The Farm (Shares) Report – 06/09/09

Fans of local food should check out this week’s Farm (Shares) Report on my other blog, Psipsina.

http://psipsina.wordpress.com/2009/06/09/the-farm-shares-report-060909-seven-pounds-of-greens/

In Which the Migraineur Laments the Sorry State of Health Science

First of all, yes, I’ve been away for a while, and no, I don’t know if I’ll be writing regularly again any time soon.

And, my daughter Gillian Rose was born on January 31 – we are all healthy and happy.

Now, on to my topic.  Front page news on today’s New York Times:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/09/health/research/09fat.html?_r=1&ref=todayspaper

The part that really struck me was this (emphasis mine):

Recently, Dr. Kozak put mice predisposed to obesity in a cold room, 41 degrees, for a week. The animals activated their brown fat. As a result, they lost 14 percent of their weight, which constituted 47 percent of their body fat, while eating a high-fat diet with two and a half times more calories than they had consumed at room temperature.

“That’s just by going out in the cold, without any drug treatment,” Dr. Kozak said.

Now, surely it doesn’t take a PhD to realize that changing both the temperature of the room and the diet of the mice introduces a confound into the experiment.  I would expect any freshman science major with a decent grade-point average to recognize that it is impossible to tell from such an experiment, at least as it is described by Kolata (who is, admittedly, not the brightest star among health journalists) whether the mice’s diet led to weight loss, or whether it was the cooler room temperature, or a combination of the two.

And in fact, at least three variables have changed: the temperature of the room, the fat content of the mice’s diet, and one or more of the following: the total calories consumed by the mice; the total amount of carbohydrate; the total amount of protein; or the ratios of fat, carbohydrate, and protein.  As Gary Taubes points out, you can’t alter one macronutrient without altering something else about the diet.

Of course, if you believe that a calorie is a calorie is a calorie, then the fact that the mice lost weight on more calories would suggest that it was the room temperature that caused the weight loss.  But if you recognize that the body treats fat differently than carbohydrates, that the body can waste fat calories much more easily than carb calories, then the entire experiment (again, as described by Kolata) is suspect.

Put another way – I’ve lived in 65-degree rooms every winter my whole adult life.  Why didn’t I maintain a healthy weight until I upped the fat and lowered the carbs?

Holy Canoli, Batman – Migraineur Passes GTT

I rather reluctantly took the dumbed down pregnancy version of the glucose tolerance test today.  I say it’s dumbed down because 1) you get only 50 g of glucose instead of 75, 2) you don’t have to fast, and 3) it only lasts an hour.

Still, I wasn’t thrilled about taking it, because I was pretty sure I would fail it.  And failing it would mean being subjected to the much nastier fasting 3-hour GTT, which I was also pretty sure I would flunk.  And flunking that would mean a diagnosis of gestational diabetes, and that would mean I’d be shuffled through the whole nightmare that is diabetes care in America, including, no doubt, a visit to a nutritionist who would push the ADA diet on me.  While I could and would ignore that advice, it’s still a hassle and an annoyance.

Furthermore, I’ve chosen to give birth at a birth center that only handles low-risk pregnancies.  Their definition of low-risk allows for diabetic moms, but only if they can control their blood sugar without medication.  Now, I’m pretty sure I can do that, but it’s just another layer of hassle.  Plus – I haven’t written about this yet, but it’s fairly important to me – the less my pregnancy gets treated as an illness and the more it’s handled as a normal body function, the happier I’ll be.  Getting a GDM (gestational diabetes mellitus) diagnosis doesn’t actually fit into the “keep your bloody medical instruments off of me and my baby” ideal that I’m hoping for.

Now, I’ve turned down all kinds of tests that the birth center considers discretionary, but the GTT is mandatory.  The midwives want to know if there’s a likelihood of a high birthweight baby, with all the risks that implies.

So I drank down 10 oz. of orange-flavored and -colored sugar water, and waited.  And I sneakily took my own readings a couple of times, too.

Fasting this morning:  94
Right before the orange drink (about 1 hr after breakfast):  82
15 minutes after the drink:  136

At that point, I thought I was sunk – if it was 136 after 15 minutes, what would it be like in an hour?  But I didn’t get a chance to take another sneaky reading at 30 minutes like I’d planned, because I got called into the midwife’s office for my appointment.

At 1 hour, the nurse (whom I really like) drew my blood.  I guess I was expecting immediate results, but they actually send the blood off to the lab.  So as soon as the blood was drawn, I popped back into the bathroom and took my own reading.

90.  At about 1 hour and 5 minutes after consuming the glucose.

Obviously, this isn’t official, and I suppose it’s possible that somehow the lab will come up with a reading of 150 or something, but it seems pretty unlikely.  The Migraineur is breathing a big fat sigh of relief here.

Book Review: The Girlfriends’ Guide to Pregnancy

Here is my Goodreads review of The Girlfriends’ Guide to Pregnancy.

The Girlfriends’ Guide to Pregnancy: Second Edition by Vicki Iovine

rating: 2 of 5 stars
Or, as my husband aptly dubbed it, “The Girlfriends’ Guide to Being a Self-Indulgent Twit.”

Let me start by saying that there are a couple of good things about this one.

First, it is full of the kind of anecdotes about what pregnancy is like – swollen boobs, swollen feet, hemorrhoids, how to buy maternity clothes, when to expect morning sickness to end – that previous generations got from their mothers, aunts, grandmothers, sisters, and childhood friends. In a world where many of us live hundreds or thousands of miles from the most important women in our lives, it’s nice to have a reassuring compendium of all the stuff that happens, and to learn that it is completely normal.

Second, the list of what to take with you to the hospital when you go into labor looks to me to be useful and includes items I wouldn’t have thought of but plan to add to my suitcase.

So why do I rate the book so low?

Well, first of all, the constant theme of “x symptom is very common and normal in pregnancy, but we don’t know why – ask your doctor” is irksome. With apologies to my doctor friends, who learns anything useful from a doctor in a fifteen-minute appointment? I have learned at least nine-tenths of everything I know about my health and my body from reading books and trolling the internet, and frankly I was hoping Iovine would add to my store of knowledge instead of brushing me off. Had I bought the book instead of borrowing it from the library, I’d feel cheated out of 20 clams.

But more important, I was alarmed, rather than reassured, by Iovine’s insistence that interventions like caesarians, continuous fetal heart monitors, episiotomies, and the other, frequently unnecessary torture and mutilation that obstetricians inflict on women during labor and delivery are normal and somehow OK. She seems to have confused “frequent” with normal, largely because so many of her Girlfriends (the capital G is hers) suffered these procedures. This review is not the place to go into the alarmingly high 30% caesarian rate in the US, and how appallingly it exceeds the World Health Organization’s recommendation of 10% or less. (Yes, folks, that is almost 1 in 3 pregnant American women who will go under the knife.) Suffice it to say that I couldn’t help wondering if Iovine’s insistence that it is no big deal for a pregnant woman to gain substantially more weight than the current recommendations, or her bizarre, completely unsubstantiated opinion that pregnancy is a great excuse to avoid exercise (she seriously says this), had anything to do with the fact that apparently none of her Girlfriends-with-a-Capital-G managed to have a perfectly normal, natural delivery.

Give this one a pass – go for an informative, truly reassuring book like the classic What to Expect When You’re Expecting.

View all my reviews.

My review

Book Review: The Pregnancy Cookbook

Here’s my book review of Hope Ricciotti’s The Pregnancy Cookbook from Goodreads:

The Pregnancy Cookbook, Revised and Expanded Edition by Hope Ricciotti

rating: 1 of 5 stars
I knew I wasn’t going to get along with Ricciotti when I opened the book at random and read the intro to her french toast recipe:

My review

 
Although traditional French toast contains plenty of carbohydrates, it also contains a considerable amount of fat from egg yolks and whole milk, not to mention the butter in which it is cooked. We have been preparing a lower-fat version for years using eggs and egg whites, and skim milk in place of whole, to keep the fat and cholesterol down.

This was my first clue that Ricciotti’s command of prenatal nutrition was weak at best. Why should a pregnant woman limit egg yolks? They are just about the most perfect food for pregnancy, loaded with multiple nutrients, including the fat soluble vitamins that are so important for fetal development. Plus, if you get free range eggs or eggs from hens fed omega-3 supplements, eggs are a great source of DHA, which is crucial for fetal brain development. And all this nutrition comes in a very calorie economical package: 70 calories for one large egg.

Furthermore, her praise of carbohydrates rings false in a world where an increasing number of mothers are diagnosed with gestational diabetes, a condition that puts the baby at risk for high birth weight and other complications.

What seems to be operating here is the current American hysteria about dietary fat combined with fears about excessive weight gain for mothers. I might have sympathy for this position if Ricciotti had not admitted, in her intro to the book, that it was only through sheer willpower that she managed to limit her pregnancy weight gain to the maximum recommended 35 pounds.

There is a fair amount of decent, basic information in the introduction about fetal development and what to expect during pregnancy, but you can find that information in many other books, without the dubious nutritional advice.

Or, as my midwife put it – get ample protein, eat a lot of vegetables, some fruits, and don’t go overboard on carbohydrates. Ricciotti seems to be offering the opposite advice.

View all my reviews.

Migraineur Gains 15 Pounds!

Of which I estimate:

• Body fat:                      6 lbs
• Water retention:           2 lbs
• Breast tissue:               2 lbs
• Extra blood volume:     2 lbs
• Uterine enlargement:   1 lbs
• Amniotic fluid:            1 lb
• Placenta:                        1/4 lb
• Baby:                              1/2 lb

TOTAL:                                  14 3/4 lb

I’m one day shy of 19 weeks.

(My educated guess at the breakdown of my weight gain is based on this nifty chart from http://www.whattoexpect.com.  I know that 19 weeks, the fetus weighs about 8 oz; the other numbers are my best guesses.)

The End of Cheap Corn?

Check out this interactive graphic in the New York Times about price changes in the last year. Absolutely fascinating.

Note that all those shades of blue mean price decreases, while the warm colors (pinks, reds, and golds) mean price increases. And if you zoom in on the Food and Drink section, note that the blues are things like meat and vegetables (and, yes, carbonated drinks), while the reds and golds are breads and cereal products.

Finally, the price of grain is catching up with things like the price of lettuce.

And did you catch how much peanut butter, rice, and pasta prices have gone up in one year? Makes me wonder if people will continue to think of these as cheap foods …

This is a pretty nifty diagram, but I wish it went further. I’d love to see, for example, differences in price between grass-fed meat and CAFO meat, or local produce vs. giant agribusiness.

The Lilacs Are Out!

So I’m changing the theme color to lilac for a while.

(Lilacs are my favorite.)

Where the Heck Have I Been?

OK, first question out of the way – no, I have not fallen off the wagon.  In fact, I’m continuing to lose weight at about a pound a month, same as always.

What’s really happened is that my career is taking off!  I’m much busier, and less bored, during the work day.

Also, this is somewhat less important, but WordPress changed its #$%@*!! authoring interface, and I absolutely hate it.  They made all the features I used all the time less prominent and emphasized all the distracting little stuff I couldn’t care less about.  WordPress people – if you’re reading this – I still hate it.  I don’t really need to see how many posts I’ve written every time I log in, so that does not need to be at the top of the main dashboard page.  On the other hand, when I write a post, I really need to see my categories without scrolling down below the fold, and I need to see ALL of them, not just the most frequently used.  And it used to be much easier to add a new category – the new UI adds several mouseclicks to that process.  So I’m slighly dissatisfied with WordPress now.  Not dissatisfied enough to move my blog, but dissatisfied enough that I am not motivated to write as often as I used to.  >grump<

Recommended Reading: In Defense of Food

Here’s the label on a box of animal crackers that someone is storing in the work fridge (why the fridge? don’t these have a shelf life of 100 years?):

“Good source of calcium.”

To paraphrase Mark Sisson, adding a nutrient to a junk food doesn’t turn it into a health food.

You know, I think all of us low-carb / Paleo / slow food / traditional nutrition / WAPF types have been a little hard on Michael Pollan.  I have a few bones to pick with In Defense of Food, namely an inherent contradiction between his injunction to eat “mostly plants” and his suspicion of corn and other grain products.  (Michael, dear, if we are supposed to limit animal products AND limit grains, where are we supposed to get enough calories to fuel our bodies?  Swigging down glasses of olive oil?)

But the fact that food manufacturers bother to put labels like “a good source of calcium” on foods that are largely made of sugar suggests that it boosts sales.  Which means that people are falling for it.  Which means that Pollan’s advice to avoid foods that make health claims is necessary.

And my own experience supports this, too – I have extremely educated friends with decent incomes who tease me about my insistence on spending more money for cream that doesn’t have added thickeners and stabilizers, or think I’m too picky when I avoid commercial salad dressings because they are made with ingredients that can’t be procured for home use.  So Pollan’s advice not to eat anything your great-grandmother wouldn’t recognize is also sorely needed.

So go read In Defense of Food.  But more to the point, if you’re a regular reader of this blog, you probably already get and agree with 90% of what Pollan says – so give copies of the book to your less enlightened friends.  You know, the ones who buy things like Diet Coke Plus.

(Disclosure:  I work for a company owned by the same company that owns Penguin Press, the publisher of this book.)