Over 3 years in the making, the PN Certification is the synthesis of everything we’ve learned during the last 15 years of coaching and research in the nutrition field.

For elite fitness professionals, it’s based on my teaching at Eastern Michigan University as well as the work we’ve done with, and the data we’ve collected from, thousands of clients over the years.

And there’s nothing else like it, anywhere.

The first true nutrition certification for fitness professionals.

I’ve always felt that nutrition is the missing component in the fitness profession; without it, a client will simply not see results, and a coach will simply not be able to generate them.

But where would you go to learn the essentials of sport and exercise nutrition, and how to coach it?

Everything that exists is usually re-purposed material from clinical dietetics (i.e., feeding people in hospital situations) or is more suited to advanced academic study (i.e., post-graduate research).

Nothing, and I mean nothing, deals with the problem we face every day: how to use nutrition coaching to elicit marked improvements in health, performance and (especially) body composition in an exercising client.

We literally wrote the book on it.

So we literally wrote the book: finding no suitable textbook, we created one from scratch: “The Essentials of Sport and Exercise Nutrition,” a 500-page opus covering every aspect of the science and practice of nutrition coaching.

In addition, we’ve created a whole video lesson curriculum, a challenging exam to test your mettle, and in general, a contribution to the betterment of the fitness industry as a whole.

Basically, we’re going to do everything in our power to change the game. We’re out to train a new kind of fitness professional. And the certification is a massive step in that direction.

More details and pre-registration

If you’re interested in finding out more, we’ve set up a pre-registration page with some more info about the program.  There, you can also get on the waiting list.

We’re limiting next group to just 200 people, and since, in our last group, we filled every spot in less than 24 hours, the current spots will go quickly.  So everyone on the waiting list gets a 24 hour “presale” window to reserve a spot before we open it to the general public.

There’s no charge to be on the waiting list, so if you’re interested in the certification program I highly recommend you get on it, because your chance of getting a spot will be much, much better.

Click for more info on the PN Certification program, and to get on the waiting list.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q. Why offer a certification like this?

Because nutrition is THE missing component in the fitness and strength/conditioning professions.

If a training program isn’t accompanied by effective nutrition coaching, a client will get mediocre results — no matter how badly they “want it.”

The fact is this: exercise alone doesn’t work. Many very good trainers and exercise coaches are having their efforts wasted because their excellent training programs aren’t accompanied by a proper nutrition intervention.

And that’s not merely my opinion. For example, there is ample research demonstrating that in the absence of nutrition change, even very intense exercise programs with experienced trainers will yield an average of between 3 to 6 lbs of fat loss in 6 months time.

Think about that: a client would spend $3,000-$5,000 for 6 months with a personal trainer, only to lose a few measly, unnoticeable pounds of body fat.

That’s not good.

To give you a counter example, in our Lean Eating coaching program, clients average around 15 lbs of fat loss in 6 months.  That’s nearly 3X as effective.

In Lean Eating, we provide both exercise and nutrition coaching, and that’s the difference. But keep in mind: our coaching is 100% online. They get those results without ever meeting us in person.

If they work with a trainer while doing Lean Eating (which can help keep them from dogging it in the gym), they lose closer to 25 lbs of fat in 6 months.  That’s over 4X as effective.

So something is missing, and that something is nutrition coaching.

That’s why we developed the certification program: to teach exercise coaches to become nutrition coaches too.  Because once you can do it effectively, you can deliver results that are impossible with exercise alone.

Q. What do you mean when you say, “Exercise alone doesn’t work”?

I mean exactly that: exercise alone doesn’t work.

If a client doesn’t change their nutrition, nothing you do in the gym will matter when it comes to body comp change (fat loss, muscle gain) — and that’s what 95% of your clients are looking for, isn’t it?

Simply put, the last 25 years of published research show that, while exercise alone can promote VERY small changes in body fat and lean mass, those changes are almost negligible.

In fact, one published review, a meta-analysis of over 700 previous exercise studies done over 25 years, showed that about 6 months of supervised exercise programming will produce only 9lbs of weight lost.

If we assume 50% of that weight lost is fat (which is a safe assumption, based on the research), that means that clients can expect to lose around 4.5lbs of fat during a 6 month training program.

So, let’s assume a client meets with his/her trainer 4 times per week for $50 per hour. That’s $200 per week, $800 per month, and $4,800 for 6 months. All for 4.5lbs of fat lost? That’s a cost of just over $1000 per pound of fat lost.

After all that time and money spent, would an overweight client even notice a 4.5lb fat loss? Not likely.

Q. What results can I expect when I integrate nutrition coaching into my practice?

Again, let’s look at one comparator, the Precision Nutrition Lean Eating coaching program, which incorporates both exercise AND nutrition.  During the 6 month, online-only program, the average fat loss is around 15lbs.

And if you see the client in-person, i.e., use our exercise and nutrition system while coaching them in the gym to keep intensity up, we see see an average of 25lbs of fat loss in 6 months.  Top end results are even more impressive. Top performers are losing up to 50lbs in 6 months. It’s quite amazing.

So with 6 months of the right exercise and the right nutrition programming, supervised by a trainer, the cost per pound of fat loss can go down from $1000 per pound to $100 per pound.

That’s nearly 5X the fat loss and 10X the cost effectiveness.

Seriously, imagine how in-demand you’d be if you were a coach that could regularly deliver results like that.  Well, it’s absolutely possible. In fact, it’s what we should expect. But no one is teaching this stuff.

Nothing out there covers the specific problem: how to deliver nutrition coaching in a personal training or sport coaching environment.  And that’s why I wanted to do this certification.

I want to help create a new kind of fitness professional. One that helps coaches become body transformation experts, and one that helps clients get the kind of results they deserve.

The PN Certification is a massive step in that direction.

Q. What qualifies you to teach a course / offer a certification like this?

Well, for one I have pretty vast exposure to almost every aspect of fitness and nutrition. I’ve been:

• A student of nutrition, going on to complete my PhD in Exercise Physiology and Nutrient Biochemistry at the University of Western Ontario
• A teacher of nutrition at the University of Texas, Eastern Michigan University and the University of Western Ontario
• A competitive physique athlete, winning the Mr. Jr. USA title in 1995
• A personal trainer, running a successful training business in Miami
• A researcher with published studies in peer-reviewed academic journals
• An author of over half a dozen nutrition books and hundreds of mainstream articles in magazines like Testosterone, Men’s Health, Women’s Health, Oxygen, etc.
• A nutrition coach to thousands of everyday folk and quite a few pro athletes and Olympic gold medallists

So apart from being qualified academically, I think I have a pretty unique perspective — one that’s very well-suited to teaching fitness professionals. I’ve seen the field of nutrition from more angles, both personally and professionally, then almost anyone else teaching nutrition today.

In addition, I’ve written chapters for other nutrition textbooks, I’ve created masters-level university courses on sport nutrition, and I’ve created nutrition certification material for other certifying bodies. So I have quite a bit of experience creating academic course material.

But most of all, I think I’m qualified to teach this because we’ve used and tested this very system extensively with our own clients here at Precision Nutrition.

Over the last 3 years, through our Lean Eating Coaching Program, we’ve been quietly conducting what I think is the largest body transformation research project in the world.

In 3 years we’ve had nearly 3,000 clients go through at least 6 months of coaching with us. Essentially a total exercise, nutrition and lifestyle intervention.

The purpose of the Lean Eating program is simple: help people lose fat, gain lean mass where needed, and completely transform their bodies.

Now, here’s the thing: since the entire program is online, we were able to collect data on everything. And I mean everything.

Because we don’t see clients in person, we can’t “eyeball” things. We need data. So we have detailed psychometric profiles on our clients. We track compliance and every measurable and relevant behavior. And, of course, we regularly collect photos and monitor body composition and performance outcomes.

And as a result of this rigorous data collection, I’m guessing that we here at PN know, better than almost anyone else in the world, which variables are most important to body transformation success.

Now, remember, I’m not talking what we THINK is correlated to success. I’m talking about what we ABSOLUTELY KNOW is correlated with success. Success here meaning compliance, consistency, and ultimately, fat loss and muscle gain.

It takes a long time to gather this kind of information, especially since no one in the fitness industry has ever done anything like it before. But now that it’s been gathered, analyzed, and tested, I believe it’s time to share it.

From there, the PN Certification was born.

Q. How does the PN Certification compare to other nutrition education options out there?

Well, for one, it’s based on real client data and our own coaching experience. We’re not really a certification organization. We’re coaches. So this is coming from first-hand knowledge that we use ourselves every day.

This certification is based on real client results, and a reliable and reproducible system for monitoring and achieving those results. That’s what you learn when you become PN Certified.

Two, it’s designed specifically for fitness professionals. So it’s for trainers, coaches, therapists and nutritionists working with people who exercise.

That’s very important, because most nutrition courses suffer from 1 of 2 problems.

Problem 1: They have little/nothing to do with exercisers looking for body transformation.
Most credible nutrition education today is meant for people looking to become professors, researchers (people who work at universities) or clinical dietitians (people who work at hospitals). So if you want to do any of that, you go to college, study for years and get a PhD or an RD.

Both noble professions. I got a PhD in the field myself, so I’m not knocking it. And Ryan Andrews, who co-wrote the textbook for the PN Certification, got his RD and worked out of Johns Hopkins. But neither of those roads teach you how to actually coach a exercising client through a body transformation.

That’s a very specific skillset, requiring both an understanding of the science of nutrition and — this is critical — a reliable system for coaching it.

So unlike anything else out there right now, the PN Certification does both of those things. It was designed from the ground up, specifically for the working fitness professional.

Problem 2: They’re, well, a joke.
I just Googled “nutrition certification” and found some 1000 or so results. Good God.

The situation is bleak, my friends. Of the non-university level nutrition certifications out there, I see plenty of shit, quite frankly. Weekend seminars, no exams, no studying. Lots of rubber stamping.

Some are more challenging, I’m sure, and probably a few are even worth the money. I don’t know — I can’t look at the Google results for very long before getting depressed.

I think I would sum it up this way: if you’re here, reading this, you’ve probably followed us for some time and you probably think a lot like us.

And so I suspect you will probably benefit more from the PN Certification than from any other non-university-level nutrition education you are likely to find.

That’s just my gut feeling, so take it for what it’s worth.

Q. How thorough is the PN Certification?

Very. To give you an idea:

I teach a masters level Sport and Exercise Nutrition course at Eastern Michigan University.

The course is part of a High-Performance Physiology masters degree program at EMU. And the PN Certification covers the very same material that my masters students learn as part of the EMU program.

So make no mistake, this isn’t some “Mickey Mouse” nutrition certification. It’s an elite certification based on grad school material.

Q. Will there be multiple levels of certification?

Yes, two. This is the first, Level 1, and includes the textbook, the online material and the online exam. Essentially, Level 1 certifies that you understand the theory.

With Level 1, we give you all the knowledge to begin incorporating sport and exercise nutrition into your practice immediately. You get our 500-page “The Essentials of Exercise and Sport Nutrition” text, our 100-page workbook, access to our online learning platform, complete with 17 video lectures, and more.

Then, once you pass the exam, you get a Level 1 certificate acknowledging your completion of the “theory” part of the certification program.

Some trainers and coaches will stop there. And that’s cool with me. With the Level 1 certificate, they’ll be as well trained in exercise and sport nutrition as my masters students.

Level 2 is an invitation-only program for students who pass Level 1.

The student is required to do an online internship, perform regular research reviews and client case studies showing that they can actually deliver results. Level 2 certifies that you can take the theory and apply it with clients all the way through a successful body transformation.

So, unlike other nutrition certification programs, the PN Certification has both a theory component (Level 1) and a practice component (Level 2). Those students who complete both levels will be among the best in the world at getting client results.

Q. Do I need to have a science degree to become certified?

No.  We assume no prior knowledge of biology, chemistry, etc, and so we don’t require a university degree.

Now, if you were terrible in science, expect this certification to give you trouble. But if you are generally comfortable with science and are willing to put your time in, you can learn this stuff, no problem.

Q. Once I’m PN Certified, will I be listed on your site?

Yes. And given our exposure online, that’s a big advantage for PN Certified fitness pros.

And as we grow our online coaching programs, that advantage will grow with it.

I’ll give you an example. Our Lean Eating coaching clients are often interested in finding a local trainer, one who actually knows what the hell they’re doing, to help them out with their new exercise movements, etc.

Now, in the past, we had no one to send them to. I can’t in good conscience just send them blindly in the typical local fitness club with their Lean Eating exercise and nutrition program in hand.

It would be a disaster. The trainer wouldn’t know what to make of our program, or they start criticizing it, or trying to change it. And the client would spend half their time trying to mediate between us and them. Not good.

So with the PN Certification we’re creating an army of fitness professionals who actually “get it.” Coaches who our readers, clients, and customers can trust.

What’s more, by being PN Certified, trainers and coaches will be part of a network of local professionals that WE trust, and that we can refer our own clients to.

Once you’re certified, you’ll have a professional profile in our new online directory of PN Certified Professionals, so you’ll be easy to find when people are looking for local help.

Q. Would nutritionists and dietitians benefit from this program as well?

Absolutely. In fact, I wish every dietitian would find their way to this program and get involved.

Although RDs have excellent training in all aspects of clinical nutrition, most dietetics programs don’t even offer a sport nutrition course. And if they do, the course is usually too general to be of any use in the field.

Trust me, I know, because I’ve taught in dietetics departments.

So just because someone has earned an RD or LD credential, that doesn’t mean they’re done learning. Indeed, the best dietitians, trainers, and strength coaches make life-long education an important priority.

And in my opinion, the PN Certification program would be a huge asset for every dietitian.

Q. Is the PN Certification program accredited by one of the national education boards?

No, it’s not accredited by any of the national education boards.

Q. What about those people specifically looking for national accreditation?

People come to PN to get certified because they want the best possible exercise and sport nutrition training – from one of the world’s most recognizable exercise and sport nutrition companies.

For those of you looking for some other end, like national accreditation (which means that the program has been reviewed by the US Government), give us a shout at pnn@precisionnutrition.com. There are other programs for that and we’ll be happy to point you to those types of certification programs.

Q. How long does it take to complete the Level 1 program?

The Level 1 program is self-paced. So as soon as a trainer or coach feels ready, they can take their certification exam online.

In general, I recommend studying 1 chapter every week. So, since the text contains 17 chapters, I’d study for about 4 months before writing the exam.

For the ambitious and those folks with a nutrition background, however, 2-3 chapters a week isn’t unreasonable.

Q. How about Level 2?

Once someone successfully completes Level 1, they can apply for the Level 2 program. And Level 2 should take about 6 months.

Since there is a 6-month online internship requirement, it can’t be done more quickly than that.

Q. What scope of advice will someone be able to offer clients after completing the course?

That’s a great question, and one we cover in depth in the course.

For now, it’s important to know that fitness professionals are allowed to make nutrition recommendations to otherwise healthy clients.

So even without the PN Cert, fitness pros are able to make nutrition recommendations. What we’re offering is a much better system for making those recommendations.

The only scope of practice that’s prohibited is MNT (Medical Nutrition Therapy), which means giving nutrition advice to treat or cure disease. You won’t be qualified to do this, and you should never attempt to, for a number of reasons. That’s a whole different field of study.

Q. When does the PN Certification program begin?

We’re using a cohort (group) model to accept registrations: the program begins on a specific day, everyone starts at the same time, and group size is limited.

This next PN Cert program begins on September 29th, 2010.  And there won’t be another cohort until some time in 2011.

Q. How many people are you accepting in the program?

To keep the program well-controlled, especially at first, we’re only accepting 200 people this time around. And I expect those 200 spots will fill up very quickly.

Q: How can people find out more?

To learn more about the course, and to get on the waiting list, which gives folks a chance to register early, 24 hours before the general public, they can visit this page here:

Click for more info on the PN Certification program, and to get on the waiting list.

Then you start to notice impingement due to the atrophy. Then you notice strength and posture imbalances. The downward spiral has begun.

Next thing you know, your kids are dropping you off at the nursing home in time for Thursday afternoon shuffleboard. You’ll have the posture of Quasimodo and arms like T-Rex.

What is the rotator cuff?

The shoulder has an immense range of motion — the most of any joint in the body. But this comes with a catch: because of its range, it’s also the most unstable.

As a result, nearly 70% of us will experience some sort of shoulder disorder in our lifetime. Often, the injury includes one of the rotator cuff muscles.

Of all the injuries that take place during resistance training, 36% occur at the shoulder complex. The supraspinatus muscle is most often involved.

Yeah, we're pretty sure that those arms are facing the wrong way too.

The rotator cuff is made up of four muscles (or you could think of them as “active ligaments”) that collectively compress, depress, protect and stabilize the glenohumeral joint, helping to keep the upper ball of the humerus (think of this as a golf ball) in the glenoid fossa (think of this as a tee). Weak rotator cuff muscles prevent the humeral head from rotating properly on the glenoid fossa.

The supraspinatus, infraspinatus, teres minor, and subscapularis (the 4 rotator cuff muscles) originate on the scapula (shoulder blade) and help with various movements like bringing your arm out to the side, internal rotation (turning your arm inwards), external rotation (turning your arm outwards), and so on.

Attachments and functions of rotator cuff muscles

Source: Ronai P. Exercise modifications and strategies to enhance shoulder function. Strength and Conditioning Journal 2005;27:36-45.

Why is the rotator cuff important?

The challenge of stabilization

Shouder stabilization is a dynamic activity. Many muscles, from small to large, fire in a coordinated effort to stabilize the shoulder as it moves through a range of motion. Along with the rotator cuff, this includes:

• Serratus anterior
• Rhomboids
• Trapezius
• Levator scapulae

When looking at shoulder problems, it’s important to understand the complex roles that all of these muscles play. If they don’t work together — or more likely, if some muscles are strong and some are weak or inhibited, they can’t work together effectively in order to keep that golf ball on the tee.

The result: imbalance and eventually, injury.

68% of people with scapular instability have rotator cuff problems. If these muscles are weak or not firing properly, it’s harder to control that golf ball on the tee. Typically, the shoulder blades and the top of the humerus (upper arm) start to slip forward, which shrinks the subacromial space between the humerus and the acromion (bony structure at the top of the shoulder).

Many tendons pass through this space. When it’s constricted, these tendons can become inflamed. Over time, with repeated trauma, the tendons may become damaged or even — eventually — tear.

In addition, the surfaces and structures of the joint (such as the cartilage that lines the joint capsule) can become inflamed.

Shoulder injuries: You could be next

Head forward, upper spine rounded, reaching forwards... this is shoulder pain city.

Barring an acute event (like falling on an outstretched arm), most shoulder injuries come from repeated, cumulative damage.

The bad news: Almost everyone is at risk for shoulder injuries.

The subscapularis tends to get plenty of stimulation in our “front-of-the-body-internal-rotation” happy gyms. This means it’s usually pretty tight and strong. Combine this with things like:

• desk work
• driving
• using a mouse/keyboard
• stress (which often makes people tighten up their traps and hunch their shoulders)
• sitting/standing in “hunchback” posture
• lack of attention to the muscles you can’t see in the mirror

…and you have the perfect storm for shoulder pain.

Many people ignore the warning signs of shoulder trauma (such as pain and limited mobility) until the situation is serious.

Don’t go like that.

Whether you feel pain while bench pressing, reaching overhead, throwing, punching, paddling, or all of the above… if your shoulder hurts, take the time to deal with it immediately. Don’t push through the pain. It will not get better if you ignore it, and will probably get worse.

The good news: A strong, stable and flexible rotator cuff can preserve shoulder health and increase upper body strength.

Preventing injury

One of the keys to injury prevention is developing flexibility of the subscap and pecs while building strength and endurance in the opposing external rotators.

Anterior shoulder instability, limited internal rotation mobility and posterior shoulder tightness

Remedy – Need to improve posterior shoulder flexibility

Discussion – If you can’t do this, you have some tightness in the back of your shoulder. Posterior shoulder tightness may be a contributing factor in impingement and labral tears. This tightness doesn’t allow adequate internal rotation or horizontal adduction.

Exercises to consider:

Cross arm adduction stretch

Internal rotation sleeper stretch

Scapular wall slides

Shoulder dislocates

Unilateral presses and pulls (one side at a time)

Medicine ball wall tosses

Drop and catch push up (advanced)

Excessive external rotation mobility

Remedy – Need to increase internal shoulder rotation

Discussion – This is a rare shoulder problem to have; though it’s often seen in “overhead athletes”: folks whose sport involves throwing or pressing overhead, such as pitchers. With poor internal rotation flexibility, posterior shoulder tightness ensues. This can lead to the posterior rotator cuff muscles contracting with more force in an attempt to pull the humeral head back into place, leading to rotator cuff muscle fatigue and injury.

Exercises to consider:

Cross arm adduction stretch

Internal rotation sleeper stretch

Internal rotators stronger than external rotators

Remedy – Need to strengthen the external rotators

Discussion – The teres minor and infraspinatus are major external rotators involved with abduction and overhead motions.

Exercises to consider:

Face down Y exercise

Face down T exercise

Band external rotation at 30 degrees abduction

Seated press ups (advanced)

Power wheel crawls (advanced exercise – starts at 1:42 in video)

Pushup plus

Reverse push up

Cable external rotations at 90 degrees

Side lying external rotation at 30 degrees abduction

Scarecrow

Notes on the above exercises:

Performing these exercises on unstable surfaces can further enhance sensorimotor control.

Placing a towel between the arm and body during internal/external rotations can decrease deltoid activity, relax the supraspinatus, and lessen pain – all good for the prehab/rehab process.

Weak lower traps

Remedy – Need to strengthen the lower traps

Discussion – An important sign of good shoulder function during pushing and pulling movements is the ability to keep the shoulders down and away from the ears.

If the shoulders move up toward the ears during a pushup or row (as in the left-hand photo above), it signifies greater upper trap activity. This yanks the humerus out of alignment within the glenoid cavity (the golf ball on the tee) which results shoulder complex muscle weakness and limited range of motion. This is a particular problem because the upper traps can be so strong relative to other muscles.

Another screening tool is kyphotic posture, aka “the Quasimodo” or “E.T.” Again, this suggests the upper traps are considerably stronger than the mid- to low traps, serratus anterior and levator scapula.

Exercises to consider:

Balance out all of your pushing exercises with pulling exercises (using retracted shoulder blades)

Push up with some shrugging – not good	Push up without shrugging – good

Poor proprioception

Remedy – Need to build proprioception — awareness of where the body is in space.

Discussion – Damage to ligaments around the shoulder cause less sensory information coming in. Without proper incoming information, the shoulder isn’t protected from extreme ranges of motion.

Exercises to consider:

Swiss ball pushups (advanced)

1 arm ab plank on swiss ball (advanced)

Medicine ball wall dribbles or this option

Quadruped rhythmic stabilization

The following are advanced plyometric exercises helpful for later stages of rehab/prehab.

Deceleration med ball catches

Med ball external rotation toss to wall

Tips on rehab/prehab exercises

When shoulder muscles become fatigued, the joint becomes hyper mobile, and prone to injury. Thus, building endurance is important.

When doing shoulder stabilization exercises, use higher reps (10-20), and/or longer duration (e.g. 30-60 sec).

Also, it’s important to train external rotators with an emphasis on the eccentric phase. Use the “4-6” approach for the direct rotator cuff exercises. Use a 4 second count on the concentric phase and a 6 second count on the eccentric phase.

Don’t try this at home

A dangerous position for the rotator cuff (and the shoulder), is the “high five position.” The humerus is abducted (held away from the body) and externally rotated. This overloads the anterior capsule.

Beyond actually high fiving with buddies, this position is often replicated in the gym during old-school machine chest flies, behind the neck pulldowns, and behind the neck presses.

Could cause shoulder injury

Other exercises that may increase shoulder injury risk include bench press (flat and incline), dips, barbell back squats, upright rows, dumbbell flies, and arm curls.

The empty can position (raising the arms up with the palms down/back) can inflame the shoulder by reducing the subacromial space and causing impingement. Instead, use the full can exercise (raising the arms up with palms forward in the plane of the scapula).

Modifying exercises to improve shoulder health

Here are some tips to help you adjust common exercises to maximize shoulder health.

Bench press

• Tuck elbows a bit closer to your body
• Use a neutral grip with dumbbells – like this: Dumbbell Bench Press, Neutral Grip
• Don’t feel like you need to go down all the way until your elbows dip below your body – try floor presses: Lazy Floor Press or Regular Floor Press
• Retract your shoulders before starting a press

Change your squat

Instead of standard barbell back squats, try front, zercher, dumbbell front or goblet squats, which put less stress on the shoulders.

Front

Zercher

Dumbbell

Goblet

Pulldowns and overhead presses

• Bring elbows slightly forward instead of flared out
• Always go to the front of the body

Keep it scapular

When raising your arm out to the side, don’t force it back so it’s directly in line with your body. Keep it in the natural range of motion with the scapula – like this: Scapular Plane Lateral Raise, Neutral Grip

Upright rows

Not worth it. Try face pulls instead.

Posture

Keep a proud chest, tight shoulder blades, engaged core, and overall “good posture” when exercising (and with daily life).

Other exercise modifications

Source: Ronai P. Exercise modifications and strategies to enhance shoulder function. Strength and Conditioning Journal 2005;27:36-45.

Summary and recommendations

1. If it hurts your shoulders, avoid it. And don’t work through pain.
2. Activate your serratus (see shoulder circuits below) to save your shoulders.
3. Move around during the day. Check your posture.
4. If you do a push, follow with a pull. If you work your front, follow with your back. In fact, try to do more pulling than pushing — about a 2:1 ratio if possible.
5. Don’t be afraid to nix shoulder day. Between other exercises, the shoulders get plenty of work.
6. Use massage or active release therapy to keep soft tissues happy.
7. As much as possible, alternate which hands you use for daily-life tasks, such as brushing your teeth.
8. Foam roll the thoracic spine.
9. Be cautious with explosive overhead lifts.
10. Develop shoulder flexibility/mobility/strength with the circuits below.

Extra credit

“There is a fine line between physiotherapy and the training of the elite athlete.” – Dan Pfaff

Co-activation of the traps and serratus anterior are thought to have significant influence on scapulohumeral rhythm.

The infraspinatus and teres minor are extremely active during the “follow-through” with overhead throwing motions (or some overhead exercises like medicine ball slams). Train these muscles eccentrically.

Further resources

Optimal Shoulder Performance

Original Shoulder Savers Article Part 1 |  Part 2 | Part 3

The Amazing Shoulder

References

Wagner P. A comprehensive approach to shoulder-complex maintenance. Strength and Conditioning Journal. 2003;25:65-70.

Kolber MJ, et al. Shoulder injuries attributed to resistance training: a brief review. J Strength Cond Research. 2010;24:1696-1704.

Kritz M, et al. Screening the upper-body push and pull patterns using body weight exercises. Strength and Conditioning Journal. 2010;32:72-82.

Corrao M, et al. Addressing posterior shoulder tightness in the athletic population. Strength and Conditioning Journal. 2009;31:61-65.

Ronai P. Exercise modifications and strategies to enhance shoulder function. Strength and Conditioning Journal. 2005;27:36-45.

Tyson A. Posterior rotator cuff strength: part 1 and 2. Strength and Conditioning Journal. 1995:21-23; 37-38.

Cressey E. Clearing up the rotator cuff controversy. January 2010.

Kolber MJ & Beekhuizen KS. The empty can exercise: considerations for strengthening the supraspinatus. Strength and Conditioning Journal. 2009;31:38-40.

Cressey E. Cracking the rotator cuff conundrum. T-nation.

Sorry, I was just finishing off a glass of dihydrogen monoxide.

Where did I get it? From a top-secret lab – okay, not so much… actually from my tap.

I’m sure many of you have caught on that dihydrogen monoxide is H₂O, or good old water. And according to media reports, it might be the next big weight-loss supplement.

Grab a drink and let’s talk.

What water does

Pretty much everybody has heard that their body is over 60% water. Thus, if you weigh 150 lb (68 kg) then 90 lb (41 kg) if you is water.

Why don’t you hear a lot of sloshing when you walk around with all that water? Well, even though water is in your blood and other bodily fluids that are liquidy, a lot of that body water is in your cells or attached to molecules like proteins and carbohydrates (1).

Water does seven main things in our bodies

• transporting;
• dissolving;
• cleaning;
• reacting;
• padding; and
• regulating temperature.

Transporting

Even though water isn’t coursing through your veins and arteries the way it runs through a river, it does transport things to and from the cells of your body, such as:

• nutrients and oxygen that are important for the cell to grow and repair itself
• important messages from hormones
• cell waste products, like carbon dioxide

Dissolving

As a toddler, perhaps you discovered a key function of water when you dropped mama’s sugar bowl, full of sugar, into the toilet bowl. (Or maybe that’s just my kid.)

Yep, you discovered that water is a solvent and it dissolves sugar as well as most things. Water is a nearly universal solvent.

The one thing water can’t dissolve are lipids (fats, oils, waxes, etc.) but your clever body can surround water-insoluble molecules with proteins so they can be transported in water.

Cleaning

Every time you wash your hands or take a shower, you take advantage of water’s function as a cleaner. While there’s no soap inside your body (unless you swear, perhaps), water flushes important filtering organs like the kidneys and liver that remove toxins from our bodies.

Reacting

Water is an important molecule of most of the body’s chemical reactions, but in some cases it has to be broken down, or hydrolyzed, during some chemical reactions. When sugar (sucrose) is digested into fructose and glucose, water is also a part of the reaction and is hydrolyzed.

Lubricating

Water is the major ingredient in body fluids that — even though icky — are very important to moisten and lubricate our bodies.

Even when we breathe, we need water-based lubrication, called surfactant. Otherwise each breath would feel like we’ve collapsed a lung. (One of the major challenges for premature babies is that they haven’t yet developed lung surfactant.) Joints and the digestive tract also need water-based lubrication to work properly.

Padding

You probably don’t think of water as padding or a shock absorber, but that is exactly what it does for your joints.

Your joints contain sacs filled mostly with water. When you jump, punch, fall or even move, these sacs prevent the two ends of the joint from smashing into one another. Between the vertebrae of your spine, water makes up the filling of your vertebral discs that allow you to bend, twist and jump without agony – just ask someone with degenerative back disease how important it is to have water in your discs.

Regulating

Going for a run up a hill during a July noon in Texas makes you appreciate water. You’ve probably already figured out that sweating buckets helps regulate your temperature.

Yet water does more than just make up sweat. Water in blood vessels at the surface of your skin can help get rid of heat from your body, kinda like how a radiator works. Cooling fluid (blood) goes from the engine (major organs, heart, liver, lungs, kidneys, etc.) to the radiator (skin) where heat can be dissipated.

Research question

Clearly (get it?), water is important stuff. But can it help us lose weight? That’s the question we address this week.

Dennis EA, Dengo AL, Comber DL, Flack KD, Savla J, Davy KP, Davy BM. Water consumption increases weight loss during a hypocaloric diet intervention in middle-aged and older adults. Obesity (Silver Spring). 2010 Feb;18(2):300-7.

Methods

Participants

In this study, the researchers recruited men and women between the ages of 55 and 75 years old that were overweight or obese (BMI between 25-40 kg/m2).

Researchers excluded recent yo-yo dieters. That meant the participants’ weight had to be the same, within 2 kg (about 5 pounds) for the last year or longer. Participants were also excluded if they had:

• a history of depression
• diabetes
• uncontrolled high blood pressure
• heart, lung or kidney disease
• a history of eating disorders

Process

Before the study started, everybody had to come into the lab twice: once to eat as much food as they wanted, and once to drink 500 mL of water and then eat as much as they wanted.

Researchers wanted to see whether people would eat less if they drank water before a meal. 12 weeks later, at the end of the study, the participants did the water-drinking test again.

Caloric intake

After the initial lab visits, researchers put all the participants on a diet that permitted 1200 kcal/day for women and 1500 kcal for men. Since the average male participant was around 90 kg, 167 cm tall, and 62 years of age this seems a bit restrictive.

What do I mean? Well, let’s look more at basal energy expenditure. This is the amount of energy that your body needs to be alive, and fuels things like breathing, your heart’s beating, and your cells absorbing nutrients.

Looks like the caloric allotment in the study fell a bit short.

Remember, these are calories needed to live if people are comatose — doing absolutely nothing but staying alive… no going for a walk, no standing washing dishes, not even getting up to go to the washroom. Just basic physiological functions are included here.

Water for weight loss

Everybody was on the same diet, but half the participants had the secret pre-meal supplement – 500 mL water.

Before each of their three meals, the water group drank 500 mL of water and then they could eat. There was no other difference between groups for the 12 weeks of the study.

Results

Eating fewer calories than you need causes weight loss; mostly fat but some lean body mass too.

Over the 3 months the water group dropped 4.4% body fat (from 39.9% to 36.5%) and 5.4 kg total fat while the nonwater group only dropped 1.1% body fat (from 41.0% to 38.9%) and 3.3 kg of total fat.

And remember the gluttony testing — you know, the one where the participants ate as much as they wanted with or without drinking 500 ml before eating — well, if they drank water before a meal, they ate less (about 50 kcal less), but only before the study started; after the 12 week diet, drinking water didn’t affect how much calories the participants ate.

One explanation is that everybody was eating less per meal without drinking water (541 kcal before and 506 kcal after the 12 weeks). Or there may be a certain amount of calories the body requires and it can’t be fooled by being filled with water.

Conclusion

Drinking water (500 mL or about 16 oz) before three meals a day while on a diet increases fat loss in overweight and obese individuals.

Doh! Haven’t we’ve heard this before? Yes and no.

Yes, nearly every diet plan or nutritionist will tell you to drink more water to help you lose weight and no, because this is the first scientific study that randomly assigned participants to comparison groups to see if water helps with weight loss and if so, how much more weight would be lost.

Why water helps with weight loss may be obvious. Not only does water make you feel fuller, so you eat less, drinking water also replaces energy-containing drinks like juice, soda pop, and vitamin water. People on average drink over 400 kcal/day in North America. Water may even increase metabolism.

A few years back, a study found that if you drank 500 mL of water, your body would use 24% more calories for 60 minutes after drinking water. The researchers figured that this was because of changes in osmolarity caused by drinking water and that your body has to expend energy to bring everything back in balance (2).

Bottom line

Drinking two cups of water before a meal will keep you hydrated, fuller, and may even boost your metabolism for an hour. And all you need to do is turn on your tap. Talk about convenience.

Before you go off to your favourite vitamin shop to try the latest weight-loss supplement, try drinking two cups (500 mL) before you sit down for a meal.

Oh, and make sure you’re near a toilet.

References

1. Sizer, Frances and Ellie Whitney. Nutrition: Concepts and Controversies 11th edition.  2007. Thomson Higher Education, Belmont CA.

2. Boschmann M, Steiniger J, Franke G, Birkenfeld AL, Luft FC, Jordan J. Water drinking induces thermogenesis through osmosensitive mechanisms. J Clin Endocrinol Metab. 2007 Aug;92(8):3334-7.

Today I thought I’d answer one question that has come up quite a few times, and it’s this:

“What resources do you recommend for learning how to be a better coach?”

That is a very, very good question. My bookshelf is crammed with texts from all kinds of different fields and subject areas; in my web browser I’ve got bookmarks to probably hundreds of different sites.

But rather than just post a massive laundry list, today I’ll share with you a half-dozen books that I’d highly recommend for any serious trainer or coach. In a future blog post, I’ll put together a list of recommended websites.

[Note: This is a list of books about coaching and influencing what your clients do outside of the gym, in the 165 hours you don’t spend with them — because to me that ability is the mark of a true coach. I may post my recommendation of exercise-related texts at some point, but that’s another topic altogether.]

Let’s get started.

The Power of Less

1. The Power of Less, by Leo Babauta

Truly an outstanding little book describing the author’s analysis of his own growth and change. If you want to understand how change happens and how new habits are actually formed in the real world, there isn’t a better book than this one. A short read, chock full of simple, practical — and often counter-intuitive — insight into the transformation process. We recommend it to all our Lean Eating clients, and if you want to learn how to coach people who are struggling with change, you’d do well to read it too.

Motivational Interviewing

2. Motivational Interviewing, by William R Miller & Stephen Rollnick

Most trainers and coaches are utterly lost when it comes to talking to clients, or understanding how to help them change. Spend some time eavesdropping on a conversation between a trainer and a client in a commercial gym and you will likely hear either a) the trainer trying to impress the client by sharing everything he or she has ever learned about fitness in one breathless soliloquy, or b) the client talking about what they did last weekend.

That’s a shame, and a missed opportunity. Because few people realize how important the dialog between coach and client really is, and what a key role it plays in the transformation process. Motivational Interviewing is a very specific style of dialog designed to provide clients with a safe place to contemplate change — and all coaching, whether with elite athletes or with rank beginners, is about facilitating change. The truth is that, in general, the way you speak to your clients is either encouraging change or deepening resistance, and if you haven’t read MI, you’ll be surprised to learn that much of what you’re doing has the effect of actually making change LESS likely. Read this book and start using bits of it with clients today; if you don’t, you’re doing your clients a major disservice.

Crucial Conversations

3. Crucial Conversations, by Kerry Patterson et al.

Always pandering to a client is a sign of weakness in a coach. But so is berating them or being completely insensitive to their needs. A great coach must be able to hold clients accountable, and that inevitably means discussing difficult things (eating habits, behavioral patterns, problems with a spouse, compliance issues, etc.).

But how do you learn to call a spade a spade without offending someone — or more to the point, how do you actually deepen a relationship with someone while explicitly discussing things that they may prefer not to hear?

Crucial Conversations is the best book I’ve found on the topic, and I’ve read quite a number. The authors describe a step-by-step process, from recognizing when the discussion is getting critical (i.e., becoming aware of the emotions at stake) to being honest without being hurtful, to settling an issue and moving forward in agreement. Putting even just one or two of their techniques into practice with your clients will make you a far better coach.

The Blackmail Diet

4. The Blackmail Diet, by John Bear

This is a really hard one to track down, because it’s been out of print for so long. I just happened upon it a few years ago in a used book store and picked it up for $2 based on the name alone. What a title.

The book itself doesn’t disappoint. The author, a PhD graduate from Michigan State who had battled with obesity and dieting most of his adult life, has an epiphany: obesity is a problem best solved psychologically.

(Note: I disagree with that assessment, and of course I’m simplifying his position, but it’s quite true that coaches and people in general pay far too little attention to non-physiological factors involved in body transformation.)

So he comes up with a plan: he signs a contract with a lawyer and puts $5,000 in escrow (i.e., at the mercy of the lawyer and completely out of his control). The contract states that if in a year’s time he doesn’t lose 70 lbs, the lawyer is legally obliged to give all the money to the American Nazi Party. Well, of course, for most sane people that’s an entirely unacceptable outcome, and sure enough a year later he had lost the full 70 lbs.

He goes on to describe all kinds of similar weight loss experiments revolving around the same concept: people make a legally-binding pledge to either lose weight or face an unpalatable consequence. Now I’m not suggesting that you work this into your practice. But it’s a fascinating read for a coach, with two very important lessons: 1) when people have enough leverage on themselves, anything is possible; 2) clients have to make decisions and commitments when the motivation is high that will have lasting impact when the motivation wanes — which it inevitably will.

Influence

5. Influence, by Robert Cialdini

A classic collection of psychology experiments and anecdotes examining how influence actually works. Cialdini weaves a solid argument that people are hard-wired to look for very specific cues before they are convinced of something. Well, your clients will be examining everything about you and your practice, even in ways you might not have anticipated.

For example, people look for social proof before adopting a new idea; in short, they ask: has this worked for anyone else? I’m always shocked by how few coaches can demonstrate the value of their work, either with case studies, with before/after pictures, or better yet, by directly introducing a new client to an older one who has already gone through the process. I highly recommend picking up this book if only to understand the thought process your clients go through when evaluating your services. And as an aside: if you aren’t documenting your work with clients, start now; and if you are but want to generate more impressive results to show off, I’ve got the book for you:

The Essentials of Sport and Exercise Nutrition

6. The Essentials of Sport and Exercise Nutrition, by John Berardi & Ryan Andrews

As an author, I’m obviously biased, but if I may say so myself, this the only book on nutrition you will ever need. A completely new 500-page academic textbook that Ryan Andrews and I wrote from the ground up, because frankly nothing like it existed. I’ve spent the lion’s share of my academic and professional careers pulling pieces from the dozen or so different fields of study involved in body transformation, from molecular biology to food science to behavioral psychology, just to name a few. And this is the text I wish I had when I started my career.

To be an effective fitness professional — and by that, I mean to be able to help someone build their ideal body through exercise, nutrition and supplementation — you don’t need to master all of those fields. In fact, delving too deeply into any particular one of them at the exclusion of the others leaves you open to the hammer and nail problem (“If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.”). But you do need to master the PARTS of each of those fields relevant to body transformation.

That’s what the Precision Nutrition Certification is about: turning trainers and strength coaches into true fitness professionals — into elite body transformation experts. Because in the 3-5 hours you have with a client each week (if you’re lucky), you can either teach them to exercise or you can guide them to the body they never thought they could have. The two are very different things.

PN Certification opens Sep. 29th; how to get on the waiting list:

“The Essentials of Sport and Exercise Nutrition” is available only as a part of the PN Certification. If you want to learn how to help your clients with the 165 hours a week they DON’T spend in the gym with you — the mark of an elite coach — then I highly recommend you look into the Certification. On September 29th, we’re taking 200 new students, and it’s our last opening until spring 2011.

Click for more info on the PN Certification program, and to get on the waiting list.

Wait… what? So they’re on TV, promoting their new TV show, making a living from TV… and acting superior because they don’t watch the idiot box themselves?

Hypocrisy and the question of whether TV abstinence is morally superior aside, not watching TV might be the reason those stars are lean. (Well, that and the team of personal chefs and trainers.)

TV and obesity

We know that research links TV watching to obesity. But what’s the connection?

There are three main ways that TV could lead to obesity.

Connection 1: Sitting watching TV = not moving much

The most obvious is that if you’re watching TV you’re probably not doing anything else, so you’re less physically active. And for those of you who watch TV while working out, either you’re not paying attention to your workout or you’re not paying attention to your TV show.

For example, I met a nice little old lady who would come to her apartment complex gym and bike on the recumbent bike for an hour while watching Law & Order: SVU. Six months passed and she asked me why she wasn’t losing weight. I mentioned that she should try to make her workouts more difficult and maybe try walking on the treadmill, since she was able to do her current workout in her slippers.

Connection 2: More TV = more eating

People eat more food when they watch TV. You sit down with a bag of chips while watching your favourite show, and next thing you know you’ve eaten the entire bag.

Not only do you eat mindlessly, you start to associate TV watching with filling your face. Next time you sit down to watch, you think “I should be eating something.” Munch munch munch… uh oh, another bag bites the dust.

Connection 3: More food marketing = more eating

The last way TV could lead to obesity is different than the other two, because it lasts past the time actually watching TV.

TV, specifically TV commercials , can influence what we eat at other times. This is the basis of all marketing — affecting people’s choices.

Let’s say some evening you’re watching TV, and you see an ad for ice cream. Man, that looks good. Creamy, cold, studded with chocolatey nuggets…

An hour or so later, you turn off the tube and think Snack time! And what would go down perfectly? Why, ice cream of course! You’ve forgotten the commercial (at least consciously), but somehow you sure haven’t forgotten that tub of Haagen Dazs in the freezer. (By the way, make a mental note: If you feel any ice cream urges in the next few hours, ignore them.)

How bad could TV commercials be for our diet?

Well, the study for this week’s review addresses this question in a fun way: What if you just ate the foods you saw advertised on TV? What would your nutrition intake look like?

Mink M, Evans A, Moore CG, Calderon KS, Deger S. Nutritional imbalance endorsed by televised food advertisements. J Am Diet Assoc. 2010 Jun;110(6):904-10.

Methods

Researchers asked two questions:

• What food is typically advertised on TV?
• What’s the nutritional content of those foods?

Step 1: Watch TV

To answer the first question, researchers watched over 96 hours of American TV (ABC, CBS, FOX and NBC): 84 hours during prime time and 12 hours on Saturday mornings.

To give you an idea of the kinds of ads they might have been seeing, let’s take advertisements from the last Super Bowl (American football finals) as an example. Now, that wasn’t a part of the 96 hours but it’s the most prized ad time in the US. And it gives us a little slice (so to speak) of what the researchers might have seen.

Of all the ads, 24 were ads for food (I use the classification loosely). And, as you can see below, if you ate only food you saw in the advertisements you wouldn’t be getting a lot of nutrients. Calories yes, but not many nutrients. Here’s what was advertised in my Super Bowl example:

• Dr Pepper Cherry cola
• Snickers chocolate bar
• Taco Bell restaurants
• Papa Johns restaurants
• Emerald nuts & popcorn
• Michelob beer
• Select 55 beer
• Coke (2 advertisements)
• Denny’s restaurants (3 advertisements)
• Doritos chips (4 advertisements)
• Budweiser beer (7 advertisements)

Only the Emerald nuts & popcorn ad would give you a decent amount of nutrients without a lot of calories or unwanted sugar, fats, or processing.

Step 2: Food ad nutritional analysis

Most of us could look at that list above of Super Bowl “food” ads and feel pretty confident in saying there might be some nutritional imbalances there.

The researchers wanted to be a little more scientific, however, so they actually did nutritional analysis on the food.

They used the quantity provided in the ad (e.g. a quarter-pound hamburger with a slice of cheese and a bun, or a large-sized bag of chips). If portion size wasn’t obvious in the ad, the food wasn’t included in the analysis.

Researchers analyzed both nutritional content and the number of servings compared to the US Food Guide Pyramid.

Results

Although researchers watched 96 hours in total, they only analyzed 89.5 hours. Either 6.5 hours didn’t have advertisements (e.g. political debates for elections) or the scientists messed up their recording and didn’t record the hours (don’t you feel better that you couldn’t program your VCR?).

Good news: there were 116 public service announcements! Bad news: none talked about nutrition.

In the nearly 90 hours of TV there were 3,584 ads. 17% were advertising food in one way or another, but 56 ads had food that couldn’t be analyzed by the nutritional software.

How could this be? The food was too new, so it hadn’t been analyzed in a lab and added to the software database.

Generally speaking, I avoid new food, because it usually falls into the spray-on cheese food group, or “I Can’t Believe it’s Not Really Food!” category (even though it’s an unnatural hue of yellow).

Late Night with Sugar & Fat Show

This left the researchers with 677 foods. Here are the results. The chart below compares the actual daily servings of food components shown in the ads, versus the number of servings recommended in the USDA Food Pyramid.

Actual versus recommended servings of food types

The only group was close to the recommended levels was grain, with 8 servings in TV ads and 8.5 servings recommended.

Yes, the food pyramid might not be the best thing to compare to, but lets look at nutrients. You’d get 122% and 137% of the recommend daily value of cholesterol and saturated fat, respectively, for a 2000 calorie diet.

While you’re getting too much of some nutrients, you’d be running a deficit of other things. The chart below shows common nutrients such as vitamin A, B5, D, and E as well as important minerals. Most fell well below the RDA.

For instance, if you ate a diet composed of TV ad food, you’d end up with 35% of the recommended vitamin D, and 43% of the recommended fibre.

Nutrients by percent of RDA (100%) in advertised foods

Conclusion

A lot of TV… and a lot of sugar and fat

We know that TV marketing successfully influences food choices. Americans watch or listen to an average of 6.75 hours of TV per day. Every year they take in nearly 15,000 food ads, which rarely feature salads or Supershakes.

So it’s not surprising that people’s food choices are skewed to high-calorie, low-nutrient food. After all, food in TV ads would provide you with about 26 times the daily recommended servings for sugar and nearly 21 times the daily recommended servings for fat.

What to do?

The researchers of this study recommend that consumers should be educated about the bias of TV ads, in the nutritional recommendations, and in healthy food choices. They also suggest that the food industry should be educated about these nutritional imbalances, to help them move towards providing healthier products.

I may be cynical, but the food industry, just like any industry, is driven by economics. If they sell a product that makes them a lot of money — healthy or not — they will not stop producing it.

In fact, as David Kessler has pointed out in his book The End of Overeating, companies are perfectly well aware that they aren’t manufacturing broccoli smoothies — indeed, they purposely hire food scientists to figure out how to jam more sugar, fat, and salt into their products.

The researchers suggest that government policies change too, to restrict TV ads or include disclaimers in them, much like restrictions on tobacco advertising. While other countries (such as France, Thailand, China, Denmark, Finland, Malaysia, Korea, Romania and the Phillippines) have restricted food ads, I don’t know if having a disclaimer saying soda pop is high in sugar is going to make much of a difference to adult viewers.

Do we know all the factors yet?

An aside: People are concerned about sex and violence on TV too. Yet the murder rate’s gone down in the US since 1999, and I don’t hear too much about how sex is one of the top killers.

In any case, the Center for Disease Control in the US lists the top causes of death in 2007. The top three are heart disease, cancer, and stroke (cerebrovascular diseases) — all with a diet component.

Thus, I suspect we don’t know all the factors in what inspires complex human behaviour. Nevertheless, the circumstantial evidence tarnishing food ads is still pretty strong.

Bottom line

Be aware of your TV viewing habits and how these affect your food choices subconsciously.

Regardless of exactly how much food ads affect your purchasing and eating behaviour… should you really be glued to the set for 6.75 hours a day anyway? Couldn’t you be learning a foreign language, playing the guitar, or catching up on much-needed beauty sleep?

And, at the time, we posted our Lean Eating for Men Finalists and Lean Eating for Women Finalists, each one in contention for the $20,000 is prizes for men and $20,000 in prizes for women.

The transformations we staggering.  Thousands of PN voters weighed in on who they thought was the best male and best female transformation in each group. And now it’s time we announced the winners.

However, before doing so, I’ve gotta say this.  Man, it was tough.

The last round of Lean Eating produced some of the most outstanding transformations – physical and lifestyle transformations – I’ve seen in my entire life.  We spent weeks painstakingly going through all of our finalists’ data, listening to the PN community, and scheduling long meetings with the PN Team.

(Our criterion for choosing the winner was based on measurement data, participation data, client attitude, coach feedback, community voting, and in-house voting as well.)

At the end, although we had dozens of potential winners, we had to choose.  There could only be two.

Our Lean Eating $10,000 Winners

Forum name – “bryancox”
Location – Saratoga, California
Age – 42
Starting weight – 206 lbs lbs; Waist size – 39 inches
Ending weight – 174 lbs; Waist size – 32 inches

His experience – You know, I thought the $10,000 would be the best reward.  However, the experience itself was worth far more than the money.  For me, Lean Eating was a physical, mental, and (maybe even) spiritual journey that has really fueled my enthusiasm for fitness, health and wellness.  Heck, I think my next career just might be in this industry.

I’ve  already referred several new PN members including a co-worker that is participating in the current female challenge.  This is an awesome program and I’m proud to have been recognized by the PN team and community.

Forum name – “KMisher”
Location – Arlington, VA
Age – 25
Starting weight – 160 lbs
Ending weight - 136 lbs

Her experience – This program has been life changing for me.  I finally feel like myself again. But even better than the physical transformation has been the mental transformation.  I now recognize when I am unhappy, identify the cause, and work towards change.

PN not only taught me how to make my own food, but my own happiness.  This is better than any amount of weight loss or money won.  You gave me myself back. I’m totally indebted!

As you can see from the grand prize winners above, the Lean Eating program is about helping real people make real transformations.  As we’ve said many times before, to participate in Lean Eating you don’t have to start out looking like a fitness model.  Heck, you don’t even have to end up looking like a fitness model.  Rather, the idea here is to become the best you possible.

Of course, as mentioned above, there were a lot of folks achieving their best selves in this last round.  Below, we’ve included just the runners up from the $40,000 contest.  If you’d like to see our entire list of finalists, check out our Lean Eating for Men Finalists and Lean Eating for Women Finalists.

Our Lean Eating $5,000 Winners

Forum name – “Paco”
Location – Mexico City, Mexico
Age – 37
Starting weight - 200 lbs; Waist size – 41 inches
Ending weight – 165; Waist size – 34.4 inches

His experience – I’d been following Dr Berardi’s work for years.  I owned all of his products.  I read them very carefully.  But I never fully applied the information.  Why?  I don’t really know.  But it no longer matters.  Because Lean Eating taught me how to make the change I wanted to make.

In the Lean Eating program I learned that we don’t have to wait so long to fully apply our knowledge.  That we don’t have to wait so long to be who we want to be and to live the way we want to live.  That what matters is not always how we look but how we feel.  And that we don’t have to mortgage our health to look and feel better.  This has been a great journey!

Forum name – “Typykka”
Location – Nokia, Finland
Age – 34
Starting weight – 161 lbs
Ending weight – 128 lbs

Her experience – I feel like I’m a totally new and different person that I was just 7months ago. On the inside and on the outside. On the outside, I love my new body.  I’m 34 and have 3 children.  But my physique is better than it was at age 24, before children. Wow.

But the greatest change happened between my ears!  My thoughts about food are healthy, instead of disordered.  And I’ve been 100% compliant with the program.  I was ready to follow the Lean Eating instructions at the beginning of the program.  But I wasn’t sure if I could.  Well, I did!

My whole life I’ve been unsatisfied somehow. I thought that I was a fat and ugly person.  But not anymore.  I actually like myself.  Thank you, Precision Nutrition!

Our Lean Eating $1,000 Winners

Forum name – “amoyers”
Location – Wickliffe, Kentucky
Age – 27
Starting weight – 229 lbs; Waist size – 39.5 inches
Ending weight – 177; Waist size – 33 inches

Forum name – “TransformationHereNow”
Location – Tucson, Arizona
Age – 43
Starting weight – 188 lbs
Ending weight – 150 lbs

Forum name – “bradypreston”
Location – Port Elgin, Ontario
Age – 24
Starting weight – 222 lbs; Waist size – 37.5 inches
Ending weight – 162 lbs; Waist size – 27.5 inches

Forum name – “theresavo”
Location – San Jose, California
Age – 49
Starting weight – 191 lbs
Ending weight – 159 lbs

Forum name – “GroundChuck
Location – Apex, North Carolina
Age – 32
Starting weight – 263 lbs; Waist size – 46.7 inches
Ending weight – 212 lbs; Waist size – 37.2 inches

Forum name – “Elky”
Location – Pickering, ON
Age – 22
Starting weight – 196 lbs
Ending weight – 160 lbs

Forum name – “Asim”
Location – Mississauga, Ontario
Age – 24
Starting weight – 195 lbs; Waist size – 38.8 inches
Ending weight – 150 lbs; Waist size – 30.4 inches

Forum name - “mpoushes”
Location - Grinnell, Iowa
Age – 30
Starting weight – 229 lbs
Ending weight – 188 lbs

Forum name - “Gaetan Brunet”
Location – Val Caron, Ontario
Age – 41
Starting weight – 292 lbs; Waist size – 49.2 inches
Ending weight – 242; Waist size – 39 inches

Forum name – “nazmoo”
Location – Melbourne, Australia
Age – 29
Starting weight – 171 lbs
Ending weight – 142 lbs

Are You Ready For Jan 2011?

As you can see from the photos and information above,the Lean Eating program is so much more than a weight loss initiative.  Sure, weight is lost.  A lot of it.  But, in the process, healthy habits are adopted, lives are changed, and our clients begin to realize their best selves.

If you’re one of the folks who has yet to participate in the LE program, we’ve got another round coming up in January of 2011.  And, truthfully, I’d like to see you involved.

Since the Lean Eating program typically sells out within hours of opening up, you can be one of the first to get a chance at registration by putting your name on the pre-sale list below.  Hope to see you in 2011!

• It can make food safer
• It can concentrate tastes and flavors
• It can reduce spoilage
• It can soften tough foods
• It increases the amount of energy our bodies can get from food
• It breaks starch molecules into more digestible fragments
• It denatures protein molecules

But before we get too excited about cooking, the modern diet can be overwhelmingly heat-processed. Higher cooking temperatures can create chemical reactions among amino acids, creatines, and sugars — reactions that may produce dangerous carcinogens and mutagens (compounds that can damage our DNA).

Now suddenly we have “unhealthy” compounds created in otherwise “healthy” foods — stuff like potatoes, fish, whole grains, etc.

Don’t freak out and throw your barbecue grill off the balcony just yet. Let’s start by learning more about what these compounds are, and how they work.

Cooking creates chemical compounds

Heat plus food molecules can create several products in the process of chemical conversion known as cooking. (And you thought you were just slapping a burger on the grill! Now you can say “I am chemically converting proteins!” Fancy.)

Some of the most notable end products include:

• Heterocyclic amines and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons
• Advanced glycation end products
• Acrylamide

Let’s look at each of these in more depth.

Heterocyclic amines (HCAs) and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs)

What are they and where do they come from?

HCAs are made when creatines and amino acids (both found in meats) react together with heat. PAHs include over 100 different compounds formed by the incomplete burning of organic matter (e.g., oil, gas, coal, food, etc.) at temperatures in excess of 392 degrees F (200 C).

How heat from cooking forms HCA compounds

Thus, raw foods don’t have HCAs nor PAHs. Indeed, more than 90% of our exposure to HCAs and PAHs comes from cooked food.

The most concentrated sources include grilled/charred meats and fish. However, ready-to-eat commercial breakfast cereals, processed carbs, fats/oils, and tobacco smoke also contain high amounts of PAHs. PAHs in vegetables and fruits occur mostly due to environmental contamination of air and soil.

Four factors influence HCA formation:

• Type of food
• Cooking method
• Temperature
• Cooking duration

Temperature is the most important factor. Problems begin at 212 F (100 C), with the real nasty HCAs forming at about 572 degrees F (300 C).

PAH formation is influenced by:

• Temperature of cooking
• Duration of cooking
• Type of fuel used in heating
• Distance from heat source
• Fat content of the food

Essentially, the hotter and longer a meat is cooked, the more HCAs and PAHs. Direct heat methods like frying and grilling produce more than indirect-heat methods like stewing, steaming or poaching.

Studies estimating the intake of HCAs show an average 26 ng/kg body wt/day for a U.S. population.

Why should we worry about them?

HCAs are on the official list of cancer-causing agents published by the NIH. We’ve known about them since the 1970s — and they are straight up genotoxic, meaning that they work at the DNA level causing mutations, deletions, and insertions. Not good.

Thus far, we’ve identified 17 different HCAs that may increase cancer risk.

Along with heme iron and nitrates/nitrites, HCAs and PAHs may be the major reasons that “meat” is associated with cancer at all. Pickled, smoked, barbecued and processed meats (e.g., bacon, ham, sausage, hot dogs, salami, bologna, luncheon meats, corned beef, etc.) seem to cause the most health problems.

It’s the intake of these meats that are more related to cancer risk than total red meat intake alone. Other dense protein foods (milk, eggs, legumes, and organ meats) have very little or no HCA content naturally or when cooked.

What can we do about them?

We can start by changing our cooking methods. Opt for slower, indirect-heat methods of cooking such as poaching, stewing, braising, or steaming.

We can consume more plants in our diets. Plant-based diets typically contain insignificant amounts of HCAs and moderate amounts of PAHs. Those eating a higher raw plant-based diet tend to consume even lower amounts.

HCAs and PAHs can be removed from the body via detoxification in the liver. A plant-based diet can decrease the extent of DNA damage and oxidation from these compounds. Thus, not only do plants have fewer HCA/PAH-creating compounds, but they also help fight the effects of any of these compounds once created.

Source: Kapiszewska M. A vegetable to meat consumption ratio as a relevant factor determining cancer preventive diet. Local Mediterranean Food Plants and Nutraceuticals. Forum Nutr. 2006;59:130-153.

Experts recommend a ratio of greater than 2:1, plant foods:meats as the minimum recommended intake to support the body’s fight against cancer development. The protective effect seems to increase with ratios greater than this (3:1, etc.). The more plants, the less cancer.

Advanced glycation end products (AGEs)

What are they and where do they come from?

When you slap a burger on the grill and char it up good, pop a slice of bread into the toaster, or roast a marshmallow while camping, you’re creating the Maillard reaction, which occurs when sugars and proteins in the food react together with heat.

Sadly, while possibly increasing the scrumptiousness of these foods (which, by the way, also creates the characteristic flavours of caramel), this reaction can lower the nutritional value and create toxic/carcinogenic end products, including advanced glycation end products (AGEs), also known as glycotoxins.

Thanks, Maillard reaction!

Now take a look at the grill after cooking, or try to pry the sticky marshmallow off the campfire rock after it dropped from your roasting skewer. See how all those yummy brown roasty bits have glued themselves to the surface? That’s what happens in your body with AGEs. Stuff starts to stick together.

AGEs can be created inside our body with aging and high blood sugar. But we also eat AGEs. Virtually any food exposed to extreme heat can scorch, generating AGEs.

Adding dry heat to uncooked food can increase that food’s AGE content by 10 to 100 times. But AGEs can be produced during pasteurization, drying, smoking, frying, microwaving and grilling. Any food that contains sugars, fats, and proteins is fair game.

The standard American diet likely contains about 16,000±5,000 kU of AGEs each day. This is three times higher than the safety limit advised by professional organizations. Plant-based diets contain lower amounts, unless they are built upon processed and fried foods. Diets with more raw foods typically contain minimal AGEs.

Why should we worry about them?

Once in the body, AGEs have been shown to negatively affect a majority of cells, tissues, and organs (see diagram below). Fewer AGEs circulating in the system means a lower risk of diseases like Alzheimer’s, kidney, cardiovascular, and diabetes.

Source: Semba RD, et al. Does accumulation of advanced glycation end products contribute to the aging phenotype? J Gerontol A Biol Sci Med Sci 2010;May 17 Epub.

In animal models, AGEs contribute to:

• inflammation
• atherosclerosis
• kidney damage
• neurodegenerative disease
• muscle loss
• cancer cell metastasis
• insulin resistance
• alterations in cell receptors
• a shorter life
• oxidation

However, some suggest that rats/mice aren’t accustomed to the intake of heated food and might not be an accurate study model that translates to humans.

10% of dietary AGEs are absorbed. Of this 10%, about 1/3 are excreted in the urine within three days. This means they probably hang around the body wreaking havoc.

This will help you put it in perspective (click to enlarge):

Sources: Uribarri J, et al. Advanced glycation end products in foods and a practical guide to their reduction in the diet. J Am Diet Assoc 2010;110:911-916; Goldberg T. Advanced glycoxidation end products in commonly consumed foods. J Am Diet Assoc 2004;104:1287-1291.

What can we do about them?

Method of food preparation is critical here. Heating foods over 446 degrees F (230 C) seems to be the most problematic.

For example, the same 90 gram chicken breast can vary from 1000 to 9000 AGEs:

• Frying, grilling, roasting, or broiling: 4000 to 9000 AGEs
• Boiling, steaming, or stewing: 1000 AGEs

To immediately start consuming 50% less AGEs, poach, stew, or steam meals. This 50% reduction can decrease plasma levels of AGEs by 30% within a month.

Thus:

• Cook food at a lower temperature
• Don’t char it or cook the heck out of it
• Avoid processed foods, which have more AGEs — home prepared versions (such as French fries) have fewer AGEs compared to their processed counterparts
• Use liquid in cooking (for example, in braising)
• Use acids such as lemon juice or vinegar in marinades and cooking liquid — these will also help decrease AGE formation

Acrylamide

What is it and where does it come from?

Acrylamide is another one of the toxic Mallard reaction end products, forming when asparagine reacts with naturally occurring sugars in high carbohydrate/low protein foods subject to high cooking temperatures. Reactions start at 248 degrees F (120 degrees C).

The higher the cooking temperature and the longer the cooking duration, the more acrylamide.

Most foods that contain acrylamide are cooked commercially and contain the acrylamide when purchased. Think French fries, potato chips, breakfast cereals, crackers, pretzels, coffee, pastries, etc.

If those foods are part of your regular food rotation, you’d better be worried about more than acylamide, most notably grease stains on your couch, grease chunks in your arteries, and knowing the cashier at Winchell’s Donuts on a first name basis.

But we can’t just blame the food manufacturers, since acrylamide is formed during some home food prep. Significant formation requires temperatures greater than 248 degrees F (water simmers at 190 – 200 degrees F and boils into steam at 206 – 212 degrees F).

Diets high in baked or fried starchy foods will contain larger amounts of acrylamide. Diets including more animal products and raw plant foods will be lower.

We can also inhale and otherwise absorb this stuff. You’ll find acrylamide in body lotions, shampoos, tobacco smoke, food packaging, and human breast milk (if mom is ingesting acrylamide).

Why should we worry about it?

Early animal research indicates that acrylamide may be genotoxic, carcinogenic, neurotoxic and create reproductive problems. It’s currently classified as “probably carcinogenic.”

Still, results from human studies indicate that ingestion of acrylamide at current levels fails to produce any measurable neurotoxicity or increases in cancer.

Average intake is estimated to be 0.3 to 2 μg acrylamide/kg bodyweight/day for developed countries. The WHO concluded that an adequate margin of safety at 1-4 μg /kg bodyweight over a lifetime for humans.

What can we do about it?

While we don’t know for sure about acrylamide consumption and disease, it might be best to limit exposure and err on the side of caution.

And notice that the acrylamide-containing foods aren’t all that great for you anyway.

Summary and recommendations

This article is about majoring in the minor. HCAs, PAHs, AGEs, and acrylamide are nutritional details. So make sure to prioritize.

• If your diet is based on processed foods, meats and alcohol – then don’t worry about AGEs in your morning bran flakes. You’ll probably get a disease related to your overall lifestyle first.
• If your diet is already based on whole, unprocessed foods, including lots of plants – then you can start tweaking the finer points of your food preparation methods.

The information in this article adds to previous evidence that a diet based on highly processed foods/meats isn’t the best option for health and can contribute to a range of conditions, from obesity to cancer.

What to do

No matter your style of eating, the highly processed/heated stuff tends to be the most dangerous, including potato chips, French fries, commercial breakfast cereals, grilled meats, fast food meats, deli meats, etc. There are many reasons to avoid this stuff — this is just one more.

When preparing foods, consume unprocessed items that are boiled, steamed, stewed, sprouted, fermented or poached. Avoid high temperature grilling, broiling, roasting, and frying.

Reduce carcinogens by doing the following:

• Use leaner meats
• Use an acidic marinade for meats
• Use lower temperatures and moist heat
• Don’t show off for your grilling buddies with flare-ups
• Don’t overcook
• Hey, why not eat a veggie burger and a regular burger instead of two regular burgers?

It would be impossible to eliminate all carcinogens in food, so don’t think you’re above the system. Further, while high temperatures can create some harmful compounds, it can also destroy harmful compounds. There is a trade off. No need to opt for chicken sashimi just yet.

Extra credit

The AGE content of infant formula is higher than that of human or cow’s milk.

Some food derived AGEs may have beneficial antioxidative and desmutagenic (mutation-fighting) properties.

The main dietary advice that the American Institute for Cancer Research gives is: “Choose mostly plant foods, limit red meat and avoid processed meat.”

HCAs and PAHs seem to be more harmful than acrylamide and AGEs.

Tea and yerba mate may inhibit the formation of AGEs.

Microwaving increased AGE content more rapidly compared to conventional cooking methods in one study.

High levels of methylglyoxal, an intermediate product of the Maillard reaction, are found in commercial soft drinks that contain high fructose corn syrup.

Almonds in most raw almond butters from California are required to go through steam pasteurization. This only raises the temperature of the nut to around 160 degrees F (71 C).

Low carb baked goods with sugar alcohols (maltitol, xylitol) don’t create Maillard reactions. (Unfortunately, the trade-off is often intestinal distress. Maybe just consider cutting back on the pancake intake altogether.)

Further resources

Healthy French Fries? Not

Meat: Good for Us or Disease Waiting to Happen?

References

Zheng W, Lee S. Well-done Meat Intake, Heterocyclic Amine Exposure, and Cancer Risk. Nutr Cancer. 2009 ; 61(4): 437–446.

Thomson B. Heterocyclic amine levels in cooked meat and the implication for New Zealanders. Eur J Cancer Prev 1999;8(3):201-06.

Sinha R, Cross AJ, Graubard BI, et al. Meat Intake and Mortality: A Prospective Study of Over Half a Million People. Arch Intern Med. 2009;169(6):562-571.

Vlassara H, et al. Protection against Loss of Innate Defenses in Adulthood by Low Advanced Glycation End Products (AGE) Intake: Role of the Anti-inflammatory AGE Receptor-1. Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism 2009;94:4483-4491.

Davis B & Melina B. Becoming Raw. 2010. Book Publishing Company.

National Cancer Institute. Heterocyclic Amines in Cooked Meats.

Cross AJ, et al. A large prospective study of meat consumption and colorectal cancer risk: an investigation of potential mechanisms underlying this association. Cancer Res 2010;70:2406-2414.

Carere A. Genotoxicity and carcinogenicity of acrylamide: a critical review. Ann 1^st Super Sanita 2006;42:144-155.

Goldberg T. Advanced glycoxidation end products in commonly consumed foods. J Am Diet Assoc 2004;104:1287-1291.

Santarelli RL, et al. Processed meat and colorectal cancer: a review of epidemiologic and experimental evidence. Nutr Cancer 2008;60:131-144.

Felton JS & Knize MG. A meat and potato war: implications for cancer etiology. Carcinogenesis 2006;27:2367-2370.

Sutandyo N. Nutritional carcinogenesis. Acta Med Indones-Indones J Intern Med 2010;42:36-43.

Zheng W & Lee S. Well-done meat intake, heterocyclic amine exposure, and cancer risk. Nutr Cancer 2009;61:437-446.

Gargas ML, et al. Acrylamide: consideration of species differences and nonlinear processes in estimating risk and safety for human ingestion. Food and Chemical Toxicology 2009;47:760-768.

Yamagishi S, et al. Food-derived advanced glycation end products (AGEs): a novel therapeutic target for various disorders. Current Pharmaceutical Design 2007;13:2832-2836.

Ferguson LR. Meat and cancer. Meat Science 2010;84:308-313.

Parzefall W. Minireview on the toxicity of dietary acrylamide. Food and Chemical Toxicology 2008;46:1360-1364.

Cheng K, et al. Heterocyclic amines: chemistry and health. Mol Nutr Food Res 2006;50:1150-1170.

Semba RD, et al. Does accumulation of advanced glycation end products contribute to the aging phenotype? J Gerontol A Biol Sci Med Sci 2010;May 17 Epub.

Xanthis A, et al. Advanced glycosylation end products and nutrition – a possible relation with diabetic atherosclerosis and how to prevent it. Journal of Food Science 2007;72:R125-R129.

Uribarri J, et al. Advanced glycation end products in foods and a practical guide to their reduction in the diet. J Am Diet Assoc 2010;110:911-916.

Kapiszewska M. A vegetable to meat consumption ratio as a relevant factor determining cancer preventive diet. Local Mediterranean Food Plants and Nutraceuticals. Forum Nutr. 2006;59:130-153.

Sebekova K & Somoza V. Dietary advanced glycation endproducts (AGEs) and their health effects – PRO. Mol Nutr Food Res 2007;51:1079-1084.

Henle T. Dietary advanced glycation end products – a risk to human health? A call for an interdisciplinary debate. Mol Nutr Food Res 2007;51:1075-1078.

No looks of scorn and disapproval?

You can easily solve this problem by having a baby. (Or, if you don’t want such a dramatic change in your life just for the sake of being socially judged, borrow a baby — preferably with the parents’ knowledge and approval.)

Confused?

All the parents out there completely understand what I’m talking about. You can chain smoke, eat a 1 million calorie super bacon PopTart burger while wearing Lady Gaga’s newest outfit and playing the bagpipes, and still get fewer looks of disdain than if you’re carrying a baby seemingly underdressed for 35°C (95°F) weather with humidity hovering around 95% or are trying to corral a screaming toddler at Funorama.

I guess this makes sense for the survival of the species, but as a society, are we worried about the wrong things?

The kids aren’t all right

Adults in industrialized countries are getting more and more obese, but so are children.

How bad is it?

• In Canada in 1979, only 3% of children between 2-17 years old were obese. By 2004, 8% of children were obese and 18% were overweight in Canada.
• In the United States, between the late 1970s and 2007/8:
  • Among children 2-5 years of age, obesity increased from 5 to 10.4%.
  • Among 6-11 year olds, obesity increased from 6.5 to 19.6%.
  • Among adolescents aged 12-19, obesity increased from 5 to 18.1%.

And overweight kids are getting relatively larger. A child over his or her ideal weight/size is more likely to be really heavy — not just carrying a little “baby fat”.

Baby food: Is it fit for babies?

Many regulations control the food we eat as adults. So you’d think that food for babies would also be strictly controlled and covered by more nutritionally stringent rules. Nope. Baby and toddler food is filled with excess salt and sugar, with new fun foods targeting toddlers.

There are regulations, but they have pretty big loopholes. For instance, in Canada the Food and Drug Regulations Section B.25.003 says that “no person shall sell infant food that contains a) strained fruit, b) fruit juice, c) fruit drink or d) cereal, if sodium chloride has been added to the food”.

Well, that sounds good. No salt can be added to strained fruit, fruit juice, fruit drink or cereal! (Not sure why you’d want salt on your apples anyway.) But here’s the loop-hole: you can add salt to other foods like snack foods and vegetable-based dinners, where it would make them more gastronomically stimulating.

Fun food

While deep-fried fish-shaped fish sticks may be fun foods, why doesn’t anybody ask the most important question – What type of fish is in this? Sorry folks, but “fish” is not an ingredient in the same way “mammal” is not an ingredient. Yes, waiter, I would like to order the mammal dish and could you make it in the shape of a cow?

How did this all start? Around the same time as the cotton ginny was invented, during the Industrial Revolution, baby food (mostly formula) became commercialized. By 1928, Daniel Gerber expanded the baby food market by selling canned strained peas, prunes, carrots and spinach, and beef vegetable soup that were advertised as superior to homemade.

Indeed, the baby food industry has thrived on the idea that manufacturers can somehow create baby food that is superior to what mom and dad could produce.

Why is sugar and salt bad?

Well, we probably shouldn’t have to explain this, but let’s look briefly at why sugar and salt is bad for small children.

Small children’s systems are still developing. That means the food they eat now has health consequences later. It also means that their systems may not be able to handle things the same way an adult’s can. For instance:

• Babies and toddlers’ kidneys can’t process salt as effectively as adult kidneys.
• Excess sugar and salt intake in childhood develops taste preferences that are hard to change as adults.
• Sugar has been linked to type 2 diabetes and immune system disorders (including asthma and allergies) in children.
• Sugar can cause tooth decay, even in infants, and that means big dentist bills later on.
• Sugar can affect the developing flora of children’s gastrointestinal tracts, which means lots of upset tummies.
• Sugar can affect children’s brain development, including creating/worsening mood and behavioural problems. (Translation: tantrums.)
• One study found that children eating a salty diet tended to drink more, including more fattening, sugary soft drinks — a double whammy.

This week’s review

This week’s review looks at a study that critically examined 186 different baby and toddler foods to see how much sugar and salt were in them.

Elliott CD. Sweet and salty: nutritional content and analysis of baby and toddler foods. J Public Health (Oxf). 2010 Jun 28. [Epub ahead of print]

Methods

The researcher went out and bought 186 baby/toddler foods from her local supermarkets, pharmacies, and department stores in Canada. These foods included pureed dinners, desserts, biscuits, cookies, fruit snacks, snack bars, yogurt and cereals.

She didn’t include infant formulas, cereals, or fruit/vegetable purées, because she was interested in baby/toddler food rather than infant food. Plus, single-food purées are usually simple foods with no added sugar or salt.

The researcher looked at the Nutrition Facts labels, specifically examining the salt and sugar content reported on the label. A few months back I reviewed a study that found that labels sometimes aren’t accurate, so we have to keep this in mind with this study.

Results

Of the 186 baby/toddler foods surveyed:

• 63% had high sodium (>130mg/serving) or excessive sugar (more that 20% of calories/serving from sugar). Or both.
• 36 products listed sugar (or a sugar variant, like corn syrup and glucose) as the most abundant (first) ingredient or second most abundant (second) ingredient.

Salt

Of the toddler foods, Gerber Graduates for Toddler Lil’ Entrees (Chicken Pasta Wheel Pickups) had 550 mg sodium/serving or a little more than 1/4 teaspoon of salt. To put that into perspective, a Big Mac has 742 mg of sodium. Health Canada recommends that adults get no more than 1500 mg of sodium per day. So in one serving, a small child could get 1/3 the sodium recommended for a fully grown adult. Eek.

All in all, 12% of all toddler foods in the study had more than 130 mg of sodium/serving.

Sugar

53% of all foods in the study had more than 20% of their calories from sugar (which includes both added and natural sugar). No surprise that 87% baby food desserts were high in sugar, but so were yogurt nibbles (100%) and cereals (76%).

75 products (40% of the products) added sugar, corn syrup, cane syrup, brown sugar, dextrose, fructose, or some other sugar variant.

How much added sugar could there be? This is baby/toddler food. Since ingredients are listed in order of prevalence with the most abundant ingredient listed first, and the least listed last, we can get an idea of how abundant sugar is compared to other ingredients.

In 36 of the products, sugar (or sugar variants) were first or second on the list. Holy crap! The first ingredient is sugar!

Since sugar is higher up on the ingredient list there has to be more sugar than any other ingredient, so if you made an apple sauce with sugar as the number one ingredient, you need more sugar than apples. In adult terms, that would be like eating a medium apple — 182 g — with at least 183 grams of sugar. In more tangible terms that’s over 45 teaspoons of sugar, or nearly a full cup of sugar.

Hey kids! Wash those apples down with a cup of sugar!

These 36 high sugar food were targeted to babies, compared to the high sodium foods that targeted toddlers.

Conclusion

You would hope that as a society we would be more concerned about what our babies ate than adults, but it doesn’t look like it.

There isn’t a universal standard for how much sugar and salt babies and toddlers should eat, and baby/toddler food is not  healthier than adult pre-packaged food.

Processed foods aimed at babies and toddlers are likely to have more salt and sugar than your child should eat.

Aren’t there, y’know, rules?

Not as many as you’d think. There are few specific guidelines or regulations for baby/toddler food.

Nationally, Canada wants adults to eat less salt. Health Canada, a branch of the federal government responsible for the health and safety of Canadians has set goals to reduce adult Canadians’ salt intake. The goal for 2016 is to reduce salt intake by 30% to 2300 mg (about 1 1/2 teaspoons of salt), still well short of the desired 1500 mg/day, but hey, baby steps.

There are recommendations for sugar, too. According to the American Heart Association, adult women and adult men should limit daily added sugar to 100 and 150 calories, respectively.

Great for adults! What about babies and toddlers? Not so much. What happened to the old proverb: An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure?

Instead of trying to “cure” the health problems of obese adults reared on junk food, wouldn’t it be easier to start children off right, with real food that isn’t laden with salt and sugar?

Bottom line

Being a parent is a tough job. You’re constantly worrying about something. Has my baby car seat expired (yes, they now expire)? Now you’re thinking I have to move to Saskatchewan, open an organic farm and grow heirloom variety bumbleberries to feed Timmy?

Nothing that drastic. Here’s what we recommend.

1. Don’t assume anything. Yes, you’d hope that people wouldn’t feed garbage to children. But they do.
2. Read labels. This is good advice generally. As PNers you know to read labels, so do the same for your child, whether they’re a cooing baby or an enthusiastic 2 year old.
3. Feed your kid real food, just like you’d feed yourself. C’mon — should anyone eat deep-fried mystery fish nuggets, even if they are shaped like fish?
4. Make your own baby/toddler food. As PNers, you probably have a good relationship with your blender too. Do you really need a manufacturer to squish bananas for you, or cut things into little pieces? Grab a fork, mash up those peas and carrots, and save yourself money and worry (plus hauling all those little jars out to the curb on recycling day).

And maybe keep little Billy away from gumming the family boa constrictor.

References

1. Statistics Canada. Overweight Canadian children and adolescents.
2. Centers for Disease Control. Childhood Overweight and Obesity.

Good. Me too. But wait a minute.

Is this healthy, organic junk food really better for us?

I mean, we know there are benefits to buying organic food from health oriented companies. For instance:

• We reduce potentially harmful chemicals coming into our bodies and being absorbed into the soil
• We support food companies that use sustainable energy and biodegradable packaging

So, buying healthy, organic junk foods is likely a better idea than buying the conventional equivalent… at least for the planet. And maybe for our health.

But really, despite the impact of environmental chemicals and conditions, right now heart disease, cancer, and diabetes are still our top killers. And these have a LOT to do with overall food intake patterns and body fat levels.

Junk food is junk food

When we are talking nutrition, body fat, and health – junk food is junk food. A treat is a treat. Does it really matter if it was made by Kashi or sweetened with organic cane juice?

Just because something is produced by a company that sounds healthy, distributes to Whole Foods, or is planted on an organic farm, doesn’t necessarily mean it won’t harm our health. The product might be loaded with sugar, refined flours and/or animal products (even too much of the natural sugars can wreak havoc in the body, see: All About Natural Sweeteners).

So, to get you thinking, I have a quiz. It’s time to compare food products.

I’m going to show you different food products and compare the ingredients. You can go through the categories and start thinking about which products are healthier for your body, and why.

Category: Cookies

Uncle Eddies Vegan Chocolate Chip Cookies	Nabisco Chips Ahoy
Ingredients: Unbleached flour, organic evaporated cane juice, chocolate chips (no dairy, no refined sugar), soy margarine, organic brown rice syrup, vanilla, lecithin, unsulfured molasses, baking soda, unsweetened cocoa & sea salt, walnuts. Highlights: 10 grams of sugar per cookie 3 types of added sweeteners and white flour	Ingredients: Enriched flour (wheat flour, niacin, reduced iron, thiamine mononitrate, riboflavin, folic acid), semisweet chocolate chips (sugar, chocolate, cocoa butter, dextrose, soy lecithin), sugar, soybean oil, partially hydrogenated cottonseed oil, high fructose corn syrup, leavening (baking soda, ammonium phosphate), salt, whey (from milk), natural and artificial flavor, caramel color. Highlights: 9 grams of sugar per cookie White flour, hydrogenated oils, artificial flavors

Which is healthier? Why?

Category: Sandwich Cookie

Late July Organic Dark Chocolate Sandwich Cookie	Nabisco Oreo Cookies
Ingredients: Organic wheat flour, organic evaporated cane juice, organic palm oil, organic powdered evaporated cane juice with organic corn starch, organic whole wheat flour, organic cocoa, organic cocoa (processed with alkali), organic chocolate liquor, organic cocoa butter, organic brown rice syrup, organic evaporated cane juice syrup organic roasted barley, organic vanilla extract, sodium bicarbonate, soy lecithin, sea salt. Highlights: 9 grams of sugar per 3 cookies Mainly white flour, various added sweeteners	Ingredients: Sugar, enriched flour (wheat flour, niacin, reduced iron, thiamine mononitrate, riboflavin, folic acid), high oleic canola oil and/or palm oil and/or canola oil and/or soybean oil, cocoa (processed with alkali), high fructose corn syrup, cornstarch, leavening (baking soda and/or calcium phosphate), salt, soy lecithin, vanillin – an artificial flavor, chocolate. Highlights: 14 grams of sugar per 3 cookies Mainly sugar and white flour

Which is healthier? Why?

Category: Plain crackers

Late July Organic Classic Rich Crackers	Nabisco Ritz Crackers
Ingredients: Organic wheat flour, organic evaporated cane juice, organic oleic safflower oil and/or oleic sunflower oil, organic palm oil, sea salt, leavening (baking soda, cream of tartar), soy lecithin (an emulsifier). Highlights: 2 grams of sugar per 4 crackers Wheat flour is white flour	Ingredients: Enriched flour (wheat flour, niacin, reduced iron, thiamine mononitrate, riboflavin, folic acid), soybean oil, sugar, partially hydrogenated cottonseed oil, salt, leavening (baking soda and/or calcium phosphate), high fructose corn syrup, soy lecithin (emulsifier), natural flavor, cornstarch. Highlights: 1 gram of sugar per 4 crackers This cracker is a dough ball of white flour, oil, and sugar.

Which is healthier? Why?

Category: Wheat crackers

Back to Nature Crispy Wheats Crackers	Nabisco Wheat Thins
Ingredients: Unbleached enriched flour (wheat flour, niacin, reduced iron, thiamine mononitrate, riboflavin, folic acid), expeller-pressed oleic safflower oil, raw sugar (turbinado), defatted wheat germ, cornstarch, brown rice syrup, sea salt, malted barley extract, leavening (calcium phosphate, baking soda), natural turmeric flavor. Highlights: 4 grams of sugar per 8 crackers No whole grain flours	Ingredients: Whole grain wheat flour, unbleached enriched flour (wheat flour, niacin, reduced iron, thiamine mononitrate, riboflavin, folic acid), soybean oil, sugar, cornstarch, malt syrup (from barley and corn, salt, invert sugar, monoglycerides, leavening (calcium phosphate and/or baking soda), vegetable color (annatto extract, turmeric oleoresin), BHT. Highlights: 4 grams of sugar per 8 crackers A whole grain flour is actually the first ingredient.

What’s your choice?

Category: Candy/Nutrition Bars

Promax Nutrition Bar	Snickers bar
Ingredients: Promax™ Protein Blend (Whey Protein Concentrate, Calcium Caseinate, Hydrolyzed Whey Protein Concentrate, L-Glutamine, L-Leucine, L-Isoleucine, L-Valine), High Fructose Corn Syrup, Corn Syrup, Non GMO Soy Protein Isolate, Yogurt Coating [Sugar, Fractionated Palm Kernel Oil, Nonfat Dry Milk, Yogurt Powder (Cultured Whey Protein Concentrate, Cultured Skim Milk, Yogurt Culture), Artificial Color, Soy Lecithin, Salt, Natural Flavor], Cookies (Enriched Wheat Flour, Sugar, Partially Hydrogenated Soybean And/Or Cottonseed Oil, Cocoa, Salt, Sodium Bicarbonate), Dutch Processed Cocoa, Canola Oil, Peanut Butter, Guar Gum, Oat Fiber, Non GMO Soy Fiber, Beet Fiber., Vitamins & Minerals: Dicalcium Phosphate, Magnesium Oxide, Ascorbic Acid, Vitamin E Acetate, Ferrous Fumarate, Niacinamide, Zinc Oxide, Copper Gluconate, Vitamin A Palmitate, Calcium Pantothenate, Pyridoxine Hydrochloride, Riboflavin, Thiamine Hydrochloride, Folic Acid, Biotin, Potassium Iodide, Cyanocobalamin Highlights: 28 grams of sugar per bar Lots of ingredients I wouldn’t let my kids eat	Ingredients: Milk chocolate (sugar, cocoa butter, chocolate, lactose, skim milk, milk fat, soy lecithin, artificial flavor), peanuts, corn syrup, sugar, skim milk, butter, milk fat, partially hydrogenated soybean oil, lactose, salt, egg whites, artificial flavor. Highlights: 30 grams of sugar per bar Fewer ingredients than most nutrition bars, heavy on animal fats
Clif Builder’s Bar	Organic Food Protein Bar
Ingredients: Soy Protein Isolate, Chicory Syrup, Organic Brown Rice Syrup, Organic Evaporated Cane Juice, Palm Kernel Oil, Dry Roasted Peanuts, Organic Rolled Oats, Organic Soy Protein Concentrate, Cocoa, Vegetable Glycerin, Natural Flavors, Peanut Flour, Rice Starch, Inulin (Chicory Extract), Cocoa Butter, Salt, Organic Milled Flaxseed, Organic Oat Fiber, Soy Lecithin, Organic Sunflower Oil, Vitamins & Minerals: Dicalcium Phosphate, Magnesium Oxide, Ascorbic Acid (Vit. C), Tocopheryl Acetate (Vit. E), Ferric Orthophosphate (Iron), Beta Carotene (Vit. A), Zinc Citrate, Phytonadione (Vit. K1), Biotin, Niacinamide (Vit. B3), Calcium Pantothenate (Vit. B5), Potassium Iodide, Manganese Gluconate, Copper Gluconate, Sodium Selenite, Thiamin (Vit. B1), Chromium Chloride, Cyanocobalamin (Vit. B12), Sodium Molybdate, Folic Acid (Vit. B9), Riboflavin (Vit. B2), Pyridoxine Hydrochloride (Vit. B6) Highlights: 20 grams of sugar per bar Basically this bar is processed soy, sugar and oil….with a dusting of synthetic vitamins and minerals.	Ingredients: Organic Almond Butter, Organic Brown Rice Protein, Organic Dates, Organic Agave Nectar, Organic Bio Sprouts™ – Flax, Organic Biodynamic™ (Demeter) Raisins, Organic Sesame Seeds and lots of love! Highlights: 22 grams of sugar per bar Simple ingredients, no refined sweetener until ingredient #4, “love” is one of the ingredients.

What is your choice here?

Category: Cereal – granola

Bear Naked Fruit and Nut Granola	Kellogg’s Low Fat Granola with Raisins
Ingredients: Whole grain oats, honey, canola oil, almonds, raisins (raisins, glycerin, sunflower oil), coconut, sweetened dried cranberries (cranberries, sugar, glycerin, sunflower oil), pecans, walnuts, maple syrup, oat bran, ground flax seeds, toasted sesame seeds. Highlights: 12 grams of sugar per ½ cup If you have trouble stopping at ½ cup, it’s probably because sugar and fat are the 2nd and 3rd ingredients.	Ingredients: Whole oats, whole grain wheat, sugar, corn syrup, raisins, rice, glycerin, palm oil, molasses, modified corn starch, almonds, salt, cinnamon, nonfat dry milk, high fructose corn syrup, polyglycerol esters of mono- and diglycerides, malt flavoring, niacinamide, zinc oxide, alpha tocopherol acetate (vitamin e), ascorbic acid (vitamin c), pyridoxine hydrochloride (vitamin B6), reduced iron, guar gum, BHT (preservative), riboflavin (vitamin B2), vitamin A palmitate, folic acid, thiamine hydrochloride (vitamin B1), vitamin B12 and vitamin D. Highlights: 17 grams of sugar per ½ cup First 2 ingredients are whole grains, next 2 ingredients are sugar

Which one is healthier, why?

Category: Cereal – “for kids”

Envirokidz Organic Gorilla Munch Cereal	Quaker Cap’n Crunch Cereal
Ingredients: Organic corn meal, organic evaporated cane juice, sea salt. Highlights: 8 grams of sugar per ¾ cup Simple ingredient list, the bummer is that 2/3 of the list is sugar and salt.	Ingredients: Corn flour, sugar, oat flour, brown sugar, coconut oil, salt, niacinamide, yellow 5, reduced iron, zinc oxide, yellow 6, thiamine mononitrate, BHT, pyridoxine hydrochloride, riboflavin, folic acid. Highlights: 12 grams of sugar per ¾ cup Oats? Coconut oil? This stuff is like a total health food. Some strange colors, though.

Which is healthier?

Category: Cereal – “for adults”

Nature’s Path Organic Optimum Strawberry and Yogurt Cereal	Kellogg’s Special K Fruit and Yogurt Cereal
Ingredients: Organic wheat bran, organic wheat meal, organic evaporated cane juice, organic puffed Kamut® Khorasan wheat, organic yogurt coated rice crisps (organic evaporated cane juice, organic palm kernel oil, organic non fat yogurt, organic brown rice flour, organic coconut oil, organic cultured non fat dried milk (organic skim milk, culture), organic soy lecithin, lactic acid, organic vanilla flavor, organic molasses, sea salt), organic oat fiber, organic psyllium seed husk, organic flax meal, organic oat bran, organic barley malt extract, organic freeze dried strawberries, organic whole oat flour, natural strawberry flavor, sea salt, tocopherols (natural vitamin E). Highlights: 13 grams of sugar per 1 cup A few grains and grain components provide some nutrition here, only 3 types of added sugar – not too bad compared to 16	Ingredients: Rice, whole grain wheat, sugar, berry flavored oat cluster (toasted oats [rolled oats, sugar, soybean oil, honey, molasses], sugar, rolled oats, strawberry flavored apples [dried apples, artificial flavor, citric acid, red #40, sodium sulfite], corn syrup, brown sugar, natural and artificial flavor, BHT), vanilla flavored crunch (sugar, toasted oats [rolled oats, sugar, canola oil (with TBHQ and citric acid to preserve freshness), molasses, honey, BHT, soy lecithin], rolled wheat, crisp rice [rice, sugar, barley malt, salt], corn syrup, polydextrose, honey, cinnamon, BHT, vanillin), high fructose corn syrup, fractioned palm kernel oil, salt, malt flavoring, nonfat dry milk, nonfat yogurt powder (cultured nonfat milk, yogurt is heat treated after culturing), whey, ascorbic acid, confectioner’s glaze, lactic acid powder, corn syrup, natural and artificial flavors, tapioca dextrin, distilled monoglycerides, soy lecithin, reduced iron, nacinamide, pyridoxine hydrochloride, riboflavin, thiamin hydrochloride, vitamin A palmitate, BHT, folic acid, vitamin D, vitamin B12. Highlights: 16 varieties of added sugar! Call Guinness. That has to be a record. 14 grams of sugar per 1 cup If adults think they are improving their health by eating this cereal, they are greatly mistaken

What’s your pick here?

Category: Ice Cream

Luna & Larry Coconut Bliss Dark Chocolate Ice Cream	Haagen-Dazs Five Ice Cream – Chocolate
Ingredients: Organic coconut milk (organic coconut, water, guar gum), organic agave syrup, organic Fair Trade cocoa, organic Fair Trade vanilla extract Highlights: 15 grams of sugar per ½ cup Simple ingredients	Ingredients: Skim milk, cream, sugar, egg yolks, cocoa processed with alkali. Highlights: 20 grams of sugar per ½ cup A bit heavy on animal fats

What do you think?

Category: Brownies

No Pudge Fudge Brownie Mix Original	Dr. Oetker Organic Brownie Mix Chocolate
Ingredients: Pure sugar cane, unbleached wheat flour, dutch cocoa, egg whites, cornstarch, wheat gluten, salt, baking soda. Highlights: Basically it’s a wad of sugar and flour. This product is marketing genius. What’s “no pudge” about a ball of sugar and flour?	Ingredients: Organic cane sugar, organic enriched wheat flour (wheat flour, niacin, reduced iron, thiamin mononitrate, riboflavin, folic acid), organic cocoa, salt, baking soda. Highlights: Basically it’s a wad of sugar and flour. Why aren’t these called “no pudge?”

Which is healthier?

Category: Soda

Organic Blue Sky New Century Cola	Coca-Cola
Ingredients: Filtered carbonated water, organic cane juice, natural cola nut flavor, caramel color, tartaric acid Highlights: 40 grams of sugar per can	Ingredients: Carbonated water, high fructose corn syrup, caramel color, phosphoric acid, natural flavors, caffeine Highlights: 39 grams of sugar per can

Bottom line

I know you are cursing me right about now. Why? Because it will be much harder to rationalize any healthy, organic junk food consumption.

But trust me; it’s for your own good. You’ll thank me later.

In this video, naturopathic physician Bryan Walsh presents a basic overview of how some of the key controller hormones work. Here, he explains the fundamentals of the controller hormone system, and covers some of the most common causes of low hormone production.

Understanding hormonal pathways

Millions of men and women aren’t being properly treated nor managed for symptoms of hormonal imbalances. Knowing more about how hormone systems work can help you actively manage your health situation, and be a more informed consumer in discussions with your health care providers.

There is a common pathway for many of the “master controller” hormones, such as sex hormones (e.g. estrogen, testosterone, progesterone); thyroid hormone; and the adrenal stress hormone cortisol. Here’s how the pathway works.

1. The pathway starts in the brain with neurotransmitters such as serotonin, dopamine, or acetylcholine.
2. These chemicals stimulate a small gland in the brain known as the hypothalamus, which then stimulates another gland, the pituitary.
3. The pituitary then directs a particular gland, such as the thyroid or testes. That gland will then release its hormone(s) as directed, usually bound to a transport protein that helps to carry the hormone to where it’s supposed to go.
4. If the body doesn’t need all of this hormone, the excess can go to the liver, which along with the gallbladder’s bile, helps to excrete the excess through the large intestine for eventual disposal.
5. The body can also convert hormones into other things — either a slightly revised yet related molecule, or a new type of molecule with quite different properties (for instance, testosterone can eventually convert to estrogen).
6. Once converted, hormones then bind to a cellular receptor site. If it can do this effectively, it creates a cascade of events within the cell, known as a proteomic response. If this step doesn’t happen, there will be low hormone symptoms. In other words, even though there might be a lot of hormone circulating, and every other master controller gland is doing its job, if the proteomic response doesn’t happen properly, you’ll still end up with a low hormone response.

What happens when the process breaks down?

Defects can occur at any stage of this process.

1. Not enough neurotransmitters? You can’t stimulate the hypothalamus.
2. Hypothalamic or pituitary suppression can occur. The stress hormone cortisol, for instance, can suppress pituitary function. In fact, stress and inflammation are two of the most common causes for low hormone levels.
3. The gland itself (e.g. the thyroid or testes) may be unable to produce hormone(s) required. Often, though, we assume that the gland itself is the problem when in fact it may be higher up the chain.
4. Too much or too little binding protein can also cause problems. This is also very common.
5. The gastrointestinal detoxification system (liver, gall bladder, intestine) can be dysfunctional. This means hormones aren’t properly detoxified and excreted.
6. The conversion process can be faulty.
7. If the hormone doesn’t bind properly to the cellular receptor site (perhaps because the receptor is not working adequately) or can’t do its job once it gets into the cell, this can inhibit the hormone even though it may have reached its destination.

Thus, low hormone symptoms can have multiple causes. And many things can go wrong in this complex chain. If you’re experiencing symptoms of hormonal dysfunction, first things first.

Make sure you’re following a well-designed exercise program (incorporating at least 5 hours of physical activity per week), as well as a really good nutrition plan (The Precision Nutrition System anyone?).  Then, if the symptoms persist, look at the “big picture” and consider all the possibilities discussed above when seeking health care.