Last weekend I had to go to an event across the province and decided to listen to podcasts as I drove. It had been a while since I listened to Maintenance Phase, which is all about debunking wellness and weight loss fads.
What a delightful way couple of days that turned out to be. I got caught up on trying to define ultra-processed food, the statistics behind blue dot communities (where lots of people live past 100), the wacky claims around seed oils and so much more.
Some of the influencer nonsense is spreading to Canada, as I discovered at a trendy shop in Toronto. I spotted a large display of tortilla chips made of organic Canadian corn, containing no seed oils, but fried (handcrafted) instead in grain-fed beef tallow. And as a bonus, it uses sea salt instead of salt containing iodine (iodine deficiency is the main cause of goitre).
A bag of tortilla chips that is clearly working to be perceived as Canadian and healthy.
I can’t be all smug though. My way of coping on long drives is to ingest caffeine and snack on something crunchy. By the end of the weekend, I had consumed many cups of coffee, two bags of potato chips and a Diet Coke. I had the worst case of heartburn in years, and was still feeling dodgy two days later.
One never knows what one’s media feed will present to one on any given day.
Last Monday morning, the following ad appeared:
Ad for Fatty 15 (TM), a bottle of pills claiming to improve your health in myriad and miraculous ways.
My first thoughts were:
Fatty15?
FATTY15?
Really?!
THAT’S the name the marketing team came up with in order to SELL this to me?
I am so very confused. Thanks Uday Mittai from Unsplash, for the perfect rendition of it.
Okay, what in the wild and unregulated supplement world is this FATTY15 thing? Here’s the TLDR version.
There are a lot of fatty acids.
They are found in lots of foods we eat.
Omega-3 fatty acids are a good fatty acid. They’re found in e.g. salmon, walnuts and edamame.
Trans-fats are a bad fatty acid. They’re found in e.g. many ultra-processed and fried foods, and many baked goods.
C15:0 is a recently found fatty acid. We don’t know much about it.
A new company called FATTY15 (again, wtaf) wants to sell it to you, promising you whole health in a bottle.
BUT BUT… HOW DID THE DOLPHINS GET INVOLVED?
Patience– I’m getting to this now.
It turns out that some dolphins work for the US Navy. They detect underwater mines and enemy swimmers (don’t ask me how). Part of their employee health plan includes research on and treatment of diseases related to dolphin-aging (they get some of the same diseases we do).
This person below– Dr. Stephanie Venn-Watson, the translational medicine and research program director for the Navy’s National Marine Mammal Foundation– led a crack team of dolphin health experts to manage their care.
Honestly, if my job were to make sure that dolphins lived their best lives ever while in the employ of the United States government, I’d look that happy, too.
The team analyzed the dolphins’ blood samples taken throughout their lives to identify molecules present in the healthiest dolphins. One of the top nutrients was the molecule C15:0, a saturated fatty acid (pentadecanoic acid). In the human diet, C15:0 is present in dairy fat—whole milk, butter, and cheeses.
Obviously, dolphins don’t have that option after infancy, unlike humans. But don’t worry– your research dollars found a solution:
…when they fed [older] dolphins with chronic diseases diets higher in C15:0 (fatty fish), they became healthier. Further research supported their findings that C15:0 lowers risk and can actually reverse many chronic diseases [in older dolphins, maybe], making it an essential fatty acid, a nutrient that the body does not produce but is essential to health.
Venn-Watson co-wrote this paper to argue for proof of concept for C15:0, but with no human studies. Then she started a company to try to sell C15:0 to humans, since dolphins a) don’t carry credit cards; and b) C15:0 supplements are covered by their navy employee health plan. She also wrote a book to help shill this stuff. And gave a TEDx talk to shill some more. But we have any actual evidence that it works?
Healthier skin/hair? NO Balanced metabolism? Uh-uh. Deeper Sleep? No chance. 3X more cellular benefits than omega-3? What does this even mean?
And is it FDA-approved? Hell to the no. Just like all those other untested supplements. Please, oh, please just save your money.
BUT BUT THE FATTY15 WEBSITE!
It says all kinds of things that maybe are true. What about their claims?
To sum up:
The dolphins are going to be okay.
We are going to be okay.
Eating food and moving our bodies are good things to do, be we human or dolphin.
The one supplement that I personally can recommend is to supplement your viewing by adding Heated Rivalry to your watchlist. You’ll be glad you did.
Yes, yet another study has come out linking some food/beverage product to increased/decreased risk of something-or-other. In this case, however, it’s about how coffee (and also tea) lower dementia risk and modestly better cognitive function.
I’ll drink to that.
Many shades of coffee.Thanks Nathan D from Unsplash for the photo.
These results were drawn from very large cohorts of healthcare professionals in the UK that have tracked behaviors and conditions over 40+ years. So this is not a randomized controlled trial. Still, this is how researchers find connections between habits like drinking coffee and health outcomes. So, what did they find this time?
There was a statistically significantly reduced dementia risk, with lowered risks for higher caffeine intake (up to 4 cups a day of coffee, 2–3 of tea; no improvements reported for higher daily intake).
There were very modest reductions in subjective cognitive decline (self-reported by participants) and objective cognitive decline (performance on cognitive tests) in the caffeine consumers. Again, the reductions increased along with caffeine intake, but hit saturation at 4 cups of coffee a day.
A notable fact about this study is that they were able to distinguish the effects of caffeinated coffee and tea (vs. decaf beverages). Caffeine is reported to be neuroprotective and anti-inflammatory (I could insert fancy text from the study, but trust me, it’s very science-y).
But, we also know that caffeine is NOT good for everything that ails us. It can affect sleep quality and cause all sorts of bad upper GI symptoms. But not everything that’s good in one way is good in all ways. That’s simply not coffee’s fault.
So, all’s I’m saying is, Coffee doesn’t drink coffee; people drink coffee…
Keep naked babies away from the coffee grinder.I drink coffee for your protection.
Oh, and one more thing: I love this ditty– Java Jive– performed here by the Manhattan Transfer. Enjoy with a steaming mug.
We are probably all used to getting five-alarm headlines about the perils of some food or other, just to read later on “uh, never mind. It’s all good.” Nutritional research is infamous for big pendulum swings on its pronouncements about the goodness or badness of foods (just search “fit is a feminist issue eggs” for more info).
I’ve written on worries about ultra-processed food a couple of times for the blog:
Two reasons why the picture on ultra-processed foods and health hasn’t been so clear:
The classification system for level of processing in food is a work in progress, and some foods (like grocery store bread) count as ultra-processed even though they have high nutrition value.
Our industrial food system delivers mostly processed and ultra-processed food to most people, leaving them with little access to less processed food; so it’s not reasonable to say “don’t eat these foods” without a new plan in mind.
The food industry’s production of processed foods is changing diets worldwide.
In the United States, United Kingdom and Canada, it’s been consistently high for decades (around 50% of daily energy). Ultra-processed foods are essentially the national diet. The same goes for Australia.
It’s not that the global eating public has become lax or lazy– these products are designed not only to be high in sugar, salt, and fat. Their tastes and textures promote overeating.
Crucially, it’s not just about “too much sugar, salt and fat”. Clinicaltrials show that when adults eat diets heavy in ultra-processed foods, they consume about 500–800 extra calories per day, gain weight and fat mass, and eat more rapidly, when compared with eating a non-ultra-processed diet with the same proportions of macronutrients. This is likely because of higher energy density, tastiness, and soft textures that make overeating ultra-processed foods easy.
Almost a hundred long-term studies show significant health risks associated with a diet high in ultra-processed foods.
92 [studies] reported greater associated risks of one or more chronic diseases. Meta-analyses of these studies confirmed associations for obesity, type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, cardiovascular disease, chronic kidney disease, Crohn’s disease, depression, and early death from all causes.
Addressing this global health problem requires big policy solutions, not individual willpower.
Steps recommended by the authors of three papers on this subject in the Lancet medical journal are:
changing the composition of food products
fixing food environments
curbing corporate power
addressing subsidies and supply chains
Yes, these are nutrition policy wonk solutions, with complex details and long-term goals. But we all know that really big changes rarely happen without a lot of people working together, exerting political, scientific and economic influence.
So, what can we do? Keep reading, keep (or start) cooking when we can, keep voting, and keep remembering that change is slow, but change can and does happen. I believe this, and encourage you to believe it, too.
Those who’ve been reading the blog for a while know that cooking is not my thing. And if I didn’t like cooking at the start of the pandemic, I really didn’t like it by the end of the pandemic.
I think I’ve finally recovered from all the pandemic cooking. So much cooking! Yes, Sarah did most of it, but really, there was enough to go around. We even had a night shift of adult kids making chocolate chip cookies and banana bread in the middle of the night.
Mostly when it’s my turn to be the week night cook, I use food that comes in meal kits with “mise en place” instructions. I’m a big fan for reasons of end of day decision fatigue, helping to commit to healthy eating, and avoiding food waste. But I’m actually getting tired of making GoodFood dinners every night. Eating out is an alternative, but it is extremely expensive right now.
So I’m rethinking this cooking thing.
My 25 in 2025 list even included learning to make a new vegan main course.
Next, a friend made a wonderful vegetable dish. She told me the recipe was from this book. I then acquired the book. (I know, who is this person? What happened to Sam?)
All these things came together and I made Potato and Roasted Cauliflower Salad with Olives, Feta and Arugula from the Six Seasons book.
A version of the recipe is here. The recipe has dairy feta, but vegan feta is easy to find. Or you can just leave it out as there’s already a lot going on.
Next, I made a summer salad that a friend was raving about — featuring peaches, grilled corn, and haloumi. Yum! I made this version with pistachios and pickled onions. Yum! Again, there’s vegan haloumi available these days.
As summer turns into fall, I’m thinking about soups and stews. I’m also looking forward to some of our pandemic favourites, like that black pepper tofu dish that all my feminist philosopher friends learned to make, sharing the recipe on social media. I’ve also been craving tofu and cauliflower wings. And simple things like baked potatoes, sweet potato and black bean chili, and apple pies.
Bring on the fall food. I’m ready!
What are your favourite meals to cook in the fall months? Leave recipes and links in the comments below!
What was the verdict? Ultra-processed food diets were associated with weight gain (compared with minimally processed food diets) as well as increased mortality risk.
[Ultra-processed foods are] ready-to-eat industrially formulated products that are “made mostly or entirely from substances derived from foods and additives, with little if any [minimally processed plant or animal] foods.
It’s now time for an update.
In a recent scientific advisory, the American Heart Association clarified the messaging around ultra-processed food (UPF) consumption. On the one hand, they advise us to:
Reduce the intake of most UPFs, especially junk foods, and
Replace most UPFs with healthier options such as vegetables, fruits, whole grains, beans, nuts, seeds, healthy oils, and lean proteins.
However, they also said this:
… not all UPFs are harmful. Certain whole grain breads, low-sugar yogurts, tomato sauces, and nut or bean-based spreads are of better diet quality, have been associated with improved health outcomes, and are affordable, allowing possible inclusion in diets. These food products should be monitored and reformulated if future data show harm to overall health.
The focus should be on cutting back the most harmful UPFs that are already high in unhealthy fats, added sugars, and salt while allowing a small number of select, affordable UPFs of better diet quality to be consumed as part of a healthy dietary pattern.
So what’s the more nuanced message here, and why does it seem like nutrition scientists are pulling their punches on processed foods? These are complicated questions. But, here’s my attempt as a first pass.
We know that a lot of people consume ultra-processed foods for a majority of their daily diets.
Recent data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) show that from 2021 to 2023, people in the US aged 1 year or older consumed an average of 55% of their calories from ultraprocessed foods. For youth aged 1 to 18 years, ultraprocessed foods made up about 62% of their diets.
Just telling people they’re eating a lot of junky food and to stop it forthwith isn’t an effective public health policy. Instead, we can focus on a few more specific strategies.
“When we’re shifting the 55% to 60% of calories from ultraprocessed foods,” [nutrition professor Maya Vadiveloo] said, “we really need to be reducing sugar-sweetened beverages, processed meat, candies, baked goods.”
Still, she noted the considerable challenges ahead. It’s difficult for people to make wholesale changes to eating behaviors, especially when there are barriers to accessing and affording more healthful foods. Plus, preparing whole foods often takes longer—time that many households may not have.
“We want people to make healthier choices most of the time, and we need to set up the food environment in a way that allows that, which involves changing so many different things, including the marketing of different foods; the cost of raw ingredients used to make different foods; the availability of adequate fruits and vegetables and whole grains and things that people need to consume more of; and the skills that they need to have to prepare them,” she said.
What does this mean?
Focusing on particular ultra-processed foods–paying more attention to them as individual consumers, community members, voters, and policymakers– can pay off in terms of incremental and sustainable changes in diet patterns, and hopefully public health in the long term.
Also, we need to work towards building a food environment with better access to good-for-us and yummy-tasting fruits, vegetables, whole grains and proteins, which includes pricing and easy consumability (I made up that word, but I mean not having to cook for five hours to make it edible).
How do nutrition experts and medical organizations propose to do this?
They don’t know exactly. But they think it’s important, and need our help. So I though I’d put this in bold letters too.
Personally, I love pictures to help illustrate complicated and often technical messaging. So in summary, even though we often eat like this::
A trio of ultra-processed foods: burgers, chips/crisps, and those candy sprinkles that taste weird
We should apply principles of nuance to our eating, which will help, like this:
This is what Unsplash came up with when I entered “nuance”. Good luck to all of us.
Sometimes a thousand words are better than pictures, eh?
Now that I’m back at the pool regularly, I’m feeling like my body isn’t fitting well into my swimsuit. Normally this doesn’t bother me, but I have a new swimsuit, and new suits are always very tight.
Coincidentally, I have been following a nutritionist who writes about the nutritional contents of many different foods and encourages people to eat at least 5 servings of vegetables and 2 of fruits each day. She doesn’t worry about exact measurements for servings – eyeballing, filling half your plate with vegetables, measuring by using your hand or fist are all valid. Eating a variety of things will probably be just fine for overall nutrition. No foods are off-limits. I find her nonjudgmental approach refreshing.
An example of a plate half filled with veggies. This one is from The Institute for Family Health.
So, as part of my fall routine, I’m trying to be more mindful of what I eat. I am writing very basic notes in a paper journal. I don’t track amounts or types of food. If I had an egg salad sandwich with lettuce and tomato, and ate a peach afterwards, that’s literally all I write down.
I have considered adding a note at the end of the day about whether I felt satisfied, or whether I needed to adjust my meals going forward, but so far I haven’t bothered. I’m just focusing on noticing when I feel satiated and when I feel hungry, and whether I am drinking enough water.
It’s not quite as simple as the principles of intuitive eating that Tracy wrote about many years ago, but it is definitely inspired by that approach.
After 6 days, I have noticed that I don’t normally eat much fruit; having a piece of fruit with two meals a day feels like a lot.
I have also noticed that I don’t always eat as many vegetables as I thought I did. I eat a lot of vegetables most days, so that’s an area for further exploration. Are the servings I estimate too big? Am I underestimating the vegetables I hide in sandwiches, omelettes etc?
Have I noticed any other things? Honestly, no. And I may never notice any. My aim is to see if focusing on the positive aspects of food will help me to make some tweaks to my already fairly healthy eating habits.
If, over the next six months, my bathing suit starts to fit a little more comfortably, that would be nice. But that might have nothing to do with how I eat. It could happen because I’m getting more exercise, or getting more consistent about engaging my core, or because my bathing suit stretches out with wear, as they always do.
An old picture of me playing in the water while wearing a comfortable old swimsuit. Clearly, I am not concerned about how I look as long as I’m having fun.
Yes, science is always testing more foods that might or might not help us live longer, get less injured, stay more cognitively engaged, or avoid various serious medical conditions.
The latest one of these studies that we’ve come across at Fit is a Feminist Issue is: Prunes.
Yes, these.
Prunes in a bowl, with plums hanging out beside them. From Forks over Knives.
Prunes are the new new fruit for bone health (well, according to a 2022 study that just came across our social media feeds, and also a 2024 study by the same prune-forward research group).
In the 2022 study, they looked at the impact of daily prune intake on hip bone mineral density in postmenopausal women. They divided the study participants into three groups:
no prunes
50 grams of prunes daily (4–6 prunes)
100 grams of prunes daily (10–12 prunes)
What did they find? Read on…
A 50-g daily dose of prunes can prevent loss of total hip BMD in postmenopausal women after 6 mo, which persisted for 12 mo. Given that there was high compliance and retention at the 50-g dosage over 12 mo, we propose that the 50-g dose represents a valuable nonpharmacologic treatment strategy that can be used to preserve hip BMD in postmenopausal women and possibly reduce hip fracture risk.
Fine print: participants in the 100-gram group (10–12 prunes a day!) didn’t keep up the prune pace very well; their dropout rate was much higher than in the no-prune or the 50-gram group.
The same good prune-induced effects happened in this 2024 study, measuring cortical bone structure and estimated bone strength of the tibia bone in postmenopausal women. Here’s what one of the researchers said in this article:
“This is the first randomized controlled trial to look at three-dimensional bone outcomes with respect to bone structure, geometry and estimated strength,” said Mary Jane De Souza, distinguished professor of kinesiology and physiology at Penn State. “In our study we saw that daily prune consumption impacted factors related to fracture risk. That’s clinically invaluable.”
“It’s pretty exciting data for a 12-month study,” De Souza said. “We were able to maintain and preserve bone at the weight-bearing, cortical bone of the tibia and the maintenance of cortical bone and bone strength is key to avoiding fracture.”
This Penn State-based research group is doing a variety of studies to better understand the relationships between prunes and bone health, including how prune consumption affects the bacteria in the gut biome. I’ll spare you the details, but those really motivated can read more about it here.
Let’s now take a moment to put this new research in perspective.
We have all seen a ton of articles touting some food or supplement and its effects on some aspect of our functioning, longevity and overall health. And (I hope that) we have all learned to take these splashy headlines with a grain or pinch of salt (but not too much salt, as that’s supposed to be bad for us… sigh…)
I mean, it’s hard enough to manage our busy and complex lives without piling on extra daily portions of prunes or blueberries or flaxseed or kale or grapefruit or whatever the new food-of-the-week is. And, the effects of some of these foods on our particular long-term health goals are often pretty diffuse and small, compared to factors like regular physical activity or good sleep.
For me, this prune news has captured enough of my interest that imma buy some prunes and see if I like them enough to eat them regularly. You do you.
Hey readers, any prune fans out there? Let us know– I promise this is a safe space for sharing.
Dear readers, we at FIt is a Feminist Issue are constantly vigilant, keeping watch for encroaching messaging that suggests that we need to do some ridiculous cockamamie thing in order to maintain our health, fitness, sanity, and good humor as we run, jump. cycle, swim, climb, paddle, and dance our way through the life trajectory.
Here’s the latest insult that Samantha encountered recently. She put out an APBB (all-points-bloggers-bulletin) our our bloggers FB page, and I quickly responded. Take a deep breath, then take a quick look:
A breakfast menu page with the insulting and deeply flawed headline “55+ Menu”. I know, I know. Take another deep breath– I’m handling it. It’ll be okay.
You may find yourself intuitively troubled, but not yet able to articulate exactly what is wrong with this picture. Again, don’t worry. Here goes…
On the one hand, the actual listed portions work for me personally (a 3-egg omelette is always more than I want in one sitting). Also, 2 slices of French toasts sounds fine. But I’m not now, nor have I ever been a hearty breakfast eater. Even when cycling or paddling in the morning (yes, I have documentation for these admittedly rare events), I tend to eat a little lighter before activity, and then eat energy bars or blocks during activity. One’s mileage varies.
(Parenthetical note: when ordering two slices of French toast, I’d love an egg on the side, but not an egg*. I have no idea what an egg* is, so am rightly suspicious. More research is needed here).
On the other hand, I strongly resent:
1) the idea that 55+ folks have to worry 1a) about calories; and 1b) about calories more than 54- folks. There’s data to suggest the opposite, namely that as people age, their metabolisms manage body weight differently. In particular, more body weight presents fewer risks to health and mortality in older people than in younger people.
2) the idea that 2a) 55+ people should avoid egg yolks for “health” reasons, or 2b) any folks at all (55+- )should avoid egg yolks for “health” reasons. I just wrote a blog post with the latest in egg-news, including the results of a July 2025 study showing that eating 2 eggs a day in fact reduces LDL cholesterol more than eating a high saturated fat diet, with or without an egg.
3) the suggestion that so-called Fit Fare reflects current– or any– research on 3a) nutritional needs for humans 55+-, or 3b) specialized nutritional needs for folks 55+. I looked around online and didn’t find anything, or at least anything positive to say about chain menus that offer lower-calorie variations on their usually-extremely-high-sodium menu items.
Past marketing research does show that casual-dining chains benefit financially from offering both packaged low-calorie food combos and so-called “healthier” combos. But it doesn’t mean that such combos are a) actually healthier, or b) what I want.
So, readers, when it’s breakfast time, my advice is eat what you want. You’ve got loads of options, no matter whether you are 55+ or 55-.
A montage of unsplash-provided breakfast from around the world. Enjoy…
Hey readers– what DO You eat for breakfast? I’d love to hear your ideas, as it’s fun to switch thiings up every once in a while.
We at Fit as a Feminist Issue have been following and reporting on the eggs-good-eggs-bad nutritional controversy for years now. Researchers simply haven’t been able to decide, and we’ve been there to report.
In late July of this year, a new study came out about the impact of eggs (which contain a low of dietary cholesterol) vs. saturated fat (which isn’t found in eggs) on our LDL cholesterol levels. And guess what? The eggs came out on top!
Let’s take a closer look at what they did and what it might mean.
Note: this blog post is not meant as medical advice. I am a doctor, but of philosophy, not medicine. But hey, I can read an article as well as the next person… 🙂
The study was pretty simple. Researchers created three groups:
high-cholesterol (600 mg/d), low-saturated fat (6%) including 2 eggs/d (EGG);
low-cholesterol (300 mg/d), high-saturated fat (12%) without eggs (EGG-FREE);
and a high-cholesterol (600 mg/d), high-saturated fat (12%) control diet (CON) including 1 egg/wk.
For those who are visual processors, see below:
Two-egg-breakfast, a bunch of bacon, and one-egg breakfast. All in the name of science.
And what did the researchers conclude? I won’t keep you waiting:
Saturated fat, not dietary cholesterol, elevates LDL cholesterol. Compared with consuming a high-saturated fat diet with only 1 egg/wk, consuming 2 eggs daily as part of a low-saturated fat diet lowers LDL concentrations, which may reduce CVD risk. However, this effect on CVD risk may be mitigated, at least in part, by a reduction in less-atherogenic large LDL particles and an increase in more atherogenic small LDL particles.
What does this mean? Well, the study reaffirms what science has known for decades, which is that dietary cholesterol doesn’t contribute to our LDL-cholesterol levels. What does contribute, however, is saturated fat. So, eating a lower-saturated fat diet helps reduce LDL-cholesterol. Which science already knew, but this study shows it. Again.
But what about the business with eating two-eggs-a-day vs. at-most-one-egg-a-week? Aren’t medical folks still recommending not eating a lot of eggs if your cholesterol is higher?
Yes. In this news article, which is about THE NEW STUDY, some medical professionals are still recommending avoiding eggs to manage cholesterol levels.
If you’re concerned about your cholesterol levels, Sharon Palmer, RDN, a registered dietitian nutritionist from California, suggests sticking to egg whites, as most of the cholesterol and saturated fat in eggs are in the yolk.
This woman (who also read the study) is sighing in frustration, too. Thanks British Library, for the photo.
What does all this mean? Well, research, especially research that goes against previously-entrenched medical views, is not taken up and incorporated into medical practice very quickly or easily. Also, nutrition science is one of those areas where people vigorously disagree, even when lots of research seems to be pointing in one direction rather than another.
So, what should you eat for breakfast? It’s up to you, and there are lots of considerations, including health, convenience, access, ethical ramifications, and taste.
But, in honor of the season, may I recommend:
Yogurt with peaches, blueberries and granola. Fancy glass mandatory.
