Guts and Poop: 5 tips for teaching kids nutrition

If you're a member of the Facebook Nerd Herd, you know that this week I spoke to my daughter's second grade class about nutrition. Frankly, It wasn't as hard as I thought it would be. As it turns out, we had roughly the same maturity level, and therefore plenty of common ground.

I get the generally feeling that many of my fans are parents. (Specifically, I'm hoping to hit the super-hot, single or loose-moraled soccer mom demographic, but for today's post, that doesn't matter too much.) With that in mind, I'd like to share some of the high points of my lecture in hopes that it will inspire you to give a talk at your own kid's school.

1. Get visual. I painted this reference poster to use as I gave them a tour of the digestive system. They loved it. And as you can see, you don't need to be Rembrandt to make a strong visual impression.

2. Give away free junk. I went to the dollar store and bought a bunch of odd-shaped rubber balls. In class, I asked questions and rewarded kids with a ball, whether they got the answer right or wrong. At the end of the talk, I explained that exercise was as crucial to health as nutrition and that they could all get active by playing with their balls.

Well, I mean, I didn't use those exact words, but you catch my drift.

3. Talk dirty. My daughter advised me that the word "poop" was generally frowned upon in her class, so I made a point of using it as much as possible and encouraging the kids to do that same. Surprisingly, it didn't have that much of an impact. However, the word "guts" nearly brought the house down, especially when I asked them to say it in unison. Who knew?

4. Get them involved. In addition to answering/asking lots of questions, the kids got out of their desks for a couple activities. First, I explained that the adult digestive system is 30 feet long. I then pulled out a tape measure, had them all stand side-by-side in a 30-foot human chain, then claimed they had just measured out the exact length of my digestive system (aka "my guts"). One particularly precocious kid  responded, "Your gut are 23 kids long! Amazing!"

Our second group project was to count out the teaspoons of sugar in a 20-ounce bottle of Coke. While seeing the 16 spoons being poured certainly made an impact, it really fired them up when I gave my pouring volunteer the option to either drink the soda or dump it down the sink. As she pondered her move, the kids cheered her on and when she chose to dump it, they exploded in a frenzy normally reserved for ancient Roman gladiators, WWE wrestlers, and Taylor Swift.

5. Look 'em in the eye. This is more of a personal philosophy than anything, but it seems to me that kids spend most of their time being talked down to. If you're giving a thirty minute talk about nutrition, it's not your job to impart manners, crack whips, or command respect. The respect will come, just as it does when you're talking to grown-ups, purely because you know your shit. So talk at their level, laugh with them, tease them, and let yourself be teased. Make sure they're being heard. When someone says something naive, embrace it and find the positive in it. It never ceases to amazing me how kids will raise to the occasion if you let them.

Hopefully, you'll find something useful here. If any of you Nerd Herders do have the chance to teach good eatin' to the tykes, please hit me back and let us all know how it went. While I may be omniscient regarding wellness, this teaching stuff is new to me, so I'd love to learn from y'all.

Fake Fat? Fail!

Nerd Herder and Nutritionist Extraordinaire Ani sent me this bit o' scientific scallywaggery today. It's from a symposium held at the Institute of Food Technologists 2011 Annual Meeting. (Don't freak out if this reads like Swahili. Translation to follow.)

The brain areas that represent taste including the primary taste cortex and the orbitofrontal cortex also provide a representation of oral texture. Fat texture is represented by neurons independently of viscosity: some neurons respond to fat independently of viscosity, and other neurons encode viscosity. The neurons that respond to fat also respond to silicone and paraffin oil, indicating that the sensing is texture-specific not chemo-specific. This fat sensing is not related to free fatty acids such as linoleic acid, and a few other neurons that respond to free fatty acids typically do not respond to fat in the mouth. Complementary human functional neuroimaging studies show that the pleasantness of food texture is represented in the orbitofrontal cortex. These findings have implications for the design of foods that mimic the pleasant texture of fat in the mouth but have low energy content, and thus for the prevention and treatment of obesity.

Translation: Scientists are hard at work developing delicious fake fats made of sand and petroleum products that trick the brain so that overweight people can gorge on without worrying about moderation of self control. 


Here's that abstract again run through a Swahili translator. If you're anything like me, you'll find it much less baffling.

Maeneo ya ubongo kwamba kuwakilisha ladha ikiwa ni pamoja na gamba msingi ladha na gamba orbitofrontal pia kutoa uwakilishi wa texture mdomo. Texture mafuta ni kuwakilishwa na neurons kujitegemea wa mnato baadhi neurons kukabiliana na mafuta kujitegemea wa mnato, na wengine neurons encode mnato. neurons kwamba kukabiliana na mafuta pia kujibu Silicone na mafuta ya taa, kuonyesha kwamba kuhisi ni texture maalum si chemo maalum. Kuhisi hii mafuta si kuhusiana na asidi bure mafuta kama vile asidi linoleic, na wachache neurons mengine ambayo kukabiliana na asidi bure fatty kawaida wala kujibu kwa mafuta katika kinywa. Fomu za binadamu kazi neuroimaging tafiti zinaonyesha kuwa utamu wa texture chakula ni kuwakilishwa katika gamba orbitofrontal. Matokeo haya ya kuwa na athari kwa mpangilio wa vyakula mimic texture mazuri ya mafuta katika kinywa lakini kuwa na nishati Asili maudhui, na hivyo kwa ajili ya kuzuia na matibabu ya fetma.

Why am I baffled? It's not the part where science is hard at work developing willpower-and-personal-accountability-free obesity-fighting techniques. From Slimming Belts to Diet Coke to Liposuction to Lap Bands, I'm used to that. No, I'm baffled because scientists, by definition, are smart people, yet they're apparently naive enough to think that they understand the complexities of the human brain so well that they can trick it without some kind of backlash. 

Case in point, artificial sweeteners. There's a growing body of research indicating that tricking the mind into thinking it's getting a sugar hit may impair the body's ability to regulate food. Here's a study summary from WebMD.

In the study, published in the July issue of the International Journal of Obesity, two groups of rats were fed either a mix of high-calorie, sugar-sweetened, and low-calorie, artificially sweetened liquids; or sugar-sweetened liquids alone. This was fed to the rats in addition their regular diet.  

After 10 days, they were offered a high-calorie, chocolate-flavored snack. The study showed that rats fed the mixed liquids ate more of their regular chow after the sweet snack than those who had been fed sugar-sweetened liquids alone.  

Researchers say the results show that the experience of drinking artificially sweetened, low-calorie liquids had damaged the rats' natural ability to compensate for the calories in the snack.

If you think this study doesn't apply because humans, unlike rats, have the conscious ability to control what they eat, you're wrong. If that were the case, we wouldn't have invented artificial sweeteners in the first place.


Of course, this isn't the first time that food scientists have tried to develop Frankenfat. Back in the 90s, Procter and Gamble's Olestra was supposed to be a game changer. It never took off, perhaps because of this required label:


A moderate amount of fat is good for you. It's an energy source and an important part of every cell in your body. Eat some today, and enjoy it. And if you still feel the desire for some fake fat, go rent a Martin Lawrence movie.

Liver versus Fat

That old chestnut that eating fat can help you lose weight has been floating around for some time now. Anti-sugar campaigners claim that carbs, not fat, that's responsible for Western Civilization's burgeoning waistline. (Apparently, the theory that we just eat too much crap in general, be it carbs, fat, or protein, just doesn't float with some people. After all, this is America, damnit! There needs to be a good guy and a bad guy.)

There's also the theory that fat satiates you, so it can help you eat less. This one tends to make more sense to me. Until now, the idea was that it takes longer to digest fat, therefore it keeps your tummy full longer. But there's a problem with this explanation: it's nuthin' but common sense - and that's no fun! What's the point of taking nutritional advice just because it's right? We need science! We need research! We need studies!

Well, I got your study right here. Scientists in Australia have thrown down some research in the latest issue of the journal Diabetes suggesting why fat is a valuable appetite suppressant. To my surprise, it has nothing to do with the stomach. It's all about the liver, baby.

Liver fructose-1,6-bisphosphatase is an enzyme associated with the production of glucose. Folks call it FPBase for short, but I think whoever named it was damn inconsiderate in assuming that all you need to do when you name an enzyme is slap an "ase" at the end of a string of words. It's the scientist equivalent of those celebrities who name their kids "Smoke" or "Car Door" of whatever.

Anyway, FPBase, as it turns out, plays another role. When the Aussies fed mice a high-fat diet, the enzyme kicked hormones in gear that suppressed appetite. Cool, huh?

Unfortunately, I don't know if this little tidbit will do much good 'round these parts. We've done an impressive job of nutritionally overriding silly little "hormones" and "enzymes" - not to mention "logic" with our Standard American Diet (SAD).  I'm certain that some people will read about this study and add 500 calories of fat to their shitty 4000-calorie diet, thinking that will somehow induce weight loss. The trick is to add this bit o' knowledge to your nutritional scrapbook with the understanding that when you eat healthy, this is one of the things that'll help your maintain your weight.

The great nose-feeding tube throwdown

Last week, I linked to an article on my Facebook page about doctor in Florida who's offering a feeding tube crash diet. Patients pay $1500 to have a tube shoved up their nose, through which 800 calories of protein and fat are slow dripped into their stomachs, forcing hardcore ketosis and severe weight loss. The angle is that this is something brides-to-be can do to drop weight fast to fit into their wedding dress.

I've read a lot of rumbling that this should be illegal. I don't know if I agree with that. I'm all for controlled fasting or cleansing for spiritual purposes or just to help clean the junk out of your system, so it would be hypocritical to say weight loss fasting shouldn't be allowed. However, I do think doing it purely for weight loss is complete crap and I question the ethics of any doctor who would administer something like this.

Crash diets don't work. They may cause weight loss in the short term, but it all comes back, given they don't teach dieters how to eat right, so they return to old habits and gain the weight back.

But the short term is what Americans tend to worry about most, so that's probably why this trend will continue until someone dies or goes insane and sues the doctor who shoved the tube up their snout. Litigation for things like this, BTW, is a practice I find equally repellent. I don't care what the guy on the other end of the tube is telling you; If you're willingly ramming anything up your nose, it's your duty to research it and if it goes wrong, that's your problem.

Regarding this perfect wedding thing, here's some advice from a former groom: I don't care about those "last ten pounds." If you "look fat" in that wedding dress, you picked the wrong one. You're paying thousands of dollars for the damn thing, so pick one that's flattering. That's the entire point of picking a piece of clothing you're only going to wear once. And any guy who tells you otherwise - any guy who wants you to go on a nose tube diet before the big day - is an ASSHOLE and you should put some serious thought into marrying him.

That's not to say I'm not superficial. In fact, I'm deeply, deeply superficial, but my superficiality is the longterm kind. I take care of my body and, if I ever settle down again, I know I'll need to be with someone who does the same. But that doesn't mean she'll be able to cram into a size 2 wedding dress. It means decades of exercising together, having hot sex together, eating healthy meals together, having hot sex together, and being obesity-related-disease free together.

Oh, and also hot sex.

So if you really want to have an impact on your marriage, don't pop a tube up your proboscis. Think in the long term, eat right, and exercise. A fifty-year wedding anniversary with 5-10 irrelevant extra pounds is so much more sexy than looking like a lollypop in white on your wedding day.

Rethinking Frankenfoods

I'm one, lucky sonuvabitch. Why? Because I have a great job and I live by the beach close to a major metropolitan center. Because of this, I have access to everything I need to support my hoighty-toighty, organic, locavore habit.  I can bike to one of three different farmers markets and when I get a hankerin' for a hunk o' protein, I walk down to the Redondo Beach Pier and grab a locally-caught red snapper.

My location and my steady (albeit not stellar) income allow me to make Michael Pollan's In Defense of Food my culinary canon. I eat organic, local food. Not too much. Mostly plants.

Problem is, here in Los Angeles, it's easy to eat only seasonal, locally-grown veggies, but what if you live in Alaska? Not so much with the winter squash and citrus. Similarly, it's easy for me to insist you eat only grass-fed, hormone-free beef, but if you're just scrapping by on your paycheck while feeding a family of 6? Who cares what goes into the cow's mouth? You have other mouths to worry about.

Those are usually some of the first points that trollers make on my blog when I extol the virtues of cruelty-free eggs or summer peaches or whatever. Not only does most of the world not have access to this stuff, but with our exploding world population, traditional methods simply can't support them all. They have a point. While I love watching hardcore sustainable farmers like Joel Salatan at Polyface Farms in action, I have a hard time believing that set-ups like that can sustain the diets of 7 billion people. There are too many of us. In other words, we've screwed ourselves out of this simple, sustainable solution by screwing too much.



So how do we fix this? Please don't answer battery cage hens and feedlots. As much as I believe that it's well within our rights as humans to eat other animals, I just don't see how it's our right to force them into living tortured, short, drug-adled lives in shoeboxes or their own shit. I mean, sure, being well-doped and dying young was good enough for Janis Joplin and Kurt Cobain, but at least they got bigger hotel suites.

And, of course, there's monoculture, where you're, for lack of a better term, fucking the earth. Monoculture farms do away with crop rotation, instead planting GMO corn and soy from the same soil over and over, dumping chemicals in the dirt to keep nutrients up. If it isn't completely obvious to you why this is bad, check out an ever-growing list of documentaries, from King Corn, to Food, Inc., to The Future of Food.

(I'm going to pause here to personally address any angry agronomists reading this and getting their overalls in a bunch because a city slicker doesn't have any right to talk about farming. Relax, Mr. Green Jeans, I'm on your side. The documentaries I mentioned above describe in great detail how Big Agra like Monsanto is making millions screwing y'all over.)

So I'm wondering. Is there a third way? Maybe we can't all eat cherries right off the tree and have a halibut jump into our plate and fillet itself come suppertime, but instead of continuing to exploit over-exploited resources, how about exploiting a resource that can handle a little exploitation?

A cool explain of this is whey. For generations, this white liquid was considered nothing more than a useless byproduct from cheese production. Then the supplement industry discovered that it's actually a great source of complete protein. I'm willing to bet only a tiny fraction of the whey out there is used in those chocolate and vanilla wonder tubs. Can you imagine how many people we could feed if we devoted more energy to properly using all the whey the dairy industry discards?

I'm also interested in the trend to use sustainably-fished seafood as a source for Omega-3 sups, such as krill, anchovies, and trout. In fact, here's a cool article about a recent study on using trout protein as an omega-3 source for "functional foods."

Admittedly, this gets into frankenfood territory, something I've always spoken out loudly against, but maybe I need to reconsider. Maybe if we're smart about it and test things properly, it makes sense to investigate under-utilized foods. Sure, it might burn a few extra food miles, but the simple fact is, in the 21st century, sometimes you just gotta drive to dinner.

Be Food Pairing Aware!

Here's a groovy little excerpt in Mother Earth News from a new book called The Happiness Diet. While the premise of the diet seem pretty boilerplate (eliminate refined crap from your diet and you'll feel better), the excerpt focuses on food pairing - the notion that nutrients in certain foods work better when paired with the nutrients in other foods. For example...

Eggs and Cheese:  The vitamin D found in egg yolks makes the calcium in dairy more available to your body — important not only for bones, but for heart health as well. 

Rosemary and Steak:  Marinate your steak with rosemary before cooking: The herb is rich in antioxidants such as rosmarinic acid and carnosic acid that help neutralize carcinogenic compounds known as heterocyclic amines (HCAs) that form when steak reaches a temperature of 325 degrees Fahrenheit or higher. 

The idea that mixing foods can make them exponentially better for you is nothing new. The most obvious example of this is good ol' rice and beans, something cultures the world over have been dining on for centuries, completely unaware that this combo provides all nine essential amino acids.

While it's almost always better to seek nutrition from whole foods, you can get similar benefits trying this trick with supplementation. I've been having a lot of luck lately with magnesium for neural/muscular tension issues. I take the sups along with a B complex as to help absorbability. Recently, I ran out of the B complex and, being the cheapskate that I am, I put off heading down to the vitamin store. The difference was astonishing, not to mention gross and inappropriate. (If you want to know why, I'll leave it up to you to research the side effects of poorly-absorbed magnesium. Hint: It rhymes with "pliarrhea." I, personally, also experience "banal stitching.")

If you want to start pairing foods, I'd suggest breaking it down into nutrients. If you feel there's a specific vitamin or mineral that would benefit you, look into other micronutrients that work well with it. Then, either invest in some quality sups or look for foods that contain the two. A couple of my favorite resources for this are The Real Vitamin and Mineral Book by Nancy Pauling Bruning and Shari Lieberman; and The World's Healthiest Foods, by George Mateljan.

But be careful. The concept has been fairly perverted by some seriously lame hippy science. Generally speaking, you want to avoid anything that'll promote weight loss via pairing. Also the word "combining" tends to be a red flag. For example, one system that I'm not a fan of is Body Ecology, which does a great job of sounding super scientific despite completely misrepresenting the human digestive system. To wit:

When you eat proteins like poultry, fish, meat, and eggs, your stomach secretes hydrochloric acid and the enzyme pepsin to break down the food in a highly acidic environment. When you eat starches like potatoes or bread, your stomach secretes the enzyme ptyalin to create an alkaline condition.  

If you eat proteins and starches together, they tend to neutralize each other and inhibit digestion. The poorly-digested food travels through the digestive tract reaching the intestines where it putrefies and causes your blood to become acidic. It also provides a welcome environment for disease-causing pathogens!

I could write a nine episode, HBO miniseries on why these two paragraphs are ridiculous, but really quickly, ptyalin is an amylase (digestive enzyme) found in saliva (like, in your mouth) and it's going to by wiped out by the hydrochloric acid in your stomach whether you're eating a water chestnut or a water buffalo. That's your stomach's job, to be acidic. The digestive system doesn't so much shift to accommodate the macronutrients you're eating as much as it deals with them in different organs with different enzymes as they travel down.

So, in other words, pairing foods can be a great way to maximize your nutrition, but do your homework because there are a lot of "authorities" out there that are completely full of poorly-absorbed magnesium, if you catch my drift.

Hershey Highway to Hell

Time for a little tough love, Fitness Nerd style. If you think eating chocolate will help you in your struggle with weight loss, you're deluded. I know, I know, there's that new study in the Archives of Internal Medicine linking frequent chocolate consumption to lower BMI that the media has picked up and distorted with headlines like The Wall Street Journal's "A Chocolate a Day to Get Slimmer." As usual, there's a lot of distortion going on. Case in point, even the WSJ needed to recant its attention-grabbing headline halfway down the article:

But before people hoping to lose weight indulge in an extra scoop of chocolate fudge swirl, the researchers caution that the study doesn't prove a link between frequent chocolate munching and weight loss.

Huh? Does it make you slimmer or not? Make up your mind, WSJ!

The gist of the study is that about 1000 San Diegans, aged 23 to 85, were polled on how often they eat chocolate. They found that people who claimed to ate a small amount of chocolate 5 times a week tended to eat more calories than those who claimed to eat less chocolate, yet weighed less. However, most media outlets completely forgot to mention that this magic benefit vanished with people who ate more than this moderate amount. (NPR featured one of the few reports that fessed up to this important fact. Go, hippies!)

There are, indeed, benefits to moderate chocolate consumption. Take, for example, this 2007 Italian study of 10,000 people, where medical tests indicated the flavonoid concentration in dark chocolate has anti-inflammatory properties. I can get behind research like that, but what's with trying to manufacture pop science out of the recollections of a bunch of random Southern Californians? Apparently, the researchers don't watch House M.D., because if they did, they'd know this:

In my experience, both professional and personal, overweight people tend to have a lousy relationship with food, especially high-sugar foods that have been clinically shown to be addictive. There's a good chance they're going to fudge the truth, so to speak. It's not a reflection of their moral character; it's a reflection of their issues. If you ask an alcoholic how much he drinks, are you going to get a straight answer? If you asked me how many times in a day I visit www.flashyourrack.com, I'd say -

Well, never mind that; it's off topic. Anyway, even if, hypothetically, they laced the questionnaires with sodium pentothal so that everyone would tell God's honest truth, they're missing a massive confounding factor. Was the chocolate a cause, or an effect of the healthy lifestyle?

Could it be that the reason moderate chocolate eaters are less inclined to gain weight is because they understand how to practice moderation in general? I've long thought this to be the reason studies on alcohol and caffeine show a benefit from their moderate intake. It's stressful to ply your body with toxins, but it's also stressful completely avoiding all indulgences. There's a reason why monks who take abstinence vows cut themselves off from the world. Avoiding pleasure is hard, hard work, especially in a culture where you're a 7-11 away from instant access to at least 6 of the 7 deadly sins. (They don't sell guns at 7-11, so I left out "wrath." If you're looking for wrath, try Walmart.)

However, walking the middle road, if you can do it, is about as close as you get to having your cake and eating it too during your time onstage in the Human Comedy. A little chocolate here, a little wine there and not only are you less inclined to binge, but you tend to be less stressed out in general. And, as we all know, stress has a biochemical influence on weight gain.

But as mixed martial arts, Super Big Gulps, The United States Congress, and our burgeoning waistlines prove, moderation is not a thing that Americans do well. In the wake of this "study," I'm fairly sure that thousands of struggling dieters have embraced the Atkins + Chocolate Eating Plan, where they still avoid carrots and bananas like the plague, but shovel down candy bars like Augustus Gloop looking for the Golden Ticket, assuming that all the HFCS and refined sugar that comes with these confections won't have a negative impact cuz, like, chocolate is good you, right?

Right?