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Health related topics are something that I still enjoy learning about but for some reason I don’t think many of them are worth a stand-alone article even when I have things to say, here are some of my thoughts on a few topics. In the future I should probably bite the bullet and write full articles on stuff like this because I found that once I started writing about each of these topics I could have kept going, there were two more topics I wanted to fit in here but decided not to since these three combined were long enough. A good writer knows when he should cut things.
MAHA Fast Food
I’m a fan of the MAHA movement but when it comes to their rhetoric surrounding seed oils they are acting like a herd of irrational vegans and they need to re-evaluate their priorities. Forcing MacDonald’s to change out the oil in their fryer won’t solve America’s health crisis.
Like seriously, do we really think that swapping soybean oil for tallow is going to turn french fries into a healthy snack? Sure, we assume they are healthier if they are cooked in tallow or something similar but they don’t magically become healthy. The terms healthier and healthy do not mean the same thing. Things like french fries and potato chips are going to be junk food no matter what you cook them in.
A part of me thinks the anti-seed oil movement will fizzle out in a few years. The movement is more popular than it has ever been and has more momentum than ever with RFK acting as the United States Secretary of Health and Human Services but for every health influencer you’ll see praising a business like Steak n Shake for ditching seed oils you can find three calling them stupid for promoting a fast food chain. Peter Attia has one of the top ranked health podcasts in the world, he is well read on health and was unwilling to villainize seed oils in his bestselling book Longevity because the claims made by the anti-seed oil crowd don’t have the sort of scientific backing he’d like to see in order to endorse them.
But, regardless of whether or not history will see this movement as another short lived health fad large companies have taken notice to the anti-seed oil crowd and have begun to cater to them. The Kettle Brand makes my favorite style of chips and they have recently come out with a few flavors cooked in avocado oil. I’ve tried their sea salt flavored chip made with avocado oil and I think it is their best tasting chip, definitely better than their normal sea salt chip. But is that boost in flavor due to the avocado oil? Probably not. Their avocado oil chip isn’t just sea salt flavor, it is “Sea Salt with a Hint of Pink Peppercorn” so it gets some extra help from the pepper, and other ingredients like sugar, garlic powder, onion powder, and citric acid that the regular chips don’t have. If it were a purely apples to apple comparison I don’t think you’d be able to tell a difference between the two flavors, Kettle adds extra ingredients to the more expensive chip to get you to give them more money. (If you see the two types of chips next to each other on store shelves they will have the be price but the seed oil chips will have 7.5 ounces of chips in the bag while the avocado oil chips will only have 6).
Sure there are some small companies out there who truly believe in ditching seed oils but the big companies out there doing it are just greenwashing. I’ve already mentioned Steak n Shake, but before hearing the news of them transitioning to beef tallow when was the last time you heard anything about that restaurant? It hss been a slowly failing burger chain, their food was never that good, they had to pull out of the city I live in. I’d be willing to bet that they were on their way to bankruptcy. The switch to tallow was a clever business move on their part to generate press and interest, I don’t think it was because they care about the health of their customers. If they did they wouldn’t be selling 960 calorie Reese’s Chocolate Peanut Butter shakes.
Nuts are Not Protein
Another nutrition related thing that people like to focus on these days is getting enough protein. Conventional wisdom for proper protein intake for the past several years is that one should be eating one gram of protein per kilogram (2.2 pounds) per day, but when you look into the research you find that that prescription is really the minimum amount of protein you need to stay alive. Optimum protein intake is closer to one gram of protein per pound of body weight per day which is quite a bit, over twice as much as the normal recommendation and definitely more than the average person is eating. One has to pay attention to what they are eating to meet that goal.
So knowing that we have such a high protein need we should know what foods are high in protein. If you were to survey a bunch of people asking them to list five good sources of protein, I’d be willing to bet that most people would have put nuts somewhere on their list. But are nuts really a good source of protein? The subtitle for this section spoiled the answer to that question for you but let’s take a look anyways.
If you look at the back of a can of Planters Peanuts you’ll find that a one ounce serving of peanuts has seven grams of protein. If that is the only number we look at it doesn’t look too bad but we should bet some context to that number. That same one ounce serving will also have fourteen grams of fat (technically oil). Seeing that peanuts have twice as much fat as they do protein shouldn’t we be touting them as an excellent source of fat rather than protein? Heck, peanuts have almost as much carbs per serving (five ounces) as they have protein. Clearly someone claiming peanuts are a great source of protein is mistaken, and if you take a look at other nuts you’ll find the same story.
Let’s look at calories now. A serving of Planters Peanuts has 170 calories, that number looked familiar to me because it is the same number of calories that a serving of the gras fed ground beef I buy has per serving. If 170 calories of peanuts has seven grams of protein how many grams of protein does 170 calories of gras fed beef have? Twenty-four, over three times as much. If you want to meet your protein goals without eating a million calories don’t bother with nuts, just eat meat, your body digests that protein better anyways.
Zero Drop Shoes Work Different Muscles
Now transitioning away from food I’d like to talk about shoes. Over the past number of years barefoot shoes have been gaining popularity and I jumped on the bandwagon about a year and a half ago. There are three traits that distinguish a barefoot shoe from a normal one, a wide toe box that allows your toes to splay out rather than be constricted to an unnatural shape, zero drop between the heel of the shoe and the toe (where the term zero drop comes from), and a low stack height (distance between the bottom of your foot and the ground). I’m of the belief that the third of these traits is dumb since our feet need more protection from “modern surfaces” so I guess the barefoot purists might say that I don’t actually wear barefoot shoes but it’s the second of these traits that I’d like to talk about today.
Since I recently started running I needed to buy some running shoes so without much research I went to my local running store and ended up with a pair of Altras which have a wide toe box and are zero drop (I probably would have ended up with the same shoes had I done research). After buying those shoes I did what a lot of people do these days and looked up reviews on YouTube to validate my purchase.
Because of this I began to be recommended videos on running shoes in general and came across this video made by some running nerds discussing the science of running in a zero drop shoe. The biggest takeaway I got from their research backed discussion was that running in a zero drop shoe will put stress in your ankles and calves while running in more traditional high drop shoes will transfer that stress into your knees and hips. The nice thing about the video was that the nerds weren’t biased in their presentation of these facts, they emphasized that shoes are tools that do different things and there is no such thing as a best shoe.
I found this information interesting and the unbiased reporting was refreshing. The barefoot shoe industry often makes scientific sounding claims as to why their shoes are better than normal ones but most of their claims lack serious scientific backing. Seeing some actual science that wasn’t intended to be marketing was nice.
Knee pain is one of the most common complaints for runners and it seems that switching to a zero drop shoe may put a stop to that pain since they transfers stress away from the knee. Of course this isn’t a guarantee and switching to a zero drop shoe might just move that pain to another part of the body. I’ve seen people report that the increased load on the calf caused by running in zero drop shoes gives them pain in the achilles tendon. I experienced this pain when I started running in zero drop shoes but after a month or so that pain has gone away as my calf has gotten stronger. I don’t think knee pain has the ability to resolve itself in the same way since, unlike the calf (which drives the achilles tendon), your knee isn’t a muscle that can be strengthened.
I’d say zero drop shoes are worth a try. Are they perfect? Probably not, traditional shoes probably have their own benefits that I’m not aware of. Remember the running nerds in the video I referenced said shoes are tools that all do different things, it is up to you to spend time researching and trying different pairs to figure out which tool is best for you.