An excellent article by Gary Taubes from Science Magazine which is the article quoted by my post from Barry Groves website, thoroughly readable.

 

 The Soft Science of Dietary Fat

Gary Taubes


When the U.S. Surgeon General's Office set off in 1988 to write the definitive report on the dangers of dietary fat, the scientific task appeared straightforward. Four years earlier, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) had begun advising every American old enough to walk to restrict fat intake, and the president of the American Heart Association (AHA) had told Time magazine that if everyone went along, "we will have [atherosclerosis] conquered" by the year 2000. The Surgeon General's Office itself had just published its 700-page landmark "Report on Nutrition and Health," declaring fat the single most unwholesome component of the American diet.


All of this was apparently based on sound science. So the task before the project officer was merely to gather that science together in one volume, have it reviewed by a committee of experts, which had been promptly established, and publish it. The project did not go smoothly, however. Four project officers came and went over the next decade. "It consumed project officers," says Marion Nestle, who helped launch the project and now runs the nutrition and food studies department at New York University (NYU). Members of the oversight committee saw drafts of an early chapter or two, criticized them vigorously, and then saw little else.

Finally, in June 1999, 11 years after the project began, the Surgeon General's Office circulated a letter, authored by the last of the project officers, explaining that the report would be killed. There was no other public announcement and no press release. The letter explained that the relevant administrators "did not anticipate fully the magnitude of the additional external expertise and staff resources that would be needed." In other words, says Nestle, the subject matter "was too complicated." Bill Harlan, a member of the oversight committee and associate director of the Office of Disease Prevention at NIH, says "the report was initiated with a preconceived opinion of the conclusions," but the science behind those opinions was not holding up. "Clearly the thoughts of yesterday were not going to serve us very well."

Why the Blog?

This blog is my record of my journey from ignorance to enlightenment about the real truth about food and health, and why what is promulgated as 'healthy' is actually false and is the cause behind modern ill health.

A number of years ago I had a complete health assessment with BUPA (a British private healthcare company) and was diagnosed as 'pre-diabetic'.

Or in other words, if I did nothing, I would be injecting insulin within 10 years.

The advice was to cut the saturated fat and increase my consumption of 'heart healthy' whole-grains.

As a guy with a Financial background who has worked in both industry and public sector, this seemed strange to me as when we have problems in business we always go back to 'root cause'.

So if we have lost money on a deal, we need to understand 'why' so that we do not repeat it, whereas, if we have made more money than we expected, let's understand 'why' so we may be able to repeat it.

So, my thought process was this;

1. My body has a problem in that it has a higher fasting blood sugar level, because it is becoming insulin resistant.
2. You are now asking me to increase my consumption of a food category (Carbohydrates) that is guaranteed to spike my blood sugar, thus triggering further insulin release, thus increasing the risk that my body will become ever more resistant than it has been to the insulin release;
3. Thus Type 2 Diabetes is virtually guaranteed under this advice.
4. Say 'hello' to the products of Drug Companies (go figure!).

I spent some two years researching the subject matter, whilst busily consuming beans, pasta, brown rice, etc and cutting back on grass-fed butter, red meats, eggs etc - the result? - no weight loss and fasting blood sugar had not changed.

I then found Martin Berkhans web-site, which began to open my eyes to what I felt instinctively to be 'right'. Then I read Dr John Briffa's excellent book "Waist Disposal", and in reading his blog you see how he has also been on a voyage of discovery on what actually contribute to 'whole health' and has arrived as the same view as people such as Gary Taubes.

The views across the spectrum of the 'low carb' community are wide and disparate, and as a 'finance guy' I have been always trying to reduce the guidance down to a singe cogent phrase. As a UK trained Accountant we believe in 'principles' as opposed to 'rules' as they are more encompassing, and leave less room 'for manouvre' than simple rules.

So despite some of the focus on aspects of certain carb's, (see the excellent Dr William Davis in his crusade against Wheat) my view is this;

Avoid all and any foodstuffs that will cause a significant insulin release.

Why?

Insulin release is the primary indicator that blood sugar has risen to a level that is contrary to human health, and that the resulting blood sugar hike and related elevated levels of insulin  will cause irreparable damage to certain tissues within the body leading to many of the modern 'diseases' which aren't actually diseases;

• Type 2 diabetes
• Heart Disease
• Stroke
• Polycistic Ovarian Disease
• Sleep apnea
• Cancers
• Dementia
• Alzheimers
• Macular Degeneration
• Coronary Artery Disease
• Arthritis
• and many more

From an evolutionary standpoint, we evolved over 2.4 million years to eat what we could catch or gather, and that did not include rich sources of carbohydrates as they did not exist.

But we could, infrequently, access rich sources of carbs/sugar - fruit in autumn/fall, or wild honey. We evolved to handle the windfall of sugar by having a mechanism to grab the increased blood sugar and tuck it away for later - namely shoving it into the fat cells.

Fast forward a couple of millenia, and what do we find?

Ape decendants who evolved to handle a blood sugar 'spike' maybe 1 month out of twelve having to deal with it every day due to a diet full of 'heart healthy, low fat' breakfast cereals, low fat lunchs of pasta, evening meals of lean protein with potatoes etc etc.

No wonder we are all fat - the daily insulin release is trying to shove all of the blood sugar into fat storage.

As someone said - carbs drive blood sugar, blood sugar drives insulin, and insulin drives fat storage.

How do we reverse this?

The counter hormone to insulin is Glucagon, when insulin levels are low, Glucagon levels rise and trigger the release from the liver of stored glycogen stores, but also the presence of glucogon (and the absence of insulin) allows the process of Lipolysis whereby the body is able to mobilise fat stores to be burned by the body as fuel, Glucagon is our friend.

Don't like those fatty thighs?, got a beer belly?, double chins ? - adopt a diet that enables you to keep insulin levels low (or lowish) and enables you to eat your own fat stores.

See the attached diagram from Endocrineweb.com




How do we do this? - eliminate all foods with a high Glycemic Load (which is basically the Glycemic Index expressed in real terms of impact on the body).

i.e. Water Melon has a GI of (say) 72, but a GL of 4 as it is not a dense carbohydrate.

More here http://www.mendosa.com/gilists.htm