I think we could move into diet and nutrition and what I would like
to do with your permission is take this down to the “nitty gritty”
because a lot of people hear these words and terms and they don’t
know what they mean. So what is a calorie?
A- I will keep it pretty simple. A calorie is the amount of heat that is
required to raise one cubic centimeter of water one degree. What it
is an amount of energy?

How about a carbohydrate, what is a carbohydrate?
A- Carbohydrates are molecular linkages of sugar molecules. If you
take a starch, which is a carbohydrate and you link those sugar
molecules together. If you look at the ingredients they are always
listed in the order of predominance. In that listing you will see an
ingredient called maltodextrine. A maltodextrine is a hybrid
ingredient that is neither a sugar nor a starch. You know a simple
sugar can be like glucose and a starch is a long chain of glucose
molecules. You link all those together and you finally get something
called a starch. In between where you have the simple sugars and
you have the complex substance starch you have these things
called maltodextrine.

What about fat?
A- You know again it comes back to the whole idea of how many units
are in this molecular chain. If you break down a fat you break it
down into something called a fatty acid. They can all be broken
down into smaller units. In the case of starch it can be broken down
into simple sugars or these maltodextrines, which can be broken
down into simple sugars.

The point I am trying to make is any of these macronutrients can
be broken down into smaller units. Just like starch is broken down
into simple sugars, the fat is broken down into fatty acids and the
proteins are broken down into peptides or amino acids.

Each one of those macronutrients can be subdivided. In the case of
proteins, proteins are made up of amino acids. Not all proteins have
all amino acids that are important because there are essential
amino acids. If you are consuming proteins and the essential ones
are missing you will suffer. You could end up with some disease
because those are missing, in some cultures around the world
where food isn’t so plentiful and they aren’t ingesting the right
nutrients. You know one that I can think of is called Kwashiorkor.
You will see often times where little kids will have the distended
tummies. The rest of their bodies are fine and it just comes down to
the fact that they have a nutritional deficiency.

You know in the case of fat you can actually measure the quality of
nutrients. People will volunteer to be involved in a clinical feeding
trial and they will hook these people up to all kinds of measuring
devices everything from body temperature to how much moisture
they exhale.

They weigh and eliminate brine in their feces and they weigh it and
they record everything they can about these patients. They will feed
these people a controlled diet and so they will feed them a
controlled amount of protein. They can measure those four
elements how much is excreted and how much how much weight a
person gains and basically they can determine how much of that
protein is utilized by the body.

When they do that they can determine the quality of the protein
and it’s based on the amino acid that makes up the protein. They
can determine how well that the body absorbs protein. Then they
can assign a number value to the protein and how well it is
absorbed.

Some proteins are absorbed extremely well and an example would
be egg albumin, which is the white of an egg rather than the yolk.
The egg white protein has an extremely high biological availability
and all of the essential amino acids in the right balance. You can
take a protein like gelatin and gelatin has the amino acids that it is
made of you will find that it is deficient in an amino acid called
triptophane and because it is lacking in that it isn’t balanced. If it is
combined with other sources of protein it is okay.

The bottom line is if you are looking at fat or protein it is important
to look at the composition of them. You can read the declarations of
the food labels and especially in snack items the protein will be
there but often times the manufacturer is looking for inexpensive
ingredients they can find. Often times the protein is inefficient and
they don’t have the quality and are deficient in amino acids. It is
important to know that all fat and proteins are made up of these
building blocks and it is important to know to have a balance of all
of these building blocks for the fat to be good for you and the
protein to be good for you.

Is it true then that you can eat more and lose weight by combining
different foods?
A- No. People say that there are certain foods that take more calories
to burn than they provide or that certain food items are going to
cause more calories to be burned. It is a misconception and I can
fully understand why people think the way they do.

People don’t want to put the time and the energy or the money into
losing weight. It is a lot of work. People want to lose weight and
they know that some of the food they eat is unhealthy and they
don’t want to put the time and energy into changing things.
It takes planning and time. Instead of visiting the fast food
restaurant on the corner on the way home you go to the produce
aisle in the grocery store. It might take you a little more time and
cost you a little more money but it’s worth it. You know the fast
food restaurants super size everything. The artists and executives
that design the ads know that our mentality is that the more food
we can get for our buck then the better we are going to like it. It
wasn’t so long ago that you would go in and order a pop and you
would get 8 oz or 12 oz and now it’s not uncommon to get 24 or
36oz because they super size everything.

Tell me are there any specific foods that burn fat?
A- I would say not. Basically, if you want to burn fat or lose or
maintain your weight everything comes down to energy balance. It
gets back to when you asked me to define a calorie and if you look
at the macronutrients the carbohydrates, proteins and fat are
assigned a certain level of energy and for example protein each
gram of protein will contain four calories.

Then what should we be counting? Should we be counting calories
carbohydrates or fat?
A- Let me just go on a little further and we will come back to that.
If you look at carbohydrates it is the same scenario. Each gram of
carbohydrates contains 4 grams of fat. This is why fat is so
important. It is almost twice that of protein and carbohydrates.
So one gram of fat contains roughly 9 calories. So if you start
talking about the Atkins diet, it depends on how you set up the
study. You can get any variety of results you want. You know the
Atkins diet is one of my favorites to pick on because the early
studies showed that people lost more weight initially and overall the
diet was more effective than other diets.

Well I believe that since then they have gone bankrupt. Some
where along the line people were starting to figure out that it’s not
all it’s cracked up to be. What seems to be the case now when you
start looking at the numbers is when you have enough people on
the diets it becomes statistically significant. What it seems to boil
down to is Atkins restricts your intake to mainly fat and protein and
by eliminating carbohydrates from the diet it takes away so many
of the food choices that are available.

You know, even lovers of protein and fat what they find that
restrictions your variety and choices are taken away and what you
do is actually limiting your caloric intake. Just because you don’t
have the wide variety of choices you can make any more. So it
works initially and that is one of the reasons why people are so
attracted to it.

95% of diets fail and what it really comes down to if you want to
lose weight it has to be something that you decide to make as a
lifestyle change. You know, a diet is only temporary. You go on it
and what are you going to do eventually? You are going to go off
it. In my definition that is not a lifestyle change that is a temporary
fix. You know that is human nature. You go on the diet and
eventually you are going to go off it and revert back to you old
eating habits and gain the weight back.

It all comes down to understanding a little bit more to
understanding the foods that you are eating and a choice to make a
lifestyle change. Also almost all of these diet plans introduce a new
way of eating, a way that is abnormal to the way that you are used
to eating and we are creatures of habit and we like the foods that
we are used to.

And because we are creatures of habit we don’t adapt very well to
changes like that. We can go on it for a while and because it is so
abnormal it just doesn’t fit. If you are a busy mom and you are
rushing your kids back and forth to school you then all of the
sudden you have to prepare these kinds of foods and eat these
certain foods it basically forces you off the diet. It all comes down
to the fact that you have to make a decision that you are going to
change the way you eat and it doesn’t’ have to be an abrupt change
you just need to understand more about what you are eating and
what the energy value is and the nutrient value is of the foods you
are consuming.

I know the nutritional value of the foods I am eating. I keep a
running tabulation in my mind of the foods I have eaten and what I
am going to eat today and how I am going to balance it out.
I know that if I have been naughty in eating too many chocolate
chip cookies then the next day I am going to watch what I eat.
You know we talked about people and their eating habits and they
are so ingrained, how can we change our eating habits. One of the
things that I have noticed is that if you are doing something healthy
for yourself, if you will just go out and walk 15 minutes a day the
easier it will be to put aside the unhealthy ones.

When you do something like walk 15 minutes and then you are
standing in front of the chocolate chip cookies you are more likely
to start thinking should I eat those cookies or shouldn’t I, well I
think it becomes a little more easier to make healthy choices. The
more healthy choices you make the easier it is to incorporate more.
It’s almost like the unhealthy choices don’t fit anymore. They are
incompatible with the healthy choices. You know, I have quoted
that adage that the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. Well
it’s almost the same applied to health and nutrition.

As I kick around health and nutrition with people that are into it like
I am, I find that if you do exercise and have more muscle mass you
burn more calories when you are at rest. Lean muscle mass has a
higher metabolic requirement. When you are just sitting around
doing nothing and your body has more lean muscle mass you are
going to burn more calories than if your body contains fatty tissue.
It’s kind of a cruel injustice but the fitter you get even at rest you
are burning more calories. The basil metabolic requirement on a
daily basis may be a very small percent of your total energy needs
as compared to other ways you burn energy. The basil metabolic
requirement is just how much energy you need to sustain your
basic metabolic processes, like breathing, heartbeat and digestion
and those things.

What about alcohol? You know that we hear that one drink is okay
or two drinks are okay and now it’s just red wine.
A- You know the studies that I have read, and I am not 100% up to
date on this, but a small amount of alcohol ingested on a daily basis
may have some positives in reducing your risk for heart disease or
may help to lower blood cholesterol levels.

Red wine may be preferred because of the antioxidants that you get
and the other chemicals that come along with the wine. Obviously
there is something in the red wine as opposed to the white that
makes it more beneficial. Alcohol is number one a source of
calories and you know that it is quite high. The higher the level of
alcohol in the beverage the higher the caloric intake is. I believe
that one gram of alcohol would be five and a half calories. It isn’t as
high as fat but not as low as protein and carbohydrates.

There are other aspects of that to think about, if you are trying to
lose weight you need to question whether you need the extra
calories. There are many other beverages that would provide many
more nutrients. If you are trying to lose weight you need to
question whether or not you need those extra calories from
something that basically has no nutritional value. I would tend to be
more negative about consuming alcohol because people tend to get
out of hand when consuming it and the damage it can do to families
as well as the individual.

So I would never be one to advocate the drinking of alcohol
because it has no nutritional value or health value. You know any
benefit that alcohol might provide you can get from something else.

That brings up something that I completely skipped and that is a
well balanced diet, just what is a well balanced diet?
A- Following the food pyramid is a good place to start and maybe it’s a
good place to end for some people. If you take all the food
somebody eats at the end of the week and then add them all up
and how much variety there was, you will find that there really
wasn’t that much variety.

People generally have a dozen foods they like to eat and they will
end up eating the same foods day after day for most of their life
and that are where you run into problems. You get stuck in a rut
and fail to incorporate a vast variety into your diet and fail to get
the nutritional balance that you should be getting. If you know
nothing about food but incorporate a lot of variety into your diet the
chances of your being malnourished because you don’t get the right
nutrients goes down hill.

I like fresh fruits and vegetables especially in the summer time. My
wife does the grocery shopping and she and I like fresh fruit and
vegetables. We will just take a big salad bowl and fill it like the diet
out there called the Rainbow diet. It’s based on all the different
colors of fruits and vegetables. So I will take purple grapes and
onions and garlic and sprinkle some lettuce and if we have fresh
strawberries I will add those cantaloupe and really your imagination
is your only limitation. You know, just basically add all your
favorite fruits and vegetables and throw in a couple of tablespoons
of your favorite dressing and season it to taste. Mix it all up and
you have an incorporation of all of that variety. You get all of the
vitamins and the nutrients and the minerals that you need in just
one meal instead of just ingesting one kind of food.

My point is the more variety you can get in your diet the greater
the possibility that if you are lacking in something that you are
going to get it. I am an advocate of getting variety in your diet. It
all comes down to looking at your budget and having some
knowledge of getting what you need and looking at the food labels.
With just a little bit of knowledge of how to read food labels and
what you need you can make the right choices with the money that
you have to work with.

Even the restaurants and the fast food chains are starting to offer
more nutritious choices, likes salads. Subway is one that has really
jumped on the bandwagon. You know the one with Jared standing
there saying this deep fat fried sandwich contains 45 plus grams of
fat I wonder how they got all that fat in there to begin with and
compare it to the subway sandwich.

I saw an interview where they were talking with the producer of
Sesame Street and they were talking about the cookie monster and
how it was presented in a way to get kids to eat more junk food
and more cookies. Now they have repositioned that whole program
to where they are starting to teach kids more about nutrition. I am
hoping that one of the things that are happening is that there is
awareness about nutrition and this obesity epidemic. Some people
are just succumbing to obesity and the things that come with it like
cancer and heart disease and diabetes. It’s good to see some
positive changes taking place.

Why is that we sometimes crave certain foods? Can it be that your
body is sending you a message?
A- You know that in some developing cultures there is a craving that
some people have and I believe it is called Pica. It is where a
person will have a craving to eat a particular food item and it
doesn’t always have to be a food item, it can be dirt or something
that isn’t a food at all. The theory is that people will have a craving
for certain things that will provide a nutrient that is lacking.

In our culture I don’t think it is metabolic for food cravings. You
know if you are used to consuming sugary sweets and that is all
you eat, your metabolism adapts and guides you to the foods you
are used to consuming.

An example of that would be someone who has gone on a
vegetarian diet and eliminate meat from their diet temporarily.
Then they start to reintroduce meat and their stomach is upset.
Their stomach is not used to digesting that kind of food. They have
adapted to digesting just non-meat items. There are food digestive
adaptations to the kinds of food that you eat. One would have to
believe that those are the kinds of foods that you get used to.

Do we become hungry because our stomach is empty or is it
because of something else?
A- That is a tricky question. There are people who have studied this
and can boil it right down to all kinds of enzymes and mechanisms
that kick into play that stimulate appetite or depress appetite.
Individual metabolism is so significant individually that I am sure
that you can feel that on a general basis.

You know one thing that I can say is when I go exercise and I get
back and sit down I need to replenish my water intake. The next
thing that I find is that if I find a combination of fruits to eat it will
suppress my hunger because fruits are primarily water and sugar
and carbohydrates. But the digestive process is pretty rapid when it
comes to breaking down sugars into glucose and the glucose is
stored in your body. So digestion of fruits in particular is pretty
rapid. I can consume a lot of fresh fruits and it doesn’t satisfy my
hunger.

I will still have hunger pains because the digestion is completed so
rapidly as opposed to protein, which takes longer. It almost seems
like exercise can suppress appetite but I think you have to balance
that whole idea with how much exercise you are doing and how
many calories your body needs to replace and what kinds of food
you are going to consume when you are done.

It is complex and is another whole area to think about why people
are gaining weight, whether it is emotional or whether it is the
amount of exercise they have done. You know that everybody that
is out there studying this whole thing and trying to help people lose
weight, each one of these communities have their own theories and
their own recommendations. They all study it in a different way -
some try to understand the psychology and some try to understand
the nutritional aspects of it. You know, if it was well understood we
probably wouldn’t be having the problems we are having today.

We have discussed foods in general, but can you tell us, what are
“functional foods”?
A- It is a term that gets bantered about by people who are food
scientists or food companies that are talking about different kinds of
foods. Usually when they are talking about a functional food it is a
food analog, which is a food that has been put together by when it
is manufactured.

You know a functional food through the company that I was
working for may be let’s say internal tube feeding formula for a
hospital. The composition of the product contains all the nutrition in
the right proportions for protein and amino acids plus fat with the
right fatty acids and the right vitamins and minerals and you put all
that together and you have it has a particular food functionality.
There are foods that are designed to resolve particular health
problems. Let’s take something common like lactose intolerance,
people have trouble digesting the lactose they are missing an
enzyme called lactaid. So an example of a functional food would be
a food that was put together without any milk protein or lactose
sugar. It functions with that person who is lactose intolerant. You
can take that example and apply it to anyone else who has special
feeding needs.

Do they actually convert differently into energy than if they had
this component in it?
A- No, functional food is just a catchy term that came up years ago by
food companies looking for a certain marketing handle to promote
different types of food they may want to manufacture. This term
functional foods really originated 8 or ten years ago really by food
manufacturing companies. It really doesn’t have any scientific
meaning. It’s just a generic term used to describe foods that they
want to manufacture. It is a little hype and one of the areas would
be food that is high in fiber.

Often times food companies will include products that they have
formulated that contain high amounts of fiber because fiber
functionally is healthy in most forms anyway. Therefore they
include all these high fiber foods that that have formulated under
the functional food umbrella. It’s just another way of marketing
foods.

Nutrients obviously decrease the risk of some diseases, is that
correct? In other words you can’t eat a magic vegetable to cure cancer
but you can gain eat certain nutrients that lend themselves to good
health can’t you?
A- When I worked for that company for 14 years, I worked with a
fellow that had more patents than anybody else in the company. He
was their number one inventor and he had two PhDs and a genius
IQ.

He had actually developed a lot of the foods that were first used in
the bio-satellites. Some of them would have a monkey or some
other kind of animal and they needed the food company that I was
working for. The company contracted with the government to
produce the foods that were for those animals.

All kinds of foods spun off those kinds of contracts. One of the foods
came about when astronauts started to go up into space. They had
all their spacesuit paraphernalia and the large helmets and whatnot
and the only way they could eat was to insert food through a
certain orifice. Actually there was a food item that was marketed
that looked like a tootsie roll and what is actually a combination of
protein and fat, carbohydrates and all the vitamins and minerals
that were needed for good health. Everything in the proper balance
and the proper amounts and it was in this tootsie roll form and
could be inserted through the space helmet.

To get back to your question this person that I worked for would
joke that someday there would be magic pill that you could take to
get all of your nutrients in the proper proportions that you needed
for the day. The astronauts had to take six of those a day, but he
ended up making this magic pill and it ended up being the size of a
softball.

The bottom line is there is no magic pill. It wasn’t until the 1940’s
that we as a country started to put together nutritional
requirements in relation to disease and when we started to
establish the different recommendations.

Something that has always intrigued me is that if you do take that
historical perspective and go back you find that in the early years
there were just a few nutrients for which the recommended daily
allowances were established and through the years, through the
studies and the whole process of understanding we have continued
to add to the list of things that are required. It hasn’t been until
quite recently that we have learned about trace nutrients like
selenium and things like that, that have recently been added to the
list. Those levels continue to change as we learn more. One of the
things that interest me is the addition to the list; it is almost a
never-ending process. I always come back to the concept of
nutrition and variety and not getting locked into a few fixed food
items.

Just to clarify, in the most basic form what are the basic nutrients?
A- There are, call them building blocks of good nutrition, the level
of protein in your diet and a certain amount of carbohydrates to
provide energy and a certain amount of fat. Those are the main
building blocks and the body requires certain enzymes and
vitamins and minerals. A good quality protein contains certain
amino acids and then you break it down into smaller blocks
called peptides. Basically it just comes down to protein, fat and
vitamins and minerals to keep metabolic process continued.

So then what is a non-nutrient?
A- Basically it would be something that didn’t contain any calories or a
source of protein, carbohydrates or vitamins and minerals. Water
would be non-caloric. There is a lake in Minneapolis called Lake
Harriet. There are water pumps all around the lake and by the
main pavilion there is a pump that goes down a couple hundred feet
and it is the best spring feed water and when ever I ride my bike I
always seem to swing by that pump and load up.

__________________
Christopher Berry
Diabetic Discussion