The standard American diet (SAD diet) is always changing and Americans are always up for a new trend. In the late 1980s, we saw a turn to low fat diets to stave off weight gain and heart disease. Of course, when you remove the fat from food it becomes less satisfying and less flavorful. Enter sugar. Yes, the best way to make a fat-free or low-fat food more palatable is to add more sugar. Of course, good sugar is expensive. So food manufacturers turned to high fructose corn syrup (more on this later!).
The SnackWell Effect
In the early 90s we saw the rise of products like SnackWells. These low- to fat-free goodies included cookies, crackers, yogurt, and other snacks to replace their full-fat counterparts. The only problem is that you might eat two or three regular cookies and be satisfied. SnackWell chocolate chip cookies, on the other hand, tasted good but never satisfied you. They had no fat to slow the sugar or to slow gastric emptying. So we ate, and ate, and ate some more. Good marketing leads to bad health.
This phenomenon was so rampant that they actually have coined the “SnackWell Effect.” According to Wikipedia, “The SnackWell Effect is a phenomenon that states that dieters will eat more low-calorie cookies, such as SnackWells, than they otherwise would for normal cookies.” Americans were forced up at least one clothing size by these sugar-laden treats. Scary enough this brand still seems to lurk in supermarket aisles somewhere between bags of 100 calorie snacks (another trend designed to make us want more!).
The Atkins Diet
After endless bowls of fat-free pasta, cookies, candies, and cakes Americans were sick of being hungry and fat. We needed a new way to eat because clearly this wasn’t working. So a new trend started to arrive in the mid-1990s. Carbohydrates became the devil and protein was king. Surely if all carbohydrate didn’t work, then all protein would? Diets like Atkins and the somewhat more moderate South Beach and Zone diets became the rage. True, getting rid of your carbohydrates can certainly help you lose weight quickly. Of course, this occurs by dehydration which is not the best way to become slim. Not to mention the problems associated with the limiting of fruits and vegetables! Of course, just one bite of bread and ten pounds of water weight returns. At some point your body will force you off this high protein diet in favor of our preferred energy source, carbohydrates. So we lost some weight on Atkins, but unfortunately put it all back on plus some. So our waistlines grew some more!
The Paleo Diet
So how could we improve on the beauty of Atkins? Enter the Paleo diet. Eating like a caveman will help us be thin and healthy, right? Grass-fed meats, fish and seafood, eggs, fresh fruit and vegetables, nuts and seeds, and healthy oils are on the safe list. We now banish grains, legumes, dairy, refined sugar, potatoes, processed foods, salt, and refined vegetable oils. Okay, wait, this time we might see some sense in this fad. Are Americans really starting to come around? Perhaps, but we are all about the products. We can still have cookies right? Yes, just use almond meal instead of flour. Bread? No problem, use coconut flour. We get that there are foods we cannot eat, but we refuse to give up our favorite things.
The Cost of Fad Diets
So as you can see, I am passionate about the high cost of fad diets. Why is it? In the end we find ways to get sugar back into our diet. We are designed to crave sugar. We are busy too. We work all the time, sleep very little, and rely on restaurants and prepared foods to fill our bellies. So the more we like a product, the more we will buy. Food manufacturers are intelligent and they know what we crave. They want to keep food costs low so they use high fructose corn syrup. Fructose catabolism in the liver can disrupt fuel metabolism by moving us from creating fuel to storing fuel. This means that if we don’t need any more energy immediately than we will store this sweet treat as fat.
Even more important to understand is that fructose has no effect on leptin (a hormone secreted by adipose tissue). This is simply because fructose does not trigger insulin secretion. Without insulin, our satiating friend leptin is nowhere to be found. Why is this? Well, if we go back to our Paleodays fructose was only found in fruits and vegetables. No release of leptin meant that when we found the nutritional jackpot of fruits and vegetables we would eat as much as we could.
Leptin has a role in the obesity epidemic. This hormone is designed to reduce hunger levels after a meal. When food is needed leptin levels decrease to trigger hunger. However, as more and more leptin is released cells become resistant. As a result, the hunger/satiety mechanism is not appropriate in modern times where there is plenty of feasting and relatively scarce famine.
Of course, we now pay the fructose consequence. It is such a highly addictive item because it cannot ever end our hunger. Further, many people can’t even absorb fructose in large amounts (20 to 50 grams). In almost 60% of adults, high fructose intake may lead to intestinal distress, symptomatic of malabsorption, which frequently appears following intake of 50 grams or more of pure fructose. While this may be hard to do eating your fruits and veggies, a 25 ounce coke will get you there in no time flat! What we see is that fructose is not only addictive, but it will cause malabsorption and malnutrition as it crowds out healthier foods.
People often ask whether our diet really affects our behavior and attitudes. The answer is a definitive yes. We are truly addicted. The worse the food is, the more we want. Pile it on. Fructose, salt, MSG, gluten, dairy, soy. Pick your poison! The more sensitive you are, the more you will crave the substance. It will hold you captive until you are an inflamed mess. We gain weight. We get grumpy. We can’t think straight. It affects every ounce of our being. Switching to a healthy diet free of these drugs is difficult, but can certainly clear our minds and our bodies. It allows us to function in ways that most Americans will unfortunately never know.
The next time you decide to try a fad diet skip purchasing the latest diet book. Concentrate on the things that we all know are true. Eat your fruits and vegetables. Work your way up to seven to 11 servings per day with only one to three being fruit. Avoid processed foods and consume whole grains if you choose to eat grains. Choose lean sources of protein including fish, eggs, poultry, lean meats and beans. Incorporate healthy fats like fish oil, nuts, seeds, avocado, coconut and olive oil. Eat a wind range of natural foods. Avoid excessive sugars, cookies, candies and cakes. In the end Michael Pollen said it best in Food Rules: An Eater’s Manual, “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.”
Jessica Pizano is the owner of Fit to You, LLC, which offers clinical nutrition and nutrigenomic counseling, as well as personalized training programs. She completed her training to practice Health Coaching at the Institute for Integrative Nutrition and is certified as a holistic health practitioner through the American Association of Drugless Practitioners. She earned a master’s degree in human nutrition that emphasizes functional medicine at the University of Bridgeport. She is continuing her studies at Maryland University of Integrative Health where she is pursuing a doctor of clinical nutrition. Currently, Jessica practices nutrition counseling, nutrigenomics, and personal training in her studio in Avon. She may be contacted at (860) 321-7234 or online at www.fittoyouct.com.