Dispelling nutrition myths, ranting, and occasionally, raving

Tag Archives: low-carb


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Low-carb kids?!

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I came across this article recently detailing how to raise kids on low-carb diets and I honestly can’t even. It’s one thing for adults to choose to follow low-carb diets. It’s a whole other kettle of fish to inflict them on children.

The post is written by a pharmacist. I’m sorry, when did pharmacists become keepers of nutritional expertise? Has this woman never heard of scope of practice? You don’t see me running around telling people to start popping pills for various ailments. This is because I’m a dietitian, I know about food and nutrition. Medications I leave to doctors, NPs, and pharmacists.

Okay, so why is this pharmacist advocating for a low-carb diet for kiddos? The opening statement reads: “Childhood obesity is a huge problem today. Lots of parents are wondering – how do you raise kids without feeding them excessive carbs?” 

Are they? Parents, can you confirm this? It frightens me to think that this may be true.

The article makes a disingenuous comparison between two packed lunches and essentially equates low-carb to “junk food” free and, as far as I can tell, low/no grain. Trotting out that erronous message that modern wheat is different from ancient wheat and therefore the food of the devil.

Does the author bother to mention that grains contain nutrients that are important for growth and development in children? Nope. No mention of ensuring that alternative sources of B vitamins, fibre, vitamin E, certain proteins, and so on must be found for children to be healthy on such a diet. Certainly no mention that this type of diet may be setting up children for a lifetime of disordered eating.

There are other ways to prevent childhood obesity and to promote healthy eating habits in children. Forced orthorexia and elimination of food groups is not one of them. Instead, focus on providing your children with nutritious options. Involve them in food prep. Allow them to have occasional treats. Model healthy eating habits and a positive relationship with food. Eat together as a family as often as possible. Carbs are not the enemy.


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The harm in fad diets

Many of us roll our eyes when we hear about people on fad diets. I think that most of us think, “oh well, it’s not doing them any harm. Let it run its course”. But what if these diets are doing people harm?  I’m not about fear mongering, you know this. Many of these trendy diets can be safe and healthy when followed properly. However, what about when they’re not? There is reasonable risk of deficiencies that could cause some degree of harm at worst, and at best prevent the adherents from attaining optimal health.

What’s the harm in a low-carb or gluten-free or paleo diet?

I’m lumping these two in together even though they’re not strictly the same, although it seems that they frequently go hand-in-hand. Here the risk lies in B vitamin deficiency. Yes, many B vitamins are available from animal foods. However, folic acid (which I blogged about a few weeks ago) was added to refined flour and cereals as a public health measure to prevent neural tube defects during pregnancy in 1998 (1). Eliminating grains from the diet may lead to increased risk of spina bifida, and other neural tube defects, in infants of mothers following these diets. It’s recommended that all women of childbearing age take a multivitamin containing 400 mcg of folic acid daily. Women who are following the above diets should be sure to follow this recommendation. The crucial window for neural tube formation is within the first 21-28 days of pregnancy. This means that if you wait to start taking a prenatal multivitamin once you find out you’re pregnant you may have already missed this window.

What’s the harm in a vegan diet?

While touted as one of the healthiest diets, a vegan diet can easily be deficient in essential nutrients. As with the low-carb diets above, a vegan diet may be low in some B vitamins. In this case, vitamin B12 is more likely to be the B vitamin of concern than is folic acid.

Vitamin B12 is important for many reasons. We need B12 for blood cell formation, nerve function, and brain function.

Vitamin D is also a concern in vegan diets as it’s primarily found in milk, fish, and eggs. During the winter months it’s difficult for most of us, vegans and non-vegans alike, to get enough vitamin D from food alone.

What’s the harm in a low-sodium diet?

This isn’t even so much a risk of low-sodium diet but of a diet that eschews table salt in particular. Now that sea salt is the salt selection of foodies and many of us are avoiding salt shakers there is potential for insufficient iodine consumption. Table salt is fortified with iodine, sea salt is not.

Iodine deficiency during pregnancy can result in poor mental development. Iodine is important in thyroid function and deficiency may result in the development of a goiter.

Now, to be fair, when consideration of balance, variety, and nutrients is taken into consideration all of these diets may be healthy. I think that it’s also worth mentioning that the average Western diet is probably less nutritious than all of the above diets. Most people consume too few vegetables and fruits, too much sodium, sugar, and fat. Most of us, even those of us consuming relatively healthy diets, don’t get enough potassium, vitamin D, magnesium, and fibre. While the focus should definitely be on whole food, it’s worth considering what nutrients your diet may be low in and making an effort to consume more foods rich in those nutrients or even considering taking a supplement if you’re finding it hard to meet your nutrient needs through food alone.


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5 things low-carb gurus don’t want you to know

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I hate these lists: 5 foods you should never eat, 8 foods for a flat belly, and one I saw last week “10 Things Dietitians Say About Low-Carb Diets That Don’t Make Sense“. I should confess that as a dietitian, the headline alone immediately got my back up. Still, I took the bait and clicked the link.

Some of the stuff on there was quite reasonable, and some of it inaccurately portrayed dietitians and nutrition. It drives me nuts that we study nutrition for 4+ years in university, do internships, and must demonstrate continuous learning to maintain our professional status as registered dietitians, and yet those from other professions (and non-professions) are constantly proclaiming to the world that we’re nutritionally biased ignoramuses. Okay, so I didn’t exactly read this list with an open mind. No apologies.

Here are my top 5 retorts to this post and others in the same vein:

1. Low-Carb Diets Are Hard To Stick To

Have you ever tried a low-carb diet? There’s a reason why nearly everyone you meet who’s on a low-carb diet is singing its praises at a month or two in. How many people do you know who’ve consistently followed low-carb diets for years? Probably not many. There’s a reason for that. They are hard to stick to. Sure, you can feel physically satisfied on a low-carb diet but there are other aspects of it that can make it difficult to stick with. There’s the social aspect of food. It can be hard to follow a low-carb diet when others around you aren’t, forgoing birthday cakes and pizza. There’s also the restrictiveness that comes with a strict diet. You lose a lot of options when you cut-out or dramatically reduce carbohydrate intake. Finally, if you’re at all athletic, it can be extremely hard to train and perform at your best without carbohydrates.

2. The Opposite of Low-Carb Is NOT Low-Fat

Why is it that every time I hear someone poo-pooing on dietitians for our reluctance to support low-carb diets claiming that we push low-fat diets? The macronutrients are: carbohydrate, fat, and protein. While we all vary in our needs and desires for each of these, they all play a role in a healthy diet. I don’t know any dietitians who promote low-fat diets. Yes, in the past, because nutrition research is often flawed, we believed saturated fat was unhealthy. Most of us are over that. As I’ve said before, real dietitians eat butter.

3. Low-Carb Diets Are Not Proven To Be Safe In The Long-Term

As dietitians, it’s our job to provide people with the information that they need to make informed choices. When the average life span is over 80 years in Canada a two year study is but a drop in the bucket. Yes, you can probably be healthy on a low-carb diet. You can also be unhealthy on one as well. A diet of steak and bacon is low-carb, as is a diet of vegetables and fish. It’s a lot easier to get all of the nutrients that you need when you consume a greater variety of foods.

Yes, the Inuit ate high-fat low-carb diets. Will your low-carb diet consist predominantly of raw meat and seal blubber? I thought not.

4. Just Because You Can Be Healthy Following A Low-Carb Diet Doesn’t Mean That You Should

You can be healthy following all sorts of diets. You can also be unhealthy following them. A low-carb diet can be healthy, as can a vegan diet. You need to figure out what works best for you. Don’t let nutritional gurus convince you that their diet is the only way to go.

The main draw of a low-carb diet generally isn’t health anyway, it’s weight loss. These are not one and the same; no matter what the gurus may say. A healthy weight very much depends on the individual and health is not just physical. There is no shame in deriving pleasure from food.

5. We Don’t Like Diets

It’s nothing personal. We’re not eschewing your beloved low-carb diet because we have shares in the wheat industry. We tend to be wary of any diet because they are restrictive and have end dates and “cheat days”. The way you eat should be a way of life that you can maintain until the end of your life (which will hopefully be in the distant future because you’re following a healthy, enjoyable, varied, and balanced diet).


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Follow Friday: All of the low-carb diet blogs

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When the news about the new “low-carb diet is the best long-term weight loss diet” came out I fleetingly considered writing about it. In the moment that I took to think about it, pretty much everyone else had covered it. So… Rather than reinvent the wheel. Here are some links to posts that say pretty much everything I would have said (and then some):

James Fell on Six Pack Abs: New Study: What is low carb good for

Karmal Patel on Examine.com: Is low-carb really the best weight loss diet?

Yoni Freedhoff on Weighty Matters: What I actually learned by reading that low-carb is best study

Julia Belluz on Vox: The one thing you need to know about weight loss and diet studies

There’s more, but that’s probably more than enough reading for now. I’m off to The Canteen for a sandwich. See you Monday!

 


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What’s the *BEST* diet?

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There are so many diets out there; from low-carb (and its many iterations), vegetarian, vegan, low-fat, paleo, gluten-free and on and on. The one thing that many of their followers seem to have in common is the absolute certainty that their diet is the best diet. It amuses me when I see back-to-back tweets from people praising their chosen religion diet.

I’m sick of seeing people (especially my fellow dietitians) passing judgement on the diets of others, presuming that their chosen diet is superior. Power to you if you are healthy and enjoy following your diet of choice. That doesn’t mean that the diets followed by others are inferior. It doesn’t mean that only you (and others following the same diet) are eating “real food”. What the heck does that even mean?? I’m fairly certain that I didn’t imagine my last meal, that I didn’t consume “fake” food. Just because it works for you doesn’t mean that it’s going to work for everyone. This isn’t Mormonism, you’re not going to secure your place in foodie heaven by converting more people to your way of eating.

Each diet has its drawbacks and nutrients of concern. Each of these diets has its benefits. I could go through many of them and list out the pros and cons but that would be tedious for me to do and tedious for you to read. So which one is the best? The one that you are happiest and healthiest following. The one that you can easily follow for the rest of your life without feeling like you’re on a “diet”. Yeah, sorry, I sucked you in with that title. It’s the truth though. Me, I don’t follow a diet with labels. I enjoy a variety of foods. I eat meat, but I have been known to go weeks without it. I eat grains, but I try to vary them and may not have them at every meal. I’m an agnostic eater.