Connecting the Dots for CNN’s Dr. Sanjay Gupta: Why Soy-n-Joy’s High-Protein, Low-Glycemic, High-Fiber, Low-Fat, Organic-Tofu, Plant-Based Vegan “Ice Cream” Makes So Much Sense for Appetite and Weight Control. |
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Copyright © 2007 Soy-n-Joy® Connecting the Dots for CNN's Dr. Sanjay Gupta: Why Soy-n-Joy's High-Protein, Low-Glycemic, High-Fiber, Low-Fat, Organic-Tofu, Plant-Based Vegan "Ice Cream" Makes So Much Sense for Appetite and Weight Control. Dr. Sanjay Gupta's Special Investigation Unit (S.I.U.) program, "Fed Up: America's Killer Diet", first aired on CNN on September 22 and 23, 2007, drew so much attention that it was re-aired immediately the following weekend. The program began with a real-life example of Adrian, originally a skinny eleven-year-old boy from Jamaica, who gained 30 pounds after spending just months in Atlanta. He became fascinated with and habitually adapted to the American diet. The result? He developed high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and was borderline type-2 diabetic. His mother was worried that Adrian might develop full-blown diabetes, having heard horror-stories of wounds that wouldn't heal and cases where the amputation of an arm or a leg was warranted. Fortunately, after she stopped buying junk food and resorted to home-cooked healthy meals, Adrian was gradually relieved of the diabetic threats and finally put his mother's mind at ease. Adrian was lucky. But his case also illustrated the fact that overweight health threats could be reversed by choosing and sticking to the right strategy. Of course, his mother's being informed of the health threats, having loving and caring values to inspire decisions, and adopting a disciplined approach were instrumental in effecting Adrian's recovery, but Adrian's own commitment to behavioral change is what makes the ultimate difference. Dr Sanjay Gupta ambitiously packed a lot into the one-hour program. The coverage was far and wide, but exactly because it covered so much, some key insights were overlooked in the face of obvious data. The first came from the experiment involving chicken wings, orchestrated by Dr. Brian Wansink of Cornell University, author of the book "Mindless Eating." In that experiment, those mindless eaters, unaware of how much they had eaten, consumed 14 % more chicken wings than the mindfully aware did. While the message to drive home is that environmental factors can impact our food intake, the flipside to note is that people will eventually stop eating when they feel full (though the feel comes late), irrespective of the fact that they can passively overeat (here by 14%), especially with high-fat foods. The second came from the insightful statistics compiled by Prof. Patricia Crawford of the Center for Weight and Health, UC Berkeley. Prof. Crawford observed, in her 30-year experience, that in the U.S., fruit and vegetable consumption appeared to be holding steady. That might already be bad news, because Americans on average are not known to eat the recommended 5 to 9 servings a day of fruits and vegetables, and it also depends on how we define the fruit and vegetable category. Prof. Crawford made the shrewd observations that the consumption of fruit juice was up, but that of solid fruit was down; the consumption of potato was up, but that of non-potato vegetables was down; and the consumption of sodas (not even diet sodas) was up, but that of milk was down. Moreover, 40% of people's calories came from added fat and added sugar. What are these facts telling us? How do they connect to the alarming reality of rising obesity? Sir David King, UK's chief scientific adviser and head of the Foresight programme, a two-year-long study into the causes of obesity involving almost 250 experts and scientists, summed it up very well: "Stocking up on food was key to survival in prehistoric times, but now with energy dense, cheap foods, labour-saving devices, motorised transport and sedentary work, obesity is rapidly becoming a consequence of modern life." In essence, obesity is a result of changes in our technological and food environments that exceed the pace of human evolution. Our fat genes, once a valuable asset for our hunter-gatherer ancestors to help them build up fat reserves to survive lean times, have become a liability for obesity in our modern times of plenty. Sir David King also said: "Foresight has for the first time drawn together complex evidence to show that we must fight the notion that the current obesity epidemic arises from individual over-indulgence or laziness alone. It is a wake-up call for the nation, showing that only change across many elements of our society will help us tackle obesity." This statement, however, overwhelmingly attributes obesity to social causes and excuses individuals from personal responsibility for "inevitable" weight gain. The complexity of causes also makes the individual appear both hapless and helpless. While scientists have a hard time figuring out the interplays between pancreatic and intestinal hormones, adipose tissue chemical signals, skeletal endocrine organ, immune-cell-mediated inflammation, insulin resistance, and brain control mechanisms, individual laymen are naturally at a loss. Does that mean we really are hapless and helpless? Yet Adrian's success suggests otherwise. Both in business and life situations, we always encounter environmental factors beyond our influence or control. But that does not mean we cannot act. What we need to do is to clearly differentiate what we can influence and control from what we cannot. Then we can choose the right strategy to focus and act on what we can influence and control, and leave alone what we cannot. Because if it is something that we cannot possibly influence or control, our concerns over it only add to unnecessary worries and anxiety. Its outcome is independent of our worries and anxiety, sleepless nights, or bad dreams. We can only manage by controlling our response to that outcome, as we do in a helpless crisis. Life is already complex enough; we shall be happier to live without such worries and anxiety. Prof. Crawford's observations helped us connect the dots. The statistics were revealing. The observed trends pointed toward the glycemic index (GI) as the common thread. The GI measures how fast, upon ingestion, a given food's carbohydrate is released as glucose into the blood stream. In normal subjects, the release of glucose into blood spurs a rise in insulin (the fat-accumulating, pro-obesity effect of insulin is the basis of Gary Taubes' book "Good Calories, Bad Calories"; and insulin accumulation in the liver after high-GI diets is linked to the rising incidence of fatty liver, according to Dr. David Ludwig of Boston Children's Hospital.) Of the foods mentioned in the statistics, the potato is amongst the highest in GI, and replacing high-fiber, low-GI vegetables in the diet. Fruit juice is higher in GI than fibrous fruits, and soda is much higher in GI than the milk it is replacing. The overall trend is skewing the dietary GI upwards, with obesity implications. What we shall focus on is GI-related satiety. We do not need to decipher the complex interplay of hormones, but we can all sense when we are full and want to eat no further, and sense when we want to eat again. During-meal satiation, between-meal satiety, and hunger pangs are the senses that we are all familiar with that regulate our desire for food. To allow satiety work to our full advantage, it is advisable to feed ourselves slowly, that is, chew our food carefully before swallowing. To get our brain sensitized to our stomach distention, we may have a time delay of up to 20 minutes between eating full and feeling full. Managing this time delay is important for the obese because they can exhibit delayed satiation due to reduced sensitivity to leptin, the appetite-depressing hormone, and for the diabetic because they can feel hungrier due to a ghrelin impact unmodulated by insulin. Now the efficacy of food nutrients (excluding water, which can also fill you up) toward satiety decreases in descending order from protein, fiber, carbohydrate, to fat. In complex whole foods, it approximates the glycemic index (GI) table of foods, with high-GI foods like potatoes and bagels less satiating, and low-GI foods like soybeans and cashews more satiating. Thus a banana muffin with low-GI oats is more satiating than one without, and porridge made with a rice-barley blend is more satiating than a straight rice porridge. A high-satiety meal will delay the onset of hunger pangs between meals and may help us reduce food consumption at the next meal. Even emotional eaters are subject to satiation and satiety controls. To reduce unwarranted emotional eating, the secret is managing satiety with low-GI foods, particularly those that are high-protein, high-fiber, low-fat, and low-caloric. They also tend to be higher in bulk and lower in energy density to limit your caloric intake. If you feel like snacking on something between meals, go for a low-GI, low-caloric choice. Make a habit of avoiding high-fat options (except low-GI, high-protein and high-fiber nuts), because fat is the highest in energy density among nutrients while being the least effective in suppressing the signal of Ghrelin, the hunger hormone. That is exactly why Soy-n-Joy's high-protein, low-glycemic, high-fiber, low-fat, high-taste, low-caloric, organic -tofu "ice creams" or soy milkshakes make so much sense for appetite and weight control. They tide you over to the next meal with interim hunger-controlling satiety. And they provide so many positives that you are actually doing yourself a favor by enjoying "ice cream," benefiting from organic whole-soy's benefits, like lowering bad LDL-cholesterol to help your heart, reducing breast and prostate cancer risks, and helping you to deal with the threats of type-2 diabetes, the metabolic syndrome, osteoporosis, and menopausal symptoms. On CNN's program on diet debate aired on October 20, 2007, Dr. Mehmet Oz detailed what he used to eat in meals, which happened to be very sensible choices, including plenty of nuts, soy smoothies, tofu, and lots of fruits and vegetables. One item he consciously left out was desserts. His decision probably reflected his belief that desserts were unhealthy. Well, wait until Dr. Oz learns about and experiences the 33 tasty flavors of Soy-n-Joy! On the other hand, if you have already formed a habit of snacking on high-glycemic foods and want to modify that habit, try keep those foods and drinks unavailable, out-of-sight, or inconvenient to reach. This is the same principle for controlling an undesirable agent, whether you are dealing with drugs, weapons, or junk foods. In Dr. Sanjay Gupta's S.I.U. program on CNN, Dr. Brian Wansink's experiment with office candy was really revealing. By moving the candy just 6 feet away from convenience, the average subject consumed 5 fewer pieces of candy a day! By adopting a simple behavioral strategy, you are giving yourself a chance to keep your environment under control, while affording an opportunity to transform your habit. Prevention is always better than cure, not only because it is more difficult and costly to undo the harm, but also it is easier to prevent the harm from occurring in the first place. To regain control of our destiny, we must make timely, wise decisions to deal with the new environment, whether it be hostile competition, global warming, or unfriendly food. On the one hand, we must consciously modify our personal food environment to make it compatible with our central-adiposity genetic predisposition, and on the other hand, make assertive changes in our values, beliefs, assumptions, and habits to sustain a healthy-active lifestyle supported by healthy foods, sleep, and exercise. And balanced sustainability is central to the scientific view of development, whether we are talking about the national economy or personal wellbeing. The stressed-up, sleep-deprived person is hyper-charged on the vagus nerve and ghrelin that shoot up appetite, especially for high-GI carbohydrate foods. Meanwhile, compared with the well-exercised person, the sedentary person expends fewer calories, feels less energetic, and is less efficient in removing glucose from the blood stream or burning fat, yet he/she has better appetite than the active person. Hence developed habits can make or break us. Like bringing up a child, nature (genes) is helped by nurture (environment) in shaping one's habits. By consciously taking care of one's wellbeing, the individual is not as hapless and helpless in our food environment as it may seem. We still stand a good chance of salvaging our destiny, by actively pursuing environmental harmony with our genetic predisposition. References: 1. Anon. 2007. High GI Diets May Increase Fatty Liver Risk - Study. Foodnavigator.com, 9-21-2007. 2. Crowley, Laura. 2007. Obese Not Personally Responsible for Weight, Says Study.Foodnavigator.com, 10-17-2007. 3. Hill, Jennifer. 2007. Obesity A Result of Modern Life. UK.reuters.com, 10-17-2007. 4. Kluger, J. 2007. The Science of Appetite. Time. 6-11-2007, 24: 48. 5. Rolls, B. J., and Bell, E. A. 2000. Dietary Approaches to The Treatment of Obesity. Med. Clin. North Am. 84: 401. 6. Schaffer, Amanda. 2007. In Diabetes, A Complex of Causes. NewYorkTimes.com, 10-16-2007. |