Sweet Substitute: English Toffee Fat Bombs!

Ingredients:

• 1 cup coconut oil
• 2 tbs butter
• 4 oz cream cheese
• 3/4 Tbs cocoa powder
• 1/2 cup of Natural Peanut Butter
• 3 Tbs Davinci Gourmet Sugar Free English Toffee Syrup

Directions:
Put all of your ingredients in a pot on the stovetop on a medium/low heat.  
Stir until everything melts together and is smooth.
Pour them into a mold of some kind. 
Pop those suckers in the freezer for a few hours. After a few hours, they’ll be good to go.
Pop them out and try not to eat them all!
They store well in the freezer.

source: http://ketogirlblog.wordpress.com/2013/11/18/english-toffee-fat-bombs/

A Must Have!

 

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Dinner Fix: Cilantro-Lime Jalapeno Chicken Salad!

 

 Ingredients:

• 3 large chicken breasts
• poaching liquid (chicken stock, water, carrots, celery, onion, thyme, bay leaf, peppercorns)
• 1 jalapeño diced (with seeds scraped out)
• 4 Tbs cilantro coarsely chopped
• 1 lime, juiced
• 1/4 red onion diced fine
• 1/3 cup mayo (plus a little more if needed)
• 1 Tbs Dijon mustard
• 1 tsp cumin
• salt and pepper
• 2 ripe avocados 

Directions:
Season chicken with salt and pepper and *poach.
Remove chicken from liquid and shred with a fork.
Once chicken has cooled add mayo, Dijon, cumin, lime juice, salt and pepper and incorporate. 
Add more mayo and lime if necessary.
 Mix in red onion, jalapeño and cilantro.
Cool in fridge for several hours to let flavors merge and serve with avocado
.
*To Poach – In a medium pot add chicken breasts to the poaching liquid.  The chicken should be completely immersed.  Bring to a boil and then immediately reduce heat and partially cover.  Reduce heat to a simmer for 10 minutes (be sure to just simmer and not boil….and no longer than 10 minutes since you don’t want the chicken to turn “rubbery”).  Remove from heat and let chicken remain in the liquid for about 15 minutes.   Reserve the liquid for future use.

source: http://dailycrave.wordpress.com/2011/08/17/cilantro-lime-jalapeno-chicken-salad/

Diabetes Update

Study: Lower Your Cholesterol and Raise Your Risk of Death Following Mainstream Diet Advice

You've been hearing for decades about how a healthy diet is one that lowers your intake of saturated fats and replaces them with "healthy" unsaturated oils. This, you have been told, will lower your cholesterol and your risk of having a heart attack.

What you probably didn't hear is that a study published in the British Medical Journal (BMJ) February of this past year found that though the first claim is true--swapping out saturated fats for vegetable oils will lower your cholesterol--if the oil you use instead of saturated fat is full of omega-6 fatty acid, like safflower oil or corn oil, the second claim is completely false.

The study found that when men who had already had a heart attack replaced saturated fats with safflower oil and ate margarine made with safflower oil they significantly raised the risk that they would die of a heart attack, stroke or, in fact, any cause of death, over the next five years.

How significantly was that risk raised? The study states: "Among the control and intervention groups combined, an increase of 5% of food energy from unspecified PUFA [polyunsaturated fatty acids] predicted about 30% higher risk of cardiovascular death and all cause mortality.

A reduction in SFA [saturated fat] and increase in the PUFA:SFA ratio were also associated with increased risks of all cause and cardiovascular mortality." In short, the more they replaced saturated fat with "healthy" polyunsaturated oil the more likely they were to die.

I was only made aware of this study last week, when the Canadian Medical Association Journal (CMAJ) published an opinion piece questioning whether the government should be putting "heart healthy" labels on corn oil and other polyunsaturated fats. (Details HERE.) They cited the February BMJ study in their write-up.

What doesn't come across in the small amount of press the CMAJ article got is something that makes the BMJ study even more significant:  The data that this finding was based on was 40 years old. It was collected during the Sydney Diet Heart Study, a  randomized controlled trial conducted in 1966-73.

This was one of the many landmark interventional studies whose result was used to convince doctors that replacing saturated fats with polyunsaturated fats would lower cholesterol and, by implication, prevent heart disease.

But while the authors of the original study published the finding that the polyunsaturated fats would lower both cholesterol and triglycerides, they did not look to see whether lowering cholesterol with this intervention actually helped prevent heart-related deaths.

They eventually admitted in a study published in 1978--a full 5 years after they began to publish their results--that there was a higher "all cause mortality" in the group eating the safflower oil, but they did not look at whether these deaths were from cardiovascular-related causes. This was a surprising omission, given the point of the dietary intervention--to lower cholesterol in order to prevent heart attacks.

So it was only in the last few years that a new group of researchers were able to go back to the original study's raw data and take another look at it. When they did so, they discovered what they term "previously missing data."  This "missing data" was the data that led to the conclusion that there was a 30% greater risk of cardiovascular death among the people in the study who ate the cholesterol-lowering oil.

Where the Smoking Gun Was Hiding

Getting at this missing  data was not a trivial process. The original study data had been stored on 9-track tape--the kind you can see at left--which used to be used by IBM 360 series mainframe computers. There are only a very few data recovery specialists around who can still read these kinds of tapes.

Once they recovered the data, the researchers did a very careful analysis, teasing out other factors that might have affected the death rate and, most significantly, analyzing whether the transfat associated with the margarine the test subjects ate might have explained the higher death rate. They conclude it did not.

They also point out that this re-analysis of the data echoes what was found in two other re-analyses of 1960-70s era cholesterol/heart diet trials: Linoleic acid, with its high proportion of Omega-6 fatty acid and complete lack of Omega-3 fatty acid is really toxic stuff.

You can read the whole BMJ study here:

Use of dietary linoleic acid for secondary prevention of coronary heart disease and death: evaluation of recovered data from the Sydney Diet Heart Study and updated meta-analysis.

Omega-6 Fatty Acids Promote Inflammation

The researchers believe that the reason that the polyunsaturated oils used in these cholesterol-lowering diets were so toxic was because the vegetable oils used were very high in Linoleic Acid, an Omega-6 fatty acid, and devoid of the  countervailing Omega-3 fatty acids you need to consume to keep Omega-6 fatty acids from promoting inflammation.

So, okay. Safflower oil is now out of your diet. But it turns out that safflower oil is not the only common vegetable oil that is rich in linoleic oil.  Corn oil  is very high in it, too. You can see a complete list of oils sorted by their percentage of Linoleic acid HERE.

Finally, though health nuts who still fear that eating saturated fat will kill them will tell you that canola oil and flaxseed oil are healthier alternatives, neither of these oils has been a part of the human diet for any significant period of time the way animal and dairy fats have been.

Canola oil does contain Omega-3 fatty acids, but the process used to take away its rank smell and keep it from going rancid is likely to damage them. Damaged Omega-3 oils is not healthy. Flaxseed oil is the recently renamed stuff we used to call linseed oil and use for mixing up oil based paint--which it often tastes like.  It's safe to eat if you keep it refrigerated and don't let it go rancid, but since it is not a traditional food, I would suggest eating it in small quantities.

Palm oil is another fat that has recently made its way into our food system, as manufacturers are using it as a replacement for the hydrogenated oils full of transfat. But while there may be health benefits from consuming the palm oil eaten in traditional societies, the industrially processed palm oil that is appearing on supermarket shelves is very different stuff and may very well be harboring transfat-like molecules that escape the FDA labeling requirements. And besides that, it often tastes--and refuses to melt--suspiciously like lipgloss. Treat it with caution.

Stick to the traditional healthy vegetable oils and fats like olive, coconut , and melted butter, and you are more likely to actually improve your health.

source: http://diabetesupdate.blogspot.com/2013/11/study-lower-your-cholesterol-and-raise.html

How Foods Affects Our Bodies!

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Snack Shift: Bacon Wrapped Smokies!

Ingredients:

• 1 pound sliced bacon, cut into thirds
• 1 (14 ounce) package beef cocktail wieners
• 3/4 cup sugar-free maple syrup

Directions:

1. Preheat the oven to 325 degrees F (165 degrees C).
2. Refrigerate 2/3 of the bacon until needed. It is easier to wrap the wieners with cold bacon. Wrap each cocktail wiener with a piece of bacon and secure with a toothpick. Place on a large baking sheet. Drizzle maple syrup generously over all.
3. Bake for 40 minutes in the preheated oven, until the syrup is bubbly. To serve, place the wieners in a slow cooker and keep on the low setting.

adapted from: http://www.piarecipes.com/2013/11/bacon-wrapped-smokies.html

Better Beginnings: Herb Baked Eggs with Parmesan & Kale!

Ingredients:

• 1 tbsp unsalted butter, softened 
• 1/4 cup Parmesan cheese, grated
• 1/2 tsp fresh rosemary, minced
• 1/2 tsp fresh thyme, minced
• 1 tbsp fresh parsley, minced
• 8 eggs
• 4 strips bacon, cooked and crumbled
• 1/4 cup kale, sautéed and chopped 
• salt and pepper to taste

Directions:
Heat oven to 375°F. 
Butter four ramekins. 
Combine the cheese and herbs in a small bowl. 
Crack two eggs into a bowl or cup, taking care not to break the yolks. 
Pour the two eggs into a ramekin and repeat until all four ramekins have eggs. 
Sprinkle bacon, kale, and the cheese-herb blend over the eggs. 
Finish with a dash of salt and freshly ground pepper. 
Bake the eggs for 10-15 minutes until the eggs have achieved desired doneness: less time for runny yolks, more time for firm yolks. Keep in mind that shallow ramekins will cook faster than deeper ramekins (uh, I found this out the first time around). 
Serve immediately. 

source: http://userealbutter.com/2010/12/28/baked-eggs-recipe/ 

New Research Finds Diabetes Can Be Reversed

I have recently spent more time in drugs stores than I would like helping my sister on her journey through (and hopefully to the other side of) cancer. Rite Aid, CVS and Walgreens all had large diabetes sections offering support for a "diabetes lifestyle" -- glucose monitors, lancets, blood pressure cuffs, medications, supplements and pharmacy magazines heavily supported by pharmaceutical advertising. Patients are encouraged to get their eye check ups, monitor their blood pressure, track their blood sugars, have foot exams and see their doctor regularly for better management of their blood sugars -- all apparently sensible advice for diabetics.

But what if Type 2 diabetes could be completely reversed? What if it weren't, as we believe, an inexorable, progressive disease that has to be better "managed" by our health care system with better drugs, surgery and coordination of care? What if intensive lifestyle and dietary changes could completely reverse diabetes?

A ground breaking new study in Diabetologia proved that, indeed, Type 2 diabetes can be reversed through diet changes, and, the study showed, this can happen quickly: in one to eight weeks. That turns our perspective on diabetes upside down. Diabetes is not a one-way street.

We used to believe that once cells in your pancreas that make insulin (beta cells) poop out there was no reviving them and your only hope was more medication or insulin. We now know that is not so.
Continuing misconceptions about what causes diabetes and our unwillingness to embrace methods know to reverse it have lead to a catastrophic increase in the illness. Today one in four Americans over 60 years old has Type 2 diabetes. By 2020, one in two Americans will have pre-diabetes or diabetes. Tragically, physicians will miss the diagnosis for 90 percent with pre-diabetes or diabetes. (Below I tell you exactly what tests to ask your doctor to perform and how to interpret them).

From 1983 to 2008, world-wide diabetes incidence has increased seven-fold from 35 to 240 million. Remarkably, in just the past three years from 2008 to 2011, we have added another 110 million to the diabetes roll call. And increasingly small children as young as eight are being diagnosed with Type 2 diabetes (formerly called adult-onset diabetes). They are having strokes at 15 years old and needing cardiac bypasses at 25 year old. The economic burden of caring for these people with pre-diabetes and diabetes will be $3.5 trillion over 10 years.

If we have a known cure, a proven way to reverse this disease, shouldn't we be focused on implementing programs to scale this cure? Unfortunately despite this extraordinary new research, the findings will likely be pushed aside in favor of the latest greatest pill or surgical technique because behavior and lifestyle change is "hard." In fact, with the right conditions and support, lifestyle diet and lifestyle change is very achievable.

What did research show?
Reversing Diabetes: Can it Be Done in a Week?
The study, entitled Reversal of Type 2 diabetes: normalization of beta cell function in association with decrease pancreas and liver triglycerides, was exquisitely done. The bottom line: A dramatic diet change (protein shake, low glycemic load, plant-based low-calorie diet but no exercise) in diabetics reversed most features of diabetes within one week and all features by eight weeks. That's right, diabetes was reversed in one week. That's more powerful than any drug known to modern science.

We know from gastric bypass patients that with rapid changes in diet right after surgery, within just a few days, without significant weight loss, diabetes goes away -- fatty livers heal, cholesterol levels plummet. Some theorized it was because of changes in the stomach hormones related to the gastric surgery. Others, including the researchers of this new study surmised that maybe it was just the drastic change in diet. So they went about studying just the diet change without surgery.
They studied 11 people with diabetes and compared them to a control group. Through very sophisticated techniques including MRI imaging, they measured their blood sugar and insulin responses, cholesterol levels and fat in the pancreas and liver (some of the hallmarks of diabetes) before and after diet changes at one, four and eight weeks.

What they found was revolutionary. The beta cells -- the pancreas' insulin producing cells -- woke up, and the fat deposits in the pancreas and liver went away. Blood sugars normalized in just one week, triglycerides dropped in half in one week and reduced 10-fold in eight weeks. The body's cells became more insulin sensitive and essentially, in just eight weeks, all evidence of diabetes was gone and the diabetic patients looked just like the normal controls on all the testing.

With focused, strategic, scientifically based nutritional intervention, combined with exercise, stress management and sugar and insulin balancing nutritional supplements, many of my patients completely reverse their diabetes. And the side effects -- more energy, better sleep, improved sexual function and weight loss -- are all good.
What most don't realize is that pre-diabetes and diabetes exist on a continuum and both dramatically increase the risk of heart attacks, stroke, cancer, infertility, sexual dysfunction, depression and dementia. You don't have to get diabetes to be at risk for all those problems. That is why it is so important to get your doctor to diagnose pre-diabetes early and implement an intensive lifestyle program to help you reserve it.

You may be at risk if you have extra belly fat, have a family history of diabetes, gestational diabetes, are in at risk ethnic group (Asian, Hispanic, African American, Native American, Middle Eastern), have high triglycerides (> 150 mg/dl) or a low HDL (< 50 mg/dl) or have high blood pressure.
If any of these apply to you or you have other cause for concern, here is what to do.

How to Reverse Your Diabetes
First, get your doctor to test the following:
1. A 75-gram glucose tolerance test measuring BOTH glucose and insulin fasting and one and two hours later. Your fasting blood sugar should be less than 100 mg/dl and your one and two hour sugar levels should be less than 130 mg/dl. Your fasting insulin should be less than 10, and your one and two hour levels should be less than 35.
2. Triglycerides should be less than 150 mg/dl and HDL (good cholesterol) should be over 50 mg/dl, and the triglyceride to HDL ratio should be less than four. These ranges are meaningful only if you are on no medication.
3. Newer cholesterol tests measure the size of your cholesterol particles and is very effective in diagnosing problems with pre-diabetes early. In fact, this is the only cholesterol test we should be performing.

And here's the program I use for my patients to reverse diabetes:
1. Eat a low glycemic load, high fiber, plant-based diet of vegetables, beans, nuts, limited whole grains, fruit and lean animal protein
2. Vigorous exercise (fast walking, running, biking, etc.) 30 minutes four to five times a week and strength training 20 minutes three times a week
3. Take a good multivitamin, fish oil, vitamin D and blood sugar and insulin balancing nutrients (including chromium and alpha lipoic acid)
Remember, pre-diabetes and diabetes is not a one way street and the solution is not at the bottom of a pill bottle or the end of an insulin syringe, it is at the end of your fork and in the shoes on your feet!

source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-mark-hyman/reverse-diabetes_b_918539.html