In step #1, we talked about what not to eat. In this article, we'll talk about what to eat.

Most of the calories we get from food come from protein, carbohydrates and fat. These are referred to as macronutrients. We also get other important nutrients from food, such as vitamins and minerals. These don't constitute a significant source of calories, so they're called micronutrients.

For the last 50 years we've been told to follow a diet low in this or that macronutrient. From the 1950s up until the present day the American Heart Association and other similarly misguided and pharmaceutically-financed "consumer organizations" have advocated a low-fat diet. More recently, low-carbohydrate diets are all the rage.

Not all macronutrients are created equal

The problem with these approaches is that they ignore the fact that not all macronutrients are created equal. There's a tremendous variation in how different fats and carbohydrates affect the body, and thus in their suitability for human consumption. Grouping them all together in a single category is shortsighted - to say the least.

What many advocates of low-fat or low-carbohydrate diets conveniently ignore is that there are entire groups of people around the world, both past and present, that defy their ideas of what constitutes a healthy diet.

For example, the low-fat crowd will tell you that eating too much fat - especially of the saturated variety - will make you fat and give you a heart attack. Tell that to the traditional Inuit, who get about 90% of calories from fat, and were almost entirely free of obesity and modern degenerative disease. The same is true for the Masai tribe in Africa, who get about 60-70% of calories from fat (almost entirely from meat, milk or blood.) And then there's the modern French, who have the lowest rate of heart disease of any industrialized country in the world - despite the highest intake of saturated fat.

The low-carb crowd is very much aware of these statistics, which are often used in defense of low-carb diets as the best choice. Tell that to the Kitavans in Melanesia, who get about 70% of calories from carbohydrate and, like the Inuit and Masai, are almost entirely free of obesity, heart disease and other chronic, degenerative diseases that are so common in industrialized societies. We see a similar absence of modern diseases in the Kuna indians in Panama and the Okinawans of Japan, two other healthy indigenous populations that get about 65% of calories from carbohydrate.

These rather inconvenient exceptions to the low-fat and low-carb dogma vigorously promoted by advocates of both approaches show us that humans can in fact thrive on a wide range of macronutrient ratios, ranging from extremely high fat (Inuit, Masai) to very high carb (Kitavans, Kuna & Okinawans). They also hint at the idea that perhaps not all carbohydrates are the same in terms of their effects on human health.

A psychiatrist with a particular interest in violence believes that psychiatrists should become aware that the antismoking medication varenicline and antidepressants have been linked with violent behavior.

A link between several types of psychotropic medications and violent behavior toward others has been documented in a recent study.

The medications most strongly linked to violent behavior were the smoking-cessation aid varenicline and antidepressants, regardless of class.

The association was made by Thomas Moore, Joseph Glenmullen, M.D., and Curt Furberg, M.D., Ph.D. Moore is a senior scientist for drug safety and policy at the Institute for Safe Medication Practices (ISMP) in Horsham, Pa. The ISMP is a nonprofit organization that educates health care providers and the public about safe medication practices. Glenmullen is a clinical instructor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, and Furberg is a professor of public health sciences at Wake Forest University.

You could be eating sawdust - and not even know it!

Sound crazy?

Let me explain.

On a recent plane ride to a medical conference, I started a conversation with the man sitting next to me to pass the time. I told him that I was a physician working in the area of nutrition.

He exclaimed that the new low-carb craze was a boon for business. I assumed he was in the food business - but I was wrong.

When I asked him what he did for a living, he replied that he worked in the wood pulp industry.

So what's the connection between wood pulp and low carbs?

As it turns out, cellulose - an indigestible fiber starch - is one of the main ingredients in processed low-carb foods.

And what's another name for cellulose?

Sawdust!

Yes, cellulose gives us those low net carbs that food manufacturers like to cite on labels.

World-renowned Professor Dr. A K Susheela presently visiting Australia Warns on Fluoride Link to Miscarriages, Stillbirths and Retardation.

According to the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, there were more than 2,900 perinatal deaths in Australia. In addition, each year many more parents experience the loss of a baby early in the pregnancy. Sadly, one in every four pregnancies ends in a loss from miscarriage and stillbirth. http://www.sandsvic.org.au

Professor Dr. A.K. Susheela who is visiting Australia says long-term studies show fluoride is a serious threat to public health. It has not only has been linked to increased rates of stillbirth and miscarriages among Indian populations exposed to fluoride in water, but poses a serious risk of birth abnormalities including mental retardation.

The International Medical Council on Vaccination just released a six page write-up critiquing the very wide-spread use of vaccination. I was made aware of this report some days back and was happy to contribute my name to the scores of likely more credentialed MDs, PhDs, DOs, Naturopaths etc. who likewise support a serious reassessment of our current vaccination practices. The full report is publicly available on line here, Vaccines: Get the Full Story, and I would highly encourage readers to take a moment to go through the full write-up. In this post I will just touch on a few areas and add some additional commentary about certain items. And away we go ...

First off, simply regarding the list of physicians, health practitioners and scientists who lent their name to this important report, while it is a long list it is by no means complete. Many people, of course were not aware of the report while perhaps even more importantly, as has been brought out by commentators numerous times on this blog, if one is in a conventional medical environment, it is extremely difficult and risky to criticize firmly entrenched policies. If one deviates from the norm and something goes awry, one is at risk of not only harming or even losing ones career to a charge of malpractice but also possibly facing a financial lawsuit.

Perhaps a better measure of what physicians and health care providers think of vaccines is to observe what they do themselves. As is brought out in the report, doctors and nurses, quite often avoid vaccines like the plague (pardon the pun) if they are able. Additionally, an ABC News report from 2008 stated that the majority, 60% of physicians, don't get the yearly flu vaccine. At least as regards flu vaccine, I think that figure should give one pause, "Do as we say, not as we do."

Fat was once the devil. Now more nutritionists are pointing accusingly at sugar and refined grains.

Most people can count calories. Many have a clue about where fat lurks in their diets. However, fewer give carbohydrates much thought, or know why they should.

But a growing number of top nutritional scientists blame excessive carbohydrates - not fat - for America's ills. They say cutting carbohydrates is the key to reversing obesity, heart disease, Type 2 diabetes and hypertension.

"Fat is not the problem," says Dr. Walter Willett, chairman of the department of nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health. "If Americans could eliminate sugary beverages, potatoes, white bread, pasta, white rice and sugary snacks, we would wipe out almost all the problems we have with weight and diabetes and other metabolic diseases."

According to a new study by Dutch scientists, restricting the range of foods fed to children suffering from ADHD can "significantly improve" their disrupting behavior and can prove a standard treatment for such kids.

Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) is a neurobehavioral developmental disorder in children characterized by the co-existence of attentional problems and hyperactivity with symptoms starting before seven years of age.

Kids with ADHD are excessively restless, impulsive, inattentive and difficult to handle. Such children often require special care at school and in home.

"Dietary intervention should be considered in all children with ADHD, provided parents are willing to follow a diagnostic restricted elimination diet for a five-week period, and provided expert supervision is available," according to study published in The Lancet medical journal.

When we first started publishing the research and the truth about coconut oil in 2000, almost nobody else on the Internet was publishing anything about coconut oil, even though many studies existed. Today, with the rise in popularity regarding coconut oil, many people are now touting its wonders, and as a result a lot of misinformation is also being propagated regarding coconut oil's nutritional characteristics. So let's clear up some of these myths, since coconut oil has great nutritional benefits without making up ones that don't exist!

1. MYTH: One of the most propagated myths regarding coconut oil we are seeing on the Internet today is that it is a good source of Vitamin E. This is simply not true - not even in Virgin Coconut Oil. A search in the USDA database for coconut oil will confirm this fact, and we also tested Virgin Coconut Oil in the lab to determine its nutritional qualities, and we found very small amounts of Vitamin E. We suspect that people are saying this because coconut oil is known to be very nourishing to the skin.

FACT: What is true, however, is that when coconut oil is combined with a good source of Vitamin E, the Vitamin E is more readily absorbed by the skin and transferred to organs such as the heart and liver. This was shown in a study in Canada in 1999 at the University of Western Ontario. The study concluded that combining Vitamin E with coconut oil through the skin was a good alternative for those with gastrointestinal malabsorption diseases.

One caution about using Vitamin E as a supplement however: most of these are the tocopherol form of Vitamin E and come from soybean oil. If you want to avoid soybean oil, look for a Vitamin E from a source like Virgin Palm Oil which has the full complement of the tocotrienol form of Vitamin E believed to be more potent.

Among developed nations, Americans are the fattest, new study says

London - The world is becoming a heavier place, especially in the West.

Obesity rates worldwide have doubled in the last three decades even as blood pressure and cholesterol levels have dropped, new research says.

People in Pacific Island nations like American Samoa are the heaviest, the study shows. Among developed countries, Americans are the fattest and the Japanese are the slimmest.

"Being obese is no longer just a Western problem," said Majid Ezzati, a professor of public health at Imperial College London, one of the study authors.

In 1980, about 5 percent of men and 8 percent of women worldwide were obese. By 2008, the rates were nearly 10 percent for men and 14 percent for women.

That means 205 million men and 297 million women weighed in as obese. Another 1.5 billion adults were overweight, according to the study.

Though richer countries did a better job of keeping blood pressure and cholesterol levels under control, researchers said people nearly everywhere are piling on the pounds, except in a few places including central Africa and South Asia. The studies were published Friday in the medical journal, Lancet.

A Canadian Farmer tells the story of how a corporation by the name of Monsanto tried to take his farm, his land and his life away.

How he Fought Back and Won!!

This is not only a take over of Canadian farms but a problem that is happening all around the world and Monsanto is bent on controlling the seeds of plants that produce food for the world. Their believe is that "he who controls the seed, controls the world" and their goal is world domination to control the food greed and power.

Among the changes in agriculture in Canada and the United States and who owns life forms on the planet is at question. Here a large corporation called Monsanto claims they are God and own the seed to grow foods.

The presumption is that any genetically modified seed belongs to them by the form of a patent. But they intentionally spread the seeds to infect organic farms and then take the farmer to court basically to bankrupt them and put them out of business.

This is what happened to Percy Schmeiser of Saskatchewan in Canada which is the agricultural heartland of Canada's food for Canadians.