How the Spartan Diet fixes the "10 diet mistakes men make"

Personal trainer Lorie Dudley posted a dead-on blog post called "10 'Diet' mistakes men make." Dudley lists each of the ten mistakes, and follows them with great advice and context on each. Here are Dudley's "10 mistakes" followed by brief commentary on how the Spartan Diet solves each one.

1. Eating too much. The Spartan Diet controls food quantity by limiting all food intake to three meals a day. Achieve hunger between each meal, then stop eating before getting full. There is no way to eat too much on the Spartan Diet.

2. Portion distortion. Spartan Diet recipes and meal plans provide all foods in just the right proportion, right-sizing protein, calories, vitamins, minerals, phytonutrients and all the rest in optimal quantities.

3. Drinking your calories. There are no caloric beverages on the Spartan Diet except for a total of four glasses of organic red wine or beer per week. There are no sodas, shakes, smoothies, juices or any other caloric liquids on the Spartan Diet.

4. Snacking on unhealthy foods. There is neither snacking nor unhealthy foods of any kind on the Spartan Diet.

5. Eating late at night. All food on the Spartan Diet is consumed in three meals per day.

6. Not eating breakfast. Breakfast is an important one of the three Spartan Diet meals.

7. Eating whatever you want. The Spartan Diet eliminates all low-quality foods, including all processed, adulterated or other junk foods. And it provides a system for choosing the most-healthy food option in every situation.

8. Eating processed foods. There are zero processed foods on the Spartan Diet.

9. Not drinking enough water. Water is the main beverage on the Spartan Diet, and most other beverages are not on the diet.

10. Not eating enough. The Spartan Diet three-meal, no-snacking system enables everyone to right-size meals and make sure that each Spartan Dieter gets just the right amount of nutrition-dense calories.

How industrial-food scientists turn food into drugs

The New York Times yesterday published an article about David A. Kessler's new book, "The End of Overeating" (link goes to Amazon.com page, which also has a video interview with Dr. Kessler). From the article:

"When it comes to stimulating our brains, Dr. Kessler noted, individual ingredients aren’t particularly potent. But by combining fats, sugar and salt in innumerable ways, food makers have essentially tapped into the brain’s reward system, creating a feedback loop that stimulates our desire to eat and leaves us wanting more and more even when we’re full."

The article -- and the book -- are worth reading. Kessler's essential point is that food scientists expertly "tweak" quantities of fat, sugar and salt in order to "hijack our brains" and make us crave, even need, their processed junk food. They do this by testing various combinations in order to reach "bliss points" -- that make some industrial food products almost irresistible.

This is the same point made by Michael Pollan in The Omnivore's Dilemma when he wrote: "The power of food science lies in its ability to break foods down into their nutrient parts and then reassemble them in specific ways that, in effect, push our evolutionary buttons, fooling the omnivore's inherited food selection system."

And Neal Barnard's entire book, Breaking the Food Seduction, is about how specific foods interact with the body in precisely the way drugs do to create something similar to addition. He goes into detail about a particularly addictive food: Chocolate. He writes that "chocolate is not just a single drug-like compound -- it's basically the whole drugstore: traces of mild opiates, caffeine, amphetamine-like components, and the equivalent of a slight whiff of marijuana."

As these and other authors (including us) continue to expose this trend in food science, which started out with food preservation, then developed techniques for making stale foods look fresh and now are perfecting methods for making foods interact with the body like addictive drugs, a rising public awareness of this phenomenon will motivate people to seek help.

The Spartan Diet is one cure. The Spartan Diet contains exactly zero food products created or "tweaked" by food science. There is no processed or industrial foods of any kind. Also: The Spartan Diet contains no cheese, chocolate or other foods that create a craving-satisfaction cycle of drug-like dependence.

When good science leads to bad advice

A study in the July/August issue of the Journal of Nutrition Education and Behavior found that that because "peak bone mass" is not achieved until people are in their 30s, it's important for young people to get plenty of calcium, protein and vitamin D.

After detailing this good science, the article then gives bad advice: It says that people in their 20s should drink more milk.

Milk has been found to increase the risk of prostate cancer and Parkinson's disease.

Also: Much of the milk available in US supermarkets is from cows treated with a genetically-engineered bovine growth hormone, which is passed on in the milk (the hormone is banned in Canada and Europe). This hormone raises the risk of colon, prostate and breast cancer. Dairy cows are also typically treated with antibiotics and fed nasty foods treated with pesticides. (Go here to read more about the dangers of milk).

Meanwhile, milk is an inferior source of calcium, vitamin D (which is usually added artificially to the milk) and protein.

One of the best sources of calcium is kale, which is a major ingredient in Spartan Diet recipes. Other sources better than milk include: green leafy vegetables, cabbage, asparagus, broccoli, collards, figs, oats, almonds and prunes -- all key Spartan Diet foods.

Better sources of protein include wild game meats, egg whites, grains and legumes, all of which are major parts of the Spartan Diet.

And, of course, the best place to get vitamin D is from the sun.

So, yes, young adults aren't getting enough of the right nutrients for bone growth. But no, milk is not a good choice.

Lack of vitamin D may trigger cancer

Scientists at the Moores Cancer Center at the University of California in San Diego say a wide range of research shows that cancer develops when cells lose the ability to "stick together" in a normal way. This loss of ability, they found, may be inadequate vitamin D. In other words, having enough vitamin D in the body may halt the first stage of cancer.

The new findings support previous work by the researchers, which found a close link between lack of vitamin D in the bloodstream and the incidence and severity of breast, colon, ovarian and kidney cancers.

Higher blood levels of vitamin D have been found to be associated with a lower risk of colorectal cancer, according to a recent study published in the British Medical Journal.

Previous research by the UK's University of Warwick found that getting plenty of sun cuts the risk of heart disease and diabetes, too.

The Spartan Diet calls for plenty of sunshine, and for exercising outdoors. Exposure to the sun is vital for health. We recommend a nice long walk in the morning or late-afternoon sun every day, and also taking excercise outdoors whenever possible.

Low fat, low red-meat diets prevent, treat prostate cancer

A new study published in the Journal of Human Nutrition and Dietetics shows that diets low in both fat and red meat, low in dairy and calcium, but high in fruits and vegetables, can both prevent and treat prostate cancer.

The Spartan Diet matches all this criteria, and then some. The Spartan Diet is low in fat, and gets nearly all fat from "good fat" sources, including raw nuts, avocados, olive oil and other plant sources. Red meat is limited on the Spartan Diet, and domestic animal meat banned altogether. There is no dairy on the Spartan Diet at all. And the diet is loaded with very high varieties of fresh, whole, organic fruits and vegetables.

In other words, this study shows that the Spartan Diet is ideal for maximum prostate health.

More excercise means less back pain

A new study at the University of Alberta found that people with chronic lower-back pain get far more benefits from more-frequent workouts. Specifically, people who hit the gym 4 days per week experienced 28 percent less pain and 36 percent less "disability" than people who worked out just two or three days per week.

The Spartan Diet advocates daily exercise, with an emphasis on walking. The human body is not designed to sit in chairs, and is not designed to go even one day without some exercise. By walking, working out and exercising every single day, most people can avoid all back pain, as well a an uncountable number of other problems caused the unnatural act of sitting around all day.