Junior Needs a Nutrition Lesson

In our April issue, we ran a story on how to Build a Better Breakfast. Essentially, it said to lower the carbs, and increase the protein and fat, and then gave a few recipes on how to do that. This prompted a personal trainer to write in and give me a lecture on proper diet. I won’t use his real name, since it’s not really important. Instead, I’ll just call him Junior, as in, “Listen up, Junior, you have a lot to learn.”

Junior writes:

In response to your build a better breakfast story, I have to say there are good suggestions about mixing protein with your carbohydrates and adding fat…sound advice. The problem is suggesting eggs and red meat as valuable fat sources just doesn’t work. The fat found in these sources is strictly saturated and bad for the cholesterol and triglyceride levels, that over time may cause cardiac problems. I am a personal trainer in California with 25 years experience and write a health and fitness column for a local paper and have covered these topics many times over the last few years.

I think Junior has spent too many years in the gym. Eggs and red meat are ALL saturated fat??? There’s not much to say about this except that it’s an absolutely ridiculous statement–and from a guy who writes a health and fitness column in a newspaper no less. Junior may know plenty about training, but he clearly doesn’t know the first thing about nutrition.

Case in point: A sirloin steak. Now, if you read my blog you already know that I don’t buy into the conventional view on saturated fat. (You can read about it HERE.) But setting that aside for a moment, let’s break down the fatty acid content of a steak.

-Turns out, 49 percent of the total fat in a sirloin is monounsaturated. Even better, almost all of that (45 percent of total fat content) is oleic acid, the same  “heart-healthy” monounsaturated fat found in olive oil.

-Four percent of the fat is polyunsaturated. Which brings the sirloin’s total amount of unsaturated fat to 53 percent. So even though Junior thinks that it’s all saturated, it’s “mostly” UNSATURATED!

-47 percent of the fat in a steak is saturated. And of that, about half is palmitic acid, which has a positive effect on cholesterol, meaning it raises HDL (good) cholesterol more than LDL (bad) cholesterol. And one-third is stearic acid (the same fat in chocolate), which has no effect on cholesterol. (Some experts will debate the palmitic claim, or may simply say it has no net effect, but we found support for this in the research.) What was your point again, Junior? The saturated fat in red meat will kill you? Doesn’t look bad at all to me.

His last sentence in that paragraph– where he says, “I’ve covered these topics many times”–is what bothers me the most. Apparently, Junior has been passing on this misinformation for years. Thanks a lot for making things worse, Junior!

Junior continues:

I don’t know about most of your readers but the toast and tuna breakfast sounds a little hard to eat first thing in the morning.

This is a valid criticism. We suggested that toast with tuna salad would be a better choice than toast with jelly. Now the advice is great. Whether you like it or not, well, that’s personal taste. But I really think most people would be better off abandoning their typical breakfast–cereal, bagels, donuts–for whatever they might eat at lunch, which is likely to include some protein. Junior’s recommendation?

A great on the go breakfast I recommend for my clients is a fortified protein shake using whey protein, non fat milk with a small handful of oats, fruit, and almonds. With this concoction you are getting calcium and vitamin D from the milk, protein, omega 3 fatty acids, whole grains, and carbohydrates. Using the blender it’s quick, can be consumed in the car on the way to work, and the best thing is no dirty dishes sitting in the sink waiting for you to get home from a hard days work!

That’s a decent shake, I guess. It’s a typical, “I read that all of these foods are healthy so let’s throw them into one drink” approach, but at least it has plenty of protein and even some fat. I’m not sure what the point of tossing whole grains into it is (yes, I know they have fiber)–you’ll get more than “enough” carbs from the fruit. But I’ll address that in another post.

Introducing: The Coregasm Fitness Model

Turns out, sex and fitness are a winning combination. So far I’ve received tons of emails on the coregasm post, and almost all of them have been positive. Imagine that.

As a result of all this buzz, the lovely  Patricia Hannigan, a.k.a. the Golf Girl (that’s her in the photo), has offered to be the official model for Coregasm Training [insert trademark symbol here]. And, of course, we greedily readily accepted because, as our online team explained to me, “No one wants YOU to be the face of the coregasm.” Can’t argue with that. Plus, it’s not in my contract.

So what does Patricia get out of all of this? She put it this way:

“In the pursuit of good core conditioning exercises, I’m always ready to try something new. The core of the body is a key source for generating power in the golf swing, and we could all use a more powerful swing, right? The fact is, 95 percent of the muscular effort involved in creating torso rotation comes from the core. So sure, I’ll try the hanging leg raise because I’m pretty sure it could be beneficial to my swing… and we’ll see about the coregasm. There’s a possibility this could become my favorite exercise.”

Patricia will be sending us Coregasm Training photos soon, so keep an eye out for the next coregasm update. And in the meantime, check out her personal site HERE, which is soon to be one of the most popular golf blogs on the Internet. I know I’m reading it, and I don’t even play golf.

In other coregasm news, I decided to probe a little deeper (sorry, I can’t help myself), by following up on a couple of the emails I received. One was from Kristin, a married 26-year old woman who lives in Ontario. Her coregasmic experience hasn’t been with the hanging leg raise, but with a leg lowering drill, in which her legs are straight as she lowers them to the floor. Kristin says the number of reps required for a coregasm are different every time, but that she achieves optimal pleasure when she holds one position. From her email:

I have to be
lying down and usually put a small towel or pillow under my lower back. I get
the best “coregasm” when I lower my feet close to the floor. But my real secret,
the thing that sends me to the moon and back is when I use my vibrator at
the same time. WOW! It totally vamps up the intensity.

Well, it’s pretty clear Kristin takes advantage of the leg lowering drill at home, but what about at the gym? Kristin’s answer:

No, I don’t avoid this exercise at the gym. I look forward to it. Wouldn’t
you?

No comment, Kristin, but thanks for asking.

Kali, from Oklahoma, says that she first discovered the coregasm when doing a “hanging hold”–like in the top position of a chinup. Later, she found that if she “held a leg and shoulder lift” during sex, “it only intensified the pulsing.” In the gym, she says that the corgasm usually starts after five repetitions of the hanging leg raise. And, she adds, “I’m just glad to know I’m not the only one with this side effect.”

Actually, far from it Kali. For all you non-believers, check out these coregasm message board posts from around the Web:

Ever Had a Coregasm? 

Roman Chair Orgasm

The Coregasm?

The Ice Cream That Doesn’t Melt

A few days ago I posted HERE about a Morgan Spurlock video, in which he does a very unscientific test of how long fast food will last after it’s been cooked. In response, a reader named Rick writes:

I only eat fast food about once a year and I have the DVD “Supersize Me”.  I am not unduly impressed however with how long food lasts on the countertop or associate that environment with what happens in my gut.  A lot of healthy foods I eat do not readily rot at room temp for example, water, nuts, oatmeal, raw veggies such as: cabbage, beets, carrots or potatoes.  In fact most of what I eat lasts a pretty long time on the countertop. I wouldn’t eat most of it after a week or two but I do not lend a whole lot of value to the connection between healthy eating and how quickly what you eat rots at room temperature.

I agree with what Ricks says about how long a food lasts on a countertop not being related to what happens in your gut. Your body doesn’t have any trouble breaking that stuff down. But that’s not why I posted the video. The first reason was that it’s entertaining, as is most of what Morgan Spurlock does. I’m really not a fan of Supersize Me for various reasons, but you can’t deny he puts on a pretty good show. (See THIS Mike Eades’ post for some of the flaws in the orginal film.)

Second, I’m not exactly sure what point Morgan Spurlock was trying to make, but I had a different takeaway than Rick. The fact that French fries can last weeks and look relatively the same bothers me because it tells me something about how they’re made–or what they’re made with. What type of “chemicals” are needed to keep a food from rotting? These chemicals don’t naturally occur in the food, and could be potentially unhealthy. And because of that, I’d rather avoid eating them when I can.

Also, I don’t think comparing raw, uncut potatoes to cooked, sliced potatoes is a fair comparison. Why?

1. Unlike a whole potato, a sliced spud–like the kind French fries are made of–will start to oxidize immediately and be brown within a few hours, if not sooner. So it will rot, even though the unpeeled, uncut version may last a month just fine. Definitely not the same thing.

2. A whole potato has no added ingredients. Does anyone really think that a fresh potato is the same as a processed, deep-fried French fry?

All of this reminds me of the last time I ate the ice cream treat called a drumstick. It was 1994, and my friend Jeff Simmons bet both me and our buddy Steve Hardin that we couldn’t eat an entire box of drumsticks. (Either 10 or 12 came in a box, I can’t remember for sure.) I downed five, but threw in the towel on number six, tossing what was left of it in the sink. Steve finished his box. (He also ate an entire Fuddrucker’s cherry pie once, which may not seem like much in the age of hot dog eating competitions, but we were all impressed.)

Anyway, being a 23-year old slob, I didn’t bother to wash the drumstick down the sink until the next day. When I went to clean the mess, I was suprised to find that the drumstick was still intact. In 12 hours, the ice cream didn’t melt. That was enough for me to say goodbye to this treat forever. That and the fact that, once you’ve gorged yourself on drumsticks, they sort of lose their appeal. Kind of like the first time you overdo it on Jack Daniels.

Oh, and in case it isn’t obvious, I used to eat like crap when I was younger.