Integrative Nutrition is partnering with Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution Day on Saturday, May 19, and we encourage you to get IINvolved!

Hosting a Local Food Event is a great way to get your health coaching practice out there and in front of people who are looking for your services.

Become a healthy leader in your community with one of these ideas:

Is sugar poisonous? According to UCSF researcher and pediatric endocrinologist Dr. Robert Lustig, very. Though most people are quick to condemn sugar as an unhealthy choice, Dr. Lustig took sugar slandering to a new level when he asserted in February that sugar is toxic and should be regulated similarly to alcohol and tobacco.

On Sunday in an interview with Dr. Sanjay Gupta on 60 Minutes, Dr. Lustig argued that sugar, more than any other substance, is to blame for the skyrocketing rates of obesity, type 2 diabetes, hypertension, and heart disease.

New research backs up Dr. Lustig’s claim. UC Davis nutritional biologist Kimber Stanhope has found that people who consume high-fructose corn syrup have increased levels of LDL cholesterol and are at a higher risk for developing cardiovascular disease than those who consumed the name number of calories without the added sugar.

Welcome to the latest installment of Integrative Nutrition Reviews, where we consider books, movies, and other media related to health, food, and personal wellness. Want to suggest something for us to review? Post it in the comments!

As you probably know, obesity and type 2 diabetes—two diseases that go hand in hand—have become major global epidemics. Recent estimates predict that by the year 2030, over half of American adults will be obese and 552 million people will struggle with diabetes.

The statistics look grim, but is there anything we can do? As it turns out, there’s hope after all. In his new book, The Blood Sugar Solution, renowned physician and IIN visiting teacher Dr. Mark Hyman offers an encouraging answer for the dual-pronged problem of obesity and insulin resistant diabetes, which Hyman refers to as “diabesity.”

Diabesity may have a tight grip on the world’s population, but Hyman offers some good news: the condition is highly preventable, treatable, and often reversible. The Blood Sugar Solution provides a personal plan that breaks through myths and misconceptions about diabesity, and lays out seven key steps to preventing, treating and reversing both diseases by dealing with the underlying causes.

The eight-week plan is designed to reboot the metabolism, foster weight loss, and essentially reverse type 2 diabetes. According to Hyman, additional benefits may include reduced blood pressure, increased energy, the elimination of joint and muscle pain, improved sleep, and an overall better mood and outlook.

New Yorkers can be pretty hardened, but some of the latest ads to come out of Mayor Bloomberg's no-holds-barred anti-obesity campaign are leaving some people in shock.

Specifically addressing the extreme augmentation of portion sizes, the New York Department of Health is swapping their gross-out fat soda ads for even more distressing depictions of obese individuals afflicted by limited mobility.

In the ad to the left, an obese, one-legged man is a startling warning of the repercussions of obesity – specifically, amputation due to diabetes. Another ad shows an obese woman struggling up steep stairs. Both contain warnings about the dangers of growing portions.

Despite the laudable intent to discourage becoming obese, these grim subway posters are being rebuked as scare tactics instead of credible risk reminders.

For years, science has supported the theory that sugar can be as addictive as alcohol or tobacco. Does it then follow that this commonplace but potentially harmful substance should be similarly regulated?

According to researchers from the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), absolutely.

In their study, "The Toxic Truth About Sugar," published in the scientific journal Nature, the authors advocate taxing sugary foods and controlling sales to children under 17.

According to their statistics, reported on CBS New’s HealthPop, worldwide sugar intake has tripled in the last 50 years, and the average person is taking in a whopping 500 calories from added sugar in processed foods alone.

But is sugar really "toxic," like the authors of the Nature article say? In those quantities, yes.

Here’s a powerful exercise to try: wherever you are, wherever you go, simply look at the people around you. According to recent findings from the American Heart Association, one third of everyone you see has high blood pressure.

Hypertension is not just for grandfathers any longer. A whopping one in three Americans now have it. According to the Centers for Disease Control, hypertension is now common in everyone from toddlers to college students to grandpas (and grandmas.)

Scary, right?

More commonly known as high blood pressure, the disease occurs when blood pumps too forcefully through blood vessels. The great push of blood stretches veins and arteries out of shape. The vessels then tear and develop scar tissue as they try to heal. These scars act like burrs, on which cholesterol gets caught and builds up. Another scenario: vessels tear and rupture, sending fast-flowing blood everywhere.  

A new anti-obesity campaign in Georgia, run by Strong4Life, has been causing quite a stir. The series features several black and white images of obese children revealing how obesity negatively affects their lives. One child tells the camera that she doesn’t want to go to school because the other children make fun of her. Another says that she was scared because the doctor just diagnosed her with hypertension. And perhaps the most powerful of the bunch is a young obese child asking his similarly obese mother why he is fat. 

The campaign, which includes print ads, billboards, and television commercials, features the tagline “Stop sugarcoating it, Georgia” and is meant to force people to acknowledge that Georgia has the second highest rate of childhood obesity, just barely behind Mississippi, and something needs to be done about it.

“We feel like we needed a very arresting, abrupt campaign that said” ‘Hey, Georgia! Wake up. This is a problem,’” Lina Matzigkeit, senior vice president at Children’s Healthcare told The Atlanta Journal Constitution.

Did you miss all the latest nutrition news? Don't worry we collected all the hottest topics for you to easily digest right here. Deepak Chopra discusses diabetes and the circle of life and IIN grads are making headlines. Plus encouraging news about the fight against obesity. 

Type 2 Diabetes and the Circle of Life [VIDEO]
By IIN Faculty Deepak Chopra
Huffington Post
Type 2 diabetes has become an increasing problem in modern America. Because it is chiefly linked to obesity, as more people become overweight and as the age of gaining weight reaches down into childhood, a largely preventable disease turns into an epidemic. The litany about such lifestyle disorders is now familiar to almost everyone. The changes that prevent Type 2 diabetes all move in the direction of moderation: a balanced diet, exercise and management of stress. Read more.

“Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.” In those seven simple words, celebrated writer and activist Michael Pollan cuts through all the confusion surrounding nutrition and sums up almost everything you need to know about healthy eating.

The premise of Pollan’s mantra is simple: until recently, people relied on food traditions instead of nutrition facts to guide their eating habits. All meals were home-cooked, made from fresh seasonal ingredients, and families and friends enjoyed them together sitting down at the table.

Fast forward to today, when the world has become dependent on what Pollan calls “edible food-like substances” – highly processed food that is produced not by nature, but in a lab – and eating meals has been replaced by scarfing down pre-packaged snacks on the go. The paradox is that the more we worry about nutrition and dieting, the less healthy we seem to become.

In Food Rules: An Eater’s Manual, Pollan gives solid bits of wisdom and advice on how to adopt a saner approach towards food. This handbook of sorts provides simple common-sense rules, one on each page, that include such pearls as: 

Last week, Medicare announced they will now reimburse physicians for providing weight-loss counseling to obese patients. This is a small, but crucial victory against the health crisis, sure enough, but it brings with it a new set of questions.

Medicare is a government run insurance program providing coverage to the elderly, the disabled, and those below the federal poverty level. The new policy allows for face-to-face counseling every week for a month, then bi-weekly meetings for 5 more months. If a patient is successful in losing at least 6.5 pounds, Medicare will continue to cover the sessions for a year.

This is fantastic news for the millions of Americans enrolled in government insurance, many of whom fall into the nation’s poorest, and also most obese, demographic.