NUTRITION

For many, the COVID-19 pandemic reinforced just how important mental health is for overall wellness. Rather than some intangible aside, it’s a critical element of physical health. You might even call it fitness. Referring to mental-health care as mental fitness creates a powerful mindset shift. It puts us in a proactive state and gives us the autonomy to improve it. And just as we build and preserve muscle with physical training, we can develop and sustain mental fitness by regularly training our brains. Start with these 12 steps.

When it comes to diet, most people’s concerns involve weight loss, fitness, cardiac health, and longevity. But what we eat affects more than our bodies; it also affects our brains. Recent studies have shown that diet can have a profound impact on mental health conditions ranging from ADHD to depression, anxiety, sleep disorders, OCD, dementia, and beyond. In This Is Your Brain on Food, Dr. Uma Naidoo draws on cutting-edge research to explain the many ways in which food contributes to our mental health and shows how a sound diet can help treat and prevent a wide range of psychological and cognitive health issues.

“'Too much sugar' might be the simplest explanation for the many obesity-linked cancers, but it is not a simple explanation. It is an idea built upon more than a century of science," Sam Apple explains in this excerpt from Ravenous: Otto Warburg, the Nazis, and the Search for the Cancer-Diet Connection. Here, Apple highlights key moments in that century of science, focusing specifically on how sugar and other rapidly digested carbohydrates spike insulin and insulin, in turn, "activates the pathways linked to cancer."

Over his more than 40-year career, pediatric neuroendocrinologist and New York Times bestselling author Dr. Robert Lustig has been dedicated to treating and preventing childhood obesity and diabetes. In his new book, Dr. Lustig exposes the truth, both scientifically and politically, underlying the current global pandemic of diet-related diseases. In this excerpt from chapter 8, he describes the two pathways that fuel energy metabolism and explains how different food sources affect the body at the cellular level.

Over his more than 40-year career, pediatric neuroendocrinologist and New York Times bestselling author Dr. Robert Lustig has been dedicated to treating and preventing childhood obesity and diabetes. In his new book, Dr. Lustig exposes the truth, both scientifically and politically, underlying the current global pandemic of diet-related diseases. In this excerpt, he explains how the precepts of cell biology discussed earlier in chapter 8 (excerpts 1 and 2) present a new way to think about the role of diet and nutrition in the development of non-communicable diseases.

Over his more than 40-year career, pediatric neuroendocrinologist and New York Times bestselling author Dr. Robert Lustig has been dedicated to treating and preventing childhood obesity and diabetes. In his new book, Dr. Lustig exposes the truth, both scientifically and politically, underlying the current global pandemic of diet-related diseases.

In this exclusive preview of Gary Taubes’ new book, Taubes explains why most of us have a fraught relationship with food and a flawed understanding of what makes a healthy diet. Here Taubes argues, “The existing evidence says that if you have metabolic syndrome, if you’re getting fatter or are already obese, if you’re prediabetic or already diabetic, avoiding carbohydrate-rich foods and replacing them with fat may be the single healthiest thing you can do for yourself." He adds: "No one can guarantee what happens in the long run. … Anyone who makes an ironclad guarantee for any way of eating—that one diet will assuredly make you live longer than others ... is probably selling something."

In this exclusive preview of Gary Taubes’ new book, Taubes explains why most of us have a fraught relationship with food and a flawed understanding of what makes a healthy diet. In 2002, Taubes discussed recent research findings on the relative benefits of a low-carb, high-fat diet in an article in New York Times Magazine. Since then, he writes, “close to one hundred, if not more, clinical trials have published results, and they confirm these observations with remarkable consistency. The trials are still incapable of telling us whether embracing LCHF/ketogenic eating will extend our lives (compared to other patterns of eating the authorities might recommend), but they continue to challenge, relentlessly, the conventional thinking on the dangers of high-fat diets, and they tell us that in the short term, this way of eating is safe and beneficial.”

In this exclusive preview of Gary Taubes’ new book, Taubes explains why most of us have a fraught relationship with food and a flawed understanding of what makes a healthy diet. “‘Is it safe?’ is always one of two ultimate questions when considering a change of diet or lifestyle, particularly with the goal of preventing chronic disease,” Taubes writes. Is a ketogenic diet safe? Is a plant-based diet safe? Is saturated fat dangerous? Here Taubes evaluates the various methods we have for answering these questions, from personal experience and anecdotal evidence to clinical trials.

In this exclusive preview of Gary Taubes’ new book, Taubes explains why most of us have a fraught relationship with food and a flawed understanding of what makes a healthy diet. “Despite all my reporting and my journalistic skepticism, my thoughts on the nature of a healthy diet were a product of the nutritional belief system” rather than scientific evidence, Taubes writes. In this excerpt, he describes how he has come to think about health and diet trends in more recent years and shares his recommendations for navigating continually evolving nutrition advice.

Whole, unprocessed carbohydrate sources have significant health and performance benefits that might go unnoticed with macronutrient counting. For example, a doughnut and an orange can both provide the carbohydrate grams one needs, but other constituents should be considered. Even honey has more health value compared to table sugar due to the vitamins and minerals it contains.

Training and nutrition are the two most powerful mechanisms for improving human health, but they exert their influence from opposite directions. Diet supplies energy and is the source of the body’s structural components. Exercise consumes energy and actually breaks down the body in various ways. Here, Tyler Hass explores how to optimize both mechanisms by dialing the body’s activity and nutrition patterns up or down.

Eating for wellness relates to the quality of food. Eating for performance relies on a combination of food quality and quantity.

Eat meat and vegetables, nuts and seeds, some fruit, little starch, and no sugar. Keep intake to levels that will support exercise but not body fat.

A survey of economic data across 42 European countries found no relationship between heart disease risk and eating animal protein and animal fat.

Frederick Allen, Elliott Joslin, Louis “Harry” Newburgh, and Phil Marsh were pioneers in the treatment of diabetes before the discovery of insulin. This 2006 review of their methods and outcomes found that all four successfully treated diabetic patients with a diet that closely resembles modern high-fat, low-carbohydrate diets.

"Today, most doctors, dietitians, and even diabetes specialists consider type 2 diabetes to be a chronic and progressive disease — a life sentence with no possibility of parole. But the truth, as Dr. Fung reveals in this paradigm-shifting book, is that type 2 diabetes is reversible."

A 2011 article takes a historical look at the use of extremely low-calorie diets in diabetic patients prior to the discovery of insulin.

In this 2012 commentary, Robert Lustig and colleagues claim sugar is similar to tobacco and alcohol in that it is unavoidable, toxic, abuse-forming, and societally harmful. They argue anti-sugar measures are warranted.

A 2019 in vitro study found chronic fructose exposure increases insulin release by pancreatic β-cells, which may contribute to obesity and insulin resistance over time.