Vegan Kickstart coming soon

Vegan Kickstart is an online event run by the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine and they encourage you to become vegan with recipes and tips. I always sign up for it because I usually get at least one good idea out of it and I think it’s a good cause to support. Just a word of warning, it is definitely not low carb in outlook. So you’ll want to bear that in mind while looking at the recipes.

Sign up for it here.

Paging Mr. Wizard ...

OK, I’m probably dating myself with that reference but why take someone’s word for something when you can test it out for yourself?

A while back (I’m a bit behind in my reading) the Annals of Nutrition and Metabolism published a paper saying that vinegar, consumed as part of a meal, effectively reduced the glycemic index of complex carbohydrates eaten in that meal. What does that mean? If you drink vinegar as part of a meal, the complex carbs, i.e. things like rice and flour, will be absorbed by your body more slowly than without the vinegar.

While that might be all that helpful for folks who just want to reduce their carb intake, for diabetics like me, it’s actually quite good news. Or it would be if true. Can I check it out for myself? Well, let’s see, I can certainly make a meal with vinegar included and I can check my blood glucose levels so I don’t see why not.

I suppose I should insert a disclaimer here that this isn’t a controlled study and your mileage may vary and so on and so forth but you know that already, right? So I made some Caribbean rice and beans, something that would normally send my blood sugar through the roof but also includes some vinegar. And then I checked my blood sugar a couple of hours after eating. Now for those of you who aren’t diabetic, a couple of hours after eating I’d like my blood sugar to be under 120 and wouldn’t get too worried by anything under 150. But eating a couple of cups of rice has been known to send my reading over 250! So you can imagine my surprise when my level was 122.

So this definitely is worth some more investigation. But let’s be clear on what the paper claimed and what it didn’t. The carbs didn’t go anywhere, they’re still in your body, it just takes them longer to be digested. So you’re still getting all of them, just without the spike. And this doesn’t seem to work for simple carbohydrates. Dousing your Twinkie in balsamic isn’t going to help.

If you try it out, drop me a note and let me know what you’ve found. And if anyone has access to the full article, I’d love to read it.

First of all, where does phytic acid come from? Well, phytic acid is a common way that plants store phosphorus. As phosphorus is the second number in NPK, it’s a pretty basic nutrient for plants. And phytic acid is found in nuts, seeds and grains. So you can see, a vegan diet could very easily include a number of those.

And why is that important? That’s where things get more interesting. Phytic acid binds quite easily with minerals such as calcium, magnesium, iron and zinc. As I’ve been told in the past that I’m low in at least two of those, this definitely caught my attention. So, I’m announcing that I’m now eating dead animals where ever I can lay my hands on them? No.

This is a really good example of why looking at nutrients in isolation from each other just doesn’t work. I’m not eating just phytic acid. I’m eating tempeh and lentils and walnuts and, actually, a whole bunch of things. A number of those are high in phytic acid, true; but they’re also high in a lot of other things.

And just to make your head explode, there is some evidence to suggest that phytic acid protects against cancers of the colon by, wait for it, blocking minerals the cancer need to grow.

Bottom line, what do we do? For me, not much. Fermentation seems to reduce the amount of phytic acid in food and I do try to eat fermented soy. Past that, there really doesn’t seem to be a lot of consensus on phytic acid’s role so I’m just going to go ahead and eat the best I can. If it turns out that I’m low in something, I’ll address that as seems best.

We don’t eat nutrients in isolation from each other and the attempts to analyze them in isolation are not doing anyone a favor. We need to eat more food that’s not been processed within an inch of it’s life and, certainly, leave the animals alone! They have enough problems of their own.

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Well, yes it is and it all does relate. You’ll just have to be a bit patient and all will be revealed, grasshopper. But first, what do we mean by inflammation? You’re familiar with it on your skin, you get a splinter or a cut and then that gets kind of reddish, maybe a little swelled and warm to the touch. That’s inflammation. Not to be confused with infection which is a separate thing. Infection is caused by an external pathogen while inflammation is the result of the body reacting to something irritating the cells.

And it’s not just your skin that can be inflamed. That’s certainly the easiest to see but there are others. Hay fever is a kind of inflammation. As is rheumatoid arthritis, asthma or IBD.

Your heart can be affected as well. Inflammation of the coronary arteries can elevate your risk of heart attack. Dr. Eric Topol, Department Chairman, Cleveland Clinic Heart Center states the new information about inflammation will, “change everything we do in heart disease.”

The risk of stroke is effected as well. Increased inflammation is associated with strokes.

And last but certainly not least, a subject near and dear to me, Type 2 diabetes. Studies have proven that obesity without inflammation does not result in insulin resistance. Now not all Type 2 diabetes are fat, I’m not for instance, but there are a significant number who are, most likely including my father. It stands to reason that their insulin resistance would be improved if their overall level of inflammation could be reduced.

And that brings us full circle. What can we do to reduce the inflammation present in our bodies? It turns out a lot of the low carb, vegan foods we like to eat actually can reduce the levels of inflammation we have. Things like vegetables, healthy fats and whole soy products are beneficial in this area as well as others. Avoiding things like sugars, high GI fruits and processed foods also fit well into a low carb, vegan diet.

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