DrClydeWilson's NUTRITION BLOG

Food for the SOUL: Eclaire's from HOME

I have been studying chemistry almost every day for 22 years since high school.  This includes 6 years in nuclear engineering in the US Navy, 3 years as an undergraduate in Flagstaff AZ, 5 years as a graduate student at Stanford, 3 years as a research fellow at UCSF, and 5 years doing public outreach through a nonprofit while teaching at Stanford and UCSF.  You would think that my entire nutritional focus would therefore be how the molecular aspects of nutrition impacts our quality of life.  But nothing could be further from the truth.

The most important aspects of quality of life involve emotional connections that lie far beyond the grasp of scientific understanding.  This includes the connection we have with our own childhood and the foods we received with love from our parents.  The cartoon movie Ratatouille demonstrated this extremely well in the scene where the food critique time-tunneled back in his mind to his childhood and was overwhelmed with emotion when eating the ratatouille made by Anatole the mouse.  You are seeing this scene re-enacted as I shove a chocolate eclaire into my mouth that my mom made for me last night.  Thank you mom, for the eclaires throughout my childhood, and for the eclaires today.  I can't thank you enough.

See the video here, below, or see my entire channel at YouTube.com/DrClydeWilson.

My Mom's Quiche: YouTube

Although the camera caught my mom dozing off (just kidding!) this QUICHE is nothing to sleep about!  My mom Jeanne (pen name Dazy) is feeding me something no one can resist: Food from home!  This quiche is made from olives, artichoke hearts, salsa, low-fat sour cream, jack cheese, parmesan, and crust.  When eating something containing refined carbs (crust) and saturated fat (cheese) just keep your portion moderate and eat it with salad or veggies.  Bon appetit!

See the video here, below, or see my channel at YouTube.com/DrClydeWilson

Ordering a Sandwich: YouTube

This is me eating a Subway sandwich.  I ordered it with "a lot of veggies", lean deli meat (nitrate preservatives come with a small cancer risk) for protein, avocado and olive oil for healthy fats, and had them scoop out the inside of the bread to keep the carbs down to a couple hundred calories per serving.  I only have a couple deli sandwiches per month and only eat the ones I enjoy; why take any health (nitrate cancer) risk whatsoever for something you don't like?!?!  Watch the video here, below, or see my channel YouTube.com/DrClydeWilson

Bodybuilder Quincy Taylor on Vegetables

I met Quincy Taylor (see his web site at www.QuincyTaylor.net or click on his photo) at Gold's Gym in Las Vegas a couple days ago.  He is the NICEST person.  Terrific personality.  I asked him about his nutrition and he said his focus is protein, carbs and vegetables.  During our discussion he said the following things about vegetables:

"Protein, carbs and vegetables work together.  They have to be together all the time."

"If you don't eat vegetables you end up in real trouble."

"I eat everything that's green."

When I said that without vegetables the carbs we eat go to fat instead of muscle, Quincy nodded with a look of profound agreement.  It was fantastic meeting this superstar in bodybuilding and upcoming star in movies.

Feeding nutrition students chocolate cake

I teach 7 nutrition classes per year: 1 in the medical school at Stanford, 1 in the medical school at UCSF, 1 in Continuing Studies at Stanford (the only course I teach that is open to the public), and 4 in the Department of Athletics at Stanford (3 of these are Introductory Nutrition, and the other is an advanced sports nutrition class).  I teach one class unrelated to nutrition: Analysis of Human Movement in the Department of Athletics at Stanford. 

On the last day of each nutrition class, I bring in my favorite chocolate cake for the students to try:  a chocolate mousse cake called "Chocolatissimo" from the Bread Garden Bakery in Berkeley.  I do this to make the point that nutrition is not only about physical health, but also about mental, emotional and social health.  In the top photo you see the first of 33 students in my Stanford Medical School course this past week heading down to try it: Maybe this will brighten them up after all the scary nutrition facts they learned.  The bottom picture is me picking up the cake at the Bread Garden in Berkeley.  Sandy (in photo) and Richard have gotten used to me coming in each quarter and helping me spike my students' blood sugar (but I do tell my students to eat salad before coming to the last class!).

What, When & Water

What you eat, when you eat, and hydration are the bottom line in nutritional health. It is the concept I end every nutrition class with.

An additional concept of secondary importance is processing, referring to food processing by the food industry, by us in our homes (e.g. cooking), and how nutrients are perceived or processed within our brain (e.g. cravings, sugar addiction, social eating pressures, habits, etc.).

Getting the BEST bread at Vital Vittles

The healthiest bread on the market that I have ever seen is made by Vital Vittles in Berkeley.  The commitment that this company has to quality is unbelievable.  It is closest thing you can get to having a mom who has a PhD in nutrition baking bread for you at home.  I just got back from picking up some (a bunch!) of bread for my 3 weeks in Las Vegas visiting my family (where they all live).  Pictures from left is Binh and his sister Huong (current owners) and Kass, the founder who's vision put the heart and soul into this company.  Read about them here.  

Where I go for my information: PubMed

The National Institutes of Health has an electronic library of all the biology and medical (including nutrition) scientific publications at its web site "PubMed".  If you click on "limits" and select "title", then the key words you type in will only bring up papers with your key word in the title.  If under the "display" drop down menu you select "abstract", all of the abstracts of the papers appear, allowing you to quickly sift through which papers are important to you.  If you display "abstract plus" you will also see a list of related papers to each listing.  AMAZING RESOURCE.  Of course, as you can tell from my blog entry yesterday, if a Cochrane paper comes up on one of my searches, that is where I start reading because Cochrane papers tend to be the most comprehensive and unbiased reviews or meta-analysis (SO impressive).  

Amazing resource: Cochrane reviews

When I am searching for the answer to a nutritional or medical question, I know that I will find the most comprehensive and unbiased review or meta-analysis of the scientific literature by The Cochrane Collaboration.  This is an international non-profit that publishes only the highest quality literature reviews.  They do not have papers on every nutritional question, but for those they have papers on, it can be considered the most up-to-date final word i.e. the closest to truth we can currently get.  I highly, highly recommend taking a look at this resource.

I'm on Twitter.com so I can update you by the minute from my cell phone!

See www.twitter.com/drclydewilson to follow what I am doing; the entries are instant messages from my phone so I can share thoughts and events with you by the minute.  Really cool!