On Hold with Atchka! and Michelle Allison

Michelle Allison (aka The Fat Nutritionist) is a BAMF.

Not only does she educate people on how not to lose your fucking mind while trying to feed yourself and your family, she does so with healthy blend of wit and grace and charm, smothered in sass and deep-fried in awesome.

I admire her greatly and I was thrilled when she agreed to an interview, which I couldn’t wait to post with Ellyn Satter, one of her mentors.

And not only did she permit an interview, she let me ask her stupid question after stupid question and explained everything in way that even I could understand.

I have to say that I felt pretty stupid after this interview because I mention that cheap food is the “fifth column” of social security, or something to that effect. I know what I meant in my head, but I sure as hell didn’t mean fifth column.

Also, this interview has some… shall we say… audiosynchrasies. Michelle was using Skype and at times there was a lag, which I could definitely hear, but hoped was not recorded. So, as I’m asking questions, my voice is echoing back to me and fucking with me head. It also made the times where we both say something a bit difficult to hear, so I apologize for that. Plus, there’s a little hiccup at the beginning because GarageBand hates me.

Anyway, I asked Michelle a followup question regarding high fructose corn syrup because I felt like skeptics would definitely have pressed that issue further, and I want to play devil’s advocate when possible so that critics are at least partially addressed.

So, I wrote this to Michelle:

In our conversation on HFCS, you asked how often people really consume HFCS in products and gave a teaspoon of barbecue sauce as an example. It sort of sounds like you don’t think HFCS is all that prevalent, but it’s in virtually all processed foods (especially frozen ones, as it prevents freezerburn (I think… I read about it somewhere in something)), including breads (they help with browning). So, someone (like myself) who consistently eats processed foods is consuming a significant amount of HFCS and I was wondering if you would change your answer or revise it in some way to reflect that.

And she responded:

The thing is, if we’re going to talk “a lot” or “a little,” it would actually help to look at specific numbers. Unfortunately, that’s pretty damn hard to do given the way food labeling works. Sugars are merely listed as sugars, and are not broken down into different sources of sugar.

Even if you check the ingredients, you’re only getting a rough approximation of how much of a given ingredient is in a food based on how far down on the list it is.

So even if we closely analyzed the daily diet (or several days’ worth of diet records) of a specific individual, the HFCS amount would be unknown, unless you could get specific info on every single food that contains it from the manufacturers. And I’m guessing that would be a long-shot, probably.

To sum up… perhaps there is reason for caution, and perhaps there is reason to avoid HFCS in certain products where we know it is the only or primary sweetener (like pop), but I still think there is little or no reason for panic, or to severely reduce the amount of variety in one’s diet for the sake of attempting to avoid it.

You could easily drive yourself CUHRAAAZY attempting to avoid an ingredient that is so ubiquitous. In my opinion, it is better to press for reform of the food industry (like they did in the case of trans fats), but that can likely only be done if there is good evidence to do so. I am not confident such evidence exists.

Then again, they managed to get food companies to reduce a whole whack of sodium recently, and as far as I can tell, it’s not based on good (or any) evidence of benefit for the general population. So what the hell do I know.

Michelle is awesome.

Listen to the interview here.