new research debunks trad views on nutrition

[saysfaa]

Hmph. Another 4% into it and I'm beginning to wonder if the reviewer at the New Yorker read the book.

Separately, I want to look up
"Food not Nutrients is the Fundamental Unit in Nutrition' by David Jacobs, an epidemiologist from the University of Minnesota, and Linda Tapsil from the University of Woolengong in Australia was published in Nutrition Review. And anything else they wrote.

Excuse me for writing such notes here. It is quite on topic of the thread, though, other than being about people rather than chickens. I think the concepts apply to chickens too.

 

[Perris]

No worries @saysfaa; your posts are absolutely on topic.

 

[saysfaa]

Short version of this post - the experiments done about whether chickens will balance their own diets when offered all of the ingredients of a balanced diet was done with people (babies) too. With similar results - they do.

Long version -

About a third of the way in, he tells of Clara Davis, a pediatrician who was concerned about what the medical establishment was pushing in the 1920s:

"No one can satisfactorily prescribe food for an infant who does not have knowledge of the composition of that food." quote of an article in the journal of the American Medical Association. American mothers were routinely given eating lessons based on the latest nutritional science. But the children didn't seem to care about the data and refused to eat the food. It became such a problem that the majority of visits to pediatricians during the 1920s were about fussy eating. The profession advised parents to let children go hungry and be firm... an example is telling parents with children who vomited (willfully or not) that "force is necessary... Give such a child a small amount of the food. If he vomits, give him more until he keeps that food down."

Not from the book but my oldest child was born, my grandmother told me the doctor told her to feed my mother every four hours. Grandma told him that the baby gets hungry at three hours. He insisted it was important to get the baby on a schedule. So, my mother cried the last hour nearly every time. Fifty years later, Grandma still looked haunted as she told me; she said: I couldn't understand what was wrong with a 3-hour schedule but he was the doctor and was so sure. It is good you are feeding her when she is hungry.

Anyway,

Davis knew there was no evidence for such an approach from history and that wild animals seemed to be able to maintain their health without being told what to eat by scientists. She was worried about the modern food. In one paper she describes "the poor nutrition of infants that were weaned onto the pastries, preserves, gravies, white bread, sugar, and canned foods that are commonly found on the adult table" she thought such foods were incomplete and altered and noted that they "formed no considerable part of the diet a hundred years ago"

She persuaded a number of mothers (a dozen or so) to place their children in her laboratory for months at a time, in one case for more than four years, in that is the longest running clinical trial of eating that has ever been conducted.

She let the infants choose their own food and then measured if they could be as healthy as the infants who were fed prescribed diets using the best nutritional advise of the time.

Her hypothesis is that since the body has internal regulatory mechanisms for water and oxygen intake, heart rate, blood pressure, body temperature and every other physiological variable, the same thing should be true for body composition and nutrient intake.

Wow! This going to be too much to put here. He gives a LOT of detail. Incidently, I see why the mothers may have been willing to let the children stay in the lab. The first baby (Earl) was nine months old when he came and showing signs of severe rickets and (maybe) other signs of malnutrition. His mother also did.

Thirty-two foods (named), at least ten at each meal, all what I would call "whole" foods, if any were finished at one meal then a larger quantity of that food was offered at the next, nurses instructions (designed to not influence the choices the children made), how health was measured, how the children acted during meals, and so on.

They "throve" (Davis' word)... many details and descriptions given.

One example: Earl had the option of a small glass of cod liver oil at each meal. He drank from it often but irregularly and in varying amounts until his blood calcium and phosphorus levels reached normal levels and his xrays showed his rickets were healed. At which point he stopped drinking it entirely.

All the children followed this pattern for whatever health problem they had, not necessarily rickets.

Davis was clear that her experiment should not be misinterpreted. She did not believe children should eat anything they wanted. She thought it important for adults to teach children what is good to eat to avoid poisoning and so forth . But they should allow that children should be learning to self regulate their eating in response to what they need.

Edit to add: under the long version has a lot that is semi-quoted from the book Ultra-Processed People

 

[saysfaa]

I just finished "Salt Your Way to Health" by David Brownstein, MD

"...I became interested in the therapeutic use of salt ten years ago after observing that many of my patients were doong poorly on a low-salt diet... In my search for safe and natural holistic remedies I came across unrefined salt. Unrefined salt contains over 80 essential minerals. Refined salt has no minerals. ...I was leery about using salt, especially in thise patients with hypertension. I was taught in medical school that salt=hypertension...However, my clinical experience has shown that many patients with hypertension had a significant improvement in their blood pressure when mineral deficits were corrected with mineral supplementation... when I began using unrefined salt as part of a holistic regimen to correct mineral deficits...I found ... high blood pressure began improving... immune system and hormonal system, as well as other areas of the body.

How could salt be helping all these conditions when I had been taught salt was bad? I began to search the medical literature and I was struck by what I found...

It has been five years since I wrote the first edition... Since that time I have treated thousands of patients with unrefined salt. I continue to support the use of unrefined salt for promoting health. In fact, time has only assured me of the benefits of using unrefined salt in any dietary regimen."

"...Refined salt does not contain minerals and its use leads to the depletion of minerals in the body..."

The quotes are all from the prefaces. I condensed but kept the message pretty well, I think.

Chapter 1 History of Salt
Chapter 2 The Difference Between Refined and Unrefined Salt
Chapter 3 What Makes Good Salt? Minerals
Chapter 4 Problems with Low Salt Diets
Chapter 5 Hypertension and Salt
Chapter 6 Salt and Water
Chapter 7 Salt and the Adrenal Glands
Chapter 8 Salt and the Thyroid
Chapter 9 Salt and Detoxification
Chapter 10 Uses of Salt
Chapter 11 Final Thoughts

All of the chapters make a lot of sense to me. It is in line with other things I've been learning about how ultra refined foods work/don't work/harm at a cellular level.

Oh. He says people in renal failure, in particular, should talk with their nephrologist before changing how they use salt. I didn't notice any other such cautions but may have missed them.

 

[Sally PB]

Unrefined salt contains over 80 essential minerals.

Where would I find unrefined salt? I would give it a try. I don't salt my food, almost at all, because of the strong correlation between high blood pressure and salt. My dad died from complications of a stroke at age 58.

Minerals are critical to health. I wish more emphasis was placed on their role.

 

[saysfaa]

I found it at Walmart but haven't seen it at any of the Walmarts I go near regularly. Since some carry it, others can probably order it. Himalayan salt is much easier to find and has some minerals - maybe 3/4 as many if I remember right from my sister's research. I trust Himalayan less becuase it has been more popular; generally, more popular things like this get the attention of people who find a cheaper, faster, ie likely more processed way to provide it.

I've seen Mediterranean Sea Salt and some from Hawaii (brand is Palm Island or something similar) in grocery stores but I don't know how refined they are. They at least have color to them and don't have anti-caking agents added - two aspects of unrefined salt.

The book gives two
Celticseasalt
Realsalt
Both are dot com

Hm, the first has a locate retailers tab that is not active. Maybe their customer service number can help. This is the brand I found at Walmart.

 

[Sally PB]

I trust Himalayan less becuase it has been more popular; generally, more popular things like this get the attention of people who find a cheaper, faster, ie likely more processed way to provide it.

Yup.

 

[Perris]

These are the best here
https://www.halenmon.com/
https://maldonsalt.com/

 

[BDutch]

FYI:

In the Netherlands, Belgium and probably in many more countries, we have a problem with PFAS in our environment.

A research in backyard chicken eggs around a factory that produces PFAS showed an alarming amount of PFAS in the eggs (published last September). The message: don't eat eggs from BYC near the factory. They researched a wider area and found PFAS in other backyard too who where further away from the factory they could not explain.

January 16, 2024
The NOS (our national news) has had eggs from hobby chickens examined at 12 locations in Friesland, Utrecht and Limburg. PFAS was found at six locations, and at three (Bloelenslaan, Maartensdijk and Smakt) the concentrations were higher than the EU limit value. The PFAS turned out not to come from the Chemours company in Dordrecht. It is not known where the PFAS comes from. The substance may have spread through the air, but may also be in the food.
As is known, PFAS is also found in pesticides. In 2022, pesticides containing PFAS were found several times in the Rhine and the Meuse. These involved concentrations above the drinking water standard. Scientists recommend limiting the consumption of eggs from hobby chickens. That advice certainly applies to children.

 

[Sally PB]

In the Netherlands, Belgium and probably in many more countries, we have a problem with PFAS in our environment.

PFAS is in a lot of people's wells in the Grand Rapids, MI area, about 35-40 miles from me. A tannery dumped a lot of their waste (leather treated with waterproofing chemicals containing PFAS) not far from homes.