On Fri, 29 Aug 2003 10:56, Paul Makepeace wrote; PM> He in fact died while in a coma following slipping on ice earlier PM> this year: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/2957343.stm
OK technically you're correct. BUT he *almost* died a year earlier: http://stacks.msnbc.com/news/901829.asp?0si=-&cp1=1 Sorry, chinese whispers I guess. PM> The more I read about lipid and carb metabolism the more I'm PM> coming around to idea that diets high in trashy carbs (white PM> bread, pasta, sugar, fructose, etc.) are more responsible for PM> the increasingly fat & obese populations of the UK & US. Fructose is actually quite good. It isn't converted to glucose very quickly. Look up a chart with the `glycaemic index' or `glycaemic load' values of food for more concrete ways of telling which foods are good and which are bad on that scale. Interestingly, the glycaemic indices of most vegetables has not been measured, because you would have to consume too many of them to get 50g of carbohydrate content in your system to be measurable in your blood :-). That's 16 cups of broccoli! eg: Item Glycaemic load 1 cup macaroni 3,328 1 cup raisins 10,192 1 cup chickpeas 2,162 1 cup soy beans 520 1 peach 280 1 `medium' orange 630 1 cup orange juice 1,716 1 `medium' banana 2,528 1 cup broccoli <100 1 teaspoon fructose 99 1 teaspoon sucrose 372 1 regular coke 3,510 Apparently the rule of thumb is to aim for less than 3,000 total glycaemic load for any one meal. Glycaemic load is a term he may have coined - but it is essentially the size of the serving (presumably in grammes of net carbohydrates) multiplied by the glycaemic load. PM> There's More Than One Type of Fat, too. As you say, essential PM> fatty acids are quite a different beast from transfats, etc PM> (e.g. in margarine - why do people even consider eating this PM> shit? Ignorance? Don't care about themselves? Laziness? Habit?) Partial Hydrogenation, the process which produces trans fatty acids, is used to help preserve the food. These fats are very, very bad for you. Getting the right fats, thereby controlling the delicate hormonal systems that drive your cells is the author's main emphasis of one of his books I have read; his book has a summary description of lipids (ie, what omega 3/6 means, different omega 3/6 fatty acids & their effects on your cellular chemistry, what they get converted to under what situations, by which metabolic pathways, etc). Saturated fats (including animal fats - advocated strongly by the Atkins diet) are the worst, monounsaturated are the ones you can consume the most quantity of (as they have no hormonal impact), and polyunsaturated fats should be balanced between omega 3's & 6's. Longer chain omega 3's - eg DHA (22:6), EPA (20:5) are much better than shorter ones like ALA (18:3) or Steradonic Acid (18:4). Anyway, it's interesting stuff. He has several books; a recipe book (the meals are exquisite), a book on the benefits of fish oils, a book applying his research to vegetarians, and loads more. -- Sam Vilain, [EMAIL PROTECTED] Ambition is the curse of the political class. - anon.
