The High Protein Diet Controversy The traditional dietary guidelines most of us were taught in school are now being challenged as a result of a new diet. Remember when your teacher told you that all you needed to do to eat healthy you just needed to consume a lot of pastas and breads and eat meats and fats sparingly. Times have changed. In today's fast paced world of dot coms and international space stations, everyone is looking for something new. It's in with the new and out with the old. It seems this is true with our eating habits as well. I guess we could credit some of this change to the rise of obesity in America. Whatever the reason, it seems that this new high protein diet is here to stay. In fact, according to a new breed of nutritionist, the wait is over. The answer this new protein diet offers for an age-old problem of obesity includes a 180-degree turn around in the currently accepted dietary guidelines. The advocates of the "high protein diet" recommend that a person almost completely eliminate your carbohydrate intake and double your protein intake. This is a far cry from what nutritionists have recommended in the past. In fact, high protein diet plans are insisting that instead of having that plain baked potato and brown rice you planned for dinner, that you serve up a nice, juicy, double helping of barbecue ribs, and ignore the fat. Never mind the fat? What do they mean ignore the fat? Don't they know about fat? Sounds too good to be true, right? Well, not according to advocates of the protein diet. They insist that by eliminating high carbohydrate foods and replacing them with high protein foods, regardless of the amount of fat they contain, your body can more efficiently burn fat and ... ... middle of paper ... ...icine. 2. High protein diets may affect your mood. (1998). Medical Tribune News Service. 3. Burning Calories from high-fat meals: how the body reacts. (1998) The New York Times. 4. The reincarnation of the high protein diet. (2000). Center for Cardiovascular Education. 5. A taste of the Atkins diet. (2000). Center for Cardiovascular Education. 6. Carbohydrate unloading: a reality check. (1997). The Physician and Sports Medicine. 7. High protein diets. (2000). Good House Keeping. 8. Against the grain. (1998). Time. 9. Step away from the scale. (1999). On Health. 10. The exercise vs. diet dilemma. (2000). The New England Journal of Medicine. 11. DeVries H., & Housh, T. (1994). Physiology of exercise - - For physical education, athletics and exercise science. Iowa: Brown & Benchmark. 12. Green, J., & Gold, R. (1999). Holt: Health. Texas: Harcourt & Brace.
I will first show the lack of validity and soundness to Howard’s claim that A) a vegan lifestyle is a healthier choice and B) his claim that one must switch to that lifestyle to enjoy these said benefits. To the claim made in A, Howard uses his own health problems he endured on his meat diet, and uses it as a constant variable comparing it to his now relative healthy lifestyle as a vegan. On first glance anyone who eats a calorie-laden, unbalanced diet and ends up weighing 300 pounds, as Lyman himself admitted, will have health problems regardless of his orientation to meat or vegetables. With this said his comparing analogy is inertly flawed and must be disregarded from the argument he presents. On march 8 before the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee, Mary K Young, MS.,R.D,NCBA Director of Nutrition Research and Information, presented the benefits of eating meat. Using Data from the 1995 USDA Continuing Survey of Food Intakes by Individuals (CSI) she confirms that red meat enhances one overall diet quality. Young goes on to point out that red meat is the number one source for protein, B12, and zinc, number 2 source for B6 and third greatest source for iron, niacin and potassium. She also pointed out that red meat alone has the greatest concentrates of iron and zinc together. Also included cited in Young’s report was the research recently published in the Journal of the American...
Kushner, Jason, ed. "Fast Food and Obesity Epidemic."Nutra Legacy. Nutralegacy.com , 12 Nov 2008. Web. 16 Jan 2014. .
several decades, the Mayo Clinic diet, which was never actually invented or been approved by the true Mayo Clinic, has been used by dieters as a way to quickly lose body fat. This diet suggested that by replacing one’s daily carbohydrate intake with protein, the person would be able to lose weight. Recently, the low carbohydrate diet, an echo
McKenzie, D. C. (2012). Respiratory physiology: Adaptations to high-level exercise. British Journal of Sports Medicine, 46(6), 381. doi:10.1136/bjsports-2011-090824
The food industry is in a state of necessary revolution, for obesity rates seem to be rising exponentially, counties striving to develop have hit lack-of-food road blocks, and massive animal farms produce threats such as unethical treatment of animals and food-borne pathogen spikes. With these dilemmas revolving around the food world, it is natural for one to ponder, “Are human’s inherently omnivorous, eating both animal and plant based products, or were we suppose to be receiving nutrients solely from a vegetarian diet?” Kathy Freston, author of The Lean: A Revolutionary (and Simple!) 30-Day Plan for Healthy, Lasting Weight Loss, discusses her viewpoint surrounding the dilemma by writing “Shattering the Meat Myth: Humans are Natural Vegetarians.” Freston’s answer to the questions presented above
High Protein diets are traced all the way back to the 1800s when William Banting produced a brochure including information and details surrounding the diet. He claimed the newfound diet, which consisted of meat and shockingly, sherry but no bread and very few vegetables, aided him in shedding his unwanted pounds. This is very similar to today's Atkins diet. Originally developed in the 1970s by Dr. Atkins, it, like Banting's idea, believes that carbohydrates are responsible for America's obese society (Applegate 26). Dr. Atkins claimed it was possible to change carbohydrate-burning bodies to fat burning by applying the concept of high protein and low carbohydrate eating. ("How does . . .?"). Nearly ten years later, Americans concluded "fat was . . . fattening," causing people to shift from proteins and fats to hefty serving of "fat-free and high-carbohydrate foods such as bagels and fat-free cookies." Still people continued to gain weight and in turn blamed it on carbohydrates. So again, in the nineties, the Atkins diet ...
Elsevier Health Sciences. "Eating Out Can Have Both Positive And Negative Impact On Obesity." ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 10 January 2008. .
According to the USDA, at the start of century 21st American people have increased their daily caloric intake by consuming five hundred calories more than in 1970. As cited by Whitney & Rolfes (2011), there are many recognized causes of obesity such as genetics, environment, culture, socioeconomic, and metabolism among others; but the cause most evident is that food intake is higher than the calories burned in physical activity. Excess of energy from food is stored in the body as fat causing an increase of weight. During the course of the last 40 years, obesity has grown enormously in the United States and the rates remain on the rise (pgs. 272-273).
Ross, A. C. (2005). Physiology. In B. Caballero, L. Allen, & A. Prentice (Eds.), Encyclopedia of
Mettler, S. "Increased protein intake reduces lean body mass loss during weight loss in athletes.."
High-protein/ low-carbohydrate diets are nothing new to Americans these days; they seem overwhelmingly to be the most popular among those people trying to lose weight. Ph.D. Dr. Barry Sears’ books on his version of the high-protein diet, the Zone Diet, are among the best selling diet books on the market. The diet seems to be yielding quick and noticeable results to those who follow Dr. Sears’ plan. Many people are desperate to lose weight and have tried numerous methods that have not produced sufficient and long lasting results. This could perhaps be the reason for the recent craze for the high-protein/ low-carbohydrate diet- it really does cause weight loss. Even Hollywood movie stars such as actresses Jennifer Anniston and Sandra Bullock attribute their recent weight loss and improvement in appearance to the Zone diet. However, in the midst of all of the hype, we must examine the claims and assess the degree to which this diet is indeed effective. Further, considering that Dr. Sears’ advice contradicts what we have been told for years about dieting, we must determine if it is healthy. Could we have been misinformed when given advice to eat a diet rich in carbohydrates, or is this diet another that falls short of what it promises?
Veganism is a diet that consists of eating NO animal products. This includes any animal meat, eggs, dairy products, and honey. They are also known to boycott any company associated with animal cruelty and/or animal testing. Veganism is also known as a wholefood, plant based diet. As well as saving the animals, veganism is also a way to tremendously decrease the waste of fresh water and the levels of pollution in our environment. Because of these restrictions, they eat only vegetables, fruits, grains, nuts and seeds, and legumes. The main concern of skeptics, is whether or not this diet has a convincing source of protein. People who follow this diet rave about its benefits, not only in health, but in emotional wellbeing. They say that eating a clean diet like this one, keeps you energized and feeling amazing. Also, studies have shown that people on this diet have significantly lowered their risk for heart attacks, cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, strokes, and cancer. While some people might think that this diet is extreme, there’s a diet that’s even more
Obesity and overweight remain the two major social problems in the United States. Apart from the fact that obesity and overweight are dangerous by themselves, they also cause a variety of negative health consequences. Our lives our overloaded with tasks and obligations, and we often choose to eat something fast. “Fast”, however, does not necessarily imply “useful”, and more and more people face the risks of becoming obese even at young age. Because obesity has already become a national i...
Today’s medical experts say that avoiding meat helps you avoid saturated fat. They have found out from studies that women who eat meat daily have a fifty percent greater risk of developing heart disease than vegetarian women and a sixty-eight percent greater risk in men (staff writer). People may not know about serious diseases meat can cause such as, mad cow disease and foot-and-mouth disease. In the September 1999 issue of the Emerging Infectious Diseases, approximately 76 million food-borne illnesses- resulting in 325,000 hospitalizations and 5,000 deaths occur in the United States each year from improperly cooked or diseased meat (Licher). That is a lot of fun!
Moderation is vital in all aspects of life and is necessary for overall health, including with one’s food intake. Protein is one of the many important nutrient building blocks that is necessary for proper growth and good health. However, eating excessive amounts of any nutrient or inadequate amounts, can cause various health concerns. Scientists have been able to estimate the amount of nutrients that the body requires. However, the amount of any particular nutrient varies from person to person, depending on your “age, sex, general health status, physical activity level, and use of medications and drugs” (Schiff 2013). It is also important to remember that consuming the required amount of nutrients that meets your dietary guidelines does not