CategoriesNutrition

Recovering Your Metabolism: Do You Need to Increase Or Decrease Your Calories? (Part I)

Today’s guest post comes from personal trainer and strength coach Lucas Serwinski.  Some of you may remember his name from an excellent series of articles he wrote for my site last year titled How Did Your Food Live? Know the Health Behind Your Food Parts One and Two.

He did a bang-up job with that article, and given I don’t discuss nutrition nearly enough on this blog I felt inviting him back would be a welcome change of pace.

Enjoy!

PS:  I also understand that this is a topic that MANY people are passionate about, and to give full disclosure this is NOT an area that I am an expert in.  Ie: I did not write the article.  Someone who has more experience on the topic did.

I understand that by posting it I’m “vouching” for it, but having said that, if it sparks some debate and conversation, fine.

Hopefully we can all get along….;o)

Recently I’ve been considering the path I’ve taken with my eating and how my calories and macronutrients have changed and increased or decreased so many times that it’s mind boggling.

With some influence from Layne Norton and John Berardi (always giving props)I’ve been delving back into the science concerning the adaptations our metabolism makes while increasing or decreasing calories.

Let me tell you right now, I can feel this article giving a Tolstoy novel a run for its money in length, but I think understanding that the relationship between our metabolism and necessary functions of our body are so heavily influenced by our diet is important to know.

Observationally, I’ve noticed ( and other coaches may tell you the same thing), that some diet approaches work best the first time and only the first time.

Some people respond the same to supplements.  They’ll take creatine for the first time, gain 10lbs and get stronger.  However, the next time they add it back into their regimen, nothing happens.  I find this approach work very similarly with low-carbohydrate diets, low calorie diets and the addition of excessive exercise.

Ask yourself what happened the first time you ever dropped your calories very low?  You probably lost a significant amount of weight, albeit some of it was probably water weight and muscle, but I bet some bodyfat came with it.

How about the first time you ever dropped your carbs way down, or went from no exercise to four-days of exercise a week?  These initial changes sometimes produce drastic and impressive results, but the momentum is usually short lived and such extreme waves in calories and exercise duration often produce the most inconsistent results.

Here’s a scenario comparing two women who both need to lose significant bodyfat.

They are both 5’2” but  Person A is 210 lbs and Person B is 180lbs.

Person A – Basal Metabolic Rate 1692calories

Daily Energy Expenditure from Exercise and Activity:  946 calories

Total Daily Calories Needed to maintain Weight:  2623 calories

Person B – Basal Metabolic Rate 1561 calories

Daily Energy Expenditure from Exercise:  851 calories

Total Daily Calories Needed to Maintain Weight:  2420 calories

Consider that Basal Metabolic Rate is just the energy it takes to keep you alive.  Energy expenditure is added on top of that to factor in exercise and daily activity.  These samples are merely hypothetical but are taken from the Harris-Benedict Equation and give you an idea of how two people of the same height, age and sex with different bodyweights “hypothetically” expend different amounts of energy.

Even if both people are overweight, we can assume Person B has less total bodyfat from Person A simply because they are 30 lbs lighter.  I would find it highly unusual, especially for a woman, to have 30 lbs more muscle than someone of similar height.

At 5’2” and 210lbs, Person A may very well be about 45% bodyfat.  Since Person B is significantly lighter but still considered “overweight”, she might be closer to 35% bodyfat.

Person A:  210lbs, 45% bodyfat =  115.5lbs lean body mass

Person B:  180lbs, 35% bodyfat =   117lbs lean body mass

Here’s where the above formula doesn’t really hold up.

Simply weighing more doesn’t mean you are expending more energy than someone who weighs less.

As noted above, person B is lighter but actually has slightly more muscle mass than person A who is heavier.  Consider that fat tissue has barely any mitochondria, unlike muscle cells which use mitochondria to burn nutrients.

So fat tissue is almost entirely inactive from an energy use perspective.

“Well, Luke….wouldn’t someone who weighs more have to exert more energy because they are carrying extra weight around?”. 

This would make sense if you think simply in terms of more weight equating to more energy expended.  However, fat tissue is all about efficiency.  It is highly calorie dense, doesn’t require much energy to stay on the body and even insulates against cold.

People with more bodyfat are simply more efficient with their energy than leaner people.  Muscle tissue is highly active and literally IS your metabolism.

In addition, individuals with significant bodyfat may even find it (and I note this observationally) harder to exert the same level of intensity during exercise, when similar muscle mass is taken into account.  Having a lot of bodyfat and not being well-trained just means its going to be hard to exert your full potential any time you exercise, making your total calorie expenditure, again, less than a leaner person with similar muscle mass.

Back to the Harris-Benedict Equation above.

I’ve seen many times people fitting the height and weight used in the above equation consuming much fewer calories than Person A and not losing weight.  Why?  Remember, there is a baseline number of calories you need daily just to maintain a healthy metabolism.

Add to that the stress of work, kids, commuting and then exercise and you have significant requirements for energy.

Cutting your calories too low doesn’t leave much wiggle room for intense weight training, jogging, gardening, making dinner for the family and anything else you do on a daily basis.

The body’s response is to down-regulate the amount of energy it needs by lowering thyroid (t3).  T3 activates mitochondria in your muscle cells and organs  to burn nutrients.  T4 is the inactive form of thyroid and is the majority of what your thyroid produces.  You rely on liver and kidney enzymes to convert T4 to T3, but if your body is over-stressed from dieting, excess cortisol can suppress thyroid stimulating hormone and decrease thyroid function.

Still following me here?  I didn’t lose you did I?

The two most disruptive changes to thyroid levels are first, reducing calories too low and second, reducing carbohydrates too low. 

A study on hypo and hyper caloric diets with different ratios of macronutrients showed that when calories stayed the same, but carbohydrates were replaced with fat, concentrations of T3 dropped significantly.  So, even if you don’t drop your calories too low, dropping carbohydrates too low can inhibit your metabolic functioning.

You’ll find people who reduce their calories too low are often less energetic, cold and don’t respond to stress very well.

Note from TG:  They’re also 10x more likely to scissor kick you in the face the second you eat a piece of bread in front of them. It’s science.

Maybe they exercise often and keep doing their normal life activities but at the cost of their metabolism.

I’ve seen real people such as Person A above who is exercising often and leading a busy life consuming less than 2000 calories a day. 

Hmmm….shouldn’t they be burning at least 623 calories a day from fat, leading to over one pound of fat lost a week? (3500 calories in a pound of fat).

Quite often, they don’t because their metabolism has adapted to such a low calorie diet that it won’t chance increasing energy expenditure for fear of burning through it’s precious energy stores.

Calories in and calories out work to a point, especially with a healthy metabolism.  However, with some metabolic issues, consuming more of the right calories might be the first step to losing weight.  If you’re already at rock-bottom with your calorie consumption and exercising often, you have only one caloric place to go:

Up.

What the First Step?

Here’s where things get personal.  That is, they need to be personally adapted per person, as just prescribing all encompassing recommendations rarely work for most people.

Even though calories count in total weight loss or gain equations, actually counting them is an exercise in futility. Furthermore, simple fixes need to be applied to most diets before getting obsessed with the details.  These usually are eating more protein, hydrating properly and getting enough vitamins and minerals.

Thermic Effect of Food

First off, each of the three macronutrients; protein, carbohydrates and fat require a certain percentage of their inherent calories to just be metabolized.  What’s the percent?

-Protein 20%

-Carbohydrates 5%

-Fat 5%

Right off the bat, consuming greater percentage of certain macronutrients directly affects how many calories are burned for digestion.

In one study, participants consumed either 5, 15 or 25% of their calories from protein, with each group consuming almost 1,000 calories a day OVER maintenance.

Each group gained  about 3.5 kg of fat over the course of the study,  but the high protein group actually gained 3.5 kg of muscle while the low protein group lost a kg of muscle.

In addition, the high protein group saw an 11% increase in their metabolic rate.  Researchers concluded while over eating, the low protein group turned about 90% of their excess calories to fat while the high protein group only turned about 50% of calories into fat.  Pretty cool.

Thermic Effect of Whole vs Processed Foods

Studies have shown that while consuming equal calories and macronutrients, whole food has a 50% greater thermic effect than processed foods.  The whole food groups in such studies had an increase in their metabolic rate hours after eating while the processed food group actually had a decrease in metabolic rate.

Hydration

I’ve noted in past articles that a 2% decrease in bodyweight from water loss can have a 22% decrease in aerobic performance and 10% decrease in anaerobic performance.

Remember that your aerobic metabolism runs primarily on fat for fuel.  Inhibiting general aerobic performance by being dehydrated actually makes burning fat for fuel harder!  Dividing your bodyweight in half and consuming that many ounces a day in water is a good jumping off point.  Even more feedback-based is checking urine color.  Anything the color of hay/straw is good.  If your urine is dark, you are already dehydrated.

Vitamins and Minerals

This is certainly a tough one to tackle because to check if you are deficient in any vitamins, minerals or micronutrients you’d have to get a blood test.

You can do a dietary recall and plug it into an online database but that may not be as accurate.  Even for those of us who consume lots of greens and veggies, we most likely consume the same ones week in and week out, out of habit.

As a whole, many Americans are deficient is some of the most important nutrients.  86% of us are not meeting the RDA for Vitamin E, 68% for magnesium and 73% for calcium, just to name a few.  The RDA is quite conservative as well, so not even meeting their standards is pretty lame.

Vitamin E is the body’s most powerful antioxidant, more than C.  Magnesium is involved in hundreds of metabolic reactions and calcium is necessary for bone growth, blood clotting and nerve function (depolarization, anyone?).

Taking a chance on being deficient in just a few areas can lead to trouble, so a low-level multivitamin and mineral is probably a good idea.

Note from TG: And that’s it for part one.  In part two Lucas covers intervention strategies and numerous measures one can follow to help “recover” their metabolism.

And just to throw it out there, for those interested in reading more into the topic – it’s a doozy and something that affects more people than you think – I’d HIGHLY suggest checking out Leigh Peele’s excellent manual Starve Mode.

Author’s Bio

Lucas Serwinski is a Strength and Conditioning coach and nutritional consultant for athletes and weekend warriors alike. Lucas holds a Bachelor’s in Strength and Conditioning from UCONN as well as an Associate’s in Culinary Arts from NECI,and is currently coaching at Bodylogy Fitness Studio, located in Hamden, CT.

Lucas has interned at Cressey Performance in Hudson, MA, worked on low-carbohydrate research for fat loss and health,and  trained and competed in powerlifting.

He extensively studies the roles of digestion, sleep, nutritional habits and homeopathic medicine to help people of all walks achieve greater health. Lucas has also worked in multiple award-winning restaurants, including Arrow’s which was named 14th best restaurant in the country by Food magazine. Lucas incorporates knowledge and skill from cooking experience into creating a comprehensive plan for those he works with. Lucas has also worked as a social worked for years and takes mental and emotional considerations into each person’s plan and goals for success.  You can visit his blog HERE.

CategoriesNutrition

How Did Your Food Live? Know the Health Behind Your Food – Part II

If you missed Part One (shame on you), I’d suggest taking a few moments to read that before moving forward.  Don’t worry, we’ll wait.

For those who are already caught up and anxiously awaiting Part Two, today Luke digs a little deeper into the rabbit hole and sheds some light on HOW our food is produced.  It’s pretty shocking to say the least.

And not to leave us hanging by a thread, Luke also offers a plan of attack moving forward on how we can be more cognizant as well as proactive with regards to not only the quality of the food we eat, but where it comes from too. 

This is something that affects ALL of us, and I’d be remiss not to encourage everyone to take some time to read it and let it sink in.

If you don’t a kitten cries.  You’re a real jerk you know that!?

One of my major concerns with human health is related to the combining of animal products from many animals.  It is estimated that 1 in 10,000 eggs is contaminated with salmonella and this is usually passed on from either an infection from the mother hen (so long healthy gut flora) or fecal contamination.

I don’t know how the CDC extrapolates that this number exists, did they test 10,000 eggs before finding Salmonella?  Searching online it seems that this data is assumed when comparing illnesses from Salmonella compared to how many eggs are purchased/consumed in a year.  This sort of makes sense but when you consider that not everyone who gets sick sees a doctor and not everyone who eats an egg contaminated with Salmonella actually gets sick from it – as cooking can destroy the bacteria – the numbers seem too gray for me.

Either way I’d rather eat a dozen eggs from one or two chickens rather than 12, and much more preferred than eating a dozen eggs laid by 12 chickens in a crowd of 1,000.

Ground beef suffers a similar fate.  At this point in the argument, I won’t even address factory farm treatment of animals but rather how the food is produced and packaged.

In general there are two kinds of cows: those bred for milk production and those bred for meat.  Obviously, not all milk cows are female and the male milk cow must now be used for beef or veal, to avoid monetary loss.  As a whole, dairy cows put so much energy into milk production that they do not gain much in terms of muscle and fat, making them less suitable for meat production.

To answer this issue, these two breeds are cross-bred so that male dairy cows can be more easily fattened up for meat production.  Now we have dairy cows that produce less milk than they should and beef cattle that don’t fatten up as much as normal because they are both half-breeds of each other.  Here we add continual stimulation from antibiotics, hormones and cheap feed like soy to boost the half-rate milk and beef production we genetically engineered ourselves.

Let’s assume half of all cows are bred for meat and half for dairy, with half of the dairy cows being male and thus used in meat production.  Most beef cattle are slaughtered at  twelve to eighteen months compared to the two or three years it takes normally.  Now we have 75% of all beef entering our supermarkets from underage, half-bred, antibiotic injected and artificially fattened cattle.

Aside from ALL of this is the fact that the one pound package of beef you buy can be the meat from literally dozens of cows.

Just as in the dizzying possibility of your eggs coming from so many different and possibly sick chickens, the same applies to all ground meat.

Added to this is the fact that meat carcasses are sprayed with high-powered air guns to detach all remaining flesh from the animal after production.  This meat mush is then either added into existing ground beef or mixed for sausage and other pre-made meat products.

This certainly makes economical sense but it just contributes to the overwhelming vastness of where our food comes from.  I actually have a Meat Buyers Guide from the North American Meat Processors Association and it lists standards, practices and guidelines for all cuts of meat and how they are produced.  Ground beef in particular is allowed to be “chopped or machine-cut by any method provided the texture and appearance of the product after final grinding is typical of ground beef prepared by grinding only”.

So….you can process ground beef any way you want so long as it looks like ground beef in the end?

Also, the processing allows bone collectors and extruders to be used in the process so that companies can literally grind anything on the animal for ground beef.

Lastly,  purchasers may “waive” an examination for trimming defects as long as they use a bone extruder.  I don’t think I even need to explain this one as it is pretty self evident, but it basically says that anything in the final product is OK since you used a bone extruder, and using a bone extruder allows you to grind any part of the animal.

The reason this all ties into the USDA is because they allow food to be produced and processed this way.  In my goal to continually steer this article away from animal welfare e.g Eating Animals, and the fact that this aside could be and already is the topic of other books, I want to focus on how this food affects us.

Already discussed above is how the use of antibiotics affects both our health and that of animals.  If you think that eating meat with compromised digestion and immunity does not impact your health, it would be a claim to ignorance.  You could argue that cooking inactivates many of the hormones given to these animals, as is the case with milk and other dairy products.

My nutrition professor at UCONN claimed that the crossover from animals being fed and injected hormones has a weak transfer from the animal to us and combined with pasteurization of dairy, she claimed it was a non-issue.  I can’t help but think that this is a cop-out when you look at the research even seemingly benign foods like cabbage, kale and tomatoes have on our health.

 

These foods can inhibit iodine absorption, increase blood clotting factors and enhance immunity, respectively.  Yet meat that is raised as noted above has no impact on our body chemistry and health?

This brings me back to my original question about the rice.

Think of each grain of rice in that bowl as a bit of meat from hundreds of different animals.  Even with the antibiotic agents added, wouldn’t you rather eat the rice if it came from just one restaurant?  And wouldn’t it be a little better if you knew what the standards were that that restaurant judged the rice by?

And wouldn’t be better still if you knew the rice had no added chemicals because it was handled and cooked responsibly?

There is a level of damage control that we need to face here, especially as athletes who consume a lot of food and namely a lot of meat, dairy and eggs.  You already know the benefits of eating pastured, grass fed meat both for your health and the animals.  You already know organic is better than conventional, despite somewhat shady and interpretive “standards”.

What’s the average meat-head with a limited income to do, since most of us won’t adopt veganism or vegetarianism? Making the best of a bad situation is a reality for many of us.  I propose that since poultry has it the worst that we make the best effort to eat as naturally here.  Free-range eggs aren’t actually that expensive if you have someone near you with chickens and it is becoming increasingly more popular to grow your own hens, I have multiple friends who do this.

Second, focus on buying whole-bird organic chickens.  Since you’re buying whole, it is usually cheaper by the pound because some of what you buy is bone and extra fat.  Take advantage of this though and challenge yourself to roast, braise, grill and smoke whole and half-birds.  Eat the innards, they are delicious; take time to learn how to truss or break down a whole chicken.

Beef is harder to eat grass-fed and organic because it is usually only affordable when you buy in bulk and have a freezer to store it in.

Instead, if you can adopt the suggestions above, practice damage control by purchasing whole cuts of beef like chuck, top round and other pot roasts and slow cooking them.  Another option, which I have done myself is visit a butcher that grinds their own meat.  You can either bring them some top round or other cut to grind or have them do it with their own supply.  At least in this scenario you can get ground meat from one animal, not dozens.

This movement should not be much more expensive than what you are doing now and only a little more time consuming.  People will argue that you should go cold turkey (pun intended) and switch right over to grass-fed and pastured meat, eggs and dairy or just stop eating meat.

In what other context do we do this?

How many people do you know that just stopped driving until they could afford an electric car or quit smoking without adding in something like nicotine patches, gum or coffee to titrate them off?  The staggering enormity of finding, purchasing and storing completely grass-fed and pastured animal products will turn most people off.

However, as in a new exercise or diet program, we all know as coaches and athletes that small progressions often yield the best long-term results.

To this I say start making a small difference NOW, instead of no difference at all.

References:

World Health Organization.  Risk Assessment of Salmonella in Eggs and Broiler Chickens, 2008.

Google Books, May 17th, 2013.

Fearnley-Whittingstall, Hugh.  The River Cottage Meat Book.  Great Britain: Hodder and Stoughton, 2004. Print.

NAMP.  The Meat Buyers Guide.  United States: North American Meat Processors Association, 2003.  Print

Lipski, Elizabeth.  Digestive Wellness.  United States:  McGraw Hill, 2012.  Print

Campbell-McBride, Natasha.  Gut and Psychology Syndrome.  United Kingdom:  Medinform Publishing, 2012.  Print.

Author’s Bio

Lucas Serwinski is a Strength and Conditioning coach and nutritional consultant for athletes and weekend warriors alike. Lucas holds a Bachelor’s in Strength and Conditioning from UCONN as well as an Associate’s in Culinary Arts from NECI.

Lucas has interned at Cressey Performance in Hudson, MA, worked on low-carbohydrate research for fat loss and health,and  trained and competed in powerlifting. He extensively studies the roles of digestion, sleep, nutritional habits and homeopathic medicine to help people of all walks achieve greater health. Lucas has also worked in multiple award-winning restaurants, including Arrow’s which was named 14th best restaurant in the country by Food magazine. Lucas incorporates knowledge and skill from cooking experience into creating a comprehensive plan for those he works with. Lucas has also worked as a social worked for years and takes mental and emotional considerations into each person’s plan and goals for success.  You can visit his blog HERE.

CategoriesNutrition

How Did Your Food Live? Know the Health Behind Your Food

I don’t post enough content on nutrition.  But I should, especially after reading THIS walking ball of fail of an article yesterday – in which the woman who wrote it, a registered dietician mind you – linked egg consumption to colon cancer, diabetes, heart disease, and probably global warming for all I know.

It was a glowing example of cherry picking data. Example:  I’m pretty sure all the studies she linked to about egg consumption causing the next apocalypse were debunked by a lot of people much smarter than myself.  Namely the fact that many of the aforementioned studies, as quick as they were to demonize eggs, and not coincidentally backed by vegan or vegetarian groups with an agenda, used surveys to extrapolate their data.  

Surveys, as we all know, most of the time, and especially as it relates to research studies, are about as useful as a poop flavored lollypop, and not much more valid.

Okay, people who eat eggs have a high(er) risk of diabetes and heart diseases.  But is it the eggs that are the issue or the fact that these same people fail to note that they also smoke like a chimney, don’t exercise, and eat a ton of highly processed, sugary, gooped up foods as well?

Nevertheless, I was pretty dumbfounded that someone who gives nutritional advice for a living would write something so off-base and overtly biased. Then again, given the context and the site for which it was written, I’m not surprised.  

Still: it’s disconcerting to think that this article is no doubt making its rounds around the internets and people are probably throwing out their eggs and high-tailing it to their local bomb shelters.

On the bright side, I was very happy to see that many, many, MANY people chimed in in the comments section to debunk many of the author’s claims.

In any case, today (and tomorrow) you’ll be treated to some good ol’ fashioned nutrition content.  

I want to introduce everyone to Luke Serwinski, who was an intern at Cressey Performance earlier this year and who is now a Strength and Conditioning coach in Connecticut.

Luke has a Bachelors in Strength and Conditioning from UCONN, as well as an Associates degree in Culinary Arts.  So, ladies, Luke can lift heavy things and make a killer duck confit….;o)

In this two-part article Luke goes into details about how the health and lifestyle of our food directly impacts us and ways to correct and operate damage control in an imperfect world.

I thoroughly enjoyed it, and I hope you do too!

If I offered you a bowl of rice from my fridge and as you ate it explained that it was collected from 30 different restaurants around town, cooked at different times to different standards, scraped off bottoms of pots and then thrown together in one bowl, would you eat it?

If I assured you that each restaurant had conducted their own inspection of their rice to unknown standards and added some cleaning agents to keep bacterial growth from occurring on it, just to be safe, would you eat it?

Ever since attending culinary school and getting hands-on experience in a real functioning butcher shop (what we’d call meat fabrication), I have had an affinity for animal products.  All of our classes were taught hands-on in working kitchens for pastry, baking, buffets, fine dining and so on.

One class I couldn’t wait to take and loved more than any other was meat fabrication.  The term meat fabrication itself sounds very industrial and out of touch with humanity but in fact it was quite the opposite.

While I never got the experience of helping to butcher an entire cow, I had the opportunity to work on half a cow all the way down to dicing chunks of fat for sausage making and pate.  There were plenty of classmates who were not very keen on handling so much dead animal and plenty more who tried to act like it didn’t bother them but I felt like it put me in touch with food on a deeper level.

If you get the chance to watch, like I did, a butcher turn half a cow into edible portions you’d understand how important it is to know more about what you are eating and not distancing yourself from where our protein comes from, as it is an awe inspiring experience.

While it sounds like I might be some meat wunder-kid, believe me, I’m not and I had the smallest understanding of animal products when I began(I wasn’t even sure if meat was the actual muscle of the animal or not!).

Every passing day I appreciated more and more how important it was to treat the products with absolute care, never wasting a piece of meat, bone or fat.

Duck fat would be rendered for cooking with, beef and pork fat would be ground with lean meat for sausage, and bones would be simmered for stock.  My instructor, Chef Danny was very well versed in physiology and I remember him telling our class that we tumble meat with a little water before grinding it into sausage because the tumbling works the myosin to the surface of the meat and helps to create a consistent texture.

The same myosin I learned years later was partly responsible for muscle contractility. That is the kind of understanding I always desired and continue to pursue.  These lessons now illuminate issues for me that would have otherwise gone unnoticed, such as seeing inter and intra-muscular fat in chicken breast.  Poultry, as a whole, store fat almost exclusively subcutaneously, or under the skin, rather then in and between the muscles as in beef.

Over the years I have noticed chicken breast in supermarkets with what looks like marbling and see color shading from pink to gray.

What happened to the meat I used to know, and what is causing these changes?

Part of the problem is that our grocery stores now serve ground meat that is combined from many cows, poultry or pigs, up to 100+.

Note from TG:  I knew this, but still……….groooooooosss.

A package of chicken breasts could come from God knows how many birds and the same goes for milk, yogurt and cheese products.

No longer does our food come from one singular animal that lived a good life, was slaughtered humanely and became food to nourish and sustain us.

If you’ve read Eating Animals (TG:  I still eat animals, but this book made me think twice about where my animal sources come from. And I wouldn’t recommend reading it if you have a weak stomach) or The Omnivores Dilemma (TG:  easily one of my ten favorite books I’ve ever read), then you have heard the same type of story and much worse.

The goal of this article isn’t to list the animal treatment horrors of factory farming but give some insight into why we should be more skeptical about “assured” food production practices and possible health concerns.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve discussed with my grandfather why it’s important to pay attention to where our food comes from now.  He just can’t seem to understand that meat today is not the meat he used to eat, and likewise for vegetables and dairy.

He used to work for a milk delivery company in his 20s and 30s and delivered milk from specific small farms to people in the community.  He also grew up on a farm and grew most of his own produce, which was not heavily sprayed or laden with chemicals.  He also didn’t breathe air from pollution caused partly by automobiles and mostly by factory farming.  While he doesn’t understand the changes in food he will note how many more obese and sick people he sees at all ages these days…

To understand our food we must understand our own bodies.

Reading work by Dr. Natasha Campbell-McBride, I’ve come to a greater understanding of how we are raised and even more telling, how we’re born affects our entire lives and health.

For instance, when a baby is born it has a sterile gut.  It’s first exposure to bacteria, good or bad, comes from a mouthful of flora inside the mother’s vagina.  The mother’s ( as well as father’s) reproductive organ flora is directly influenced by their own gut flora.

If a child is born into C-section, not breast fed and/or exposed to antibiotics at an early age, its immune system is devastatingly compromised.    Dr. Campbell-McBride n0tes that any women with chronic yeast infections invariably have compromised digestive flora; one aspect of our health reflects the rest of the system.

Great, what does that mean for our food?

To start all baby chickens born for egg production, known as “layers,” and those born for meat, known as “broilers” are born from chickens raised in absolute filth and fed a heavy dose of antibiotics.

These baby chicks are grown apart from their mothers and do not get passed any beneficial gut flora that they would be exposed to from sharing feeding space with the parents.

If you look at what abnormal gut flora, or disbysosis, does in humans, you can correlate what it might do to animals.

Symptoms of disbyosis in humans are chronic infections, autoimmune diseases, lack of neurotransmitters, food malabsorption, allergies, skin conditions, arthritis, Celiacs and so on.

Imagine eating an animal with one or many of those symptoms, not very appetizing.

You might even notice that your food cooks differently now too.

Staying with the chicken example, most birds are now slaughtered around 40-45 days old, one third what it takes naturally.  Young birds often retain light-red and pinkish hues around their joints even when fully cooked.

My mom asked me a while back why a chicken she roasted just didn’t seem like it was fully cooked no matter how long she had it in the oven, I believe she threw it out without eating it.  I explained the natural phenomena occurring with young birds, most likely because the bones have not fully formed and leak marrow.

I don’t think this is problematic and makes sense from a physiological standpoint until you also consider that in addition to this, many of these birds are too large to stand on their own legs and spend most of their lives on their knees.

This creates what is known as “hock burns”, burns caused by ammonia from the litter on the floor.  Now we have partially formed, burned and arthritic bones in chickens two months old….yikes.

Note from TG: And on that cliffhanger, I’ll post part II of Luke’s article tomorrow.  In the meantime I hope part I at least spurned a dialogue in your mind which gets you thinking about where you get your food from. There’s much more to the equation than just purchasing what’s on the shelves in your local supermarket, or what’s on sale.

As the saying goes, you are what you eat…….eats.

Author’s Bio

Lucas Serwinski is a Strength and Conditioning coach and nutritional consultant for athletes and weekend warriors alike. Lucas holds a Bachelor’s in Strength and Conditioning from UCONN as well as an Associate’s in Culinary Arts from NECI.

Lucas has interned at Cressey Performance in Hudson, MA, worked on low-carbohydrate research for fat loss and health,and  trained and competed in powerlifting. He extensively studies the roles of digestion, sleep, nutritional habits and homeopathic medicine to help people of all walks achieve greater health. Lucas has also worked in multiple award-winning restaurants, including Arrow’s which was named 14th best restaurant in the country by Food magazine. Lucas incorporates knowledge and skill from cooking experience into creating a comprehensive plan for those he works with. Lucas has also worked as a social worked for years and takes mental and emotional considerations into each person’s plan and goals for success.  You can visit his blog HERE.