Our Longevity Diet

Jeez, here we are in the last month of 2011, and I noticed I have not posted to this site all year. Not because we stopped our fasting diet, or have been having any problems, on the contrary — everything continues along so well I hardly think of the diet any more. It has now been three years and nine months that we have followed this lifestyle, and I can say without hesitation that we are pleased with the results.

We are not skinny — but the creeping weight gain we were struggling with before starting the diet has been held in check. I fluctuate from 90 to 92 kilos, and Isabel is still a little over 60 kilos. Our health has been excellent. So there is really nothing to add to this blog. Maybe next year I’ll post again. Intermittent fasting works for us.

It pains me to see intermittent fasting lumped in with crazy fad diets and other foolish notions. Today I saw a site touting ‘ionized water’ for use while on your ‘water fast’ — which is distinguished from a ‘juice fast’. If you are drinking fruit juice, you are not fasting — you are on a highly restricted diet.

These sites also tout long-term fasts for weight loss and curing diseases — from seven to forty days fasting. That kind of starvation diet should not be confused with intermittent fasting. Any weight lost during such a fast would be rapidly regained when you resume eating. Nor have I seen any scientific evidence that long-term fasting might cure disease — but then again it doesn’t exactly sound like something main-stream science is likely to conduct controlled experiments on. I’m willing to remain open-minded but uncommitted on that; if nothing else the placebo effect can yield wonderful results at times.

The part that really got my goat, however, was the sales-pitch for a machine to produce ‘ionized water’ which is purported to have all sorts of wonderful effects. Well the scientifically proven effects of intermittent fasting are wonderful too — so I can hardly let that be a criteria for condemnation. In the case of intermittent fasting, the old adage that if it sounds too good to be true, it probably isn’t gets broken all to smithereens. Ionized water is another matter altogether though. There is a good, detailed, refutation of the entire idea here — I’ll quote just the summary — read the entire page if you are interested in the details.

• “Ionized water” is nothing more than sales fiction; the term is meaningless to chemists.
• Most water that is fit for drinking is too unconductive to undergo significant electrolysis.
• Pure water can never be alkaline or acidic, nor can it be made so by electrolysis.
• Groundwaters containing metal ions such as calcium and magnesium can be rendered slightly alkaline by electrolysis, but after it hits the highly acidic gastric fluid in the stomach, its alkalinity is gone.
• The idea that one must consume alkaline water to neutralize the effects of acidic foods is ridiculous; we get rid of excess acid by exhaling carbon dioxide.
• The claims about the health benefits of drinking alkaline water are not supported by credible scientific evidence.
• There is nothing wrong with drinking slightly acidic waters such as rainwater. “Body pH” is a meaningless concept; different parts of the body (and even of individual cells) can have widely different pH values.
• If you really want to de-acidify your stomach (at the possible cost of interfering with protein digestion), why spend hundreds of dollars for an electrolysis device when you can take calcium-magnesium pills, Alka-Seltzer or Milk of Magnesia?
• Electrolysis devices are generally worthless for treating water for health enhancement, removal of common impurities, disinfection, and scale control.

That is the scientific analysis. Note that it covers ‘alkaline water’ as well, which is just another variant on the same mumbo-jumbo theme. Don’t confuse scientific evidence with pseudo-scientific jargon. The entire ionized water pitch is illogical and improbable, and one need only look as far as the price tag for the ionization device to find the motive. Snake oil would be more effective at half the cost.

I’ve been reading a lot of health-oriented web sites and blogs lately, while researching various styles of fasting and dieting. I keep coming across absurd recommendations, like ‘eat plenty of nuts, but not peanuts — those are a legume’. Say what? When did legume become a dirty word? Beans, peas and lentils are all legumes, and I haven’t heard anyone saying they should be eliminated from your diet. Well, except the paleo-diet folks, who say pre-agricultural man didn’t eat legumes. Nonsense. How would humans have known legumes would make good agricultural crops if they didn’t eat the wild ancestral legume species?

Oh Nuts

Saying ‘peanuts are legumes’ seems to convey the message that they are the exception — other nuts are of course — ?? — er — something else. Let’s see, Walnuts, Pecans and Hickory nuts are Juglandaceae; Chestnut, Beech nuts and acorns are Fagaceae; while Hazel nuts and Filberts are Betulacea; — jeeze, I don’t see much of a pattern here. Oh, and Almonds, Brazil Nuts, Cashews, and (my favorite) Pistachios are all seeds, like peanuts. None of those are considered nuts by botanists. They are all (except sometimes peanuts) considered nuts by health-nuts.

Digging deeper into the peanut controversy, some folks point to the fact that certain people are allergic to peanuts — there must be something toxic in there. My wife, Isabel, is allergic to tomatoes (nearly a national crime here in Mexico) — does that mean tomatoes are unhealthy for the rest of us? On the contrary, tomatoes have been found to be especially healthful, and an integral part of the Mediterranean diet which nutritionists say is heart-healthy. Yes, if you are allergic to peanuts you should shun them like the plague — but the rest of us have no reason to stop eating this healthful food.

Aflatoxin

Finally, there is the aflatoxin scare. Aflatoxin is not found in freshly harvested peanuts, but comes from a mold that may grow on peanuts if they are kept in a hot and damp storage silo. In the U.S., peanuts and peanut products are tested to ensure that dangerous levels of aflatoxin (a carcinogen) are not introduced into commercial food products. In fact, when peanut butters were tested for aflatoxin, the lowest amounts were found in the supermarket brands, like our childhood pal Skippy, and highest levels in ‘organic’ fresh-ground peanut butter at health food stores.

So why not ‘play it safe’ and avoid peanuts because the FDA allows minute amounts of aflatoxin (under 20 parts per billion)? Well, that means you will also have to give up pecans, pistachios, walnuts, milk, grains, soybeans and spices — they have all been found to contain aflatoxin at times.