Two days ago, there was an announcement a landmark study had found that a gluten free diet could improve your overall wellbeing, with reduced fatigue and incresed energy levels.

Sounds too good to be true, isn´t it?!

Right, be careful! Although it was stated that new research on this topic was released, this research is not published in any (peer-reviewed) medical journal yet, there´s not even a press release to be found (e.g. from the institute that conducted the study), but there´s already this public opinion making a gluten free diet could help improve your health.

Our tips how to handle such information:

• Keep this in mind, there will certainly be a publication in the future.
• Only then we will know which persons were included, and e.g. what symptoms they suffered from before the study.
• Only then we will know whether the authors considered the so-called Hawthorne effect – this effect specifies an improvement in study participants simply due to their knowledge of being observed.
• Yes, there is a likelihood that this study actually proves that going gluten free could boost energy levels, reduces fatigue, and improve concentration. But we have to have the complete data and information to finally decide on going gluten-free or not.
• It´s just that the way of information so far is quite dubious.

So long, keep calm and eat with self-respect and self-care

Source: www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-3339328/Could-going-gluten-free-boost-brain-power-Landmark-study-reveals-diet-reduces-fatigue-increases-energy-levels.html

Hi guys,

we´ve read the recent media information on obesity carefully – and would like to share some thoughts with you:

There were news that, in the US, obesity is still on the rise, though there´s a glimmer of hope in children. In the UK, obesity was directly linked to the wealth of the family obese children are born in: The wealthier the family, the less likely was the child to be obese. For the UK and Germany (amongst other countries), it is well known that the higher the Body Mass Index (BMI) of a child, the more dental caries they have. On top of that, the poorer, and the less well-educated families quite often belong to the so-called caries-polarization-group: While on average the prevalence of dental caries is low in children, some children seem to “have it all”, that is they suffer from so many carious lesions that they deviate immensely from the arithmetic mean.

Plus: The more these obese children weigh, the harder it is for them to get rid of the excessive fat due to a specific mechanism in their body that “tells” their bodies not to burn any of this excessive fat. In the end, fat is burned when they embark on a healthier eating/lifestyle but it is harder for them than for those who are not obese.

That sound very much like a vicious circle, right?! Yes, it certainly is. Especially as we know how often preventive measures don´t reach those who are really in need

And there´s always been that debate upon a healthy lifestyle not being affordable for those with small budgets only. We know that it is really hard for some families – but still: A generalisation like “We can´t afford chia seeds. One package of chia costs so more than a package of (sugared) bran flakes.” should really not be used as an excuse or argument. To feel satisfied after a chia pudding requires an incredible smaller amount of chia seeds than it would require bran flakes. So, before the chia seeds are empty, at least three packages of bran flakes are going to be emptied.

The question should therefore be: What are the true cost of healthy/unhealthy eating? Money and quality of life can hardly be compared, but the “price” the affected children “pay” from their early life on is certainly exceptionally high.

Sometimes we ask ourselves how weird this world has become. With new (health) information coming up on a daily basis, this info seems to get more and more confusing and contradicting. How can we expect everyone (and especially those not involved in the health sector) to understand what is best for them?! It seems like every day there´s a new diet popping up, most often, of course, the one and only. It is definitely impossible to claim one style of “diet” is correct and will therefore work for everyone. This is simply not true. But it is  true work to find out how to stay healthy in this confusing jungle of information and news.

Keep calm and eat with self-respect and self-care

P.S. In this pic: Roasted sweet potato wedges and pumpkin hummus. A comparable meal at a fast food chain would have been less satisfying, less healthy, and more expensive.

After we´ve figured out that our followers like our breakfast bowls most we have decided to share some thoughts with you on why we eat what we eat for breakfast

Most of us have either chia pudding or overnight oats most or even all mornings of the week. These are normally combined with fruits, nuts, or juices – or all of it. We would never dare to say that this is the ONE solution for all – because maybe it´s not as everyone and every metabolism functions differently. But: We were frequently asked why we have such huge bowls for breakfast.

Here are the answers

• As for us, we never were one of those people who could go without breakfast for hours. We always had these hunger pangs attacking us late in the morning simply due to very low blood sugar. Additionally to not feeling fine and often unconcentrated, low blood sugar makes you crave unhealthy food because the only thing you can think about is how to get any food – no matter what. And often the healthiest choice is not the one you get the easiest.
• For years, we had self-baked bread and honey, jam, or other spread for breakfast. This was an o.k.-option, but still we couldn´t really get a grip on hunger pangs during the late morning.
• Our food journey has led us from trying various granolas, mueslis, joghurts, and omelettes – amongst others- to chia seeds or oats soaked in non-diary milks, these combined with fruits and some other food for mood. Finally, we feel absolutely energized after breakfast, but never stuffed. The amount we eat compared to what we had as bread, omelette etc. is certainly much more but we feel so much lighter and better. And there´s no more low blood sugar danger during the morning.
• The chia seeds provide us with a lot of protein and omega 3 fatty acids. It takes the body relatively long to break proteins down, so you keep your metabolism nicely busy for hours. Omega 3 fatty acids are often said to have various health benefits (reduce inflammation, a certain role in preventing cardiovascular disease, improve mental health, have a posisive effect in the treatment of atopical diseases) though all of these need to be better scientifically proven in the future.
• Even though our breakfast might seem very sweet, there´s nothing of these fruit sugar (=fructose) related problems you can read so much about in the media recently: As we eat the fruits as a whole, there are a lot of fibres that prevent the fruit sugar to quickly reach a blood sugar peak, followed by a sudden low. When eating the whole fruits, there´s a constant level of fruit sugar absorption – thanks to the fibres!
• The optional addition of e.g. raw cacao nibs sees us consume what we like to call natural health enhancers: In the cacao nibs, there is magnesium contributing to proper nerve and muscle functioning, again a considerable amount of fibres, iron and antioxidants (to prevent free radicals doing damage to your body), cacao nibs stimulate the brain to release neurotransmitters that help you feel really good, and phenylethyamine to make you feel focussed and alert.  Others of these foods include tiger nuts (earth almonds), dried berries etc.
• Knowing we eat so much health-realted good food made us stay away from supplements – but, please, be careful, this may not be true for everyone as every body functions differently! We were successful and we wish you can be, too – but if in doubt please have this checked by your GP, nutrionist etc.
• We do acknowledge that there are people who claim they can´t eat anything early in the morning. Breakfasts like bread, chia pudding, overnight oats etc., they all can be either easily and quickly prepared, or just be taken from the fridge – and off you are.
• Recent research has shown that there seems to be an active circadian clock in various organs which are related to food intake (e.g. stomach, intestine, pancreas (=insulin release!)). If due to delayed food intake the function of these organs is not considered, the food eaten later in the day will be stored as fat. Maybe not the nicest of all imaginations, uh?!  
• For children: There are literally no reports that chia seeds are not suitable for children. Luckily, this topic is off the agenda!
• By the way, school-based breakfast programmes have shown to improve attendance rates and tardiness amongst their students. Those pupils who regularly eat a healthy breakfast are more likely to perform better in school. The latter study also showed that having snacks such as crisps or sweets in the morning was no better than eating nothing at all! The authors could show that there´s not only a significant (= not by chance) association between eating breakfast and doing well, but also between a healthy breakfast and doing well. It didn´t make a difference whether the children had their breakfast at home or at school – it was simply important they had a breakfast. This is good news for all the families who simply cannot manage to have the breakfast at home (provided the school offerss a breakfast programme/club).
• Tip: Especially in winter, have the chia pudding or overnight-oats heated before you eat them, this makes them a very soothing and comforting breakfast!

References

Taras H. Nutrition and student performance at school. J Sch Health 2005; 75(6):199-213

Garaulet M, Goméz-Abellán P. Timing of food intake and obesity: a novel association. Physiol Behav 2014; 134:44-50

Littlecott HJ, Moore GF, Moore L, Lyons RA, Murphy S. Association between breakfast consumption and educational outcomes in 9-11-year-old children. Public Health Nutr 2015 Sep 28:1-8 [Epub ahead of print]

Hi there!

Yesterday another food-related headline got a lot of attention:

http://time.com/4087775/sugar-is-definitely-toxic-a-new-study-says/

It is a well-known fact that children today suffer from diseases that, for long, had their onset only later in adulthood and were normally linked to an unhealthy diet (e.g. type 2 diabetes, non-alcoholic fatty liver disease, dyslipidemia, hypertension, all of them part of the so-called metabolic syndrome). Most often, these diseases occur in obese children; often additionally depending on the ethnic group the children belong to.

The Western diet has often been cited as being responsible for changes for the worse in Middle Eastern/Asian countries.

The new study by Robert Lustig and colleagues has primarily investigated the effects of fructose. Fructose is one of the two parts of what we normally call “refined sugar”. In their study, fructose was replaced by the much more complex carbohydrate starch. Starch takes much longer than fructose to be broken down and metabolized, though in the end, it´s broken down to glucose, the other part of refined sugar. That means, the children were still fed sugar/carbohydrates, but in a much more complex form.

43 obese children were given this replacement-diet for 10 days, the most informative body parameters were measured before and after these 10 days (e.g. body mass index, heart rate, blood pressure, insulin, cholesterol etc.).

All children improved remarkably.

What are the consequences of this result?!

We could easily put it into one sentence: The more refined the sugar the more harm it does to the body.

Of course, it´s a little more complex than that. Here´s our summary:

• A heading like “Sugar is toxic” is misleading. The described effects depend on the type of sugar (refined versus un-(or lesser)refined) consumed. Even the most healthy diet includes sugar – but not refined sugar, it´s the natural sugars that are used in these diets.
• Only swapping fructose for other, more complex sugars and thereby still sticking to an overall unhealthy diet is merely of extremely small benefit.
• An early education and awareness about the negative health effects of refined sugars, refined carbohydrates, and also the hidden sugars (salad sauces, tomato ketchup, flavoured yoghurts, “healthy” drinks, sports drinks etc.) is of utmost importance. This knowledge will help individuals and families to avoid the potential health-threatening, industrially refined, sugars.

Keep calm and eat with self-respect and self-care, your knowledge will protect you

Here´s the link to the full text of the study: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/oby.21371/epdf

Another study found that eating sweets with refined sugar causes the brain to form a memory – and, in the worst case, to demand more and more. Increased snacking is positively correlated with obesity. At the same time, obese people snack more frequently than those who aren´t obese.

Henderson YO, Nalloor R, Vazdarjanova A, Parent MB. Sweet orosensation induces Arc expression in dorsal hippocampal CA1 neurons in an experience-dependent manner. Hippocampus, Sep 19, 2015, doi: 10.1002/hipo.22532 [Epub ahead of print]

Hey guys!

Yesterday, there was a media storm about the newly released WHO report on the health risks of eating red and processed meat.

We´ve watched this media storm with interest, have downloaded and discussed this report in our team, and now we´d like to share some of our observations with you:

• Rather often, the information published in the media was too general and therefore misleading for the end-consumer (=you).
• Opinion making was unfortunately present, that is the data was not considered from a neutral point of view.
• The meat industry shrugged the report off as being of poor quality and absolutely biased.

What was this report truly about?!

• The scientists involved investigated the already published literature (=studies) that has dealt with the question if red or processed meat can cause cancer.
• They included only the best (=high quality) literature.
• It was differentiated between the intake of red meat (e.g. unprocessed mammalian muscle meat like beef, pork, veal, lamb etc., includes minced meat) and processed meat (cold cuts, smoked or cured meat, fermentated meat etc.).
• The largest body of data was found for associations of colorectal (= bowel) cancer and meat consumption. That means: NO generalization should be made that meat consumption can cause all types of cancer – this is completely wrong at the time being (but was used as a heading!)
• The consumption of processed meat holds a higher health risk than red meat, even (and already) in smaller portions per day (50g processed meat versus 100g red meat).
• For other cancers than colorectal cancer positive associations were found; that means meat-consuming people in the investigated population sample suffered more often from cancer than those who didn´t eat meat. But: An association is not the single cause of a disease! It is often often not even a cause in itself – but it contributes to the development of the disease (see also colorectal cancer)! Skipping the questionable food could therefore have remarkable and longlasting health benefits.
• The larger the available data, the more secure the result. As the researchers in charge dealt with a truly big amount of hard data, their result is reliable. That´s why they classified processed meat as a carcinogen, and placed it in the one group with arsenic and asbestos. Please keep in mind, that the link between colorectal cancer and the consumption of processed meat was the strongest, for others types of cancer these data might not be applicable.

Some general remarks: 

• 50g of processed meat is less than one sausage. The consumption of 50g per day increases the risk of colorectal (=bowel) cancer by almost a fifth.
• An association is normally not the single cause of a disease, but it is linked to it and has the potential to trigger it. Meat consumptiom shows several associations with the development of cancer – reversing this result means eliminating this regular intake will have remarkable health benefits!
• When reading the report carefully, the researchers appeared as unbiased as possible, they openly claimed any potential clash of interests, and the investigation was not funded by either side  of meat industry or cancer research organizations.
• The whole process of evaluating the data was observed by representatives of the meat industry.
• What is behind the meat industry´s claim that this report would be of poor quality? Probably money. It´s a giant industry and this behaviour is well-known from the tobacco industry. the categorization through the WHO is a serious threat to this industry.

What to do now?!

• Keep calm and eat with self-care and self-respect.
• Knowing about the data might make you think about your meat consumption. If you´re in the group who eats more than the treshold values of 50g for processed meat and 100g of red meat per day, it will be your very own risk. If you decide to lower your intake, there will be healths benefits waiting for you!
• If you belong  to the group of non-meat-eaters anyway: relax 😉

Here´s the link to the original report:

http://www.iarc.fr/en/media-centre/pr/2015/pdfs/pr240_E.pdf