Break grain, sugar chains

BREAKFAST ALTERNATIVE: Home-made Greek-style yoghurt with almonds, walnuts, desiccated coconut, cinnamon and frozen berries. PICTURE: GREG BELL

A number of people who read my previous two articles have asked what the lower-carbohydrate high-fat (LCHF) approach looks like. What foods constitute the path to low carb living, or in the diligent, the path to nutritional ketosis?
Nutritional ketosis, in a nutshell, is the operating state of the human metabolism where fat is exclusively used as an energy source. This includes ingested and stored fats, the latter of which unceremoniously gathers around your waistline, jowels, backside and critically, around your organs. The achievement of reducing fat around the organs is a passport to better health and reduction of risk for the future. For some, who are slim, it is possible to be TOFI: thin on the outside, fat on the inside. You can be skinny and yet metabolically unhealthy. It really all comes back to what we fuel our bodies with.
The average American consumes 70kg of sugar a year. It is little wonder that diabetes, heart disease and obesity rates are soaring. Carbs switch on insulin, and in the words of Sally-Ann Creed, "is both an inflammatory hormone, and the fat storage hormone". Kieron Rooney illustrates how insulin blocks the use of fat as a fuel in his lecture, The Science Behind LCHF Nutrition. This is how we get fatter and fatter over time.
Reading about the South African "Real Meal Revolution", Sally-Ann Creed, Jonno Proudfoot and David Grier laid down the foundation for eating in a way that controls carbohydrate ingestion, essentially restricting it to between 25 and 50g a day. Carbohydrate covers the food products whose primary constituents are sugars, and this is essentially how the body views carbs once processed into the digestive system - bowl of muesli on the outside, sugar on the inside; glass of juice on the outside, sugar on the inside.
Because we live in such a manufactured food world, many sugars are now hidden. The food industry, in its love of marketing, has managed to nuance the name of sugar. If you figuratively put agave, evaporated cane juice, diastatic malt, oat syrup and panela into an oesophagus-shaped funnel, they will pop out the end as sugar.
Addressing the elephant in the room is only possible if you fully apprehend the danger that sugar poses to the human physiology. Because it has so intricately woven its way into our culture, we discover we are literally addicted to the stuff, and dismiss the warnings as scaremongering or killjoy.
Limiting carbs to 50g or less is initially draconian, but that's because we are so accustomed to sugar in our food. It takes diligence, but if you become convinced of the goal, it becomes increasingly easy.
Green light food In the Green Light zone, which is fairly unrestricted, you have animal protein including all meat, poultry and game, eggs, offal, natural and cured meats and all seafood, except the high mercury content varieties. Fats are on the list: Avocado, butter, cheese (not processed), coconut oil, clarified butter, lard, macadamia nut oil, olive oil and any rendered animal fat. Before you choke on your lard, science writer Gary Taubes found the composition of lard from the US Department of Agriculture: 47 per cent monounsaturated fat (a good thing) of which nearly all of that is oleic acid, also found in olive oil (a good thing). Forty per cent of lard is saturated fat, a third of which is stearic acid, which raises good HDL cholesterol (a good thing). The remaining percentage is monounsaturated fat which lowers bad LDL cholesterol.
Nuts are great; almonds, flaxseeds, macadamias, walnuts. Not peanuts sadly. They are tasty but high in carb. Vegetables come under the "all you can eat" heading. This is where you get dietary fibre, nutrients and flavour. It's easier to say what's not on the list - potatoes, parsnips, peas, legumes and beetroot are off the menu.
Orange light food Fruit, while having an amazing variety, flavour and street cred, is not encouraged in high amounts. Again, many recoil in horror as the mantra of several fruit servings a day is betrayed, but if you think about running the machine to design, it doesn't need all the sugars that fruit delivers. You get as good nutrition from the vegetables, without the insulin and fructose. Saying that, thanks to Creed and co, I know one apple will provide around 16g of carbohydrate. A cup of blueberries is the same. Avocado gives me 8g. A kumara is 25g so you don't go crazy, but Mrs Bell makes amazing kumara wedges and sour cream finishes those off beautifully. Every fruit is different in sugar load so it's worth doing a bit of research.
Red light food All flours from grains. All grains. All trendy grains that you can't pronounce (quinoa). Rice. Pasta. These read like a smack to the face. Brace for impact: Beer, ice-cream, fat-free anything, all seed oils, tomato sauce, biscuits, cake, brownie, any sweetened yoghurt, less than 85 per cent cocoa chocolate ... sigh. Speaking in Draconian, I have just taken away all your fetish little treats, and comfort foods, to leave you with what was once staple foodstuffs. Treat foods were never meant to intersect with your mouth several times a day.
Breakfast for the last 10 months involved several eggs every other day, with bacon to complement. The eggs were as close to organic as possible and the brainchild of the brilliant Daryl of the River Traders Market in Wanganui. On alternate days, thanks to Stephanie and Nate, home-made Greek-style yoghurt which we killed once, unintentionally. Add to that a handful of almonds, coarsely chopped, some walnuts, a good sprinkle of desiccated coconut, a smattering of cinnamon and lashings of frozen berries, well, half a ramekin each. Coffee with cream and vanilla ( the alcohol-based essence). A slice of the Banting loaf, courtesy of Nicky Perks' website (http://primalperks.com), which we adapted a few times.
I eat till full, and have learned to not need lunch. I can comfortably go the whole day on a fatty filling breakfast. If you see me eating the low-carb lunchtime delights at Delicious Café, it's the old me conforming to societal rhythms. I must rave about the full cream coffee that Patrick makes me. It needs to be called the Gregaccino - coffee, a little chocolate, and cream frothed up like it was milk.
Dinner is similar to our usual, but salad fills the potato void, and any dish is flavoured without sauces, soy, processed packet mixes. We don't look for lean meat. Cauliflower rice is a sensation. Use a food processor to chop the cauli florets then fry in coconut oil. The NZ Heart Foundation recently contracted the opinion of a food industry expert, to say that from available evidence, eating coconut oil will increase heart attack risk. It's hard to take this seriously when it's a food industry expert, and the advocacy endorses other oils on the market especially canola oil which is high in inflammatory omega 6, and that the Heart Foundation tick system endorses foods like flavoured milk. A child will obtain 18.8g of sugar from a 200ml serving out of a 600ml bottle so the potential for a child to ingest more than three days of sugar in one go gets a big confusing tick. Also, as you have seen over the two previous articles, the available evidence is contrary to popular opinion and so if it barks like a conflict of interest, it probably is.
As we developed our tastebuds back to real food, we discovered flavour all over again. I believe Peter Brukner will be proven right in his prediction that this will become the prudent diet in the next 10 years.
As "Diet Doctor" Andreas Eenfeldt has documented seven years of excellent blood tests on a ketogenic diet, I intend to continue to monitor and marvel at how fearfully and wonderfully made the human container really is.