For the last 30 to 40 years we have been fed a line about food. Not surprisingly this time window has coincided with the movement to subsidize and promote corn as the number one food source in the U.S. and the development and use of high-fructose corn syrup in almost every processed food you can think of.
And that same period has seen a huge increase in obesity (including child obesity) and diabetes. Of course everyone knows (or thought) diabetes was a fat peoples’ disease. It’s turning out that, perhaps, nothing is farther from the truth and, in most cases, fat isn’t simply about eating (or even over-eating!) and it isn’t “calories in, calories out” either. There’s more to weight gain than either dieting or exercise could ever fix.
Here are a few interesting videos and articles to take a look at:
• Sugar: The Bitter Truth – a presentation by Robert H. Lustig, M.D., Professor of Pediatrics, Division of Endocrinology, University of California, San Francisco.
• The Quality of Calories – What makes us fat and why nobody seems to care. A presentation by Gary Taubes of the New York Times magazine. Be sure to see all 10 parts!
• Common Allergy Drug Reduces Obesity and Diabetes in Mice – news release from Harvard Medical School about a paper published in July 2009.
• Abstract of a paper on Meta-analysis of prospective cohort studies evaluating the association of saturated fat with cardiovascular disease as posted by the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.
How did we get on this crazy “no fat is good fat” track in the first place? Ancel Keys (1904 – 2004) was the American scientist who studied the influence of diet on health and upon whose published results the position on reducing fat in our diets was formulated and on which nearly nearly all subsequent positions have been based — without further research or conformation of the results.
In particular, Keys examined the epidemiology of cardiovascular disease and hypothesised that different kinds of dietary fat had different effects — mostly negative — on health. He concluded that saturated fats, as found in milk, meat, and processed dairy products, have adverse effects which are opposite to those beneficial effects of unsaturated fats in vegetable oils.
That these same unsaturated fats and oils are actually found in meats to a much greater extent than Dr. Keys report lead to the truth being obscured for a 20-year period starting around 1985, during which all dietary fats were considered unhealthy. This was driven by an entrenched belief that all dietary fats cause obesity and cancer
The kicker is that when his work was finally, and carefully, examined it was discovered that he had faked results and/or cherry-picked only those that supported his original hypothesis. Today we know that low fat diets do not counter-act obesity and the conection between dietary fats and cancer, if it exists at all, cannot be substantiated.
When Lora and I were diagnosed with diabetes Lora decided that severe changes were needed in our diet and she began researching the subject. Fortunately other factors also prevented us from attending (to the chagrin of our doctor!) standard diabetes diet education sessions which, as it turns out, a built upon a very flawed set of premises.
Within just one year, following the very acceptable diet Lora designed for us, our diabetes was at pre-diabetic “normal” levels and our cholesterol, including triglyceride levels, was well within normal range. The fact that our diet was rich in whole milk, cheese, eggs, and meat (including bacon almost every day) came as a complete surprise to our doctor.
I won’t publish our diet because, although it worked extremely well for us, we are not in a position to recommend it to anyone. If your diet isn’t working and/or you have diabetes which is not responding, I do challenge you to question what you are being told. This doesn’t mean disagree with it or ignore or refuse treatment. It means examine, research and ask!