Rather Be Healthy

The 5 best foods to eat before bed (for a flat belly)

You may have heard some trainers or gurus telling you that eating before bed is a big-time “no no” if you’re looking to lose weight. In fact, you’ve probably even heard that eating late at night will undoubtedly cause you to GAIN weight…even worse!

Well, there’s good news… not every food that you eat past 7PM will be automatically deposited to your belly fat, thighs, and love handles.

In fact, there are certain foods that you can eat as a late-night snack that can actually INCREASE your fat loss results through hormonal improvements! The key is knowing which foods to eat, and which to avoid, as the evening progresses.

Here’s a good rule of thumb: Avoid carbs before bed in favor of slow-digesting high-quality protein and healthy fats. Fiber is ok too as long as it’s low in starch or sugars.

Carbohydrate consumption causes significant rise in the storage hormone insulin, which also puts the breaks on fat-burning. That’s a recipe for disaster in the late evening hours as your metabolism is winding down, but fortunately, slow-digesting protein isn’t.

Instead, slow digesting proteins provide your body with a steady flow of amino acids throughout the night to help you recover from exercise and maintain your calorie-burning lean muscle as you lose fat.

Here are some of my top pre-bedtime food choices:

1. White Meat Protein – White meat animal protein sources such as chicken and turkey are great pre-bed meal choices because they digest slowly and have a very low insulin release. These sources also promote the release of another hormone, glucagon, that assists the body with breaking down stored carbs and fat within your body to be burned for energy…a double win!

Having some cooked ground turkey or chicken handy in tupperware in your fridge makes for a quick late night snack whenever you need it… my favorite way is to warm it up and add to a quick lettuce wrap with a little avocado and hot sauce whenever I need a night time snack. A delicious way to aid your metabolism and fat loss efforts!

2. Cottage Cheese – Cottage cheese is very slow digesting and coats the stomach to be assimilated by the body over many hours. As a protein, it also stimulates glucagon release, which as I just mentioned is great for fat loss, making this a good pre-bedtime choice. Just make sure you’re using plain cottage cheese, not the flavored varieties with added sugars. Add some stevia and cinnamon if you need to flavor it up a little!

3. Green Vegetables – While these aren’t considered a protein, they contain virtually no calories (insignificant), are high in fiber, and they’re very filling. Often times when I get a late night craving I eat a big bowl of green veggies and it completely kills my craving…a diet savior to prevent you from giving in to junk foods late night!

4. Almonds, pecans, walnuts, or pistachios – These nuts are not only great sources of minerals, vitamins, and antioxidants, but provide the fiber and healthy fats necessary to control your cravings late at night and make sure you don’t give in to junk.

5. A Slow-digesting, Low-carb Protein Shake – I use a slow-digesting protein shake before bed a lot of times. It’s a great dessert alternative that’s much lower in sugar and better for your body. The vast majority of my clients have grown to love the habit as well…who doesn’t love dessert before bed? 🙂 I normally blend the shake with almond butter to get some healthy fats in there, and oh man, it tastes good with the right protein powder.

WARNING: Avoid taking a simple whey protein powder before bed…research has shown that it causes more of an insulin release than white bread! Instead, try this time-released blend that includes a blend of slow-digesting, high-quality proteins.

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FDA Allows Drugs to Remain on Market Despite Uncovering Fraudulent Safety Data

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is looking to increase their budget by $821 million next year, which would make their proposed 2014 budget a hefty $4.7 billion.

The additional money would help the FDA improve food safety, monitor imports and create measures to protect against chemical and biological threats, FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg told Congress, outrageously noting that:1

“FDA is a true bargain among federal agencies.”

This has to be one of the biggest delusions of the 21st century.This is one “bargain” that is not such a good deal for Americans’ health, as the FDA is also the federal agency responsible for a growing list of policy decisions that favor big industry at the expense of public health.

And if their nearly $1-billion budget increase is approved, they stand to fall even further into the drug companies’ trenches …

94 Percent of the FDA’s Budget Increase Funded by Drug Companies

Out of the extra $821 million the FDA is seeking, 94 percent, or $770 million, would come from user fees paid by the drug industry. While some of the FDA is funded by taxpayers, most of their budget comes from such user fees, which are paid by the drug companies to hasten the review and approval of their products.

Industry user fees were first introduced in the early 1990s in an effort to help speed up the FDA’s approval process; prior to that, the FDA had been funded entirely by Congress.

This is one of the main reasons why the FDA’s track record for keeping you safely out of harm’s way has failed so miserably over the years, as user fees allow the drug industry to have major leverage over the FDA, and that control is continuing to increase year after year.

The FDA is even trying to have about $83 million in industry user fees exempted from the sequester (mandatory budget cuts to federal agencies that began in 2013), as these fees are supposed to be withheld due to the sequestration. Yet, with a budget already surpassing the $4-billion mark, the FDA has done little to keep Americans safe from dangerous foods and drugs. Instead, they:
•Quietly withdrew their intent to ban low-dose antibiotics in animal feed, allowing the spread of antibiotic-resistant “super-germs” linked to this practice to continue unabated
•Approved the first genetically modified plant intended for the treatment of a human disease, opening the door for biotech companies such as Monsanto, which also has vested interests in the pharmaceutical industry, to design more drugs created from genetically engineered plants and/or animals
•Is considering allowing the unlabeled use of the artificial sweetener aspartame in dairy products
•Approved a generic version of Actos – the brand name for a drug used to treat type 2 diabetes – even though it is presently embroiled in thousands of lawsuits alleging that the drug causes severe side effects including heart failure, macular edema and bladder cancer
•Attempting to regulate stem cell procedures at a Colorado clinic, even though the stem cells being used in the procedure come from the patient’s own body, which means they are essentially claiming that they can regulate a part of your body

FDA Allows Drugs to Remain on Market Despite Uncovering Fraudulent Safety Data

What do you get when the federal agency in charge of monitoring drug safety is funded largely by the companies producing those very same drugs? A massive conflict of interest and an agency that is more interested in serving the drug industry than the American public.

This is not speculation; it’s been shown to be the truth, time and time again. In 2011, the FDA found out that many studies conducted at Cetero Research, a major drug research lab, from 2005 to 2009 were fraudulent, involving manipulated data and tampered records.2 About 100 drugs were already on the market, approved, at least in part, based on these fraudulent studies.

Yet, the FDA made no warnings to the public, instead allowing the potentially dangerous drugs to remain on the market while it quietly ordered re-testing to be done. In Europe, however, multiple drugs were pulled from the market following the revelation. Even today, the FDA has never released a list of the affected drugs, saying this would reveal trade secrets.

Unfortunately, this wasn’t an isolated case. As Scientific American and ProPublica reported:3

“Turns out that wasn’t an anomaly: The agency’s slow, secretive response in the Cetero case mirrors how it handled an earlier instance of scientific misconduct at another contract research organization, MDS Pharma Services.”

When the FDA found that four years’ worth of data produced by two MDS facilities were potentially fraudulent, it again refused to post a public list of the 217 affected drugs, some of which were already being sold. Despite requiring re-testing of many of the medications, the FDA assured the public that the drugs were safe – an impossible truth since they were approved, in part, based on faulty research. At least five of MDS’ senior executives later went to work for Cetero Research.

Scientific American continued:4

“In January 2007, three and a half years after first finding problems at MDS, the FDA informed drug makers that studies done by MDS between 2000 and 2004 needed to be reevaluated. FDA officials told the media that 217 generic drugs were potentially implicated, 140 of which were already approved for sale.

The agency was unsure how many new drugs might have relied on studies carried out by MDS, according to news accounts, so it asked the manufacturers of every new drug approved between 2000 and 2004 — some 900 medicines — to check to see if MDS had conducted any relevant tests. 2The FDA made no effort to warn doctors or patients that it now had doubts about the data underlying some of the drugs it had approved. Instead, the agency sounded a public ‘all clear.’”

The FDA Is Failing at Its Stated Mission

Now, with the FDA requesting even more money from the drug industry, it’s likely that such egregious biases in favor of the industry are only going to continue. They simply cannot risk biting the proverbial hand that feeds them …The FDA’s mission statement reads as follows:

“The FDA is responsible for protecting the public health by assuring the safety, efficacy, and security of human and veterinary drugs, biological products, medical devices, our nation’s food supply, cosmetics, and products that emit radiation. The FDA is also responsible for advancing the public health by helping to speed innovations that make medicines and foods more effective, safer, and more affordable; and helping the public get the accurate, science-based information they need to use medicines and foods to improve their health.”

In 2007, a report bearing the revealing title “FDA Science and Mission at Risk” by the Subcommittee on Science and Technology,5 detailed how the FDA cannot fulfill its stated mission because:
1.Its scientific base has eroded and its scientific organizational structure is weak
2.Its scientific workforce does not have sufficient capacity and capability, and
3.Its information technology (IT) infrastructure is inadequate

Furthermore, the report found that “the development of medical products based on ‘new science’ cannot be adequately regulated by the FDA, and that the agency does not have the capacity to carry out risk assessment and analysis. Additionally, the agency’s science agenda “lacks coherent structure and vision, as well as effective coordination and prioritization.”

The fact that the FDA does not have its ducks in a row, so to speak, has sorely misplaced its priorities, and is not working to fulfill its mission is clearly evidenced in the numerous cases where hundreds and sometimes thousands of complaints about dangerous drugs (like Vioxx and Avandia), vaccines (like Gardasil), and additives (like aspartame) are stubbornly ignored, while SWAT-style teams armed to the teeth are sent to raid supplement makers, whole food businesses, organic farmers, and raw dairies when oftentimes not a single incidence of harm can be attributed to their products.

Hospitals Make More Money From Surgical Complications

The FDA has little incentive to change its current structure or work harder to uncover drug dangers, lest they put billions of dollars of their funding at risk. Likewise, a revealing new JAMA study found that major surgical complications actually earn hospitals more money on privately insured or Medicare-covered patients.6

This isn’t exactly shocking, of course, since the more complications suffered, the longer the hospital stay and the more associated medications, tests and procedures that will be ordered. Hospitals are a business, after all, and the more “services” used by any one patient, the more money they make.

Where money is concerned, a hospital therefore has no incentive to reduce surgical errors and other medical mishaps, which may actually be a key moneymaker for them. And, as the Health Business Blog astutely reported,7 unlike most businesses, which suffer financially when mistakes occur, hospitals get to charge you even more money to treat you for avoidable complications or mistakes they make. Decreasing surgical complications may therefore have adverse financial consequences for many hospitals, the researchers concluded.

More Reason to Take Control of Your Health

Minor changes to the existing structure will not be enough to change the current medical paradigm, which is designed to profit from your ill health. A complete reform of the system would instead be needed, and there are powerful forces at play that do not want this to happen.

As much as possible, be proactive in using a healthy lifestyle to support and protect your health and, if illness does occur, use natural methods that will allow your body to heal itself without the need for the deadly drugs being pushed on you by the drug companies and the FDA.

If you like what you read, please consider donating to help support my blog, even as little as $5 will help.

How Can You Tell You’re Eating Real Chicken? And Is It Safe to Eat?

The six decades’ old fast food franchise KFC recently rolled out Original Recipe boneless chicken in its 4,500 US locations.1 The new slogan: “No mess. No fuss. No bones about it.”

The company is so convinced boneless chicken is the way of the future that they’re actually considering eliminating on-the-bone chicken from its menu altogether. According to the featured article:

“McDonald’s execs began experimenting with a range of non-burger options: chicken pot-pies, bone-in fried chicken, deep-fried onion chunks. None of them were successful, until they offered customers deep fried chicken chunks. The McNugget was born.

That was 1980, when about 80 percent to 85 percent of chicken consumed in the US was unprocessed… Ten years later, the numbers had almost reversed…

While the rotisserie chicken made a bit of a comeback in the mid-‘90s, the idea of eating the whole bird was, for the most part, a thing of the past… According to internal KFC surveys, nearly four out of five servings of chicken in the US today are off-the-bone, the inverse of 30 years ago.”

Why might this be “a big deal”? Well, for one, processed chicken nuggets, regardless of brand, are far more likely to contain all sorts of additives and fillers you’d be better off without.

For example, I wrote about the questionable ingredients of McDonald’s Chicken McNuggets back in 2010. Only half of Chicken McNuggets are actual meat. The other 50 percent includes corn derivatives, sugars, leavening agents and completely synthetic ingredients.

In a 2003 lawsuit against McDonald’s, Federal Judge Robert Sweet2 even questioned “whether customers understood the risks of eating McDonald’s chicken over regular chicken.” But there’s yet another reason for my questioning the trend of going boneless, and it’s even less savory than that…

The Future of Food: Bioengineered Meat

Few are talking about this, but scientists have been working on bioengineering “cultured” meat for the past decade. According to a September 2011 Huffington Post article,3 scientists at the University of Maastricht in the Netherlands claimed to be as little as 12 months away from delivering the world’s first bioengineered synthetic hamburger.

As of this writing, the hamburger has yet to be presented, although I doubt that means the plan has been abandoned.

The article also pointed out that London’s Royal Society had released a global food supply report, in which they called for a synthetic meat solution to feed the world’s growing population without causing environmental destruction.

“The only barriers? Overcoming the social stigma and the RS scientists say it could take another decade before it rolls out to the masses,” the article states.

Then, in February 2012, The Economist4 followed up on the research. Other Dutch scientists, led by Dr. Mark Post at the Eindhoven University in the Netherlands, expressed hopes of decimating animal husbandry altogether by altering how meat for the masses is produced. The article explains how this laboratory-created meat is created:

“Dr. Post’s cultures, grown from stem cells, are sheets 3cm long, 1.5cm wide and half a millimeter deep. To make the world’s most expensive hamburger 3,000 of them will be needed. The stem cells themselves are extracted from cattle muscle and then multiplied a millionfold before they are put in Petri dishes and allowed to turn into muscle cells.

When they have done so, they are encouraged to exercise and build up their strength by being given their own gym equipment (pieces of Velcro to which they can anchor themselves in order to stretch and relax spontaneously). The fatty cells of adipose tissue, needed for juiciness, are grown separately and then combined with the muscle cells before the whole thing is cooked.

Producing meat in Petri dishes is not commercially viable, but Dr. Post hopes to scale things up—first by growing the cells on small spheres floating in tanks and ultimately by using scaffolds made of biodegradable polymer tubes, which would both add the third dimension needed for a juicy steak and provide a way of delivering nutrients and oxygen to the steak’s interior.”

Sure, companies like KFC may have a point when they say they’re just changing their meals to meet the needs of the “chicken nugget generation.” But a side effect of getting used to the idea that chicken meat doesn’t have bones is that, at any point, the meat used in these processed nuggets could be exchanged for bioengineered meat, and no one would be the wiser…

I sincerely doubt bioengineered meat would be advertised, since it’s hardly a selling point—at least in the beginning. What the potential health ramifications might be from eating such meats are completely unknown, but it’s clearly not going to be identical to meat from an animal.

More Data Ties Human Illness to Farm Antibiotics

Seeing how commercially available bioengineered meat is still a ways away from being a reality you have to contend with, let’s bring the focus back to something more relevant to the present day, namely antibiotics in CAFO meats. Animals are often fed antibiotics at low doses for disease prevention and growth promotion. These agricultural uses account for about 80 percent of all antibiotic use in the US,5 so it’s a MAJOR source of human antibiotic consumption.

According to a recent NPR report,6 data published by a joint government program7 from tests conducted on supermarket meat samples collected in 2011 by the National Antimicrobial Resistance Monitoring System, reveals the presence of several disease-causing bacteria, including the super-hardy antibiotic-resistant versions of salmonella, Campylobacter and E. coli. According to NPR:8

“The implications were significant — that the bacteria had become resistant to antibiotics back at the farm because farmers were overusing them. The findings, released through the joint program of the Food and Drug Administration, the Department of Agriculture and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, got little attention when they were published in February. But this week, the Environmental Working Group, which opposes some of the livestock industry’s use of antibiotics, analyzed the government data and highlighted some of their startling implications in a report.”

The report9 in question, aptly named “Superbugs Invade American Supermarkets,” points out that many of the meats tested contained “startlingly high levels” of antibiotic-resistant bacteria on:
•81 percent of ground turkey
•69 percent of pork chops
•55 percent of ground beef
•39 percent of chicken breasts, wings and thighs

Want Safer Meat? Buy Organic Pastured/Grass-Fed

Writing for the New York Times,10 David A. Kessler, former commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) from 1990 to 1997, also recently sounded warning bells over the rise of antibiotic-resistant pathogens in livestock, urging the FDA to take the matter seriously. So far, the agency has only restricted on class of antibiotics, cephalosporin, from routine use in livestock.11

“While the FDA can see what kinds of antibiotic-resistant bacteria are coming out of livestock facilities, the agency doesn’t know enough about the antibiotics that are being fed to these animals,” he writes. “This is a major public health problem, because giving healthy livestock these drugs breeds superbugs that can infect people. We need to know more about the use of antibiotics in the production of our meat and poultry. The results could be a matter of life and death.”

The misuse of antibiotics in livestock has now become “a direct source of foodborne illness,” EWG points out. Worse yet, because animals are given these antibiotics continuously, in low doses, pathogens are becoming increasingly resistant to the drugs, which means they no longer work to treat human disease either. The end result is that people are dying from infections that were once easily treatable.

Despite this, organic foods, which are by law produced without such pathogen-promoting methods, are the ones being consistently targeted “for safety reasons.” The truth of the matter is, conventionally grown mass-produced foods pose the greatest danger to your health, in multiple ways, and are the ones to be avoided if you’re at all concerned about food safety.

“To be safe, consumers should treat all meat as if it may be contaminated, mainly by cooking thoroughly and using safe shopping and kitchen practices (see EWG’s downloadable Tips to Avoiding Superbugs in Meat),”12 EWG suggests.13

One of the best ways to avoid contaminated meat is to avoid meat from animals raised in confined animal feeding operations (CAFOs), aka “factory farms,” and buying organic, pastured or grass-fed meats instead. Growth promoters such as antibiotics are not permitted in organic animal farming, and organically-raised animals are also healthier as a result of being pastured, so overall you’re getting far “cleaner,” healthier meat.

Organic, Cage-Free, Free-Range, or Pasture-Raised?

When it comes to chicken, there are a number of designations floating around, such as “organic,” “free-range,” “pastured” and “cage-free.” But while you may think these are interchangeable, they’re actually not. In many ways these labels are little more than creative advertising.

The definitions of “free-range” are such that the commercial egg industry can run industrial farm egg laying facilities and still call them “free-range” eggs, despite the fact that the birds’ foraging conditions are far from what you’d call natural. For example, regulations on the use of the term “free-range” do not specify the amount of time the hens must spend outdoors or the amount of outdoor space each hen must have access to. Nor do they indicate that the hen must have access to a pasture diet.

True free-range hens (and eggs), now increasingly referred to as “pasture-raised,” are from hens that roam freely outdoors on a pasture where they can forage for their natural diet, which includes seeds, green plants, insects, and worms.

Large commercial egg facilities typically house tens of thousands of hens and can even go up to hundreds of thousands of hens. Obviously they cannot allow all of them to forage freely. They can still be called “cage-free” or “free-range” though, if they’re not confined to an individual cage. But these labels say nothing about the conditions they ARE raised in, which are still deplorable. So, while flimsy definitions of “free range” and “cage-free” allow such facilities to sell their products as free range, please beware that a hen that is let outside into a barren lot for mere minutes a day, and is fed a diet of corn, soy, cottonseed meals and synthetic additives is NOT a free-range hen, and simply will not produce the same quality meat and/or eggs as its foraging counterpart.

Certified organic poultry is also the only poultry product that is 100 percent guaranteed to be antibiotic-free.14

So to summarize, what you’re really looking for is chicken and eggs that are both certified organic and true pasture-raised. Barring organic certification, which is cost-prohibitive for many small farmers, you could just make sure the farmer raises his chickens according to organic, free-range standards, allowing his flock to forage freely for their natural diet, and aren’t fed antibiotics, corn and soy. Last year, I visited Joel Salatin at his Polyface farm in Virginia. He’s truly one of the pioneers in sustainable agriculture, and you can take a virtual tour through his pasture-raised chicken farm operation in the following video.

Shopping Guidelines for Real, Health-Promoting Food

It is very difficult to control the quality of your food if you’re eating in a restaurant, which is why I recommend that you prepare the vast majority of your food yourself. If you’re going to occasionally dine out, you would be best served to avoid fast food places. Reclaiming your kitchen is part and parcel of healthful living, so you know exactly what you’re putting in your body. Whether you are grocery shopping or looking for dining options, the table that follows lists criteria to look for in identifying high-quality, health-promoting foods. If the food meets these criteria, it is most likely a wise choice and would fall under the designation of “real food.”

Grown without pesticides and chemical fertilizers (organic foods fit this description, but so do some non-organic foods)

Not genetically modified

Contains no added growth hormones, antibiotics, or other drugs

Does not contain any artificial ingredients, including chemical preservatives

Fresh (keep in mind that if you have to choose between wilted organic produce or fresh conventional produce, the latter may be the better option)

Did not come from a confined animal feeding operation (CAFO)

Grown with the laws of nature in mind (meaning animals are fed their native diets, not a mix of grains and animal byproducts, and have free access to the outdoors)

Grown in a sustainable way (using minimal amounts of water, protecting the soil from burnout, and turning animal wastes into natural fertilizers instead of environmental pollutants)

If you’re “hooked” on fast food and other processed foods, please review my article about how to wean yourself off fast food in seven easy steps. If you’re currently sustaining yourself on fast food and processed foods, this is probably the most positive life change you could ever make.

And if you have children, remember that feeding your children home cooked meals can have far reaching benefits, extending even to your future grandchildren. Yes, that’s right! It is now well known that dietary changes can prompt epigenetic DNA changes that can be passed on to future generations. For instance, pregnant rats fed a fatty junk food diet had daughters and granddaughters with a greater risk of breast cancer. Making wise food decisions can literally “override” genetic predispositions for disease.

If you like what you read, please consider donating to help support my blog, even as little as $5 will help.