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macronutrients

Picking the Low Hanging Fruit: Dial Back the Carbs

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It’s been several days since I wrote about picking the low hanging fruit (the simpler, foundational principles) along one’s journey to restore (or improve) your overall health and wellness. Last week I offered up some simple principles related to protein and incorporating more movement into your daily routine.

Of note, my thoughts today are aimed at those who are following an approach to nutrition and food much more aligned with the Standard American Diet (the infamous SAD approach), not necessarily those thoughtful folks who have already begun to take a hard and discerning look at the healthy – and the unhealthy – aspects of their nutrition plan.

So How Many Grams of Carbohydrate Does “the Average American” Eat Per Day?

Good question, and when you get right down to it, defining the “average carb intake” of any group or population is devilishly difficult to do with genuine scientific accuracy, though there are plenty of ways to ballpark the numbers fairly closely.

For example, let’s look at carbohydrate intake suggestions from the venerable Mayo Clinic, written in February of 2017 –

The Dietary Guidelines for Americans recommends that carbohydrates make up 45 to 65 percent of your total daily calories.

So, if you get 2,000 calories a day, between 900 and 1,300 calories should be from carbohydrates. That translates to between 225 and 325 grams of carbohydrates a day.

Impressive, particularly in light of two things: first, there are impressive numbers of individuals who consume a far more than 60 percent of their daily calories from carbohydrates. And secondly, there’s been an explosion of very credible information over the past couple of decades, more so in the last decade, frankly destroying the concept that carbohydrates are our bodies preferred, principle fuel.

That said, where does one start when looking to manage carbohydrate intelligently?

Starting Your Approach to Dialing Back Your Carbohydrate Intake

Coming from the perspective of eating the Standard American Diet (SAD), once you’ve settled on a rational approach to protein intake, for most of us, it’s time to dial back the carbs.

How far? It really doesn’t have to be that complicated, and for all the chatter about carbohydrate intake floating about these days, I still find Mark Sisson’s diagram below – his carbohydrate curve – to be one of the must useful illustrations of the concept.

If you’re eating 300 grams of carbohydrate a day, dropping down to 150 or 100 grams/day isn’t necessarily going to happen overnight. You can drop quickly, we did years ago, though we’re sorta “rip the bandage off in one quick pull” kinda people, and our process wasn’t without some cravings and missteps along the way.

Part of the mechanism of dialing back your carbohydrate intake is based upon improving the quality of the carbohydrates you consume – eating fresh, whole foods and not highly refined, overly process, carb-dense preparations is a huge part of the game here.

For a little more detail, take a look at Carbs: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly (Part 1 is the Bad and Ugly, Part 2 The Good).

And Finally, Remember the Carb Game is Won By Finding Your Carb Tolerance Point

A critical reminder from a prior post – your optimal carb zone and macronutrient partitioning needs depend on a host of factors THAT ARE UNIQUE TO YOU; potentially including (a short list, just for example):

Your current objective(s): be it weight loss, athletic performance, cognitive improvement, general well being, longevity, etc.
Your current body composition: Are you overweight, underweight, lacking appropriate muscle mass?
Your overall metabolic health: Are you in full-blown metabolic syndrome with insulin resistance, on the edge, or “fairly healthy”?
Your overall level of activity: Are you a cubical-bound couch potato whose idea of a workout is the walk to and from the car in the parking lot, an occasional, casual walker, perhaps working a physically demanding job, or a gym rat?
Your overall general health: Do you have conditions that impact your body’s functions in a material way, such as joint problems (degenerative arthritis), heart disease or hypertension, poor sleep, or stress you can’t manage?
Your age: For example, protein requirements increase in the elderly, and the elderly’s protein requirements may be more impacted by higher activity levels.
Your current progress in your recovery journey: Your best macronutrient partitioning will change over time, pending where you are in your health and wellness journey, and as you purposefully get leaner, more fit, and thoughtful about how you fuel your mind and body.

There will be some trial and error, and some N=1 experimenting to find your sweet spot. Get started today, and we’re here to help guide you through the process if it seems a bit overwhelming. Git ‘er done.

Picking the Low Hanging Fruit: Put Protein In Its Place

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Continuing our look at picking the low hanging fruit (the simpler, foundational principles) along your health and wellness journey, let’s tackle one – consuming the optimal amount of good protein – that’s fairly straight forward, yet often overlooked when moving away from the standard American diet (SAD) to a more intentional, and healthy, food plan.

So Just How Much Protein Do I Really Need?

For most of us, those of us living fairly normal lives and not training to become championship level body builders or Olympians, and not dealing with some major medical condition, there are several useful rule of thumb methods to ballpark your protein needs.

Please note that I abhor “one size fits all” nutrition plans; the type and amount of food you consume every day should be carefully customized to fit your very own physiology, metabolism, and activity demands, and will of course change over time throughout your life. Run from anyone who tells you they have a magic plan handed down from on high that you must follow.

That said, I most often suggest that people who are reasonably active start with the simple guideline of aiming to consume 0.6 to 0.8 grams of protein per pound of lean body mass per day, and adjust from there.

There’s a bit more detail about typical adjustments made to protein intake in this post from a few months back, and critically you’ll probably end up doing some experimentation to see what works best for you.

Protein Quality Matters

Sourcing great proteins for your food plan doesn’t need to be overly complicated, and like most things we eat, for most of us there are a variety of options and choices available.

Several months ago I spent a fair amount of time detailing some general principles in sourcing proteins, looking at game, beef, pork, and lamb here, seafood here, and fowl here.

I encourage folks to make the absolute best selections of your protein choices within budgetary and availability constraints, though it’s possible now to have just about any variety of amazing proteins shipped to your front door with a few clicks or a quick call.

The Thinking About Protein is Evolving, Particularly in the Longevity Arena

As you’re working through your protein plan, I’d encourage you at some point to read some of what Dr. Gundry has written about protein (The Plant Paradox; his new book The Longevity Paradox is just out, though I’ve not picked up a copy as of this morning!).

Guidry (among many) opines that most of us eat far more protein than we need, and probably more than is optimal for our metabolism.

We’ll come back and visit this issue in more detail in another post, my intent is to stir your curiosity a bit and have you keep an eye out for changes in how the best minds are conceptualizing our optimal relationship with proteins.

Questionable Science Thursday: The Save the World Dietary Guidelines (and 7 Grams)

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There’s been a flood of commentary on the EAT-Lancet Commission’s report in the general media, conventional health, and ancestral communities over the past week.

I’ve not had time this week to round up everything worth sharing about the commission’s report and ongoing work, though some of the talking points presented (via the media, and the dietary recommendations released) are certainly worth noting.

From a Guardian article posted 17 January 2019 (emphasis mine) –

A complete overhaul of what we eat may be the only way to meet the needs of a planet in crisis. So what’s on – and off – the menu?

The world faces many challenges over the coming decades, but one of the most significant will be how to feed its expanding global population. By 2050, there will be about 10 billion of us, and how to feed us all, healthily and from sustainable food sources, is something that is already being looked at. The Norway-based thinktank (sic) Eat and the British journal the Lancet have teamed up to commission an in-depth, worldwide study, which launches at 35 different locations around the world today, into what it would take to solve this problem – and the ambition is huge.

The commissioners lay out important caveats. Their solution is contingent on global efforts to stabilise population growth, the achievement of the goals laid out in the Paris Agreement on climate change and stemming worldwide changes in land use, among other things. But they are clear that it depends on far more than just these basic requirements. The initial report presents a flexible daily diet for all food groups based on the best health science, which also limits the impact of food production on the planet...

7 Grams You Say???

The article goes on to ponder what the plan would allow the typical Brit to consume; one point of interest to the author (and Mark Sisson at Mark’s Daily Apple as well) is the suggested limit of 7 grams of red meat per day (the allowable range is listed as a whopping 0-14 grams).

Just for grins, I thought it might be notable to see what 7 grams of food might actually look like.

Seven grams of red meat is so tiny it’s all but impossible to creatively capture in a simple, single image, hence the use of small (about the size of my little finger nail) salad olives above – three of which weigh right at 7 grams.

Impressive.

Some Further Reading to Do After Enjoying Your Steak Tonight…

By all means read the full article linked in the Guardian above as an example of recent media coverage.

Here’s the EAT-Lancet Commission on Food, Planet, Health site. For the inquisitive, there are a series of “Briefs” posted at the bottom of the landing page.

Here’s the EAT-Lancet Commission Hub page at The Lancet.

There have been a plethora of spirited responses to the guidelines across a broad spectrum of perspectives, one particularly insightful one from an ancestral health angle is this one from Diana Rogers, RD at Sustainable Dish – 20 Ways EAT Lancet’s Global Diet is Wrongfully Vilifying Meat.

More to come (getting a big project put to bed this week…).

Enjoy that steak tonight, even if you chew up (literally and figuratively) an entire year’s EAT-Lancet allotment of red meat in one meal.

Seminal Fat Article: Is Dietary Fat Foe or Friend?

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Now and again a truly seminal article pops up in the literature; we’ll be posting citations of particular interest to we in the Older Bolder crowd as they come across our radar.

This one – Dietary Fat: From Foe to Friend? – published last month in Science (Science 16 Nov 2018:Vol. 362, Issue 6416, pp. 764-770), authored by David S. Ludwig, Walter C. Willett, Jeff S. Volek, and Marian L Neuhouser is one of those seminal pieces worth your time.

The authors take a concise look at the origins of the “reduce fats and increase carbohydrates” recommendations from purported authorities (dating in the piece back to 1977), and the resultant impacts on American health, while recognizing that correlation versus causation is open for debate, particularly given the plethora of factors impacting outcome and the lack of controlled, large human studies.

It’s most interesting to read their contrasting “The case for a low-fat, high-carbohydrate” and “The case for a low-carbohydrate, high-fat diet” sections, as well as the detailed arguments for dietary fat quality.

Their opening paragraph in the conclusion is worth noting (emphasis mine) –

The optimal proportion of carbohydrate to fat in the diet for obesity treatment and chronic disease prevention has been a topic of debate for decades, often generating more heat than light (101). Of course, any meaningful assessment of a diet’s impact on health must extend far beyond macronutrient quantity, to include the myriad qualitative aspects of food and food combinations that influence hormonal response, gene expression, and metabolic pathways. Further complicating this issue is the likelihood that inherent or acquired biological differences among individuals or populations, especially related to glucose homeostasis, affect response to specific diets.

The authors take care to note nine current controversies surrounding dietary fat, and appropriately call for further well-designed, thoughtfully controlled research in these arenas.

They also go on to list seven points of consensus, again from the article –

1. With a focus on nutrient quality, good health and low chronic disease risk can be achieved for many people on diets with a broad range of carbohydrate-to-fat ratios.
2. Replacement of saturated fat with naturally occurring unsaturated fats provides health benefits for the general population. Industrially produced trans fats are harmful and should be eliminated. The metabolism of saturated fat may differ on carbohydrate-restricted diets, an issue that requires study.
3. Replacement of highly processed carbohydrates (including refined grains, potato products, and free sugars) with unprocessed carbohydrates (nonstarchy vegetables, whole fruits, legumes, and whole or minimally processed grains) provides health benefits.
4. Biological factors appear to influence responses to diets of differing macronutrient composition. People with relatively normal insulin sensitivity and β cell function may do well on diets with a wide range of carbohydrate-to-fat ratios; those with insulin resistance, hypersecretion of insulin, or glucose intolerance may benefit from a lower-carbohydrate, higher-fat diet.
5. A ketogenic diet may confer particular metabolic benefits for some people with abnormal carbohydrate metabolism, a possibility that requires long-term study.
6. Well-formulated low-carbohydrate, high-fat diets do not require high intakes of protein or animal products. Reduced carbohydrate consumption can be achieved by substituting grains, starchy vegetables, and sugars with nonhydrogenated plant oils, nuts, seeds, avocado, and other high-fat plant foods.
7. There is broad agreement regarding the fundamental components of a healthful diet that can serve to inform policy, clinical management, and individual dietary choice. Nonetheless, important questions relevant to the epidemics of diet-related chronic disease remain. Greater investment in nutrition research should assume a high priority.

Well worth a read, and we’ll be diving into several of these key points in much greater detail in the upcoming months.

My Keto Report Card 2 August 2018: Week 15

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Back on the Seventh of June I shared a quick post detailing my personal experience in a fairly diligent nutritional ketosis run; the week before I’d shared a short post explaining why I’d chosen to do the work (in retrospect, it’s been shockingly easy) to give keto a try.

Without rehashing all the why’s I laid out back then, I was interested in pushing through a weight loss stall first and foremost, though wanted to play a bit with seeing if being in NK would really improve mental clarity and my overall reserve of daily energy.

My Nutritional Keto Report Card at Week 15

For the most part, as summarized in the image to the right, overall I’m still pleased as can be with what life looks and feels like in nutritional ketosis.

My schedule hasn’t changed much; I’m still out of the sack between 530 and 6 (after 8 hours of sleep on average), still waking up without an alarm clock with the earliest light of the day. I typically still drink a cold-brewed coffee (still with a bit of cream and 10-11 grams of protein in the form of collagen powder), though due to the scorching heat during this Texas summer, almost every day I head out for a 2-3 mile walk while it’s cool.

Then it’s back to the desk for several hours of fairly intensive cognitive work, typically with very good energy and creative juices flowing, then I’m either doing a HIIT workout 3x/week, walking again or cycling again most days, with a sprint workout thrown in every 7-10 days as well.

Trying hard to eat WHEN (when hunger ensues naturally), typically lunch is somewhere between 1 and 2, with a family dinner then following (after the afternoon’s work) most often around 730 or 8.

We did make a run to Montana (to see a new grand-baby!) a few weeks ago, with a few days on the road challenging my keto compliance; interestingly my weight loss continued, though with a bit less satiety during travel and interestingly the week after.

A Closer Look at a Few Metrics

As noted 8 weeks ago, I have been tracking a fairly close estimation of my macronutrients –

Up until starting my NK run, I’d lost 100 lbs without tracking a single calorie consumed over the 15 months window we’d been eating a fairly compliant LC/MP/HF diet around our camp, though of note been in a weight loss stall for several months (Dec-Feb).

I did however, principally at first as a learning tool, and later in part due to my medical training induced affinity for objective data, track a fairly specific diary of my daily carb intake (net carbs), which from the get go were always under 100 per day, and most often under 60 gm/day.

Again, largely as a matter of intellectual curiosity, when starting my NK run, I decided to track, as closely as possible, daily intake of carbs, protein, and fat, and to calculate my total caloric intake and deficit against my estimated BMR (adjusted for activity), as well as the percentages of carb / protein / fat contributions to my total calories.

I still don’t recommend that most folks I work with track their intake as obsessively as I have been; it’s simply not necessary to make nutritional ketosis work for most. If you’re a data nut like me, go to it. Over the 15 weeks in NK thus far, the rolling averages of my intake and macronutrient accounting include –

Daily Carb Grams: 25.3 (101 calories)
Daily Protein Grams: 88.1 (352.3 calories)
Daily Fat Grams: 121.7 (1093.5 calories)

Average Total Calories per Day: 1552.5
Average Calorie Deficit per Day: –1537.3

Average Carbs as Percent of Total Calories per Day: 6.5%
Average Protein as Percent of Total Calories per Day: 22.6%
Average Fat as Percent of Total Calories per Day: 70.5%

Of note, without any conscious effort on my part, I’ve been gradually eating less per day overall over the 15 weeks (eating WHEN to satiety), with the percentage of carbs dropping over time, and fat increasing. Over the past 4 weeks, I’ve dropped carbs under 20 g/day just to make things interesting…

Weight loss during my 15 week run now totals 30.5 pounds, fairly consistent with what I noted during the first 7 weeks.

My Nutritional Ketosis Week Fifteen Bottom Line: Still Hot Damn!

All in all, I couldn’t be more pleased and feel better than I have since my late 20’s; at this point I’m guessing I might make this a 6-month run. We’ll see in a couple of months when I report again…

Older Bolder Foundations: Is Everything You’ve Been Taught About Macronutrient Partitioning Wrong? Probably. (Part 3)

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Let’s wind up this whirlwind tour of macronutrient partitioning with a look at the role fat plays in your food plan and a key closing thought. Scroll down below (or click) to read Part 1 and Part 2 if you missed them.

Getting to Your Best Macronutrient Partitioning: Fats

Fats, despite growing evidence to the contrary, continue to be broadly demonized by many in the traditional health and nutrition world (see current recommendations from the American Heart Association for example); not only that, we’re constantly implored to utilize the very fats that are in reality shockingly bad for us – namely the highly-oxidized, chemically-modified, PUFA-dominated franken-oils lining most supermarket shelves (again, see the AHA link above).

The good, healthy fats (butter and ghee, coconut oil and coconut products, animal fats, olives and olive oil, and avocados for example) provide a host of benefits and can be enjoyed, within the bounds of common sense, with two primary goals in their consumption: balancing out your daily caloric needs as your primary fuel source (after establishing your carb and protein requirements) and making your food taste good (yep, much of the flavor you savor in your food comes from fat).

[And yes, we’ll being taking a detailed look at what makes ‘good fats’ far better for you in detailed posts down the road. If you’re currently exploring the issue and want to dig deeper (no pun intended), pick up a copy of Dr. Cate Shanahan’s book Deep Nutrition for a dive into the science underlaying the fat recommendations here and across much of the wellness literature today.]

Balancing out daily caloric needs is the key take home point here and points to a critical principle that continues to fly in the face of conventional wisdom – that point being that the human machine (our metabolism) runs optimally on fat as its primary fuel source, not carbohydrates. There’s a plethora of literature espousing this Fat Paradigm (here’s a seminal article from Phinney, 2004), and we’ll be looking at the topic in much more detail a few weeks down the road.

Practically speaking, once you’ve reacquainted your metabolic machinery with the reality of burning fat as a preferred fuel source (which conceptually isn’t that difficult to do), fats become the variable in your food plan allowing you to accomplish all sorts of things. Things like rational, consistent weight loss or fueling high level functional life or athletic activities.

[As an example, I have a client who wants to loose roughly 40 pounds (at a very sustainable rate of 1.5 lb/wk), and we’ve dialed in her comfortable carb intake at about 60 g/day and protein in the neighborhood of 90 g/day. With her calculated BMR (based on LBM and adjusted for activity) 2150 cal/day, it’s a simple calculation to subtract her carb+protein intake derived calories from her BMR, along with the calorie deficit to produce the desired weight loss, to see that she needs about 800 cal/day from good fats, roughly 88 grams. An easy-peasy plan to derive and accomplish.]

For many breaking out of the carb-dependent paradigm can be a challenge, but once you’ve personally experienced the power of changing over to fat as your preferred fuel source, a whole new world of possibility opens up.

Getting to Your Best Macronutrient Partitioning: Seek and You Shall Find

In summary, your best macronutrient partitioning plan isn’t one that comes from the benevolent USDA, the American Heart Association (or just about any other traditional medical “association”), or from the fitness guru (and Instagram celebrity) online who promises a foolproof, customized meal plan for just three easy payments of $39.99.

Your optimal macronutrient partitioning plan…

…is at any point in time unique to you and you alone, though there are useful generalizations available to serve as jumping off points when reshaping your approach to food and nutrition,

…is going to be fluid (flexible), changing as your body composition and metabolic health improves,

…is going to be fluid (flexible), changing as your physical and metabolic demands change over time, perhaps even from day to day,

…is most likely going to built around the concept that the bulk of your daily calories will come from fat (good fats!), less from protein, and minimally from carbohydrates,

…will likely vary seasonally,

…will likely become so intuitive you don’t really even think about it from day to day,

…and will likely benefit from an annual or bi-annual “tune up” or “reset”, as in a period of nutritional ketosis for example.

Your challenge, should you decide to accept it, is to find that optimal macronutrient partitioning plan that fits your life today, and learn the skills to adjust it when life throws you a curve ball, or you just feel the need to push your limits out a little further.

Read. Study. Ask questions. Experiment with your own N=1 clinical trials. Need help along the way? We can help, as can a number of excellent health coaches only an email or call away.

Older Bolder Foundations: Is Everything You’ve Been Taught About Macronutrient Partitioning Wrong? Probably. (Part 2 of 3)

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If you missed yesterday’s post taking a well-earned jab at the conventional wisdom concerning macronutrients and macronutrient partitioning, scroll down (or click here) to read. Now, let’s get down to some practical nitty-gritty details…

Getting to Your Best Macronutrient Partitioning: First, the Caveats

When trying to dial in optimal macronutrient partitioning for any given individual (most likely you!), a couple of caveats are in order.

One, beware anyone (including the USDA) telling you that their formula / ratio / recommendations work for everyone, particularly if you have to pony up something (likely cash) up front to get the magic data. There’s a simple reason generic, one-size-fits-all partitioning recommendations aren’t worth much…

Two, your optimal macronutrient partitioning needs depend on a host of factors THAT ARE UNIQUE TO YOU; potentially including (a short list, just for example):

  • Your current objective(s): be it weight loss, athletic performance, cognitive improvement, general well being, longevity, etc.
  • Your current body composition: Are you overweight, underweight, lacking appropriate muscle mass?
  • Your overall metabolic health: Are you in full-blown metabolic syndrome with insulin resistance, on the edge, or “fairly healthy”?
  • Your overall level of activity: Are you a cubical-bound couch potato whose idea of a workout is the walk to and from the car in the parking lot, an occasional, casual walker, perhaps working a physically demanding job, or a gym rat?
  • Your overall general health: Do you have conditions that impact your body’s functions in a material way, such as joint problems (degenerative arthritis), heart disease or hypertension, poor sleep, or stress you can’t manage?
  • Your age: For example, protein requirements increase in the elderly, and the elderly’s protein requirements may be more impacted by higher activity levels.
  • Your current progress in your recovery journey: Your best macronutrient partitioning will change over time, pending where you are in your health and wellness journey, and as you purposefully get leaner, more fit, and thoughtful about how you fuel your mind and body.

Optimizing your macros takes paying attention to what your body’s telling you; it’s time to start listening…

Getting to Your Best Macronutrient Partitioning: Carbs

In all the study, reading, and learning I’ve done over the years, from where I sit no one has done a better job illustrating the role that carbs play in your macro intake than Mark Sisson of The Primal Blueprint and Mark’s Daily Apple. In particular his carbohydrate curve packs a boatload of information into one simple yet inspired graphic, reproduced below.

There’s volumes to talk about with regard to carbohydrate intake and we’ll be focusing on the subject extensively here on in months to come. At this point, as the vast majority of folks that I interact with have as a primary objective optimizing lean body mass (for most that means dropping fat and building/preserving muscle), we typically start by targeting 100 g (net) or less of carbs / day.

Getting to Your Best Macronutrient Partitioning: Protein

The current RDA for protein – 0.36 g/lb lean body mass (or 0.8 g protein/kg LBM) – is based on assumptions that don’t apply to many: a sedentary lifestyle, healthy / metabolically sound, with normal lean body mass and not trying to build muscle/increase LBM. For active individuals, for years have recommendations have quickly spun up into the 0.7 to 0.8 g/lb range (or higher).

Interestingly, many in the ancestral health and wellness world have been for some time challenging the RDA dogma above, and suggest that the minimal requirements may indeed be much lower, in the range of 0.5 g/lb LBM.

Intuitively you know that athletes need more, though as science drills down with more and more specific research, the shockingly high amounts of protein recommended (for example in body builders) appear to have quite potentially been simply too much. Suffice it to say that a large portion of the strength training community holds that 1-2 g protein/lb of LBM per day is reasonable.

For those seeking weight loss, and recognizing that goal number one is loss of fat and not lean body mass (muscle being the largest component of LBM), studies have shown that upping protein (basically doubling the RDA above) improves weight loss and better preserves LBM.

The elderly and those recovering from significant illness or injury need more protein (in the ranges of 0.5-0.6 g/lb LBM and 0.7-0.8 g/lb LBM respectively).

We’ll have much more to say about protein in weeks and months to come, but at this point we steer most to target roughly 0.5 to 0.6 g of quality proteins/lb of LBM per day, and adjust within 3-4 weeks based on your body’s response.

We’ll take a hard, detailed look at what constitutes optimal protein sources in a few weeks, and
tomorrow we’ll take a look at fat and some final thoughts on macronutrient partitioning.

Older Bolder Foundations: Is Everything You’ve Been Taught About Macronutrient Partitioning Wrong? Probably. (Part 1 of 3)

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One can’t venture too far down the fitness, weight loss, or wellness roads without encountering some discussion of what makes up the ideal macronutrient partitioning ratio (the amount of carbs, protein, and fats you eat) for the human body. And just about everybody misses a key point about partitioning – we’ll delve more into it in tomorrow’s post – but your critical challenge is finding the right partitioning, at the right time, for you.

[Just so we’re all on the same page in this short discussion, let’s follow accepted convention and think of macronutrients as those nutrients the body needs in large quantities – carbohydrates, proteins, and fats; we’ll designate micronutrients as those needed in smaller amounts – water and fat soluble vitamins and minerals, other esoteric cofactors, and some might even throw water in that mix. (This is a fairly oversimplified approach, though it serves our purpose here).]

Conventional Wisdom on Macronutrient Partitioning

Like many of you, I came of age in the 1970’s, during a time when the earnest folks at the USDA coordinated a number of very diverse interests (including significant representation from food growers/producers) to articulate Dietary Guidelines for us all; the infamous food pyramid arose during those early years.

The USDA continues to this day to offer their increasingly-challenged recommendations; you can read the latest version of their Dietary Guidelines for Americans (2010) here, all mind-numbing 112 pages.

Honing in on their recommendations for macronutrient partitioning, the table below was cut right from the document –

Sadly, despite the explosion of scientific evidence otherwise, these carbohydrate-centric, fat-phobic concepts still pervade much of traditional medical / dietary literature and practice; here’s a quick example from a university website resource (Washington State).

And (perhaps not so) shockingly, despite all of the learned counseling we’ve received, Americans continue to stuff a shocking array foods down our gullets as noted in the Dietary Guidelines (link above); the table below details the top food sources of calories by age groups…

Taking the table above at face value (assuming it’s reasonably representative), it’s no wonder the ‘typical American’ slowly and inexorably gains weight every decade past thirty (many starting much, much earlier). And despite exposure to the Dietary Guidelines over the past 40 years, we’ve become fatter, less healthy, less active, and according to recent news – less intelligent along the way.

There has to be a better path, and there is – Part 2 on macronutrient partitioning tomorrow.