From the desk of Dr. Altman:

I’m looking at an hourglass right now.  No, I’m sorry that’s a glass of wine.  For those of you wine connoisseurs that are hungry, what goes with red wine?

Standard jeopardy answer:  Red Meat

Not red turnips, nor red tomatoes, nor red grapes.   But, the sound of mooing is in the air…

I know this is dangerous territory for some but it is late and the wine made me do it.  Modern man suffers from two great sins, gluttony and sloth.  In many of the last articles we have discussed sloth.  As it is most obvious, when you look around town and around the country that we eat a lot.   If you haven’t watched “Super Size Me” on hulu.com yet, do that tonight.

Chronic diseases and obesity are everywhere.

These two plagues are a new phenomenon.   Our primitive ancestors didn’t have the abundance we do today.  They also had to hunt and gather their food.  Which for most of us would be impossible unless the animals had GPS tracking collars on.  So here we have a dilemma.  Our bodies developed to eat meat, veggies, and fruit yet we live in a world of fast pace and convenience that makes it easy to drift away from that.

Plus, sugar tastes so good. 

The average American has cereal, milk, and maybe a slice or two of toast.  Right!   Now, 2/3 of us are also too heavy and too sick.  Sick meaning, they take medications.  No other country takes as many meds as the USA.

The Blue Zones Book talks primarily about the diets of long lived societies.

It has a lot to offer and the most noted diet is the Mediterranean Diet.
In a nutshell it consists of:

• Whole grain cereals
• Low-fat dairy
• Legumes
• Veggies
• Fruit
• Fatty fish
• Modest alcohol
• Olive oil

Compared to the Western diet of processed food this is a big step up.  Plus, it lowers heart disease, cancer, diabetes, and obesity.  So I thought it was interesting when a group of Swedish researchers examined the Mediterranean diet compared to the diet of primitive man.

Primitive Diet:

• Lean meat
• Fish
• Fruit
• Veggies
• They also advised these following food restrictions (only one or less egg per day, nuts.go for walnuts, two or less potatoes per day, one tablespoon or less of olive oil)
• Notice the absence of breads, cakes, milk, cereal, soda…

These two groups were not told to count calories or were they given any restrictions the amount of food they could consume.  At 12 weeks the Mediterranean group lost 8.5 lbs and 1inch of the waist and the primitive group lost 11 lbs. and 2 inches of the waist.  The researchers noticed a much larger drop in fasting blood glucose, better sugar handling, and possibly better insulin sensitivity in the primitive group.  They also noted that the primitive group ate about 400 calories less daily.

Why?

The big differences came from the significant lower amount of carbohydrates consumed by the primitive group.  The glycemic load was almost twice as high in the Mediterranean diet.  Now, there are benefits from both.

So here is a quick list of things to do.

1. Eat more REAL food and less processed food.  Ie…meat, fish, veggies, fruit
2. O.k. -end of list.

To have that hourglass shape the waist needs to get smaller.  The primitive diet will accelerate that goal.  Men: I know you don’t want an hourglass shape, it will help you build and maintain muscle.  One little caveat to note:  The subjects in the study had blood sugar problems, abdominal obesity, and had survived heart attacks.   This is a clue for those concerned about your heart.  You can get on the fast track and start eating this way because we are going to talk more about this coming up soon.

I cheated and had the Primitive Mediterranean Diet tonight and combined my wine and meat.
Enjoy a long life and enjoy some REAL food along the way.

This entry was posted on Thursday, August 20th, 2009 at 10:20 pm and is filed under Weight loss, Better eating. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.