There might be, although no one is exactly sure yet.  According to data presented at the recent American College of Sports Medicine annual meeting, there is increasing speculation amongst sports cardiologists that there may be a toxic dose for exercise.  Their research centers on marathon runners, where the incidence of illness and death during or after marathons is higher than expected.  Some studies show microscopic cardiac damage that may accumulate and show ill effects down the road.  The damage is most likely to lead to abnormalities of heart rhythm.  Interestingly, the higher rates of illness and death largely disappear in ultra-event runners (longer than marathons), indicating that they are truly a self-selected group with a highly unusual ability to adapt to ultra running.

The concern amongst sports cardiologists is that marathon running has become an urban Mt. Everest, an athletic event that is very challenging, but also enticing and seemingly achievable even by people who enter the process from a sedentary state.  The most rapidly growing group of marathon runners in the US is adults over age 50, many of whom take up running to participate in charitable causes and come to it from a sedentary lifestyle.

Studies show that marathoning may lead to overload of the right ventricle, which is most likely to appear after three to five hours of hard exercise (a common time frame for slower marathon runners).    Other potential adverse consequences include other changes to right heart function, as well as altered blood levels of markers of muscle damage, some of which rise high enough to mimic those found after a heart attack.  There is also concern about plaque rupture during hard or long exercise, particularly in runners whose long-distance running experience is less than 10 years.  So, it is possible that if a runner is deemed healthy enough to pursue the sport and does so consistently over a long period, then the risks may dissipate over time.  But, 10 years is a long time to wait for the risk level to drop.

In a case-control study of 102 healthy runners (age 50 to 72), who ran 5 marathons in 3 years, versus 102 age-matched healthy controls (non-runners), researchers found the following issues in the runners (more often than was expected and more often than in the healthy controls):

• Changes in heart muscle that are consistent with evidence of damage (called ischemia)

• Bloodflow-related deficiencies that were consistent with coronary artery disease (CAD)

• With certain specific patterns of potential CAD, the runners required heart surgery (bypass grafts or stents) more often than did non-runners

Generally speaking, running is not bad for you.  In fact, it is very good for you, and it is largely mythology that running is bad for your joints; however, long-distance running may not be suitable for everyone, and, clearly, running a marathon is not remotely necessary for good health or even a high level of fitness, despite its romantic, social, or competitive appeal.  More importantly, bear in mind that we, as a culture, are far, far away from any serious worry about whether we exercise too much.  The toxicity that predominates in our society – and drives skyrocketing medical care spending – is not our exercise patterns, but indulgent, physically inactive lifestyles.  Our toxic lifestyles lay the foundations for chronic disease, and have left the typical American adult both unprepared for the challenges of aging successfully and increasingly dependent on a wildly dysfunctional medical care system.

If you want to run, please do so.  Know your medical history/status, get a thorough medical exam and exercise assessment to establish parameters suitable for your age and health, learn the signs and symptoms of potential problems, and develop a training plan before you set foot on the road or treadmill.  There are a number of studies underway to tease out these issues in greater detail in an effort to develop better screening criteria for helping people decide whether long-distance running is the right choice for them.

Believe it or not, there is a physiology of sitting, and sitting could be much more dangerous than you might think. The perspective on sitting as unhealthy goes back to Italian physician Bernardino Ramazzini, who lived and practiced in the 1700s.  He is widely considered the father of occupational medicine, as it was his observations of people in diverse professions that led to the science of measuring risk in different lines of work.  Importantly, Ramazzini observed that people in active pursuits, such as messengers, appeared to be healthier than people who predominantly sat while they worked, such as tailors.  In the 1960s, this observation was repeated and confirmed by the great British doctor, Jeremy Morris, who is widely credited with having launched the modern concept of exercise.  Morris and colleagues studied British bus drivers and conductors.  Drivers sit all day, while conductors go up and down steps and walk around the bus.  Even in drivers and conductors with the same waist size, the rate of heart disease amongst drivers was twice that amongst conductors.

While it is obvious that excessive sitting can lead to caloric imbalance and, thus, weight gain, it is starting to look as though sitting does even more insidious damage than that.  In a review of the topic in Exercise and Sports Science Reviews, Owen and colleagues propose that the occupational and technological evolution of human cultures into seated ones actually has propagated a harmful effect that promotes mortality and morbidity.

Citing a consistent body of studies, Owen and colleagues note that sitting actually changes normal physiology because of the loss of the minor muscle contractions that accompany just simply moving around casually rather than sitting still.  This alteration can affect how muscles utilize fats and glucose and potentially cause a fall in HDL (good) cholesterol.  Their most compelling assertion is drawn from Australian data, which indicate that the harmful effects of sitting may even have an impact on people who are otherwise physically active at recommended levels (>150 minutes per week of physical activity).  These folks get exercise – even some vigorous exercise – but then spend nearly all the rest of their time seated; they are called active couch potatoes.  And much of their seated time is spent in front of computers and TVs.  Based on the Aussie data, the highest TV watchers (> 4 hours/day) had nearly double the risk of cardiovascular disease as people who watched the least TV (<2 hours/day), even accounting for their exercise time.

Taking breaks from seated time is key to altering this cycle.  Even standing up and just casually moving around can help to stimulate numerous low-level muscle contractions that may help to correct the physiology of sitting.  For most of us who work in offices, there are practical implications: consider asking for a work station that allows you to stand or shift periodically from sitting to standing; walk to see colleagues, rather than email or call; and, take frequent walks to get fresh water or other non-caloric beverages, which can help to promote good hydration and possibly appetite control because people often mistake thirst for hunger.

The physiology of sitting still requires additional research, but the more you can do to spend less time seated, the better off you will be.

Source: Owen, N., et al.  Too much sitting: the population health science of sedentary behavior. Exercise and Sport Sciences Reviews.  July 2010.  38:3; 105-113.

In early June, I attended the annual scientific meeting of the American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM), in Baltimore, MD.  This was my third ACSM meeting, and it was easily the best, with excellent presentations that were both rich in content and delivered well.  Here are the 10 most important things I learned at ACSM about exercise and nutrition, some of it new information and some reinforcing current knowledge.

1. Adjust your personal network. Your social contacts may matter more than your genes to the success of your fitness strategy.  Studies of twins show that social circles matter a great deal more than genes in determining overweight or obesity.  Hang out with sedentary, overweight, at-risk people and you may well become one of them.
2. Concentrate on reducing belly fat. Belly fat is deadly, no matter whether you are a man or woman, young or old, and no matter what your body mass index (BMI).  In other words, even if your BMI is over 25 (overweight), keep your waist as trim as you can to reduce your risk of diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and some cancers.  To do this, you must reduce daily caloric intake, as well as increase exercise.
3. Use activity as your inflammation controller. The most important reason to become physically active, as it relates to the prevention of disease, is that physical activity helps to reduce the level of inflammation in your body.  Chronic, low-grade inflammation, driven by increasing levels of body fat, may be the crucial link between inactivity and deadly diseases such as diabetes and heart disease. Physical activity reduces inflammations, affects circulating hormones and enzymes, and helps to control body fat levels.
4. Sit as little as possible. Some of the most important early work on the relationship between heart disease and activity was done on British bus drivers and conductors.  Drivers sit all day, while conductors go up and down steps and walk around the bus.  Even in drivers and conductors with the same waist size, the rate of heart disease amongst conductors was half that amongst drivers.  Stand up and walk around as much as possible; ask your employer to give you a stand-up desk or work station.
5. Move from physical activity to exercise. Physical activity is any movement that burns more calories than sitting at rest (think walking down the hall to see a coworker instead of emailing).  Exercise is repetitive movement done at a high enough intensity to affect health or fitness.  Exercise is where the most benefits are.  The cut point for building fitness (and, hence, preventing disease) appears to be about 5 to 6 metabolic equivalents (METs; sitting at rest is 1 MET).  Getting 5 to 6 METs means walking at 4 mph (15 min/mile); cycling at 10 mph; mixing periods of jogging with your walking; engaging in vigorous strength training with free weights or machines.
6. Do intervals. Intervals are brief periods of high intensity activity built into your regular workout.  For example, on a long walk (at 3 to 3.5 mph), pick out targets off in the distance and walk to them as fast as you can.  Then walk at your baseline pace until your breathing returns to normal; find another goal, and repeat this process for your entire walk.  Intervals – which work for every level of athlete – are much more effective at building fitness and burning calories than steady state exercise and are very time efficient.  For advanced exercisers, try this hard, but short 30 minute aerobic workout: after 5 minutes of warm-up, try 1 minute hard and 1 minute easy, making each hard minute progressively tougher so that the last one is at 90% to 95% of your maximum heart rate.  Then, do five minutes of cool-down to finish.
7. Build your muscles. The most misunderstood aspect of health in our culture is the value of strong, healthy muscles.  The faster you lose muscle mass (as you steadily will after age 40 and even more quickly after age 50), the more you put yourself at risk of declining fitness and diabetes.  Lifting weights is essential to preserving high quality muscle tissue and quality of life.  Aerobic activity cannot and does not preserve type II (strength and power) muscle fibers.
8. Know your critical speed. Endurance athletes often pay inordinate attention to their maximal aerobic capacity (called VO2max).  What may matter more, however, is critical speed…the maximum speed that you can sustain for 3 to 60 minutes, at just below your VO2max (a point called VO2peak).  Maintaining or enhancing critical speed requires working type II muscle fibers, because they are essential to acceleration during key moments in a workout or race.   This requires lifting weights or doing speed work when you walk, run, cycle, or swim.
9. Remodel your heart. Data from the ongoing Harvard athletes study show that as little as 10 weeks of rigorous exercise can produce dramatic, positive changes in the heart and vascular systems of both strength athletes (football players) and endurance athletes (rowers).  The walls of the ventricles (the main pumping chambers) get thicker in both types of athletes; the rowers end up with even more beneficial changes.  These include a more spacious left ventricle (that can pump out more blood), lower blood pressure, better cardiac relaxation between beats, a lower resting heart rate.  Interestingly, the hearts of the rowers also twist more on their axis with each beat (called left ventricular torsion) and untwist more quickly.  This allows for better emptying and filling of the ventricle.
10. Lower your resting hear rate. Believe it or not, your heart is probably programmed for a fixed number of beats in a lifetime.  Hence, if you lower your resting heart rate, you improve your chances of living longer, because we spend most of our lives in a resting state or close to it.  Adjusted for differences in body size, the hearts of most creatures will beat 10 to the ninth power times (that’s 1 billion) in their lives.  For example, a mouse heart (very small) beats about 200 to 250 times per minute; mice live about 2 to 3 years.  A human heart beats about 75 times per minute; humans live about 75 years.  A sea turtle’s heart (large) beats about 6 times per minute; sea turtles live about 200 years.  The best way to lower your resting heart rate is through repeated endurance exercise that gets progressively harder as you become fitter and slimmer.

Here is your meal plan for the week of 5/3/10.  Meal Plan May 3 2010

Enjoy!

The GEICO insurance company runs a series of amusing commercials in which the punch line is that signing up with their company is “so easy that a caveman could do it.”  Far be it for me to advocate one insurance company over another, but it might be useful for you to try to eat like a caveman.  Indeed, what some nutritionists call the “Stone Age” nutrition pattern may eventually prove surprisingly healthy.

Data on ancient hunter gatherer cultures show that they ate a pattern of about 1:1 between plant products and animal products, but with a heavy dose of fish and shellfish.  As people modernized, plant-based foods lost their favor, and, around the world, increased consumption of animal products, providing more saturated fats and much less heart healthy fat, often accompanies industrialization.  And, with the shift to fattier animal-based products and less exercise come the obesity and chronic disease dilemma.

Eating like your ancestors may have strong nutritional benefits, however, because data show that people who eat the Stone Age pattern get more fiber, less saturated fat, more heart healthy fat, and twice as much fruit and vegetables as we typically do.  Importantly, the Stone Age eating pattern is much less likely result to excess acid production in the body, which is crucial to long-term health, especially kidney health.

So, what do you need to change to eat like a cave man?  The five most important things:

• Stop eating added sugars.
• Increase your protein intake, but not through more consumption of fatty red meats or fried goods.  Concentrate on vegetable and seafood sources of protein.
• Increase your fruit, vegetable, and whole grain intake enough to aim for at least 30 grams of fiber daily.  (Cavemen probably got around 70 grams of fiber per day.)
• Increase the potassium in your daily diet, which is helpful for stabilizing acid-base balance and maintaining a healthy blood pressure.  (Cavemen may have gotten 7,000 md/day, while we typically aim for 4,700 mg/d.)  A wide variety of foods have an abundance of potassium, but the best ones are fruits and veggies that also contribute fiber and other nutrients to your diet.  (See http://www.umassmed.edu/uploadedfiles/SourcesDietaryPotassium.pdf)
• Get as much physical activity as is possible.  While we crow about getting 150 to 400 kcal per day of physical activity, it’s possible that our ancestors got over a 1,000 kcals per day.

What difference does all this make?  Populations eating the Stone Age pattern of nutrition have almost none of the chronic diseases that plague our culture.  It boils down to this: eat more plant-based food; less red meat; lose the sugar; and, move at every possible opportunity.  See…so easy a caveman can do it.

Sources: Eaton, S, et al.  Diet-dependent acid load, Paleolithic nutrition and evolutionary health promotion.  Am. J. of Clinical Nutrition.  Feb 2010.  91:2; 295-297.

Two new fitness products worth trying have recently come to our attention.  The first is the TRX Suspension Training System (www.fitnessanywhere.com).  Developed by a Navy SEAL, the TRX is a system that uses straps anchored to a wall, door, or frame, which allow you to use your bodyweight as the resistance for a wide variety of exercises.  The closer you are to the anchor point, and thus the greater the angle between your body and the anchor point, the harder the exercise.  The farther away you are from the anchor point (and, thus, the more upright you are), the easier the activity.

The instruction materials that come with the straps are clear, concise, and easy to follow.  There are a wealth of instructional videos on the Fitness Anywhere website.  The straps allow you to move through an entire range of exercises, allowing you to complete a total body workout.  As you build strength, you can gradually increase the resistance by moving closer to the anchor point, varying the pace of movement, using an exercise ball to increase instability, and going from one exercise to another with as little rest as possible. The TRX is useful for anyone looking for a compact home gym that will help build strength, improve flexibility, and enhance both muscular and cardiovascular endurance.  A number of companies sell the TRX (including Amazon.com), and you can search the web for the best prices.  I recommend the Professional model because of its sturdier handles, straps, and anchor mechanism.   As a lifelong weightlifter, I was initially skeptical that these two straps would produce a sufficiently difficult workout that would add value to my regular routine.  I am now convinced, and I use the TRX as part of nearly every weightlifting session.  The TRX is a particularly powerful tool for strengthening your core muscles: the abdomen, obliques (sides), back, and hips.  If you have both a limited budget and space, the TRX should go to the TOP of your list.

The second product is the website for Empower Me Photo (www.empowermephoto.com), started by technology entrepreneur Kevin Graham.  EMP uses the very powerful motivational tool of visualization to give customers a peek at what they might look like after persisting with their exercise and nutrition strategy.  You submit a “now” photo; you get back a digitally enhanced picture showing your potential physique, minus the excess pounds, and with improved muscular fitness.  You can choose one of several formats for the “future self” photo and put them in places where they will serve as a visual reminder of what your results could be.  The “future self” photos are not cartoonish caricatures, as you can see when you watch the client testimonials.

Don’t scoff about the photos.  Visualization is a commonly used and highly effective coaching technique.  Elite athletes are taught to visualize their performance in order to improve at their activity and to build confidence.  During the just completed Winter Olympic Games, downhill medalist Lindsay Vonn was shown several times at the top of the mountain visualizing her ski run.  Eyes tightly closed under her goggles, Ms. Vonn was slightly bobbing her head and moving her right hand in swoops and turns as she visualized herself careening down the course.  LA Lakers coach Phil Jackson has encouraged his players to learn through visualization.  Other famous practitioners include world class high jumper Dwight Stones and golfer Jack Nicklaus.  If seeing your “future self” on the fridge helps you hedge your bets against unhealthy eating or helps to nudge you out the door for a walk, it might just be the picture of good health that you need to move to the next level of your personal fitness strategy.

Most remodeling projects come with a big price tag, but here’s one that does not. Remodeling your arteries – in particular, the coronary arteries that supply blood to your heart and the carotid arteries that feed your brain – is essentially free.  All they need is regular activity.  Here’s how activity works to improve arterial health and greatly reduce the risk of cardiovascular disease.

Your arteries are the blood vessels that take oxygenated blood away from the heart and deliver it to the rest of your body, including heart muscle (these are the infamous coronary arteries, which, when clogged or in spasm, cause chest pain or heart attacks).  Arteries are small muscular hoses in which blood flows in one direction (away from the heart), and which must sustain the stress of the blood pushing against the artery walls with each heartbeat.  This form of stress in an artery is called shear stress, because it is caused by the flow of blood along the interior wall of the artery (parallel to the arterial wall, as opposed to perpendicular to the artery wall).

Exercise (especially regular moderate to vigorous activity) promotes two important changes in how the arteries function. The first is called a functional response, and it occurs soon after someone starts regular activity.  The essential functional adaption is greater output of nitric oxide (NO) by the arterial wall itself.  NO helps to keep the blood vessel relaxed (thus lowering blood pressure), reduce inflammation in the blood vessel, lower the likelihood of clot formation, and limit the buildup of abnormal thickness of the arterial wall.  You can read more about the beneficial effects of NO at (http://www.cvphysiology.com/Blood%20Flow/BF011.htm).  And, no, you cannot get this by taking a worthless NO supplement.

The second adaptation is a structural response, in which the artery actually remodels in response to repetitive, continuous exercise (such as cycling, vigorous walking, running, etc.).  This remodeling causes the artery to increase in diameter (including, especially, larger ones, such as the femoral, carotid, and bigger coronary arteries).  Hence, shear stress goes down because the blood is flowing through a larger diameter hose.  Another structural response to strenuous exercise is that the arteries remain more supple and flexible, possibly because your body puts down more elastin, which contributes to arterial flexibility (Seals).  Data from the Netherlands show that the (carotid) arteries of young people who work out hard are less stiff in early middle age (mid 30s) than the arteries of sedentary men and women of the same age, which portends a substantial reduction in the risk of cardiovascular disease (van de Laar).  This benefit did not occur in young people who got only light to moderate physical activity.  So, for example, fast walking/light jogging would reduce arterial stiffness in ways that slow/moderate walking would not.

Importantly, these changes tell us that having a high level of conditioning, from a vigorous physical activity habit, produces cardioprotective changes that go beyond the conventional benefits of improving glucose metabolism or lowering triglycerides and cholesterol.  Indeed, the author of one review paper notes, “each exercise bout may be thought of as providing a direct dose of vascular medicine (Green).”

Going from sedentary to active is good, but going from active to very active, and then to fit is important. Heart health advocates often call high blood pressure the silent killer because of its lack of symptoms.  Well, in this case, we see that you have a silent remodeler working in your cardiovascular system every time you exercise, especially when you exercise hard aerobically and do so repeatedly.  To achieve these effects, build your tolerance slowly and make aerobic workouts longer before making them harder.  Then, increase intensity in simple ways: insert periods of faster running when you jog, or, do some jogging or very fast walking when you walk.  Finally, if you walk, cycle, or run outdoors, add hills to your activity.  Your remodeled arteries will add to your quality of life by reducing your risk of cardiovascular disease, our nation’s number one cause of death…something important to think about during Heart Month.

(Sources: Green, DJ, Exercise training as vascular medicine.  Exercise and Sport Sciences Reviews.  Oct. 2009. 37:4; 196-202; and, van de Laar, R, et al.  Lifetime vigorous but not light to moderate habitual physical activity impacts favorably on carotid stiffness.  Hypertension.  Dec. 7, 2009 [published online].  See also Seals, D, Habitual compliance and the age-associated decline in large artery compliance. Exercise and Sports Sciences Reviews. April 2003. 31:2; 68-72.)

One debate about the value of organically grown fruits, vegetables, and grains is whether they offer a nutritional benefit.  [This argument is separate and distinct from the issue of whether organic farming is more environmentally sound or economically viable.  It is also separate from the argument over whether organic practices are a more humane or environmentally sound way to produce meat.]   Advocates of organic produce and grains typically insinuate that there is a nutritional benefit to them, without actually ever demonstrating that there really is one.  This particular seduction is common on the web, where writers often try to advance an agenda (the politics of organic versus conventional farming) by encouraging, for example, that readers consume “organic” berries or greens, rather than just telling people to eat more berries and greens.  See, for example, this post on Yahoo health by a nutritionist from Johns Hopkins (Are Your Veggies Missing Nutrients on Yahoo! Health), who offers not a shred of scientific evidence for her recommendation that people opt for organic.  (By the way, organic produce, while grown without pesticides, is often treated with fungicides.)

The worldwide market for organic produce and grains exceeds $40 billion annually, so this is not trivial.  Organic foods tend to cost more than conventionally grown ones, because supply is lower than demand and, in some cases, production costs are higher.  That brings us, then, to the question of “what value are organic produce and grains?” in a nation where two-thirds of adults are overweight (and half of those are obese), and most adults are sedentary.

Chronic diseases derive from a lack of fitness

The chief public health deficit in the US is a lack of fitness, which comes directly and completely from insufficient physical activity.  The overweight/obesity crisis, which will soon lead us into a maelstrom of expensive, disabling chronic diseases, comes from the complex interaction of both physical inactivity and poor eating habits. The dietary deficit, however, is not that we don’t eat organic produce and grains, but that, compared with the 1970s, we now eat, on average, 400 more calories per day and we are less physically active (Blackburn, G, et al.  Lifestyle interventions for the treatment of class III obesity.  American J. of Clinical Nutrition, Jan. 2009; 91:1; 289S-292S).  Much of this excess energy intake comes in the form of sweetened drinks, and highly processed, packaged foods that are frequently rich in fat (especially saturated fat) and low in essential nutrients.

Federal data show that in 2005, only 27% of American adults ate two or more servings of vegetables daily (the target is 50%) and 33% ate three or more servings of fruit daily (the target is 75%).  As the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention noted, a diet rich in fruits and vegetables is known to contribute to a healthy bodyweight and reduced risks of chronic diseases (Fruit and vegetable consumption among adults – United States, 2005.  Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, March 16, 2007.)  They don’t report that people under-consume organic fruits and vegetables. In fact, neither do major studies of healthy diets around world make any mention whatsoever of organic fruits, vegetables or grains.  Rather, they report that people eating diets rich in fruits, vegetables, and grains have healthier body weights and suffer far fewer chronic diseases (see, for example, the EPIC-Norfolk, GISSI, or Lyon Heart studies, studies of the Mediterranean diet generally, the Framingham Heart Study, the long-running physician’s and nurse’s health studies, and the lifestyle recommendations of the American Heart Association).

The data matters

The organic advocacy hits another bump when you realize, simply by reading food labels, that organic foods do not offer specific and significant nutrient benefits.  For example, I am right now looking at the labels for two varieties of orange juice: Trader Joe’s conventionally grown, not from concentrate (no pulp) and Trader Joe’s organic not from concentrate (no pulp).  They are nearly identical.  The organic has 10 more calories per 8 oz serving, but it actually has less potassium (410 mg vs 450), which is a necessary electrolyte.  The organic juice reports no folate (a B vitamin), while the conventional provides 15% of your daily needs.  The organic juice is 50% higher in cost; is there any reason to buy it?  To further drive this point, consider the simple fact of longevity.  A child born in 1900-1902 in the US had an anticipated lifespan of 49 years.  A child born in 2004 can expect to live to about 78.  Thus, in about 100 years, we increased lifespan by nearly 60%.  This phenomenon coincides with an explosion in modern farming techniques that we now regard, sometimes with derision, as conventional, but which were critical to supply a growing population with safe, affordable food.  Without conventional farming, there would be a lot fewer of us alive today.

In his excellent guide to nutrition, Eat, Drink and Be Healthy, Harvard Professor Walter Willett does not even have an entry for the word “organic” in the index.  Respected sports nutritionist Nancy Clark does have an entry in her book, Sports Nutrition Guidebook (2008 ed.) addressing organic foods.  She notes that there is no evidence supporting the notion that organic foods offer a nutritional benefit that has a demonstrated benefit for human health.

Back up your claims

As I learned in my days working in the Consumer Protection Division of the Maryland Attorney General’s Office, the burden of proof rests with the people or organization making a claim.  If the organics industry wants to persist in its not-so-subtle market battle for consumers’ food dollars through a campaign of health innuendo, then it should put its money where its mouth is.  Let’s see organic advocates fund large-scale studies (including randomized, controlled, blinded dietary trials) which show that: (1) organic produce and grains consistently have significantly higher amounts of critical nutrients than conventionally grown products and, (2) this difference matters to human health by making a statistically significant and clinically relevant reduction in either the risk or severity of chronic diseases, such as coronary heart disease.  The reason this study has not been done is that organics purveyors know that they cannot make the case.  Last summer, the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine reported on the published scientific evidence about the nutritional benefit of organic foods.  They found that, in the 50 years from 1958 to 2008, they organics industry produced a meager 11 (eleven) studies, published worldwide in credible journals, claiming to show a nutritional benefit for organic goods.  In fact, the “evidence” amounted to not even a hill of organic beans.  (Comparison of the putative effects of organically and conventionally grown produced foodstuffs: a systematic review.  London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, 2009.)

When fitness or diet professionals advise clients to opt for organic foods on the presumption of an unproven nutritional benefit, they are complicit in a cruel charade.  For the average person, the choice is not between an expensive organic apple and a cheap bag of chips.  The choice is between the bag of chips and any apple.  Thus, this is not a Hobson’s choice; there are viable alternatives to the unhealthy choices that Americans make today, and the vast majority of them are readily accessible and affordable for most people.  Don’t’ kid yourself.  If you are sedentary and eating that extra 400 hundred calories per day, your arteries will clog just as easily, your belly fat will grow just as quickly, with 400 unnecessary organic calories as with conventional ones.  And your cardiac surgeon’s bill will be exactly the same.