Atkins diet damages blood vessels

The popular Atkins diet has been shown to damage blood vessels.

In another thread in the pod (that I can't seem to find by searching for it), reservations about the Atkins diet were also raised, and the research supporting Atkins was criticized.


Thoughts? Differing opinions?

Pelle

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Re: Atkins diet damages blood vessels

My opinion is that it's the kinds of fat that people are eating that is doing the damage, not the amount. They're not eating free-range meat, obviously, or they'd be getting all kinds of really great, brain-feeding fats. Free range beef, for example, has as much omega-3 fatty acids as wild salmon. Atkins just didn't go far enough. I bet they also don't get enough green food, etc.

Also, there is a lot of money behind making sure that people stay with the high-carb diet that is so profitable to argibusiness. I'm not saying the research is invalid, but it does have limitations. I'd like to see research on the differences between people who only eat free-range meat vs. industrially produced meats. Now that would get my attention.

Liz

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Yes, the quality of fat is supremely important. Eskimos, whose traditional diet is dominated by seal, have almost no cardio-vascular diseases.


I guess we can make this distinction: a regular Atkins diet is bad for you, while an enlightened Atkins diet with high quality fats is good for you if it suits your body type and innate metabolism.


Pelle

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I couldn't agree with what Liz said more. And the reason that is more Integral research is that it takes the LR -e.g. mode of production -into account as well, not just flat, undifferentiated  biochemistry, etc. Add to that personal and cultural habits, attitudes and things and then you're starting to get a much more comprehensive picture of what could be possible.

I think about that stuff all the time in terms of “recent studies” and how ultimately limted they are, but supposedly to be applied across the board. This is one of the reasons why “they used to tell ya such and such and now 'they're' saying so and so.” Like “eggs used to be good for you, now they're bad for you.” I'm starting off on a tangent. Better stop.

But yes, factor in all the factors.

I've known people who have had great and lasting success with Atkins, and other who have had serious problems. Biodiversity may be a big factor as well.

Anyway …

Isn't the unfortunate thing that all “diets” -in the sense of “I'm on a diet” -are basically unnatural. They are a measure to try and counteract poor diet in the past (usually). I was shocked once to hear a guy from Africa say when he was a kid they used to talk about how Americans go on these things called “a diet” and they had no comprehension nor understanding of what that was. Nor any idea why anyone would have to do such a thing. This is because they were poor, but ya know what I mean?

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I totally agree with Liz.

I eat a high-protein, high-fat, very low carb diet and I am as healthy as possible (good cholesterol and all the rest). Most of my fat comes from organic nuts, olive oil, organic grain-fed chicken, organic eggs, and fish oil.

I am suspicious of this research. I suspect they used the original Atkins protocal and not their revised (healthy fats) approach that they have been pushing for the last five years or so. The current version of Atkins is very similar to the South Beach Diet, which is the only “mass produced” diet I recommend to clients.

Peace,
Bill

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I also follow the blood type diet, which I've found to be amazingly accurate in what affects me negtively or positively. I'll even eat something I think is on my diet and have a reaction to it, only to find out later it's not on the diet after all.

What has your experience been with this diet? Or these diets, I should say, since it's different depending on blood type.


Liz

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The “Blood Type” diet hasn't worked for me – it says I should eat a lot of carbs, especially grains. Doing so makes me lethargic and fat. The logic of the diet doesn't hold up for me, either – most of us have pretty mixed genetic heritages, so it doesn't seem possible that blood type can really say too much about dietary needs.

Or it could be that my little bit of native American blood makes me a good carnivore, outweighing the other 93% of my genetics.

I haven't seen any good studies on this dietary approach yet, so I won't make any conclusions, only biased opinions.

Peace,
Bill

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Glad to hear your view. My own opinion has been that the science has yet to be proven, and it's a bit suspect. My guess is that it works very well for a certain percentage of people who are more linearly descended from a particular group or something like that. I also know a person who “should” be a vegetarian, and she enjoys meat and is very healthy. It's quite possible that someday you'll be able to get a quick genetic test and a printout (hmm..perhaps on your corneal implant…) that will tell you what the perfect diet is for your metabolism.

It's a frustration to me that there isn't more research going on here, because diet is such a fruitful (oh, sorry for the pun) line of study. At some point, I think it's going to really take off.

Liz

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At some point, I think it's going to really take off.

See, that's the thing whenever this subject comes up in this context. That is, an Integral and second tier context. If really think about history - I mean really, really, really think about it from animals to human and even from before that- diet, nutrition and food altogether is really open book. We need a second tier view of food, diet and nutrition which is really something that has not yet emerged. There are just so many variables. But this, of course, does not mean to neglect what has emerged already. It just that we rememer it's firt tier. So “one right way.”

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Re: Atkins diet damages blood vessels

Genetic testing for pharmaceuticals and nutrition isn't far off – it's possible now, just spendy. I think this will revolutionize nutrition.

That will be the beginning of a second teir approach to nutrition – the recognition that each body is different and needs different things. Many nutritionists get this to some extent, but the industry likes to push specific diets.

Another component of a second tier approach to nutrition will be creating the least harm possible. This means organic agriculture, free range organic meats (killed humanely), and any other means of creating organic nutrition. In many ways, this is the farthest off – unless one moves to the country and raises their own meat and food (I grew up this way, and I'd love to get back to that someday).

In some ways, our ancestors lived more organicly than we do – not that I want to spend 12 hours a day tending a farm. But they used natural farming techniques, free of the chemicals polluting our foods now. We need to combine the best of that old school approach with the best of modern technology to generate healthy, nutritious foods.

OK, I'll step down from my soapbox now.

Peace,
Bill

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Yeah, we definitely need Integral perspectives and research on nutrition.

There are some common themes in all “diets”, that also seem to be supported by (1st tier) research:

* Refined white sugar is bad for you
* Refined white flour is bad for you
* Too much salt is bad for you
(the three white killers)
* Nuts are good for you (unless you're allergic)
* Fresh fruits and vegetables are good for you, and you need more than you think
* Organic food is usually preferable


IMO, dairy isn't good for most people either, but that still remains to be shown properly by research.


Pelle

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IMO, dairy isn't good for most people either, but that still remains to be shown properly by research.

I was so happy the day I came across the first thing I ever read denouncing milk. Yes, thank you god! For I had been taught my whole life you “needed” milk, like the god of all gods of necessary food and was culturally chided endlessly all through my childhood and teen-age years because I have always hated the shit. (My mother tells me that at 1 year old, sitting in my high chair, I took the bottle of milk she gave me and threw it across the room. LOL)

But I was just thinking about this the other day -the different first tier approaches to food and nutrition -which if you really look closely, can be very deep and informative ways to distinguish levels -after watching some of that show “The Biggest Loser.” (Do you get that in Sweden?) And the one trainer/nutritionist reaffirmed the old mantra once again to the “losers.”

Holding a glass of milk - “This right here? This is still the best thing you can drink.” And proceeded to explain the numerous reasons why. It was the classic orange view: “your body needs x,y,z” and since this has “lots of” x,y,z you are promoting your health in the best way possible by consuming this particular food.   …  without any regard for anything else, like, how it actually digests, how it actually interacts with the other things your eating at the moment, how all the other things aside from x, y, z may not only affect you, but actually affect the possible beneficial assimilation of x, y, z at all, etc. In a way, baby “formula” is probably one of the best examples of this. Hmm. If we just mix up chemicals p, q, r, x, and make it taste good, why, it's all baby needs! It's as good as breast milk and maybe better! Not that I'm interested in starting a big debate about formula vs. breat fed, it's just the mentality regarding what or what isn't good nutrition. Orange, generally, especially when you really look into it, has a really unsophisticated nutritional view. (Sugary cereal is good because it contains “vitamins and minerals!”)

Amber just does what the leaders say -like “don't eat meat on Friday” and “don't eat pork” (Islam), don't eat beef (Hindu), must be Kosher (Jewish) and whatever you do, don't eat what “those people” eat!

Integrated bodymind, starting at green, is obviously much more conscious and sophisticated. I think the leap from an orange approach to a green is really fascinating. Like I said, when you look, from amber to orange to green, it might be one of the most powerful ways to distinguish levels. And I do believe we have a great deal of teal approach out there now and even reaching mainstream culture. I'm betting that probably most of us here have already been working with a teal nutritional/food awareness for a long time. I think it started coming on board very quickly after green.

Thoughts from anyone else?

My main thought about a second tier approach is, honestly, how much do we really know about nutrition kosmocentrically? In terms, not just of cross-culture, but of cross-species, cross-era, geographically, seasonally, individually, bio-ethnically,  in terms of subtle and causal energy and composition, what are the consequences of that, etc. etc.

Anyway, time to go feed the children!   

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This is a really interesting subject.

 
“Nuts are good for you (unless you're allergic)”

They might make anger/irritation situations worse for some people, so they might be good to avoid during periods of acute anger/irritation.

When we're growing up, we tend to get food that made sense to our parents, the food they ate growing up and are still eating. So we're probably on fairly sound ground there as long as we didn't get some genetic glitch that our parents didn't have. But what if we, say, move into Green and start getting concerned about the environment and ask ourselves whether the milk and meat good our parents fed us is good for the environment or good for our karma? At that point, we better also be in touch with ourselves as well, in touch with our Deeper Intuition–which is what's connected to zone #5 intelligences like digestion–or else we run the risk of taking on a diet that really isn't good for us, is just something we think will be good for us.

Green nutrition can sometimes have the tendency to value the health of the biosphere over the individual body. There's some evidence that the human diet that would benefit the biosphere is also good for humans, but for some people the biosphere seems to be the first consideration, without the integral knowledge that that vegan diet might actually make some people ill.

It's interesting to do energy reads on foods, restaurants, cooks. Some things just glow and are full of life. And it's so important to have a cook with a good heart who loves the people he or she is cooking for. Sometimes I feel the “health foods” are so much better because so much more care has been put into them. The people who made them, from the CEO on down, can sometimes seem to really care about what they produce, really care about how it's going to make you feel. In commerical foods I tend to get the feeling that the people who put it together really didn't care what it's going to do to you–not just what they sprayed on it and put into it but that they just didn't care when they were doing it. And if your cook is angry at you or doesn't like you I think it makes a big difference.

David

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Re: Atkins diet damages blood vessels

Great minds, David…….

This seems like the perfect time and place to share this paper I wrote early this year. It is SOOOOO partial. I invite others to add and expand. I offer these sketches with a smile and no truth claims whatsoever. The descriptions jump around zones, and obviously put into words what someone at that level could not verbalize.

The whole paper is meant mainly to be thought-provoking and humorous. Look for yourself, and classify all your friends!!! (LOL) I confess that I wrote it with particular people in mind, whom I was describing……

This was written within my own version of the Spiral Dynamics spectrum, definitely not the new Wilber terminology. NOTE THAT TURQUOISE AND TEAL IN PARTICULAR ARE DIFFERENT HEREIN from the current Wilberian labels.

A complete descripiton on this subject could be a whole lot longer, but this gives a flavor :). This descripiton includes both individual-developmental and societal-evolution-level aspects, but not in any complete or systematic coverage of either aspect. I have hardly at all addressed any of the many related matters such as one's relationship with one's body, the whole psychology around feeling nourished, the interpersonal and individual-developmental aspects of food and eating, issues of the soul not fully accepting embodiment, etc. I wish to emphasize that many factors influence eating; level of consciousness on the spiral, as portrayed below, is only one factor.

Definition of Eating: what is eaten, how much, when, in what settings or contexts, with whom, for what reasons, and what it all means to the person. (That is meant to cover all four quadrants, whether it actually does or not.) Not every aspect of the definition is covered for every color; I have just given a few of the most unique or prominent features for each color.

Remember like all spiral-of-consciousness matters, these descriptions for the different levels are not either-or; some aspects of earlier levels are integratable into later levels.
Below are descriptions mostly the the actual experiences and feelings and motivations around eating, more than (but not ignoring) the concepts people have about eating.
Not every person at each level has all of the consciousness described for that level.

BEIGE

I eat pretty much whatever I can get my hands on. I eat pretty much whatever is available, handy, and easy to get, like from machines at work or the trees around me. I eat whatever I can afford or the foodbank has. I eat whenever I can get eatables. I like to have eatables available all the time.

I go by habit or instinct or what I see others eat, in deciding what is OK to eat and what is not; I don't think about that issue.

I won't eat what I don't like. Period. I spit it out if I taste it.

I don't think about the effects or results of eating; I eat because I see others eat and it's something that brings some pleasures. I am not thinking about health, or cultural aspects, or longevity, or survival. I don't really have a concept of “food” or any ideas of what happens to the stuff after I chew it up, or why I am eating in the first place. I see things and I put them in my mouth and chew them and swallow them. That's the extent of my concepts of “food” and “eating.”

Some people are allowed to take food away from me, and I am allowed to snatch food from some others. Sometimes I eat alone, and sometimes with others, no difference.

I don't prepare food in any way, either by cooking, grinding, or whatever. I do select which parts of plants I will eat, and I do peel my bananas.

PURPLE (?MAGENTA?)

I eat with rituals, like blessing the food. Blessing the food means I or the medicineperson/shaman put good spirits into it and take bad spirits out of it.

Sometimes I eat for specific ritual purposes, for the effects of the food and the eating process on my relationship with the spirits. Eating with kinfolk is best, and eating can be a ceremony for us.

I bless and thank the animals I eat, for giving their lives for mine, as they have spirits, as everything does.

Some foods are inherently sacred and others are not. All foods are provided by the spirits when they are smiling on us and when we have done what we could to get them to smile on us.

Different foods are the job of men and of women. Some foods are recommended for one or the other, or forbidden to one or the other. Men and women have different roles in the various ways we obtain and prepare foods, by hunting, gathering, carving, drying, cooking, grinding, mixing, etc.

We mix various foods together to make stews,graincakes, etc.

Feeding people is a way of showing welcoming and caring; accepting food is a way of allowing oneself to get integrated and accepted into a group.

Some foods can be literally transformed into something else, by those who work with spirits [Bread and wine to flesh and blood of Christ.]

Some things people can take in give them unusual experiences, enabling them to enter the spirit realm or communicate with spirits better; these things are reserved for those whose role is to interface directly with spirits, or special occasions.

Some drinks, properly prepared, give me unusual experiences, make me happier and give me a pleasant buzz in my head, and sometimes a hurting head, later.

RED

I eat what I damn well please. I eat what tastes good. I eat what I crave, and however much I want.

If the food is not the temperature I prefer, I won't eat it at all. If it's not the right flavoring or preparation or texture, I won't eat it at all. If it's not in my favorite dish or bowl, forget it.

I eat foods that reflect my status in the power hierarchy: common foods or special foods, high-status foods like spices, chocolate, imported teas, and white refined flour, white refined rice, white refined salt, and refined sugar. I eat the foods and in the ways that my socioeconomic class eats.

I enjoy eating foods that require elaborate prepration that someone else has prepared.

Roles concerning food and eating are quite varied and distinct; I do only my own role.

Sometimes I enjoy participating in or watching various eating contests, like to see who can eat the most sausages in three minutes. There can be winners in eating!

BLUE (?AMBER?)

I eat what the authorities tell me to eat. I eat kosher. I eat no meat on Fridays. I eat plain food because I should not indulge my senses or get too much pleasure from eating.

I eat the foods that my culture or religion eats; those are the best foods. I use the eating settings and habits my culture or religion or group has.

I eat what's “in” with my ingroup, my peers.

I thank my God for providing food and ask my God to bless the food so I may be more conscious of my God.

Some foods are symbolic representations of abstract ideas.

ORANGE

I eat what and how science and medicine say is good for bodies, health, longevity. Science and medicine say certain foods are good or bad for my health, so I will make some attempt to eat that way. Science and medicine say food should be clean, and I should eat food with clean hands. I will make some attempt to eat that way.

Because science and medicine do, I begin to distinguish what is nourishing food from what is “empty calorie” food. But this is mostly conceptual understanding, a rule for me to follow.

I eat on the run, because I am so busy. Eating is not a priority.

I enjoy convenience, processed foods. Isn't science wonderful??

Women are cooks; men are chefs.

Things are getting better and better with respect to food and eating. Progress is marching on. We need to keep up with the latest.

Food and eating are big business now; I want my share of that.

“Eating to Get Ahead” is a fine book I recommend.

I like to be seen in the best restaurants where the maitre d' knows me.

Honey, we need to invite the boss and my department over for dinner.

GREEN

I eat what gives me pleasure. I eat comfort foods. I eat what my friends give me. I like to eat with my friends and family. Eating can be a bonding experience.

Eating together is a good way to get to know someone.

I like to try new and different foods. I enjoy the variety of ethnic foods available.

I eat with consciousness of where the food came from. I like to eat locally-grown foods from humane and sustainable agricultural practices. I eat organic food because it supports organic farmers who are mindful of the earth.

As a man, I am expanding my role in the food preparation process, and ejoying the ability to cook for my partner. I also enjoy the independence of being able to cook for myself.

I can't eat comfortably knowing others elsewhere are starving.

SECOND TIER

SECOND TIER–YELLOW

I treat my body as a precious, valuable, unique individual, a complex Being who is in my care. I get to know my particular body and what benefits or harms it as a unique individual. I eat with awareness of the effects of what and how I eat on my particular body as it is right now.

I make an effort to know and use what scientific and medical knowledge is available about the effects of various foods on various bodies, and I try to individualize it for myself. So I choose mostly foods that truly nourish my body, provide it with nutrients. I tend to avoid foods that science or medicine regards as toxic to bodies in general.

I eat for a variety of reasons at various times. Mostly I eat for health and longevity, but sometimes for comfort, for sheer sensory pleasure, or for sociability.

I eat with awareness of the entire context of where my food came from and how it got to me, and I am grateful to every force of nature, every plant, every animal, every invention and process, and every person who contributed to bringing this food to me.

I allow my consciousness around eating to shift and evolve. I am expanding what the various aspects of eating mean to me, and I am expanding my practices around and relationship to, those various aspects.

SECOND TIER–TURQUOISE

I eat what my body/soul intuitively wants right now, which might be different from what I crave or what I enjoy, and might or might not match what science says is good for everyone, or what was good for me yesterday.

Eating is a process by which I experience the integration of body, mind, and spirit. All these are included in my choices around eating, and I experience my foods and my eating as multi-dimensional processes, involving physical, mental, emotional, social, and transpersonal or spiritual experiences. I am aware that subtle energies pervade my foods and water, depending on where they came from, and who has been involved with them, and I am learning to shift those energies to be more beneficial to my own self.

THIRD TIER

THIRD TIER–CORAL

Eating and all the life experiences associated with it are for me among the great joys of being in embodiment. I experience them as a form of communion with all of life, with All That Is, in material and nonmaterial realms. I am nourished by the Divine or Kosmic energies in foods and water, as much as by the molecules and physical aspects.

THIRD TIER–TEAL (what we might call Enlightened or God-realized)

My body and Self are optionally material, so it doesn't matter what or when or how I eat or don't eat. My body is nourished and renewed by the Light and Love energies it is composed of, by the vibrations of All That Is. I am One with all I take in, and I transmute the vibration of everything I take in to match the highest vibration of my body, so when I eat physical food, I am eating Love and Light that I am nothing but. I am composed of the same energies as the foods I eat, in fact, we are not separate, we just differing frequencies of the same energies.

I accept and allow all that arises in my embodiment around eating and food, including my choices and desires and aversions and concerns.

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Consciousness-expanding comments and critiques invited, remembering this is a tidbit, not meant to be a meal. LOL

Blessings, OM Bastet

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Thundering silence. Did I goof in not just posting a link? I have seen others post complete articles so I thought it would be OK. Or maybe I am just too antsy for responses.

Or maybe everyone is still busy chewing or digesting it all. LOL

Namaste, OM Bastet

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Re: Atkins diet damages blood vessels

Great article leading us through the spiral of food !

I thought it was common knowledge that the Aitkins diet was a “make yourself sick” diet?
The diet causes ketosis in the body which leads to rapid weight loss - as a diabetic who has experienced ketosis i can acknowledge that it leads to extremely rapid weight loss ! and then  coma.
Im surprised Integral Life Practice is including Aitkins diet in its “approved” integral practices.I think this is an undeveloped area at ILP as they are very much coming from  Shaun Phillips and his brother (who wrote the best seller “Fit for Life” ) angle which is based on body building /muscle building?

Food is such a key spiritual/transformational issue, if you read the biographies of so many of the great spiritual seekers from Gandi to Adi Da you can see an extremely disciplined attitude to noticing,recording experimenting with different foods and monitoring how it affects (all) the bodies and their associated arisings.As well as noticing how the ego craves and squeals for its desires.

I dont agree that there are any fats that are particularly good for the body ,fat is fat it clogs the arteries and makes the body function less effectievely and can lead to heart failure this includes lean meat,chicken and fish its all fat.Im not saying dont eat it im just saying its not “good” for the physical body.
And dairy is fat Milk is “designed” to turn a small calf into a 500Ilb cow rapidly - its not meant for the human body.

My favorite writers on Food are

Gabriel Cousins “Conscious Eating”

Web Site at

http://www.treeoflife.nu/gabriel.html

Micho Kushi - “The Macrobiotic Way”

And for many great articles on Health and Scientific “proof”

http://www.drmcdougall.com/

he wrote the article below.

The “Ketogenic” High-Protein Diets

There are two kinds of high-protein diets popular today: Those that limit calorie intake by causing the body to develop a metabolic state known as ketosis; and those that make stringent rules which limit the dieter's intake of food.

The “ketogenic diets” cause the body to produce ketones by severe restriction of carbohydrate intake while allowing unlimited fat and protein intake. With insufficient intake of the body's primary fuel, carbohydrate, the body turns to fats from foods and from body fat for fuel. Byproducts of this metabolism are acidic substances called ketones (acetacetic acid, B-hydroxybuteric acid, and acetone). The metabolic condition is known as ketosis. Ketosis is associated with loss of appetite, nausea, fatigue, and hypotension (lower blood pressure). The result is a decrease in food (calorie) intake. Ketosis is the key to the diet's success, by allowing the body to starve while reducing the suffering of severe hunger pangs.

This same condition, ketosis, occurs naturally when people are literally starving to death or seriously ill. During starvation this metabolic state is a kindness of nature allowing the victim to suffer much reduced pains of hunger while dying. During illness the suppression of the appetite frees the person to rest and recuperate, rather then be forced by hunger to gather and prepare food. Because ketogenic diets simulate this metabolic state seen with serious illness, I refer to them as “the make yourself sick diets.” As we will see below, another reason low-carbohydrate, high-protein diets deserve this title is they contain significant amounts of the very foods – the meats – that the American Cancer Society and the Heart Association tell us contribute to our most common causes of death and disability.

Steve

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the spiral of eating … hilarious!  … have any of you guys read “The Omnivore's Dilemma”? Food has become such an issue, and this book does a great job of breaking down what the various impacts are of how food is grown. Plus the writer is so talented. When's the last time you reread a passage in a non-fiction book on a “science” topic because it was so freakin beautifully written??? :)

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Re: Atkins diet damages blood vessels

Milk is very well regarded in Ayurveda, as you can read about here. But that doesn't necessarily mean the commercially produced, homogenized, pasturized, perhaps-not-fresh milk that we have in super markets will be. Some of it may be good for some people, though. One of the things about post-conventional dietary thinking is that it sometimes will go against the conventional on partial evidence, and then often in a cynical way.

OM Bastet, I think that's a great start! One thing I might comment is something in the third-tier section:

“My body and Self are optionally material, so it doesn't matter what or when or how I eat or don't eat. My body is nourished and renewed by the Light and Love energies it is composed of, by the vibrations of All That Is.”

The material body is still the foundation for any kind of realization, so it has to be attended to on its own terms: food, rest, medicine, sleep, exercise, etc. People with these realizations have sometimes down amazing things, including fasts of amazing lengths, so clearly they have a different relationship to the body, and there's something different about how it works, but eventually they will have to eat, and even during the fast they will begin consuming their own fat and muscle, though more slowly than the average person.

David

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I can drink raw milk with no bad effect whatsoever, which goes against everything I have experienced with commercially produced milk. But I can't afford it, so I don't drink it, and it's not necessary for a human diet, anyway, as it seems those of us who've expressed an opinion on it agree.

I stand by what I've said before, and that it that no one diet is good for everyone. I've seen people get very sick indeed on the macrobiotic diet or a vegan diet, and yet there are those who thrive on those diets. And I'll also repeat that my lab tests and subjective experience (not to mention all the science, both for and against the Atkins diet) support that there are indeed good fats and you can't have too much of them, within caloric intake guidelines. I'm not sure if you're misstating what you mean, Steve, but no human can live without fats. We can, however, survive without carbohydrates, though it's not particularly fun.

Liz

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I think a vegan diet really messed me up. That was when I was trusting my mind over my intuition, though the zone # 6 knowledge of foods is important to integrate as well.

David

PS. Also, yogurt's a very different thing than milk. Yogurt's what helped me improve after a vegan diet.

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I totally agree that for example milk is not milk is not milk, radical differences among forms and processes, and these differences impact different bodies differently!!!.
 
I would also point out that lecithin is a fat that is in every cell of our body, and that the brain is 18% one of the essential fatty acids, and without essential fatty acids, we get depressed and physically yukky, and can even die.

OTOH, we did not evolve with access to cupfuls of refined vegetable oils, and I don't think our bodies are set up to handle the massive amounts of fats and oils we ingest these days. So I guess I disagree that we CANT OVERDO on the good oils, but if we get our fats and oils from reasonably clean (toxin-free) whole foods, we are getting an essential nutrient in natural and thus healthful amounts–again depending on the individual body's allergies etc.

Also one needs to understand the “clogging” mechanism. Eskimos don't get heart disease we hear, despite all the blubber. The clogging comes from a first cause of stress that depletes vitamin C, or chronic systemic inflammation that is epidemic these days and does the same depleting. Lack of C (or other antioxidants) allows cells lining blood vessels to become rough. The blood thus cannot flow smoothly over the walls. Projections of roughness CATCH whatever is in the blood. Also I read that the body actually engages in a process of “repair” to these linings by laying down fatty plaque, like using fiberglass goop to repair a surface of a boat. So the buildup is a repair process, but itself an emergency strategy with a downside, namely, narrowing of vessels and possible breakoff of clumps of the repair material.

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Let me clarify my phrase “optionally material”  that David commented on, from my Third Tier-Teal description above. What I am about to offer is my understanding and perspective. I cannot prove it or argue it is TRUTH. I just offer as food for thought. (Argh. My subconscious made me do it.)

I mean that the folks I was describing have bodies that they re-create consciously in each moment. Kinda like what angels do when they materialize for some specific interaction in the physical world. This is what Ascended means to me. Those bodies do NOT need food, water, rest, because they do APPEAR to be physical, to our physical eyes, but they are composed of and nourished by and maintained and recreated by “the meat ye know not of,” which Jesus referred to. Food and water are simply lower-vibration, denser versions of this creative “stuff” and when a body is actually of sufficiently high vibration, even though it is functional and visible in the material world, it can still be of high enough vibration that physical food and water don't MATCH its vibration and are thus not relevant or useful.

Actually our spirits are constantly recreating our bodies the same way. The difference from what I just described is that our human self is not AWARE of the process. For these folks, they are aware and consciously choosing whether to create a dense human body at any particular time. Thus, for example, if one were to try to kill such a body by physical means, it would not “die” in the usual process and lie around dead, but simply be dematerialized by the Spirit which created it, the particular non-material Being who was condensing a portion of itself down to this level of vibration. The vibration would simply be “quickened” (the term is not coincidental) so that that particular human body-form was no longer perceptible to the human senses and did not “exist” in the material world any longer.

I believe our consciousness can and will evolve to the point where we have bodies that do NOT require food, rest, water, etc. Or, I hear from those who know more about this than I do, perhaps very minimal amounts of these.) But MEANWHILE OF COURSE OF COURSE if one is aware that the body one has DOES STILL require these things, one had best go about providing them fer shure. Fer shure.

(I believe a significant number of people alive today will evolve to this point in the not-too-distant future.)

Gee we are pretty far from Atkins, but I noticed that threads in I-I pod tend to “degenerate” into highly spiritual and philosophical topics, even if they start on a particular. And I totally mean that term in a humorous and spoofing way. I actually think the opposite: topics here quickly convert to meaningful exchanges about profound matters. [Even for example some folks co-wrote a very meaningful essay IMHO worthy of publication or wide sharing, starting from the particular of Halloween costumes!!!] Adore it.

Blessings, OM Bastet

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Re: Atkins diet damages blood vessels

A recent post in Zaadz Lounge:

    http://pods.zaadz.com/zlounge/discussions/view/205039#205039

Talks about a book written as I would describe it for those moving into a transpersonal consciousness around eating. In my schema above, this would be yellow moving into turquoise, both being Second Tier, but the first being Integral and the second being more focused upward, toward the transpersonal subtle dimensions of existence. The second would transcend and include Integral.

More food for thought. :)

Blessings, OM Bastet

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