the (demented) brain on industrial food

Blackberries gathered on a long walk charge up the brain as well as the body.








I recently read 100 Simple Things You Can Do To Prevent Alzheimers and Age-Related Memory Loss by Jean Carper (see her website for more on the book and its message). Carper used to be a journalist specialising in medical matters, and is familiar with searching medical databases and interviewing health researchers. In the book she assembles the results of studies that have looked at what causes the damage associated with Alzheimer's and similar brain diseases, and made suggestions or recommendations for how to prevent them accordingly. A lot of the evidence is circumstantial rather than experimental, as experiments on humans in this area are very hard to conduct, but Carper has selected only the best work.

In this regard I was most interested to learn of the extent to which industrial food can cause as much damage to the brain as it does to the body. This is not surprising, given that the brain is made up of cells just like the rest of the body, and those cells depend on what the rest of the body does by way of nutrition, exercise and so on for their health and longevity. It may not be surprising, but it is probably not the sort of damage most people anticipate when they tuck into a double cheese burger and wash it down with a thickshake. They may know that too many of these will make them obese – but do they know that such a diet will also hasten senility?

Carper devotes several chapters to the worst parts of the industrial diet – foods that should be avoided for the sake of a healthy brain that works well long into old age. She starts with the bad fats – the saturated fats in animal foods and the transfats (artificial fats made from plant oils) used in industrial baked goods, margarine, salad dressings and other processed foods. Animal experiments have shown that rats eating the same percentage of saturated animal fats as the typical American diet develop severe brain and memory dysfunction, to the point of being unable to learn anything new. One study of elderly Americans found that those who ate the most transfats were four times more likely to develop Alzheimers than those who ate the least, while those who ate the most saturated fat were twice as likely to become demented as those who ate the least.

The other problem with eating these fats is that they dispose you to insulin resistance, a main feature of Type 2 diabetes which is also linked to Alzheimer's. Type 2 diabetes is in turn linked with gross overweight or obesity – a condition caused by too much energy in, too little energy out. Fats contain twice as many calories, weight for weight, as protein or carbohydrates, so the best place to start cutting calories is with fats. (With the exception of the good fatty acids found in extra virgin olive oil, flax seed oil and fatty fish.)

Saturated fat is found in all animal products, but some of those products also hold other dangers. Too much meat, even lean meat, is bad for the brain in itself. One study showed that meat eaters were 20 per cent more prone to dementia than strict vegetarians, while another study reported that heavy meat eaters were more than twice as likely to develop dementia as vegetarians. How does this happen? There are various reasons, including the way in which meat causes inflammation in the brain as well as the rest of the body which leds to the destruction of healthy cells. Then there are the toxic chemicals which form when meat is cooked, plus the fact that meat is rich in iron – and too much iron is bad for the brain. Processed or cured meats are especially dangerous because they contain nitrosamines, which are implicated in causing cancer as well as dementia.

Sugar is something else to give a swerve if you want to stay smart into old age. It has a bad effect on the brain in itself, and of course it promotes fat and weight gain. The worst kind of sugar in this regard is the most industrial one – high fructose corn syrup – which has been shown to be much more effective than regular sucrose for piling on belly fat and promoting insulin resistance.

The other major damage that industrial foods do to the brain is not thanks to what they have, but what they don't have – the multitude of micro-nutrients (vitamins, minerals, anti-oxidants, fatty acids, etc.) which are essential to brain as well as body health. A lot of the chapters in the book are devoted to the best sources of such micro-nutrients. Some of these – berry fruits, apples, cinnamon, dark green leafy vegetables, deep red or orange fruits and vegetables – it would be hard to impossible to eat too much of. Others, such as dark chocolate, red wine, coffee, nuts, olive oil and fatty fish could be over-done, but have protective effects if taken regularly in moderation. Note that these foods are either eaten raw and/or unprocessed, or have had only the processing required to make them edible. Note also that they are all traditional foods, that a giant food industry is not required to produce them, and that although there are now mega-industrial versions of some of them (e.g. coffee, wine, olive oil, chocolate) these are the poorest quality products, and will not promote health in the way that properly-produced foods will.

Industrial food is bad for the brain and body for another reason, which has nothing to do with what is actually in the food. It is that we don't have to expend any of our own energy to get it. Pushing a trolley around the supermarket and unloading food bags from the car requires very little effort, while ordering and picking up fast foods requires even less. All this conservation of human energy comes at a price. Since Homo sapiens first evolved some 200,000 years ago we have had to work hard (often walking many miles in one day) to find our food, and in the past 10,000 years to grow it as well. It is only in the past 100 years that a disconnect between working and eating has occurred, as increasing fossil fuel energy use has allowed (or in some cases forced) millions of people out of food production and into other occupations. Those who lead sedentary lives now find that they can't have their cake and eat it too - or as Barry Commoner's Fourth Law of Ecology puts it - There Is No Such Thing as a Free Lunch.

The price of the industrial food lunch is very high – thick bodies and thick heads. Sadly, with more and more of us forced to live in concrete jungles, the opportunities for closing the energy circle between food production and consumption at the personal level become fewer and fewer. However, those who are lucky enough to have their own patch of earth, or access to an allotment or community garden, can still enjoy working to produce a high-quality lunch, and stay smart longer as a result. And if you don't believe that gardening can be as good as a gym work out, check out my post on aerobic gardening over at The Eco Gardener.

The cancer or the beetroot?

 I made this home-grown 
1 kg beetroot into a big 
pot of borscht -

nutritious and delicious.

I once saw a German postcard which showed a class of rather mutinous-looking early twentieth century school children, inscribed with the words (my translation) “Teachers are the people who help us solve the problems we wouldn't have without them.”

I was reminded of this when reading a story in my local paper about yet another scientific attempt to make industrial food slightly less dangerous. Researchers at the University of Aberdeen are investigating including an extract of beetroot in hamburger patties. This is part of a wider Scottish Government funded project being undertaken at the Rowett Research Institute of Nutrition and Health, investigating the potential health benefits of Scottish produce.

According to the university's media release on the subject the Rowett researchers believe that beetroot (which contains antioxidants) stops the body from absorbing the ‘bad’ fat found in burgers. The lead researcher, Professor Garry Duthie, says that “Processed food forms a major and increasing part of our diet. Consumption of high fat convenience foods in Scotland increases year by year. We are looking to identify if adding a vegetable extract to processed food can actually protect the body from absorbing the ‘bad’ fats which exist in these types of products.”

Those fats contain compounds which contribute to causing cancer. Other carcinogenic compounds are formed when meat is cooked, or preserved using the common preservatives, such as nitrites. This is the reason why the second expert report on food, nutrition, physical activity, and the prevention of cancer produced by the World Cancer Research Fund and the American Institute of Cancer Research in 2008 (The Second Expert Report on Food, Nutrition, Physical Activity, and the Prevention of Cancer: a Global Perspective) recommends that the public health goal for meat consumption should be a population average consumption of red meat of no more than 300 g (11 oz) a week, very little if any of which should be processed meat. For adult individuals the recommendation is to eat less than 500 g (18 oz) of red meat a week, and very little or no processed meat.

There are other reasons why reducing meat consumption is good for your health – many of them documented by the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine, which focuses on improving health by improving nutrition. One wonders whether the scientists at the Rowett Research Institute of Nutrition and Health are aware of these reasons, or of the studies on how to improve adult diets effectively. It certainly does not look like it, if Prof. Duthie can so sanguinely accept that high fat food consumption in Scotland is already a major problem, that it will continue to increase, and that the 'solution' to it is technological tinkering with rubbish foods.

Even if this particular bit of tinkering proves successful and it is possible to create a non-carcinogenic hamburger patty by lacing it with beetroot extract – what then? Is the Scottish government going to make it mandatory for all patties sold in Scotland to be so laced? How will the multinational burger chains like that? The more one thinks about it, the sillier it gets. Also, if this is supposed to be part of an investigation into the health benefits of local produce – where's the produce?

Health comes in whole foods, not in medicinal extracts. In comparison to meat, fresh whole beetroot is highly nutritious, fat-free and safe to eat in amounts well in excess of 500g per week. Cooking it does not create carcinogenic compounds. It can be made into salads, soups, main and side dishes and even cakes. I am sure that it is served regularly at Henderson's, the outstanding vegetarian restaurant in Edinburgh, which is about to celebrate its 50th anniversary. The majority of Henderson's regular customers are not vegetarians – they go there because the food is so good.

The Scottish government needs to note from the Henderson's example that Scots will eat their veges if they are properly prepared, and from American intervention studies that if they are taught how to do vegetable selection and preparation for themselves they will make significant nutrition and health gains. If I were the Scottish government and wanted the Scots to eat better, I would not be wasting money on the food fiddlers at the Rowett Institute, who are doing nothing that will help the public eat less meat and more fresh produce. Until governments are prepared to study and fund what really works in improving diets, and/or take notice of existing research that provides evidence on what is already working - this includes more/easier access to fresh produce, higher taxes or other disincentives on 'bad' foods, targeted education interventions, free fresh fruit in schools, stopping the sale of junk foods and drinks in schools, bans or heavy restrictions on junk food advertising and sponsorships, fresh food gardens and kitchens in schools, and urban/peri-urban agriculture - the Scots and other nations will continue to get fatter and sicker.

It took more than thirty years from when the role of tobacco smoking in causing cancer and other diseases was proven for governments to start acting to protect the public health by banning smoking in public places, banning or restricting tobacco advertising and sponsorships, restricting tobacco sales to minors, and so on. Tobacco-related deaths and disease rates are now starting to fall in all countries which have taken these measures.

It took so long to get action because the tobacco industry fought back in all sorts of ways, from hiding the truth about the dangers of its product to fiddling with cigarettes to make them 'safer'. This 'deny and fiddle' phase is the one we seem to be in now with regard to the industrial diet. Big Tobacco was very generous to politicians then; Big Food is very generous to them now. Some multinational corporations (e.g. Philip Morris) cover both products and both eras, and were and are working against the public interest on both fronts.

To ensure that you are still here when good people fighting for good food win out – eat the whole beet, not the dodgy meat.

Agri-chemicals - a global toxic legacy

Healthy cabbages and yacon thrive with a mulch of dead weeds. See
Weeds are our friends  
for how toxic agri-chemicals
reduce natural productivity,
and weeds can be part of replenishing it.

Just how big a mess have toxic agri-chemicals (pesticides and herbicides) made of farmland, natural ecosystems, fisheries, wild flora and fauna - and people's lives - around the world, since the chemical companies started pumping them out big time in the middle of the twentieth century?

I can't answer that question quantitatively, but today I heard Dr Ron McDowall, an expert on both the quantitative and qualitative horror caused by these chemicals, tell some tragic stories about what he had personally witnessed, or heard about, while working as consultant engineer for the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) in charge of cleaning up toxic waste sites in Africa, South America, and Eurasia. Small personal tragedies – children dying in agony from drinking pesticides stored in Coke bottles, rural women using pesticides to commit suicide – and long-term, large-scale social tragedies, such as the children still being born with deformities in Vietnam over thirty years after American forces left dumps of Agent Orange (dioxin) behind.

Dr McDowall has also seen the total destruction of farm land caused by such chemicals. An article on him and his work records that there is an estimated 100,000 tonnes of toxic chemical waste to be cleaned up in Africa alone. Most of it is unwanted pesticides that have been banned from sale or are past their expiry date. You can listen to the Radio New Zealand interview with Dr McDowall here, and read more about him and his work here.

We are fortunate that there are people with Dr McDowall's courage and expertise to do this awful work, and enough money in the UNEP budget to fund it. There's no justice in that, though, since it was chemical corporations, not the countries which fund the UNEP, that made this filthy stuff, and sold it to people who did not have the means or knowledge to store or dispose of it safely. Before they profit from selling any more, I'd like to see the owners, boards of directors and senior managers of these companies made personally liable to pay compensation for any deaths, illnesses and clean-up costs resulting from their products - and send them out to do the clean-ups as well.