Welcome to a new issue of the Pure Health & Nutrition E-Zine, brought to you by Frédéric Patenaude. Whether you are a vegetarian, a vegan, a raw foodist, or just someone interested in finding out more about diet and nutrition, you will find in Pure Health and Nutrition: lots of food for thought and practical advice.

In this issue

From the editor. Questions about Nutrition Answered (Fructose, Glycemic Index, Gaining Weight, Potassium overdose, the best water to drink) Highlights from the next issue.

From the Editor

Dear readers,

I just came back from Health & Fitness Week, a raw-food fitness event organized by Dr. Doug Graham (http://tinyurl.com/9hdal), and had to tell you how much fun that was. Really, it was a blast. I learned so much, especially about fitness. I'm really inspired to continue practicing all that I've learned so far and come back next year for another week of raw fun.

Doug, Rozi, J-P and all the trainers there really taught us how to make fitness activities fun and rewarding. It's like being back in the playground, but with activities that challenge your adult body!

The health & nutrition lectures were very instructive, and the low-fat, gourmet, raw hygienic meals were superb.

If you're serious about your health and want to learn to live the only raw lifestyle that works, you need to come to Health & Fitness Week.
(To learn more: http://tinyurl.com/9hdal)

A big thanks to Doug & Rozi, as well as everybody else involved (Lennie, Ken, Catherine, and all the crew!).

I'm looking forward to going back next year and will encourage people to join me throughout the year!

Yours for the best health,

Frederic

PS: To tell a friend about this e-zine and my website, go to:
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Your Questions About Nutrition Answered

Today we discuss:

-Is the fructose in fruit a problem?
-What to think of the glycemic index?
-How to gain weight?
-Should we fear potassium overdose?
-What is the best water to drink?

PROBLEMS WITH FRUCTOSE?

“From reading your e-zine it seems that you advocate a fairly high fruit intake as a way of meeting caloric needs without consuming large quantities of fat. There seems to be a lot of information "out there" these days from reputable health professionals that discuss the unsuitability of fructose (i.e. fruit sugar) for human consumption. Their consensus seems to be that consuming fructose is very hard on the liver, that it is immediately converted to fat and overtime will lead to the condition known as fatty liver. These health people specify that no more than 2 pieces of fruit should be eaten per day as eating fruit, in addition to readily converting to fat, will also cause insulin levels to spike leading to a whole host of other problems associated with unbalanced hormones. How would you respond to this issue?”

ANSWER: I really question the “reputability” of the authors who claim that fructose, as it occurs naturally in fruit, could cause health problems, when these authors recommend cheese and red meat that they sell on their websites.

In many articles published on Mercola's website (one of the most popular websites on alternative health), the studies cited on the “harms” of fructose were done using refined fructose, such as in the form of high-fructose corn syrup. Mercola incorrectly applies the same conclusions to the fructose naturally occurring in fruit.

Eating a low-fat, high-fruit diet will not cause insulin levels to spike, will not cause unneeded weight gain and will not cause a fatty liver. People condemning a fruit-based diet have obviously no experience with it.

WHAT ABOUT THE GLYCEMIC INDEX?

“And last but not least, when discussing the optimal diet, one of the criteria listed was "low glycemic." Again, this gets back to the fruit issue as many fruits are high glycemic-so again, even though I love fruit I'm beginning to wonder just how wise it is to consume it on a regular basis.”

ANSWER: Most fruits are not “high” on the glycemic index. Banana is 51 (low), Kiwi is 47 (low), Grapefruit is 25 (low), Mango is 41 (low), Oranges is 31 (low), Papaya is 56 (low). Only watermelon is listed as “high” in most charts (72).

According to Dr. Fuhrman, author of the excellent book “Eat to Live,” “Scientific evidence indicates that the glycemic index of a food is not a reliable predictor of the effect food has on blood glucose levels, cholesterol, and insulin levels”

You need not be concerned about the glycemic index of a particular food if it is otherwise nutrient- and fiber-rich. The presence of fiber in whole fruits is much more important in blood glucose control than the glycemic index. Even high-glycemic carbohydrates such as grains, which I do not recommend anyway, will not cause blood sugar problems or diabetes if they are consumed whole and in the context of a low-fat diet. Those high-glycemic foods are linked to glucose intolerance and insulin insensitivity, or insulin resistance (the inability for insulin to properly “carry” sugar to the cells) when consumed with excessive quantities of fat. Due the consumption of high-fat foods, there's a lack of insulin receptors in the cell surface and high levels of insulin are secreted.

When carbohydrates, including sweet fruits, are consumed without fat, and in the context of a low-fat diet, they cause a rather low insulin response.

When someone decides to follow a low-glycemic index diet they may even be causing diabetes if they are eating more high-fat foods that cause the body to secrete more insulin because of insulin resistance.

The glycemic index is also very imprecise because the effect of the same foods on different people can be so different that it would be wrong to consider the glycemic index charts accurate in the first place.

Fruits and vegetables are low to moderate, some being a bit high on the glycemic index, but this doesn't even matter. Even high glycemic index foods such as potatoes have no incidence on diabetes and sugar-metabolic disorders in the context of a low-fat diet. Many cultures have a 0% incidence of diabetes and their diet is composed of 80% high-glycemic foods such as potatoes or rice.

People who write about diet and tell people NOT to eat certain fruits and vegetables because they are supposedly “high-glycemic,” or because of some other issue such as “hybridization” or “natural fructose” are scaring people away from natural foods and instead promote raw butter and grass-fed beef. It's sad.

Natural, whole foods are ALWAYS better than refined foods, and it doesn't matter where they fit on a glycemic chart that some scientists made up using unhealthy people eating a Standard American Diet as their point of reference. I personally do not rely on flawed charts and incorrect theories to feed myself, and I encourage you to do the same.

HOW TO GAIN WEIGHT ON RAW

“I have read a lot about raw food eating and want to start it but am afraid to lose weight which happens every time I eat less bread, grains, etc. Do you know of a person who had this problem and started eating 100% raw and did not lose weight?”

ANSWER: I can only give you a generic response, keeping in mind that each situation is unique and must be dealt-with on a case-to-case basis. It is easier to gain weight on bread, grains and other cooked carbohydrates because they are more concentrated in calories.

For example, a few slices of bread will give you 500 calories, which would take 5 bananas or 10 peaches with raw foods. So the total volume that must be consumed each day on a raw food diet is much greater than on a standard cooked diet.

The problem is that when people first go on a raw food diet, they start eating large quantities of fat (nuts, seeds, avocados, oil, etc.) to compensate. This leads to several health problems and possibly, for some people, the inability to gain weight, due to impaired digestion.

I've known several people who couldn't gain sufficient weight on a typical high-fat raw diet until they switched to a high-fruit, low-fat raw diet.

I personally found it really easy to maintain my weight eating only fruits and vegetables. At 5'10'', I weigh about 145 pounds with a body fat level of about 8-9%.

What I suggest you to do is to figure out how many calories you actually need to maintain your weight. You do this using a simple calculation.

- You take your ideal weight (the weight you'd like to achieve) and multiply by 10.
- That will give you your “basic caloric requirements.”
- Then you add the calories you need for daily activities and for fitness activities.

For example, take me:
- If my ideal weight is 145 pounds, then 1450 calories is the amount I need just to maintain my weight doing nothing.
- Then I need to add 300-400 calories for my daily activities such as walking around the office, lifting up a few boxes of stuff, and so on. If someone is a postal office worker or something like that, then you'll need to add a lot more for “daily activities.” But I work most of the time on the computer.
- And then you add calories spent in fitness activities. For me, that's 500 to 1000 calories, depending on the day. So my total caloric intake should be about 2300 to 2800.

Of course, all of this is very generic and depends on other factors such as your total muscle mass, your age, etc., but this gives you an idea.

Then you need to figure out how much food it actually takes to meet your caloric needs without getting more than 10-15% of your total caloric intake from fat. To give you an idea, a banana generally yields 100 calories and if it's very big up to 140 calories. So we're talking about a lot of fruit.

For me, that means a breakfast of fruit, a lunch of fruit, and a dinner of fruit followed by a giant salad or other vegetables. For a less active person, you could skip the fruit before the evening meal.

For more information, it is imperative that you read my book “The Raw Secrets” (http://www.therawsecrets.com) to at least get started on the right path, and then check out my course “How to End Confusion About Nutrition” to expand your understanding of specific nutrients in relation to your own body. (http://www.fredericpatenaude.com/endconfusion.html).
With a foundation of knowledge you'll be better equipped to make good dietary choices.

POTASSIUM OVERDOSE?

“A question popped up the other day about potassium intake. With some folks relying heavily on bananas for the bulk of calories, i.e. eating 10+ a day, is there any risk of potassium overdose? I did a little bit of research on the web, but could come up with nothing definitive.”

ANSWER: There's really no point to fear any potassium “overdose” even when eating a fair number of bananas. Research done on wild monkeys showed that they eat over 6500 milligrams of potassium per day, which would take you over 15 bananas to eat as much potassium as they do. Plus wild monkeys are smaller in size than we are, so we could eat even more bananas and not even reach the potassium intake a monkey has on a daily basis.

The last article published in my e-zine showed that early humans consumed 40 times as much potassium as sodium. It makes sense because we lose potassium a lot faster than sodium.

Even standard nutritionists agree that most people do not eat enough potassium and that ideally they should consume close to 5000 milligrams per day, and even more for active people.

WHAT IS THE BEST WATER?

“I have been studying about different waters. I was told recently that the best water is oxygenated water. What is your opinion and where can I find a machine to make the best water to drink. I've recently moved into a house that was built in the 1830s and I'm a little leery of the water pipes. The water smells like iron. I really need to find the best solutions.”

ANSWER: I'm not so concerned about finding the absolute, ultimate, definitive kind of water. You want to drink pure water, not polluted water. There are many ways to purify water, such as distilling, high-quality filters, reverse-osmosis, and so on. Those are all great ways to obtain pure water.

I do not advocate one type of water as being “the best.” I find that I prefer reverse-osmosis or distilled water, but most of the time I drink my tap water, which in my house comes from a well and has been tested for purity. I wouldn't do this anywhere else because the quality of tap water in most cities is extremely questionable.

There will always be new ways to purify water and there will always be people to sell those machines, claiming that their water is “the best.” I also think that people in the natural health movement make a much bigger deal about finding the “best water” than it actually is. I suggest that you find a solution that works in your situation, for your budget and in your home. An Internet search for water purification solutions in your area will be a good start.

WANT TO USE THIS ARTICLE IN YOUR E-ZINE OR WEB SITE? You can, as long as you include this blurb with it: Young entrepreneur, Frederic Patenaude, is the author of the best-selling e-book “The Raw Secrets” and is known for his no-gimmick, BS-free approach to health and nutrition. To learn more about “The Raw Secrets,” and to read his FR*EE how-to articles and newsletter, visit http://www.fredericpatenaude.com

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Coming next week, in “Pure Health & Nutrition”

The secrets of increased energy... find out simple methods to get more energy now!

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