The Truth About Food

Hey guys!

Did you watch the TV program called The Truth About Food on SABC2 last week? Three of my clients watched it and there has been some healthy debate since then, so I am going to lay it out flat here – on the blog.

For those of you, who missed it, the program displays five admittedly unscientific experiments with a bunch of volunteers to confirm or reject some wide-spread claims from supplement manufacturers, celebrity nutritionists and dieticians worldwide. The tests done were as follows:
- Three London cab drivers were initially tested for their basal stress tolerance levels (read someone got in the cab and irritated the living cr*p out of them). Then, the drivers were put on a diet consisting of fatty fish (salmon & tuna) at least twice a week for three months. Then, their response to “stressful situations” was tested again. The purpose of this test is to verify the effects of Omega 3 fatty acids (in fatty fish) on the nervous system’s ability to cope.
- A group of 12 karate masters, all vegetarian, are split in two and half of them agreed to accept meat once again in their diets for 2 months. The objective is to evaluate the performance of meat eaters vs. vegetarians and specifically whether the low occurrence of creatine and iron in the vegetarians’ blood hampers their physical ability.
- Two caffeine addicts are subjected to a blind experiment with one of them being given decaf coffee for a week, while the other downs real java. The goal is to determine whether caffeine withdrawal interferes with mental performance.
- The forth test was the one that drew my clients’ attention. Here , four sets of very active identical twins are split in two groups (a twin of each pair in each group) to “take genetics out of the equation”. The two groups are fed drastically different diets, high carb vs. Atkins’ type protein-fat combo, and then taken through a gruelling physical competition, to establish which nutritional plan is more appropriate for athletes.
- Finally, the last test aims to identify whether it is carbs that fuel performance or “the taste of carbs”. The test involves sugar cane farm workers who are split in three groups. One group drinks water, one group – sugar water, and the third group only swirls the sugar water solution in their mouth and then spits it out.

As I said, the debate with my clients was centred around the fourth test. While I do not support the drastic carb elimination suggested by Dr. Atkins, and Dr. Agatston (the author of The South Beach Diet), I do know that reducing carbohydrate consumption is essential to weight loss. And since my clients are primarily concerned with weight loss, their meal plans resemble the no-carb team’s one much closer than the sugary cereal and spaghetti the other team was offered in the test. By now you have obviously figured it out – the team of twins consuming carbohydrates won the challenge, which consisted of a 5 hr mountain bike ride, a run through a lake, carrying a raft and some boot camp drills back at home base. Thus, my clients believe that I am misleading them by “taking away their daily bread” (excuse the pun!).
So, for all of you out there, let me clear it all out:
The test was measuring performance for HIGH ENDURANCE athletes. In fact for the first two hours of the test both teams kept up with each other. It was only after 2 hrs that team protein started slowing down. Now, if you run/swim/ride/etc for 3 hrs or longer every day, by all means you need the carbs!
How many of you do that?
I thought so!
The other thing to remember is what are you trying to achieve. None of these athletes were trying to lose weight! There is no such thing as a bad diet. Just a diet that achieves different results. To lose weight you lower the carbs and to keep up the pace in a long-distance event you down Energades. Simple!

Oh, and if you are curious about the rest of the findings:
Apparently eating fatty fish does reduce the stress levels significantly. How to cook the fish was believed to be the major issue people have with adding it to the menu, so if you fall in that camp – supplement… (Just watch out for the mercury in some of the supplements!).
Caffeine addiction is absolutely real and mental performance did dip quite a bit for the poor oak on decaf in the second and third day of the test. By day 7, though, he was back to his espresso-days-performance and the addiction was cleared. Is it worth ditching your daily fix, then? You decide…
On the vegetarian vs. meat eaters debate, the conclusion was inconclusive! One of the girls in the experiment improved her scores by 21%, while the others recorded no significant change…
And lastly, it is the TASTE of carbs, not the actual carbs that fuel performance, according to the sugar cane experiment. This is apparently due to some carb receptor on the tongue that sends a message to the brain that carbs are coming, which subsequently energizes the body! I know these findings clash a bit with the twins’ test, but the difference is (again) in the duration. The latter test was only done over a one hour period.

So, to make a long story short, you still need to watch the carbs if you want to lose. Period.