A Good Cookbook, Lousy Nutritional Advice and High Fructose Corn Syrup by Andy Plunk
14 July 2005If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!
Andy II as per my blurb yesterday KerPlunk offers up this tasty tidbit about AB, food in general, the Food Network, salt and HFCScomments? — Marty
A Good Cookbook, Lousy Nutritional Advice and High Fructose Corn Syrup
by Andy Plunk
Ive read Marty mention Alton Brown a couple of times. The guy is a great cook, especially for those of us interested in minutiae beyond comprehension that Marty referenced before. Ive been a big fan of Alton Browns show on Food Network for years and I recently bought one of his books, as well. Hes completely focused on getting people to understand whats going on when you cook and doesnt just try to cram recipes down your throat. I read Im Just Here for the Food from cover to cover over the course of a couple of nights and would recommend it to anyone, as long as you dont look to him for nutritional advice, especially when he talks about salt.
He says on page 19 of his book: [T]he guys in the white lab coats have finally gotten hip to what the guys in the white kitchen coats have known all along: salt is goodsalt works. In fact, a healthy adult can pretty much put salt out of his or her mind as long as he or she (a) has two functional kidneys; and (b) drinks plenty of water. Too bad that just isnt true.
Salt is an interesting case. Like lots of things its easy to overdo. We do need it to live, but most of us get far more than we need to survive, and for some that can be deadly. Studies have shown a strong association between high blood pressure and eating large amounts of salt. That doesnt necessarily mean that one always causes the other, but there is a link. Most people pass excess sodium in their urine, but there are also people that are salt-sensitive, who will see a decrease in blood pressure when they limit their sodium intake. Those salt sensitive individuals are at a higher risk for death even when their blood pressure isnt elevated, so this is a real problem. There is some disagreement as to how many people are salt sensitive, though. I ran across figures ranging from 10% of the whole American adult population to another study which cited that 26% of Americans with normal blood pressure are salt sensitive while 58% of those with high blood pressure are. If that last study is true then half of all cases of high blood pressure could be prevented with lower sodium intake. Also, those individuals who are salt sensitive without elevated blood pressure (just over a quarter of the population if that study was correct) should see lower death rates.
Dont cut out all salt, but there is a reason that there is a recommended daily allowance for sodium. For healthy people the U.S. RDA has an upper limit of around 2.3 grams per day, depending on age. In the UK they top it off at 1.6 grams. The National Research Council of the National Academy of Sciences recommends a range of 1.1 to 3.3 grams. The American Heart Association recommends that for every 1,000 calories of food consumed, the sodium intake should be 1 gram and should not exceed a 3 gram limit. How do we fare? The average intake in the United States is between 4 and 5 grams of sodium per day.
A lot of smart people whove done a lot of research in the area think that its a good idea to limit the salt in ones diet. The best approach is to be purposefully primitive about your eating. Eat less processed food. If you have to eat something someone else has made, check the labels and choose something that doesnt have as much sodium. When you cook for yourself add some salt if you need to, but be mindful of the salt content of your individual ingredients. Taste the food first before you season it and dont add salt out of habit.
Alton Brown makes another comment in his discussion about salt that reminds me of another nutrition topic, so I might as well talk about that, too. On page 18 of Im Just Here for the Food he writes, Sodium naysayers will tell you that the taste for salt has been programmed into us by the dark agents of industry. I think it was programmed into us by God. Why else would our tongues have receptors exclusively reserved for its recognition? Well, this touches back on my previous point, we need salt to live, but too much will hurt us. We have taste receptors because we do need salt, but evolution could have never predicted how much sodium would find its way into our modern diet. When I read that it reminded me that we also have receptors for sweet tastes, as well. Fruit is a sweet, nutritionally dense food that we need in order to survive (especially in the times before multi-vitamins), so our bodies let us know we needed it. This is a wonderful segue into what I truly think is our dietary public enemy number one when it comes to weight loss: high fructose corn syrup. This stuff is a diet evil incarnate and is about on the opposite end of the purposefully primitive spectrum as you can get. Food manufacturers are playing around with our taste buds and societys waistlines are paying the price.
High fructose corn syrup (HFCS) was developed in the 70s in an effort to make a substance that was sweeter than sugar. This was market-driven; its cheap to produce and is a very effective sweetener. Whats evil about HFCS is that it is primarily fructose. You get small amounts of fructose from fruit or honey, but when ingested in large amounts it can really do some damage. The problem with fructose is that it absorbed in the worst possible way if youre at all worried about your weight. Fructose doesnt stimulate insulin which in turn doesnt signal leptin production. Normally when you consume a carbohydrate your body will release insulin to regulate its absorption as energy and suppress your appetite and then leptin to regulate your metabolism and how your body stores fat. Again, fructose does not trigger that response, it will only be used for energy if it is needed right at the time of consumption (and will probably be stored as fat, otherwise), and it will also not make you feel full, except by the sheer volume of whatever you are eating or drinking. Food manufacturers have developed the perfect delivery system for this stuff: soft drinks. If you drink soft drinks and are worried about your weight, quit. Drink diet soda over the regular kind if you have a problem getting weight off. If you arent worried about your weight and you drink soda you still might want to cut it outthis stuff is just not good for your body and will probably catch up with you later when your metabolism slows down. Also, read your nutrition labels, they put this stuff in anything they can. If it is sweet read the label; if HFCS is in the top couple of ingredients, choose something else. In my opinion the only thing good about the low-carb craze is that manufacturers are producing food without added sweeteners. Make use of this trend and hope that it doesnt end when low-carb crashes and burns.
I have to pick on Alton one more time. Again, on page 18 he states Try to explain this: On average Japanese people consume twice as much salt as Americans yet they have the gall to live an average of ten years longer. Having taken a couple of epidemiology classes all I can say is that I wish comparing mortality rates (or any rate of incidence or prevalence) in two different populations was this easy. Its much more complicated than that; you end up comparing apples to oranges.
I dont want to come down too hard on Alton Brown, though. Hes in my short list of celebrities that Id like to meet. I think hes just trying to justify making his food taste the way he wants. It just highlights how careful you be in getting your information. Hes really good at what he does, and should be a resource for that. He isnt so good with nutrition (at least with salt) and doesnt know much about epidemiology (cant blame him there, I wish I hadnt had to sit through those classes). If youre new to Alton but like to cook check out his show sometime and Id recommend Im Only Here for the Food to anyone, just take pages 18 and 19 addito salis grano.
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