising in the heat, spending hours in a sauna or consuming diuretics, it’s unlikely
you’re ever going to be sufficiently dehydrated to impact your strength training.
Moreover, drinking too much can even be harmful. Overhydration can cause hyponatremia,
which is characterized by low sodium levels in the blood and accumulation of fluid. Exercises-
associated hyponatremia (EAH) has caused death in several cases among endurance athletes,
the military and the police. EAH arises when excessive fluid intake exceeds the fluid volume
that is lost through sweating, respiration, renal excretion and feces. Mild symptoms include
nausea, headaches, and lethargy, whilst more severe symptoms include oedema, seizures, and
loss of consciousness. Consumption of sodium during exercise doesn’t solve this problem. In
fact, extreme sodium intake may foster the overconsumption of water and increase the risk for
EAH.
Hyponatremia is much more common than you may think. The prevalence varies from 8-50%
for endurance athletes and strength trainees are at a greatly increased risk. Compared to
endurance exercise, strength training results in little fluid loss (~1 L/h) and a lot of sodium loss
(> 1 g/h) via your sweat, causing a decrease in blood sodium levels that isn’t commonly
observed during endurance exercise. Most strength athletes instinctively overhydrate during
strength training by an overage of 96% (e.g. drinking 1.96 L of water during a workout where
you only lose 1 L) and post-workout hyponatremia has been observed in up to 50% of
American football and rugby players.
17
Several researchers have raised concern about the widespread endorsement to drink tons of
water and its likely risk of overhydration.
So how much fluid should you consume in a day to avoid the negative effects from both
dehydration and overhydration? What’s the optimum fluid intake? Fortunately, the answer to
this is simple. Due to water’s essentiality, humans have evolved a great ability to ensure
sufficient water intake. Small changes in the solute content in the human blood stream trigger
the sensation of thirst. Plus, trained individuals naturally become thirstier than untrained
individuals in a hypohydrated state. As such, drinking in response to your thirst is often the best
way to prevent dehydration and overhydration at the same time.
2 Caveats: exercising in a very cold climate and being elderly are associated with a decreased
responsiveness to thirst, so drinking a bit more than intuitively is recommended then.
18
Saturated fat
Recommended reading
 Are some diets “mass murder”?
 Saturated fat: good or bad?
Additional references:
 Even in people with pre-existing heart disease, there’s no relation between saturated fat
intake and cardiovascular health complications or premature death.
 Some research actually finds that saturated fat intake is associated with a reduced risk of
ischemic heart disease.
 Diets with high-fat cheese, high-fat meat, or carbohydrate on cardiovascular risk
markers in overweight postmenopausal women: a randomized crossover trial.
 5 Studies on saturated fat
Note that most research does still show unsaturated fat is healthier than saturated fat. Balance
in the fatty acid ratio of your diet and the choice of whole foods over processed junk foods are
key for optimal health.
Summary
Saturated fat is important to maintain high cholesterol and anabolic hormone levels, both of
which are important for muscle growth. As long as the saturated fat comes from whole foods
and it does not dominate your diet’s fatty acid profile, there is no risk associated with it.
19
Cholesterol
Recommended reading
Is cholesterol the forgotten anabolic?
20
Meat, fish and poultry

Animal flesh is a highly nutrient dense food with easily digestible nutrients and a complete
amino acid profile. Red meat in particular is arguably the best source of l-carnitine in the human
diet.
However, meat and red meat in particular becomes unhealthy when you process it with certain
chemicals. During processing of meat with nitrates or especially nitrites, these substances
interact with substances in meat to form carcinogenic compounds: the meat then increases
your risk of getting cancer, in particular colon cancer. This is generally the case with smoked,
cured, salted and dried meat, unless the label explicitly mentions no nitrites were used. (Sorry,
this includes bacon.)
High temperature processing of red meat, in particular barbecuing or grilling over an open
flame, poses similar risks. Fat drippings can form polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) at
high temperatures [2]. PAHs are carcinogenic and toxic. If there is a lot of smoke and fat
dripping out of the meat, this signals a high risk for PAH formation.
Charcoaled or dark crusted red meat is also a risky sign. The crusting of meat can form
heterocyclic aromatic amines (HAAs), which are carcinogenic.
To put things in perspective though, for unprocessed meat consumption there is virtually no
relation with cancer, whereas processed meat does seem to increase your risk of cancer, but
it’s not nearly comparable to smoking, alcohol, being overweight or being sedentary.
So it’s misguided that the average individual, who is overweight, sedentary and deficient in
several nutrients, thinks of meat as the thing in their lifestyle that’s particularly unhealthy.
21
The most ludicrous thing about the claim that meat is bad for you is that it’s often based on the
idea that saturated fat is bad for you. Even aside from the fact that saturated fat isn’t the demon
it’s made out to be, meat doesn’t even have that much saturated fat in the first place. Grass-fed
beef is roughly equal parts saturated and unsaturated fat. Pork’s fatty acid profile is even
predominantly unsaturated, as is the fatty acid profile of chicken.
As for if you should buy grass-fed meat, it’s great, but it has a very low cost-benefit compared
to, say, fish. Whether meat is grass-fed or not only makes a small difference in terms of
nutritional value and it’s often far more expensive.
Fish
As for fish, it’s awesome [2], ‘nuff said. There’s just no controversy.
Well, for every healthy food people manage to find a reason not to consume it and instead eat
their favorite food instead of which we at least know for sure that it’s not good for them.
Sarcasm aside, what about the concern of mercury in fish?
In short, there is no direct research showing any adverse health effects of high fish
consumption. While mercury toxicity is a known risk, the health benefits of fish consumption
generally outweigh any potential adverse effects of its mercury toxicity.
Children and pregnant mothers are a notable exception, as children are much more vulnerable
to mercury toxicity than fully developed adults.
If you consume very large amounts of fish and you are worried about your mercury intake, you
may want to limit the types of fish you eat to the ones in the top left corner of the graph below
compared to the bottom right. These kinds of fish, mostly small forage fish instead of larger
22
predatory fish, have relatively high levels of omega-3 fatty acids and low levels of mercury, since
mercury accumulates in fish that eat other fish (bioaccumulation). Dolphin and whale have also
been reported to contain very high mercury levels.
Poultry
23
Poultry and other white meat are great foods too and there are virtually zero health risks
associated with it. In fact, people that consume more white meat tend to have a lower risk of
cancer [1, 2, 3]. However, white meats are generally not as nutritious as fish or red meat or
fish, unless it’s organ meat. Fatty cuts of chicken are a good source of mono-unsaturated fat
though.
Recommended reading
 The truth about red meat [series]
 Grass-fed vs. grain-fed beef – what’s the difference?
Summary
Unprocessed meat, white meats like poultry and fish are highly nutritious foods. Processed red
meat consumption increases your risk of cancer though, so you may want to avoid red meat
that has been treated with nitrites or exposed to open flames.
24
Organic food
The definition of ‘organic’ food is generally that it does not contain any artificial or synthetic
compounds, like hormones, antibiotics or genetically modified organisms. Regulatory laws vary
per country, however, and ‘organic’ does not always mean ‘100% organic’.
Organic food differs from conventionally produced food in several ways.
 It is generally far more expensive to produce because many methods to increase food
yield, like cheap synthetic pesticides that prevent bugs from eating the food, are not
allowed.
 Organic food contains fewer toxic compounds, like pesticide residues.
 Organic food tends to contain more micronutrients, anti-oxidants and beneficial
chemicals, but the variation in nutrient content due to farming conditions and the
environment are significantly larger than the difference in nutrient content between
organic and conventional food. So it could be said that the overall difference in nutrient
content between organic and conventional food is small.
 Organic animal food tends to have a more favorable macronutrient composition with
more protein and a more beneficial fatty acid composition, including a better omega-3
to -6 ratio [2, 3].
25
So how does organic food affect our health? Animal research finds significantly positive
health effects of organic food compared to conventional food. Long term human research
does too, but this finding is confounded by the fact that consumers of organic food tend to
be more health conscious in many other ways. Controlled human research often finds no
major beneficial health effects of organic food [2], but study duration and the the limited
contribution of the study food to the overall diet, like an apple a day, greatly reduces the
scope of these findings.
Overall, your food choices are far more important than whether those foods are organic or
not. Organic junk food still pales in comparison to most whole foods in terms of nutritional
value.
26
Recommended reading
 Why local trumps organic for nutrient content
Summary
‘Organic’ does not mean as much as the average consumer believes. Organic foods generally
have lower amounts of toxic compounds, more anti-oxidants and more nutrients, but the
difference in terms of actual health effects seems to be small.
What is more important than whether the food is organic is if the food is fresh, how it has been
processed and, for animal products, what the animal ate.
Given that organic food is generally considerably more expensive than non-organic food, the
cost-benefit of buying organic is generally low and you should first consider your overall food
selection. For example, the cost-efficiency of switching from beef to fish is generally far better
than switching to organic beef.
The benefit of organic food is often greatest for fatty animal products, like eggs, fatty meat and
whole milk, so these foods are the first to consider purchasing from organic origin. Here too
what the animals ate is most important, so, for example, you’re generally better off eating
conventional eggs from flaxseed fed chickens (‘omega-3 eggs’) than organic eggs from chickens
fed organic wheat.
27
Eggs
By now you should already realize why eggs are not bad for you. Egg consumption does not
increase cholesterol levels in 70% of the population and even in the 30% of hyperresponders,
LDL and HDL cholesterol both increase similarly along with an increase in LDL particle size.
Larger LDL particles are less likely to clog up your arteries.
To quote Chris Kresser: “A meta-analysis of prospective studies involving a total of 474,000

participants followed from 8 to 22 years published in the British Medical Journal found no
association between higher egg consumption (up to one per day) and CHD or stroke. (9)
An analysis of data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Study found an inverse
association between egg consumption and stroke, and a cohort study from Japan found that
consumption of animal products including eggs was associated with reduced risk of death from
stroke. (10, 11) The lack of association—or inverse association—between egg consumption and
CVD is even more impressive when you consider that those who eat more eggs are also more
likely to smoke and be physically inactive. (12)
Some studies suggest that eggs may even prevent heart disease. Egg consumption leads to the
formation of larger, less dense LDL and HDL particles, which may be protective against
atherosclerosis. (13) Eating eggs frequently may even lead to lower cholesterol; one study
found that those eating four or more eggs per week had lower total serum cholesterol than
those eating one or fewer per week. (14)”
Blesso et al. (2013) conducted a randomized controlled trial of a weight loss diet with 3 eggs
per day or the same amount of protein from egg whites (which thus had 126 kcal less) in a
population with metabolic syndrome. In spite of the whole egg group being forced to consume
an additional 126 kcal of fat in their ad libitum diet, the whole egg group actually achieved a
28
more favorable improvement in cholesterol profile than the egg white group (more and bigger
HDL cholesterol particles, less VLDL and medium VLDL cholesterol particles). The whole egg
group also achieved a decrease in plasma insulin and insulin resistance levels, while the egg
white group did not.
*: Liquid egg whites are legit for cutting and baking though.
Another reason that eggs are wrongfully demonized is that eggs are incredibly nutritious. This
shouldn’t be too surprising, since eggs literally are the building blocks to form an animal
(doesn’t that just make your mouth water?).
 Eggs are rich in B-vitamins (except niacin) and have a decent amount of all minerals.
 Eggs have a complete amino acid profile.
 Eggs contain several anti-oxidants with established health benefits, like lutein and
zeaxanthin.
29
 Eggs also have an almost perfect fatty acid profile. At least if the chickens were truly
free-range or fed flaxseed, which is why eggs are one food where I definitely
recommend buying eggs from flaxseed fed chickens. ‘Organic’ and ‘free-range’ are all
claims with little concrete legal definition. What really matters is what the chickens ate.
Chickens didn’t evolve on grains and it doesn’t matter if you give them organic grains.
Organic crap is still crap.
Note though that only about a third of the omega-3 fat in omega-3 eggs is EPA/DHA,
the rest being ALA, according to reports by The Institute of Medicine (IOM).
 Eggs are arguably the best and in fact only good source of choline in your diet. Choline
may speed up fat loss by increasing fat oxidation rates. You’d need to eat about 13 eggs
to get the researched kind of benefit, but that’s just one of the many reasons to eat
eggs.
Eggs can also be consumed raw. The risk of bacterial or viral infection is minimal in sanitary
conditions. Note, however, that up to ~50% of raw egg’s protein is not absorbed or digested in
the small intestine [2], so you need about twice as much protein from raw eggs as from cooked
eggs.
Summary
The popular claims that eggs are bad for your heart or cardiovascular health are not supported
by the scientific evidence, but the nutritional value of eggs is well established. Put simply, eggs
are awesome. Eat them.
30
Dairy
Dairy is often demonized for many different reasons. A 2016 review paper sought to end the
question of whether dairy is healthy once and for all with the appropriate title: “Milk and dairy
products: good or bad for human health? An assessment of the totality of scientific evidence.”
The review concluded that dairy intake is associated with a low body fat percentage, increased
muscle mass, improved bone density, reduced risk of various cancers, a trend towards reduced
risk of type II diabetes and a reduced risk of cardiovascular disease, particularly stroke. There
was no relation between dairy intake and all-cause mortality. Other reviews have supported
these conclusions [1, 2]. Not bad, huh?
So how come dairy and milk in particular has such a bad stigma attached to it? The reason is
likely lactose intolerance. In evolutionary terms, humans have only recently been introduced to
cow’s milk and up until that time most people did not produce lactase, the enzyme used to
digest milk sugar: lactose.
Individuals that do not produce sufficient lactase generally suffer from diarrhea and other
digestive problems when they consume lactose containing dairy. In bodybuilding circles, the
resulting bloating is often mistaken for fat gain. So dairy was scraped off the ‘clean foods’ list.
The lactose intolerance problem was originally solved in the Middle East around 11.000 years
ago during the agricultural revolution. The answer was fermentation and thereby yogurt and
cheese were invented.
Fortunately, evolution had an even better solution. In contrast to most digestive changes
required to tolerate new foods, it turns out the genetic mutation required to produce the
lactase enzyme in humans was very minor, because infants can already produce lactase to digest
the lactose in mother’s milk. Specifically, lactose tolerance seems to be linked to a single
31
nucleotide in which the DNA base cytosine changed to thymine in a genomic region not far
from the lactase gene.
Since dairy tolerance provided a huge evolutionary advantage, among the strongest yet seen for
any gene in the genome, by providing a readily available source of all 3 macronutrients and
many micronutrients, this genetic mutation spread quickly throughout Northern Europe.
Unfortunately for the rest of the world, oceans have to date functioned as a strong barrier
against further spread of dairy tolerance. To date, not many more than 1 out of 3 individuals
have perfect lactose tolerance and these individuals are almost all of European descent with a
few ‘lactase hotspots’ in West Africa, South Asia and the Middle East (see maps below).
32
33
Source
If you are one of the lucky ones that has no digestive issues with dairy, by all means make dairy
a diet staple. Dairy is one of the highest quality protein and calcium sources and generally has
an excellent satiety profile relative to its fat content, making it an ideal bodybuilding food. If you
are lactose intolerant, you can still reap the benefits of dairy by consuming fermented dairy
foods. Fermented dairy is likely best anyway due to its added probiotic benefits (discussed
further in the course topic on supplementation).
34
Recommended reading
 Is dairy bad for you, or good? The milky, cheesy truth
 The raw milk reality
Is even cheese healthy? Yes, it is. While generally highly caloric, cheese is still very nutritious
and is rich in several nutrients, including the uncommonly found vitamin K2. In spite of the
cholesterol and saturated fat fear mongering, people that eat more cheese are generally not at
greater risk of developing cardiovascular (heart) problems.
Summary
If you’re not intolerant to lactose or one of the proteins in dairy, there is no reason to avoid
whole food dairy. It’s highly nutritious and healthy. Fermented dairy is also very beneficial for
your digestive tract. Whenever possible, get raw dairy.
35
Low calorie sweeteners
Recommended reading
Artificial sweeteners: bitter controversy
Saccharin
A possible exception to the safety of zero calorie sweeteners is saccharin, a first generation
artificial sweetener first synthesized in 1879. Compared to sucralose and aspartame, there isn’t
as much research establishing its safety and one human pilot study shows that saccharin
consumption impairs gut health and induces glucose intolerance.
If you combine that with the fact saccharin is a coal tar derivative, it makes for good scare
mongering. However, this was a pilot study with only 7 subjects, only 4 of them developed
glucose intolerance, there was no control group and the dosage was equivalent to consuming
17 cans of Fanta Light 3 times per day for a week. All other human research, which is of
significantly greater methodological quality, has found that saccharin consumption is completely
safe, even for diabetics.
So any remotely normal use of saccharin is probably safe. But since saccharin has a bitter,
metallic aftertaste, it’s generally a secondary choice compared to aspartame and especially
sucralose.
Erythritol
Erythritol is a sweetener worth mentioning specifically, since it is arguably the sweetener that
comes closest to conventional table sugar in terms of texture. This can be a major advantage
36
over other sugar substitutes in dishes where you don’t dissolve the sweetener, like on
pancakes.
Erythritol is a sugar alcohol that occurs naturally in fruit and certain fermented foods and can
also be produced industrially via yeast fermentation of glucose. In spite of it being ‘natural’, the
body can only barely metabolize it, so it effectively only has 0.2 kcal per gram.
The downside of its poor digestibility is that, like other sugar alcohols, it can be stressful for the
gastrointestinal tract. Fortunately, erythritol is much better tolerated than other sugar alcohols.
The laxative threshold of erythritol is estimated as 0.80 g/kg body weight for females and 0.66
g/kg body weight for males, respectively [2]. Regardless, I recommend conservatively working
your way up to that dosage if you want to consume that much in the first place, consuming
erythritol mainly with/after meals and not exceeding dosages at which you experience any GI
problems whatsoever. Your gut health may be harmed well before you actually notice diarrhea
or other symptoms. Since erythyritol isn’t quite as sweet as sugar, in practice I often
recommend combining it with another sweetener.
Summary
All currently legally approved artificial sweeteners are perfectly safe when consumed below the
maximum recommended intakes, which are quite absurd.
37
Sugar
Recommended reading
Sugar – the sweet truth
A special type of sugar worth mentioning is honey. Though the macronutrient label suggests
honey is just pure sugar, honey actually contains a significant amount of phytochemicals and
anti-oxidants, especially raw, dark honey. This makes honey considerably more healthy and
nutritous than most processed sugars. However, due to its extreme energy density, there still
tends to be little place for honey in the diets of most strength trainees that want to remain
lean.
38
Fruit & vegetables

This one’s simple. It’s the only advice in the world practically every nutritionist agrees on. Fruit
and vegetables in particular are very healthy and should form the basis of your diet. A plant
based diet is the primary reason vegetarian and even vegan populations are generally quite
healthy. A lack of plants is also the reason many bodybuilders are not nearly as healthy as they
think. The USDA recommends that the average male consumes 3 cups of vegetables a day and
2 cups of fruit. For women it’s 2.5 cups of vegetables and 1.5 - 2 cups of fruit. That’s a good
minimum for a strength training individual that has any pretense of living healthily, as the health
benefits of increased fruit and vegetable consumption continue up to at least a total of 800 g
per day even in sedentary individuals (see figure below).
39
Grains for gains?

Why don’t many bodybuilders eat bread? Is wheat belly a serious phenomenon? Should you
avoid gluten? Why do beans give you gas? Is bread healthy? It’s time to separate the fear
mongering from the science.
Before reviewing the effects of grains for your gains, let’s first discuss terminology so that we’re
actually talking about the same things here.
Terminology
Grains are seeds from plants. A lot of those plants together are called a crop. There are 2 main
groups of food grains: cereals and legumes.
1. Cereals are a form of grass. They include wheat, rice, maize (= corn), barley and oats.
2. Legumes include beans, lentils, peas and peanuts. So peanuts are technically not a type of
nut, though nutritionally there is little difference.
40
Let’s start by looking at legumes.
Are legumes healthy?
This one’s easy. The answer is a resounding yes. Study after study has demonstrated the
positive health effects of eating nuts [2, 3, 4] and beans [2]. They are loaded with nutrients and
beneficial phytochemicals.
An interesting finding about nuts is that they are not as caloric as the label indicates. The energy
in nuts is very difficult to harvest for the body, so your body excretes a significant portion of
41
the energy without digesting or absorbing it. As you can see in the following table, nuts average
about ~20% less metabolizable energy for your body than they actually contain.
Study Atwater Actual observed Measured Actual %

energy factor net metabolized energy energy Difference
estimate energy (kcal) intake (kcal) intake
(kcal) (kcal)
Almonds
Novotny et al. (2012) ± 605 (6 / g) ± 460 (4.6 / g) 32%
Peanuts
Traoret et al. (2008) ± 631 (6.3 / g) ± 578 (5.78 / g) 9.1%
Walnuts
Baer et al. (2015) ± 661 (6.61 / g) ± 521 (5.22 / g) 21%
Kranz et al. (2014) ± 653 (6.53 / g) ± 450 (4.50 / g)* ± 2705 ± 2595 31%
Pistachio nuts
Baer et al. (2012) ± 566 (5.66 / g) ± 540 (5.40 / g) 5%
Total average ± 622 (6.22 / g) ± 510 (5.10 / g) 19.62%
*: Displaced energy
42
The degree of indigestibility of nuts is a mixed blessing, however, as we’ll go into shortly. There
are some concerns with legumes for bodybuilders in particular. This is one of the few areas
where health and a good physique do not necessarily go hand in hand.
Are cereal grains healthy?
This one’s trickier.
There are a lot of epidemiological studies showing that people that eat more whole grains are
healthier and leaner. The problem in concluding anything from this is that whole grain foods are
traditionally regarded as a health food, so whole grain eaters are generally very health
conscious. “The intake of whole grains was directly associated with the length of education, the
intake of vegetables, fruits, dairy products, fish, shellfish, coffee, tea and margarine and inversely
associated with smoking, BMI and the intake of red meat, white bread, alcohol, cakes and
biscuits [72].” (Source) In theory you can statistically control for these factors, but it’s not very
reliable due to the large amount of confounders and the simple fact that you can only control
for what you know and measure in your dataset.
The average person’s primary sources of energy are processed grain products and soda. It’s not
surprising then that eating less of those and more whole grains improves someone’s health. The
increase in protein and fiber intake will also cause greater satiety, a natural decrease in energy
intake and thereby weight loss.
In other words, the average person’s diet is simply so unhealthy that whole grains jump out as a
major health food compared to all the processed crap they otherwise eat. It’s the same reason
why vegetarians are often healthier than non-vegetarians: it’s not the actual diet, just the overall
health conscious lifestyle, misguided or not.
43
Unfortunately, most experimental studies also have processed grains as the control group of
whole grain consumption, so these studies also can’t tell us anything about the health effects of
abstaining from grains.
Then there’s the major lobbying by the grain industry from the likes of Cargill, Nestlé, Cereal
Partners Worldwide, and General Mills. Grain is cheap to produce and highly profitable.
Throughout the literature there are many examples of grain industry sponsored research, like
this one by General Mills, with blatant selection bias and cherry-picking to put a positive spin on
everything related to grains.
As such, epidemiological evidence can’t tell us much about the health effects of cereal grains
other than that it’s probably healthier to eat whole grains than processed grains. Given that
randomized controlled trials are demonstrating only mixed support of the epidemiological
literature [2], it cannot yet be said that science strongly supports the recommendation to base
your diet around whole grains, especially in the case of wheat (discussed later in more detail).
This may sound like an overly skeptical analysis of cereal grains, but in the following sections
you should see why.
Anti-nutrients
Many plants have evolved defense mechanisms to protect their seeds from being eaten by
animals. One of these mechanisms is the production of anti-nutrients that make the seed’s
nutrients impossible or uncomfortable to digest by animals. These anti-nutrients are particularly
highly concentrated in grains.
Some of these anti-nutrients actually have positive health effects in humans, like preventing
inflammation from high iron intakes, but on the whole it’s safe to say they are bad for strength
44
trainees. For one, they greatly reduce the digestibility of minerals. Ironically, grains are often
advertised for their high mineral contents, but their absorption is exceedingly poor compared
to animal foods and they still aren’t very nutritious in comparison to most vegetables or organ
meat, calorie per calorie. For example, only 13% of the magnesium in bread with phytic acid is
absorbed by the body and iron uptake from bread can be as low as 3.8%. (See the course topic
on micronutrition for more information about mineral bioavailability.)
Perhaps more importantly, phytic acid binds not just to minerals, it also binds to protein.
Several anti-nutrients inhibit trypsin and pepsin, enzymes that your body needs to digest
protein.
Unfortunately, there is very little research on the effect of anti-nutrients on protein balance in
humans. In animals the effects are severe: anti-nutrients can reduce protein digestibility to less
than half. In humans we know that Mexican diets with more anti-nutrients resulted in a 23%
lower digestibility of protein, several fold lower nitrogen balance and several fold lower
digestibility of minerals.
Soy’s poor ability to stimulate protein synthesis or inhibit protein breakdown is in part because
soybeans are loaded with anti-nutrients.
It has also become a ‘fun fact’ in evidence based fitness circles that brown rice consumption
results in significantly lower nitrogen balance than white rice. This fact actually isn’t fun at all,
because this effect is in large part due to the anti-nutrients in whole rice. These anti-nutrients
mostly reside in the bran, so white rice does not have many anti-nutrients left: they are
removed along with most of the nutrients.
45
Rice contains far fewer anti-nutrients than most other grains. Phytic acid, for example, is one of
the anti-nutrients most well-known to make protein indigestible. In the tables below you can
see that rice contains over 3 times less phytic acid than wheat.
46
So wheat is likely far more detrimental to your protein balance than rice, especially white rice.
This may explain why bodybuilding lore sees white rice as a ‘clean food’, but you virtually never
see bodybuilders with wheat products as a staple in their diet.
47
Before abolishing all grains from your diet to protect your gains, the human gut can produce an
enzyme that breaks down phytic acid, so you don’t have to completely avoid phytic acid in your
diet.
Moreover, you can probably compensate for anti-nutrients by simply eating more nutrients.
In the case of minerals, this is actually much harder than most people realize (discussed in the
topic on micronutrients).
For protein it’s much easier. In my review on the optimal protein intake for bodybuilders, I
noted that protein quality was not a significant predictor of protein requirements, assuming a
typical strength trainee diet with a complete source of protein with every meal. There is a limit
to this, as vegetarian diets are associated with less muscle mass, even at the same protein intake
above the RDA.
And there’s a caveat. Anti-nutrients affect not just the digestibility of the protein you eat, they
also affect the protein already in your body. During digestion, a significant portion of the
nitrogen and amino acids in your digestive tract originate from your own body’s constant turn-
over of protein to assist with your digestion. Normally these amino acids are reabsorbed into
the body, but anti-nutrients can inhibit this process. As a result, amino acids are lost from your
body. We currently only have relevant data on this in animals, so it remains speculative to what
extent we can compensate for anti-nutrients by simply consuming more protein.
Fortunately, there are several methods to reduce the anti-nutrient content in grains. Using
these methods will thus significantly improve the nutritional value of grains and generally makes
them fine to consume in a bodybuilding diet, at least in terms of anti-nutrients.
48
Wheat
In addition to the anti-nutrients, there are more concerns with wheat specifically than with
other grains. The concerns are:
 Wheat amylase-trypsin inhibitors

 Lectins (WGA)
 Gluten
 Low-fermentable, poorly-absorbed, short-chain carbohydrates (= FODMAPs:
fermentable, oligo-, di-, mono-saccharides and polyols.)
These substances have given rise to the theories of ‘leaky gut’ and ‘wheat belly’. Should you be
concerned?
49
Wheat.
Gluten intolerance & celiac disease
Many evidence-based nutritionists without clients argue that gluten is perfectly fine if you don’t
have celiac disease, i.e. ‘gluten allergy’. Actual celiac disease is rare: it only affects about 1% of
people. So wheat is often dismissed as something you don’t have to worry about. I can only
assume that these people don’t have clients or don’t work on their digestive health, because I
can tell you without a shadow of doubt that many people – some doctors estimate up to 33%
of the population – have some degree of sensitivity to wheat.
In fact, gluten sensitivity is often the real cause of irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) and I’ve cured
several clients from serious digestive problems when doctors were at a loss simply by removing
wheat or certain FODMAPs from the diet.
50
IBS is basically a diagnosis-by-exclusion problem: doctors say a patient has IBS if the patient has
digestive problems but the doctor can’t find a cause for them. Often, ‘IBS’ can be treated by
excluding certain FODMAPs from the diet, strongly suggesting that a large part of the
population really simply has an intolerance to certain FODMAPs.
As such, it is unwise to dismiss the relevance of the problematic substances found in wheat
simply because only a small minority has a full-blown gluten allergy.
The main symptoms of wheat sensitivity are bloating, gas, mild stomach cramps and fatigue.
Science supports that you can be sensitive to wheat and even specifically gluten without having
a full-blown gluten allergy. To quote a recent review on this topic: “While it is undisputable that
in some cases the positive effect of gluten withdrawal can be explained by a placebo effect, this
is not the case in true non-celiac gluten sensitivity (NCGS). In a double-blind randomized
placebo-controlled study design, Biesiekierski et al. found that IBS-like symptoms of NCGS
were more frequent in the gluten-treated group (68%) than in subjects on placebo (40%) [13].
Furthermore, a recent study found no significant differences between celiac disease and NCGS
patients regarding personality traits, level of somatization, quality of life, anxiety, and depressive
symptoms. The somatization level was low in both diseases. Additionally, symptom increase
after a gluten challenge was not related to personality in NCGS patients [17].” (Source)
Other double-blind placebo controlled research confirms that gluten sensitivity is real and
physiological, even though for some people there is undoubtedly a nocebo effect at play. The
only thing that’s still debatable is if it’s gluten or the FODMAPs in wheat that mostly cause
wheat sensitivity.
51
Recommended reading
Is gluten sensitivity real?
Wheat eating populations traditionally prepared their wheat by fermenting or sprouting it,
creating breads like sourdough bread and Ezekiel bread. These methods not only eliminate
many anti-nutrients, they also degrade the gluten and FODMAPs in wheat. Even people with
true celiac disease can often eat traditionally prepared sourdough bread without issues. This
suggests many cultures learned of the negative effects wheat can have on the gut from
experience. They could probably still detect the side effects, because they still had some
resemblance of good digestive health, in contrast to the average person in our time where foul
smelling farts and constipation are considered quite normal. Reality check: if it takes you longer
than a few minutes to take a crap, you are constipated, and it’s not healthy for all your farts to
smell like something has been rotting in the room for a month.
As a reference to diagnose whether you’re constipated, you can use the Bristol stool scale.
52
The authors certainly had a way with words...
Moreover, modern wheat is not the same as the wheat glorified in the bible: “The selection of
wheat varieties with higher gluten content has been a continuous process during the last 10,000
years, with changes dictated more by technological rather than nutritional reasons. Wheat
varieties grown for thousands of years and mostly used for human nutrition up to the Middle
Ages, such as Triticum monococcum and T. dicoccum, contain less quantities of the highly toxic
33-mer gluten peptide [65].” (Source)
And yes, research has found that the effect of ancient vs. modern wheat on your digestion is
significantly different.
So how exactly does wheat harm your digestion?
53
Leaky gut
Gliadin, a component of gluten, increases intestinal permeability, more commonly known as

‘leaky gut’. Gluten’s damage to the lining of the gut is most severe in people with a deficient
immune system and people with a bowel disorder, but an immune system response also occurs
in healthy individuals without either disorder. In other words, gluten causes your gut to leak,
whether you think you’re sensitive to gluten or not. The most definitive evidence comes from a
study where the researchers cut out a piece of the intestines and tested how it responded to
gluten in people who didn’t notice any reaction to 2 months of daily gluten consumption.
A leaky gut can cause chronic inflammation, not only in the gut but also in the rest of your
body, particularly your joints. This seems that wheat can make you more susceptible to injury. If
you understood the signal-to-noise theory of inflammation discussed in the course topic on
dietary fat, you should also see that the inflammation can hinder muscle growth.
On the bright side, it seems that markers of chronic, whole-body inflammation only increase in
relation to whole grain intake in individuals with poor carb tolerance. Other research has
however directly linked gluten intake to chronic inflammation even in people without celiac
disease. Processed grains in particular seem to increase chronic inflammation levels, though it
doesn’t reach statistical significance in all studies. That may be because the comparison is often
with other dense carbohydrate sources, which themselves are inherently inflammatory.
When compared to diets with a similar glycemic index and fiber content, whole grain based
diets are less effective at reducing inflammation. This suggests that the fiber and the anti-
oxidants in whole grains are protective against the inflammatory effect of gluten and WGA, but
the overall net effect is generally neutral for whole grains, not positive like for fruit and
vegetables.
54
Some IIFYM cultists have attempted to put a spin on the evidence of wheat and gut health by
showing that going gluten-free is bad for your gut microbiome. What they neglect to mention is
that in these studies wheat products are replaced with gluten-free substitutes, which are
basically pure processed flour. More importantly however, this very same research shows that
even when you replace wheat with refined flour, it decreases inflammation. So even the crappy
gluten-free products from the supermarket may be better for your gut than actual modern
wheat.
55
How gluten can damage your intestines and create inflammation (Scientific American, August 2009)
Gluten may also have negative effects on your anabolic hormone levels, at least if you have
some degree of intolerance. In people with celiac disease, gluten consumption increases
prolactin levels. Prolactin is a great to have if you’re a pregnant woman, but for strength
56
trainees you don’t want a lot of it, because prolactin decreases anabolic sex hormone levels and
libido in both genders.
Lectins & WGA
Another possibly problematic protein in wheat is wheat germ agglutinin (WGA). WGA is a
lectin. “Lectins are present in a variety of plants, especially in seeds, where they serve as
defense mechanisms against other plants and fungi. Because of their ability to bind to virtually all
cell types and cause damage to several organs, lectins are widely recognized as anti-nutrients
within food [36]. Most lectins are resistant to heat and the effects of digestive enzymes, and are
able to bind to several tissues and organs.” (Source)
WGA in particular causes inflammation in human gut and immune cells and humans produce
antibodies against WGA. The result is that WGA increases intestinal permeability and creates
‘leaky gut’.
It is also speculated that lectins cause leptin resistance. Leptin is ‘the satiety hormone’, so this
would suggest grain consumption will over time increase your appetite. There’s only little
evidence to support this, but again, the evidence we have generally compares wheat to
processed crap, which is not comparable in satiety index to nutrient dense whole foods.
Fortunately, lectin activity can be almost entirely disabled by cooking or boiling food. As such,
lectins have not been shown to affect relevant health markers in human trials. In bread lectins
may still be harmful, however.
Wheat amylase-trypsin inhibitors
57
In addition to the lectins and the gluten, wheat also contains wheat amylase-trypsin inhibitors
(ATIs). ATIs interact with gliadin to cause an immune response and create inflammation in the
gut.
Wheat belly: does wheat hinder fat loss?
Melanson et al. (2006) compared the effectiveness of a weight loss diet in groups with and
without whole-grain cereal in their diet. Both groups were put on an exercise program with
cardio and stretching. The macros were supposed to be the same between groups, but the
whole-grain group ended up consuming more fiber and, probably as a result of that,
unintentionally reducing their energy intake more than the no-grains group. In spite of the
greater deficit and fiber intake, the whole-grain group didn’t lose more weight across the 24
week study. (In fact, they lost non-significantly less weight at both measurement points.)
Rave et al. (2007) compared the effectiveness of a weight loss diet based on Slim Fast, a sugary
drink with supplemental fiber, vs. Cargill’s Balantose supplement: “a starch-reduced whole grain
derived from double fermented wheat”. The diets consumed the same amount of calories, but
there is no mention of the macros of the groups. The researchers did report the macros of the
supplements and the grain supplement contained twice as much protein as the Slim Fast. In
spite of this, there was no difference in weight loss or change in waist-to-hip ratio between the
groups. (Again the no-grain group lost a non-significant 28% more weight, but that may have
been because a “conspicuous” side effect in the grain group was constipation.)
Cargill sponsored the study and one of the researchers was employed at Cargill. All in all, this
study reads an awful lot like the researchers didn’t find what they were hoping for and tried to
make the best of it. They did manage to work their statistical magic on insulin resistance by
using the lower weight loss in the grain group to correct for the non-significant between-group
difference and push the p-value just to 0.05 so that they could conclude grains are good for
58
diabetics. I guess that will be better received than “Even with the added protein, this crap may
be even worse than Slim Fast.”
It’s also interesting to note that, in contrast to epidemiological findings, in controlled

experiments, a whole grain diet is no more effective for fat loss than a processed grain diet [2,
3].
As such, it seems that whole grains may indeed cause a slight disadvantage to fat loss, enough to
cancel out the benefits of the fiber and protein. This effect is widely overblown, however, and
thermodynamics still apply. Any small metabolic effect is likely related to the inflammatory
effect of wheat on the digestive system, which can significantly impact energy expenditure,
energy loss in stool, and nutrient partitioning [2].
The detrimental effect of wheat may be more severe during resistance training, however, since
the decreased protein digestion and the inflammatory blunting of muscle growth can worsen
nutrient partitioning and energy expenditure much further.
Conclusion on grains
Traditionally prepared whole grains are awesome health foods. However, without soaking,
fermenting or sprouting of the grains, strength trainees are probably best off moderating their
grain intake because of the otherwise extreme amount of anti-nutrients in the diet that can
interfere with protein and mineral digestion. In people with FODMAP sensitivity, commercial
grains are best avoided entirely for the sake of digestive health.
Wheat in particular is best moderated to a very low intake in strength trainees to avoid leaky
gut. The cocktail of potentially inflammatory compounds and the mixed research are enough to
warrant serious caution. Wheat products have an abysmal satiety index anyway and they offer
59
no considerable nutritional advantage over other grains, let alone vegetables. The main reason
wheat is so popular is because people are lazy and wheat is cheap.
60
Soy products
Recommended reading
 Is soy bad for you or good? The shocking truth
 The soy ploy
 What is tofu and is it good for you?
Summary
Traditionally fermented soy bean products like tempeh, natto and miso are very healthy, since
the fermentation process greatly improves the bioavailability of the nutrients in soy and reduces
the content of problematic anti-nutrients.
Soaked or sprouted soy beans can be healthy additions to your diet as well.
In contrast, the industrially processed crap you find in modern foods is just as far removed as
eggs are removed from modern mayonnaise. Unfortunately, that includes most types of soymilk
and tofu.
So avoid the processed crap, but feel free to add some traditional soy products to your diet.
61
Chocolate
Chocolate is often thought of as an unhealthy food, because it tastes good (when sweetened)
and resembles candy. Yet chocolate actually provides many health benefits. Actual chocolate,
that is, meaning cacao or dark chocolate with a very high cacao content (>~80%). Most of the
processed crap you find today labeled ‘chocolate’ is primarily composed of sugar and oil or at
best cacao butter.
Cacao is high in saturated fat, which is part of the reason for its bad reputation, but again
saturated fat is wrongly demonized here: cacao consumption decreases LDL and total
cholesterol levels without affecting HDL cholesterol. Moreover, cacao makes LDL more
resistant to oxidation, thereby reducing inflammation.
With the above in mind, it’s easy to see that cacao is a healthy food. It’s rich in nutrients,
particularly fiber and all essential minerals (except sodium). Plus, cacao has many
phytochemicals that make it a potent anti-oxidant. Cacao flavonols have been shown to
improve cardiovascular health.
Summary
Sometimes you can have your chocolate and eat it too.
62

Health Science and Food Choices PDF

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Health Science and Food Choices PDF

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Bayesianbodybuilding.

What is a healthy diet?

An introduction to dieting and health

How does processing affect the nutritional value of your food?

How cooking affects the nutrient content of foods

Freezing tends to have little impact on the nutritional value of food.

Fresh vs. frozen fruit and vegetables – which are healthier?

Juicing: good or bad?

 Increased serum inflammation levels and deterioration of kidney functioning in heart

The ideal sodium intake

Graph source: Judelson et al (2007).

Hormonal responses are in line with performance during dehydration. 5% dehydration

 Are some diets “mass murder”?

 Saturated fat: good or bad?

Is cholesterol the forgotten anabolic?

Meat, fish and poultry

 The truth about red meat [series]

 Grass-fed vs. grain-fed beef – what’s the difference?

Organic food differs from conventionally produced food in several ways.

 Why local trumps organic for nutrient content

To quote Chris Kresser: “A meta-analysis of prospective studies involving a total of 474,000

Low calorie sweeteners

Artificial sweeteners: bitter controversy

Sugar – the sweet truth

Fruit & vegetables

Grains for gains?

Let’s start by looking at legumes.

Are legumes healthy?

Study Atwater Actual observed Measured Actual %

Total average ± 622 (6.22 / g) ± 510 (5.10 / g) 19.62%

Are cereal grains healthy?

This one’s trickier.

 Wheat amylase-trypsin inhibitors

Gluten intolerance & celiac disease

Is gluten sensitivity real?

The authors certainly had a way with words...

So how exactly does wheat harm your digestion?

Gliadin, a component of gluten, increases intestinal permeability, more commonly known as

Lectins & WGA

Wheat amylase-trypsin inhibitors

Wheat belly: does wheat hinder fat loss?

It’s also interesting to note that, in contrast to epidemiological findings, in controlled

 Is soy bad for you or good? The shocking truth

 The soy ploy

 What is tofu and is it good for you?

Sometimes you can have your chocolate and eat it too.

You might also like