The Food Fight of the Century | Healthy Aging Series: S11 E23
I’ve had three behavior jobs. One with hawks, one with dogs, and one with people. I loved them all.
I’m a Behavior Analyst
First, my job with people. Since 2003, I’ve been working with people with developmental and intellectual disabilities. Really, I work with their caregivers. The Behavior Plans that I write are not written to change the behaviors of my clients, but to change the behavior of their staff. I teach and train staff to respect my client to treat them as adults, and to treat them the way that they would like to be treated. Sometimes, it’s that simple. And sometimes, not.
Sometimes my clients display behaviors that jeopardize their safety and the safety of their caregivers, behaviors like physical aggression, property destruction, and elopement, and then I help increase replacement behaviors like improving communication, learning how to request things that you want, and learning how to indicate that you don’t want to do something. This is the challenging part of my job, and I love it!
I love working with the folk that I work with because it helps them stay out of institutions and live in the community. I want them and their staff to be safe. Oftentimes, the people I work with have a difficult time with communication. They want something or need something and their behavior is a way of accessing that activity or tangible. The Function of their behavior is to access what they want or need. The same goes for wanting to escape something. They don’t want to do the tasks that staff want them to do, they display behavior and the prompt for the task is removed.
Being a behavior analyst is way more complicated than this, but that’s the gist. I do a Functional Behavioral Assessment to determine the function of the behavior. Then I write a Behavior Support Plan, and then I train caregivers and my clients to implement that plan.
Again, I’ve oversimplified something that takes years of training and years of supervision to do.
Being a behavior analyst is a wonderful profession, and I’m proud to be one.
Now for the behavior job I had with hawks.
I was a Falconer
I spent my freshman and sophomore years of high school doing Falconry. We didn’t really train our birds to kills rabbits. Spoiler Alert: Hawks kill rabbits, mice, squirrels, and really any small animals. We trained hawks, mostly Red-Tailed Hawks, to hunt for us, or really with us. It’s an unusual sport. You take your bird into the fields, you release your bird to a tree along the edge of the field, you brush up a rabbit, you yell, “Ho! Ho! Ho!” your hawk is alerted, sees the rabbit, and it is a beautiful thing to watch it catch it’s prey. Okay, so I’ve lost my appetite for hunting, but it is one of the purest forms of hunting there is. And yes, your hawk was allowed to feast on the rabbit. Being a Falconer saved me. It kept me off the streets and in the fields.
I was a Dog Handler
I spent four years in the United States Air Force as a Dog Handler. We used mostly German shepherds because they adapted to many climates, and the breed was very protective. I served two years at Osan Airbase, South Korea, with my 85 pound Shepherd named Static. He was my constant companion as we provided airbase defense by walking perimeters and flightlines. There was such a strong comradery with the other Dog Handlers.
These are such rich memories. That was almost 50 years ago.
The Korean Conflict
I’ve often thought about the conflict between North and South Korea. The DMZ or the Demilitarized Zone.
As a young man, 20 years old, I knew a little bit about the conflict. I knew that Kim Il-sung was the North Korean dictator, the grandfather of the current Kim Jong-un.
I know that there was a war in the early 1950s and I knew that 50,000 Americans lost their lives during that three year period.
I also knew that most South Koreans over 35 had seen a dead American soldier and that the South Korean people had a deep respect for American GIs.
So, I was there with about 30,000 US troops to deter the North from coming South.
There have been many conflicts around the world, and I might question their Just Cause, but being in South Korea seemed to be justified.
The Battle of the Century
There was a conflict or Battle of Words that took place in this country 50 years ago.
No blood was shed.
But it has taken a toll on our health and welfare and has claimed millions of lives.
It involved two groups of researchers and scientist, battling over two of our micro-nutrients: fat and sugar.
The two primary spokespersons for these two groups were Ancel Keys, and John Yudkin.
Honestly, I doubt if you’ve heard of either one, but in their day and in their sphere of influence, they were widely known and widely respected nutritional researchers, household names in the 1950s.
Here’s what they were fighting about: What is the primary cause of cardiovascular disease? Fat or sugar?
Ancel Keys believed that animal fat caused cardiovascular disease, and John Yudkin believed it was sugar. Kind of simple and straightforward, and with our hindsight, rather all or nothing.
Ancel Keys
The first time I became acquainted with Ancel Keys was in a book by Todd Tucker, The Great Starvation Experiment. This is a fascinating book about a program that was developed in the mid to late 1940s. Doctors and government officials were worried about American soldiers and other European prisoners of war as they returned home from World War II, because most were malnourished.
Keys suggested that conscientious objectors be given an option of participating in a program that was designed to help returnees recover from malnutrition. The participants were placed on a 1,000 calorie diet for six months and then slowly given an increase in calories to see what would be the best way to rehabilitate them. Some of these conscientious objectors were from religious denominations that objected to war, so they promised to use the research gathered from this study to help both returning soldiers and malnourished civilians as well. Keys was a caring researcher and wanted to make a difference. I applaud his research!!
Keys and his wife, Margaret, wrote a book, “Eat Well and Stay Well.” Mrs. Keys was a biochemist. Regarding diet, here is how they summed up their advice at the end of the first chapter of this book:
- Don’t get fat, if you are fat, reduce your weight.
- Restrict saturated fats, the fats in beef, pork, lamb, sausages, margarine, solid shortening, fats in dairy products.
- Prefer vegetable oil to solid fats, but keep total fat under 30% of your diet calories.
- Eat Fresh fruits, vegetables, and nonfat milk products.
- Avoid use of salt and refined sugar.
- Get plenty of exercise and outdoor recreation.
- Good diets do not depend on drugs and fancy preparations.
- Be sensible about cigarettes, alcohol, excitement, business stress.
- See your doctor regularly and do not worry.
There is no question that our understanding of nutrition and lifestyle has changed. We now know about the dangers of smoking. Few doctors, really none, would recommend moderate smoking.
Now we understand that there are different kinds of fats, omega-3 fatty acids, which are good, and omega-6 fatty acid, which are bad. We know that partially-hydrogenated oils are bad. Dr. Keys points out that of the three micro-nutrients, fat is the more calorie dense, and therefore concluded that if you want to manage your weight, you need to manage your intake of fats. As it relates to energy conservation, which is: energy in/energy out, that makes sense.
But in their first chapter, which lays out their nutritional philosophy, they clearly show their anti-fat bias and conclude that dietary fat contributes to cardiovascular disease.
Keys: Dietary fat increases blood cholesterol, which increases the risk for cardiovascular disease. To illustrate my point, in the first chapter, The Heart of the Matter, fat is mentioned 46 times. The word sugar is mentioned one time in the summary, which I’ve shared.
During the 1950s, Keys was also in the Diabetes Food Fight, asserting that it was fat, not sugar that caused or contributed to diabetes. Some researchers pointed to his conflict of interest with the sugar industry because much of his research-funding was provided by the sugar industry. He promoted what may be called the Fat Hypothesis.
As described in the April 17, 2016 edition of the guardian:
Ancel Keys was brilliant, charismatic, and combative. A friendly colleague at the University of Minnesota described him as, “direct to the point of bluntness, critical to the point of skewering”; others were less charitable. He exuded conviction at a time when confidence was most welcome. The president, the physician and the scientist formed a reassuring chain of male authority, and the notion that fatty foods were unhealthy started to take hold with doctors, and the public. (Eisenhower himself cut saturated fats and cholesterol from his diet altogether, right up until his death, in 1969, from heart disease.)
John Yudkin
John Yudkin was the other person involved in the food fight. Like Keys, Yudkin was a medical doctor, physiologist, and nutritionist. He articulated the Sugar Hypothesis asserting that sugar consumption was a factor in the development of conditions, such as obesity, diabetes, and heart disease.
In 1972 you wrote the book, “Pure, White, and Deadly: How Sugar is Killing Us and What We Can Do to Stop it.” Yadkin was “the man” when it came to nutrition in Great Britain and in Europe. Another household name.
When he looked at chronic disease, he concluded, “As for sugar, the most relevant fact is that one of the abnormalities seen in coronary heart disease, and in diabetes, can be produced by the inclusion of sugar in the diet.”
He also concluded, “You can put it in the other way around and say that sugar is the cause of coronary disease and the association with fat is accidental.”
“In summary,” he writes, “one can say that in most of the affluent populations that I have considered, the prevalence of coronary disease is associated with a consumption of sugar. Since sugar consumption is, however, only one of a number of indices of wealth, the same sort of association exist with fat consumption, cigarette smoking, motor car ownership, and so on. At this point, it would be equally justifiable to look at one of these factors as being a possible cause of coronary art disease.”
As a result of his studies, he determined it was sugar.
So, who won the food fight?
Keys was Vicious.
Think of the worse food fight you’ve seen on the TV or in the movies. That’s where this fight went. Like Uncle Rico throwing a steak at Napoleon. Someone yelled “Food Fight” and Keys started throwing whole potatoes and heads of cabbage, along with mashed potatoes and gravy, followed by handfuls of spaghetti and meatballs.
“It is clear that Yudkin has no theoretical basis or experimental evidence to support his claim for a major influence of dietary sucrose in the etiology of (coronary heart disease); his claim that men who have CHD are excessive sugar-eaters is nowhere confirmed but is disproved by many studies superior in methodology and/or magnitude to his own; and his ‘evidence’ from population statistics and time trends will not bear up under the most elementary critical examination® (Keys, A., Atherosclerosis, 14: 193-202, 1971).
Robert Lustig, M. D., a modern defender of Yudkin writes in the introduction of Yudkin’s book,
“The Pharisees of this nutritional holy war declared Keys the victor, Yudkin a heretic and a zealot, threw the now discredited Yudkin under the proverbial bus, and relegated his pivotal work to the dustbin of history, as this book went out of print and virtually disappeared from the scene. The propaganda of “low-fat” as the treatment for heart disease was perpetuated for the next thirty years. And the cluster of diseases (obesity, diabetes, hypertension, lipid problems, heart disease) collectively termed the ‘metabolic syndrome’ increased in a parabolic fashion under the canopy of the sugar industry and their propaganda machine.”
I’m not sure if you’re old enough to remember the fat-free craze, with things like cookies. They took out the fat and added sugar. And they still do it today.
By the way, I’ll be sharing the Inflammation Hypothesis in a later episodes, which gives lots of credence to the sugar hypothesis.
The food fight continues, but there are lots and lots of anti-sugar advocates.
They Were Both Right!
I’m wondering if maybe Keys and Yudkin were both right.
My doctor supports the side of reducing cholesterol, and wants me to go on a statin. But I guarantee she also wants me to decrease my sugar consumption.
And so I wrestle with the issue, and I’ve tried to cut back my sugar intake, staying away from Omega-6 fatty acids and partially-hydrogenated vegetable oil. I limit my desserts.
There’s no question that the incidence of obesity continues to rise with both children and adults. Believe me when I say I’ve read a lot about obesity and weight management. It is not a simple sugar versus fat issue.
I’ve written about the Scourge of Childhood Obesity in an earlier episode, indicating that children who are obese have an increased risk of being obese as adults. We have got to figure this out.
I think when the food guidelines were created in the 1970s, making fat the culprit for cardiovascular disease, they opened the door to our over consumption of sugar. Who doesn’t love sugar?
The Real Food Fight
Maybe the real food fight is within ourselves. As for me, it’s a daily battle that I fight to manage my weight and avoid both fat and sugar and to over consume.
I know that if I give up the fight, I’ll put on 10 or 20 pounds and then it’s over. Managing my weight, being fit, and being stable is a lifelong endeavor.
Now is not the time to give up the fight.
