.
So What is Safe to Eat and Drink?Let me start with a standard disclaimer. These are not my recommendations. The following bullets are culled from the popular written media:
○ First butter was bad, now margarine can be worse. The trans fats (TF) in margarine were the killer, literally. You can now purchase zero TF margarine, and, while this product still has as many calories and fat as butter, it does have less of the saturated variety and is easier to spread (and the healthier ones can be poured), while others can be kept at room temperature longer.
Margarine is recommended by both the Cleveland and Mayo Clinics over butter. Ah, but they say, there is something about real butter and cooking. And the dairy industry keeps reminding us that margarine is one molecule from being a plastic.
o Eggs were once to be avoided. Today, they might be back in the diet, for, while it is indeed high in cholesterol, eggs do not increase your personal cholesterol level. Same for shrimp, which has more recently been shown to lower your cholesterol. Some early medical researchers actually got confused between high density lipoprotein, which is good, and the low density version, which is bad. Thus, the latest advice,
if you don’t have diabetes, is that there should be no guilt to eating eggs, and, more so, eat as many per week as you want!
o Red meats? Bad! Beef tends to cause cancer, their fat concentrates toxic chemicals and eating too much could increase your weight (I spent a week in Buenos Aires, where I had at least 10 steak meals, gained 4 pounds, and NEVER was able to lose this weight), plus,
cattle, both in terms of carbon dioxide and methane, has a terribly high global warming footprint and is bad for the environment. Red processed meat, like bacon and sausage? More horrible! Just 1.7 ounces/day increases the risk of colorectal cancer by 21%. Why? Smoking, nitrates and high sodium. This is somewhat debatable, but
you don't need to eat meat to maintain your health. Like almost everything else, if you must, eat beef in moderation.
o High cholesterol does tend to harm the cardiovascular system, but
too low a count has negative effects. An increase in violent deaths is associated with lower cholesterol levels. Serotonin, bad temper and over-aggressiveness, too. Anyway, high density lipoprotein is good for your circulatory system.
o
Stop eating tuna to avoid mercury poisoning, or this warning might only apply to pregnant women. The most expensive of sashimi, the blue fin tuna, is about as bad as it gets, for tests as high as 6.1 parts per million (0.4 ppm seafood can be banned) have been reported. Very few of you are pregnant, so, as you can’t afford the fatty part of tuna (o-toro) anyway, again, everything in moderation seems like a good recommendation.
o A high fiber diet will prevent colorectal cancer.
Not necessarily, says the American Medical Association. But roughage up to 35 grams/day does tend to give you regularity (in bowel movement), lower cholesterol, aid diabetics and help those who suffer from heartburn. Thus, do eat fruits, vegetables, bran muffins and cereals.
o
Too much tofu induces brain aging…that was the bombshell headline from a Honolulu Star Bulletin article on November 19, 1999, written by Helen Altonn, reporting on the preliminary work of Lon White of the Pacific Health Research Center. Sales of tofu dropped, significantly. Nearly a decade later, tofu sales are up and soy is still generally looked upon as a gift from God. What happened? Nothing much, except, below the marketing horizon seems to be a
dark side hinting that there might be something naturally toxic about this bean. This is not the end of this controversy.
o
Boiled peanuts bring out up to four times more disease-fighting phytochemicals (they reduce cancer) than dry or oil roasting the nuts, or leaving them raw. Maybe this is why Hawaii people live longer, as this is a standard item at football tailgate parties and the like.
o Is it true that if you are a
Japanese American (that’s me) who drinks fruit juice just every other day, you reduce the risk of Alzheimer’s by 76%? Amazingly, the answer appears to be yes, from the Kame Project, headed by Qi Dai, reported in The
American Journal of Medicine: 2006, Volume 119, pages 751-759. Wine is included, so I am very well covered. Why only Japanese Americans? Because the study was of 1836 Japanese Americans living in King County, Washington. Doctor’s are, in this sense, conservative about these things. Odds are that you also would qualify for this advantage.
o
Will eating curried rice halt prostate cancer? I love curried foods and, being a male of advancing age, am happy to report that the answer, again, is yes. Curcumin is found in curry as the active agent. Cauliflower and broccoli also are good, but for the phenethyl isothiocyanate. These studies were made on rats, but there, apparently, is reasonable correlation to humans.
o But
working the graveyard shift is not good for your health, as the World Health Organization reported that there is a higher incidence of breast and prostate cancer for those who work after daylight. This has something to do with the circadian (biological clock) rhythm being disrupted, reducing the natural production of melatonin, which can suppress tumor development. Also, the body’s immune system becomes more vulnerable with an uneven sleeping schedule. For a small period in my life I worked various shifts at a sugar factory, and I can attest that there was considerable stress placed on my body.
o Is the Chinese restaurant syndrome—consuming food with monosodium glutamate, or ajinomoto—a myth?
Yes, it is a myth! Then again, there are some who write that
it is real. The medical profession says
MSG is safe.
o Salt is bad for your health. Yes, the American Medical Association warns us to watch out for salt in the most innocent of foods, and
cutting consumption in half could save 150,000 lives each year. The Institute of Medicine says the 2,300 milligrams of sodium/day standard set by the Federal Government is too high, and should be 1,500 mg/day. However, we consume up to 4,000 mg/day, an equivalence of about two teaspoons. Over the past three years, the sodium chloride (salt) content of cheese has increased by 35%. So it is not a simple matter of adding only so much salt. You much watch what you eat, and processed food has a lot of salt. Then, there are the
detractors to a low salt diet. Such is the medical profession, but I would think that, again, like everything else, moderation is best.
o Does green tea help prevent cancer and heart disease? Well, various medical studies are available showing clear benefits. Unfortunately, Ito En, a Japanese company, in 2005 petitioned the Food and Drug Administration to allow them to claim that drinking at least 5 ounces of green tea/day could lower the risk of heart disease.
The FDA responded in 2006 that there is no credible evidence. So who’s right? Who knows! I guess the moral of this story is, don’t ask unless you are sure that you will get the right answer.
o What about those who take a handful of vitamins or one large dietary supplement? The record is mixed, and you need to be a bit careful about any long term effects on various organs, especially your liver, but, for example, some combination of B (12 more than 6) complexes and folic acid (another B) seem to fend off Alzheimer’s and is supposed to maintain nerve and red cells, plus help make DNA. However,
only 3 ounces of clam provides 14 times the recommended daily value of B12.
o Then there is the container. How safe are plastics, especially when used to microwave food or freeze drinks? This almost sounds like one of those internet hoaxes, but polyvinylchloride is definitely not recommended for this purpose and bisphenol-A (BPA), used in the synthesis of plastics, is more and more appearing on watch lists for baby products. Dioxin is said to be released by microwaving. Cancer, chromosome abnormalities, memory and a full range of symptoms have been suggested. While there was no comprehensive medical report on this subject at the time of this writing, a sensible rule of thumb is to use glass for microwaving, but freezing should lower chemical transfer, so do what you must. Somehow, The
Johns Hopkins University is usually cited, and they have continued to state that these stories are urban legend and not linked with medical tests. The difficulty is that there are more than 20 million registered chemicals, and the FDA has more important problems to tackle.
You can chalk it up to the benefits of advancing medical research and sway with the latest scoop or more probably conveniently lose confidence in those medical recommendations that compromise your lifestyle.
Red wines deserve a category of their own:
o Is it the resveratrol in red wine that helps the heart? Probably. Better yet, champagne contains high amounts of polyphenols, which are also conducive to better health, so red champagne (from pinot noir and cabernet sauvignon grapes) could well be even better for your health. I actually invested in a start-up company to import sparkling red wine from Europe, but mainly because I thought RED CHAMPAGNE could be marketed in China with that description (in Chinese). Red is symbolic with celebration.
○ Wine is supposed to promote longevity, slow brain decline, and lower heart disease, diabetes, stroke, cataracts and colon cancer risks, but much of this is published in wine magazines, as for example just in
Wine Spectator for 2007:
■ The
Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry reported that the University of Pavia in Italy found both red and white wine prevent the growth of streptococci associated with tooth decay and sore throats (October 15).
■
Neuroscience indicated that researchers from the University of Porto determined that rats given heavy doses of red wine did not suffer memory damage, compared with those given pure alcohol. These red wine rats performed as well as those only drinking water (October 31).
■ The
Journal of Carcinogenesis featured an article from the University of Alabama showing that red wine protected the prostate.
■ The
Journal of Neuroscience reports that
one or two glasses of wine per day improves memory.
Here, the wine industry is not necessarily funding the study, this wine publication just selectively reports the information. I give wine the benefit of any possible doubt because it’s trendy, tasty and makes you high.
Soon, a test will be available to steer you away from red wines that cause red wine headache. It’s all in the amines, which are found in wine and sake, but not much in beer. Of course, there are winos, and any responsible person would know that anything to excess can be bad. How much is just right? Well, the consensus seems to be ten ounces (2 glasses) per day as being good for a typical male, and a lower amount for females who are proportionately smaller. A bottle in the U.S. is 26 ounces.
