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Public Health: For decades, the federal government has been telling people to cut fats and increase carbs in their diet, relying on supposedly settled nutrition science. A new study shows that the advice has been completely wrong.
In Woody Allen's 1973 comedy, Sleeper, his character wakes up 200 years after routine surgery, and two doctors discuss his health status. The conversation goes like this:
Dr. Melik: This morning for breakfast he requested something called "wheat germ, organic honey and tiger's milk."
Dr. Aragon: (chuckling) Oh, yes. Those are the charmed substances that some years ago were thought to contain life-preserving properties.
Dr. Melik: You mean there was no deep fat? No steak or cream pies or ... hot fudge?
Dr. Aragon: Those were thought to be unhealthy ... precisely the opposite of what we now know to be true.
Dr. Melik: Incredible.
Incredible, indeed, since it turns out that Allen had it exactly right.
That's the conclusion of a massive new study published in Lancet that followed 135,335 people in 18 countries on five continents.
The study found that consumption of fat was associated with a lower risk of mortality, while consumption of carbohydrates was associated with a higher risk.
It found that the kind of fat didn't matter when it came to heart disease, and that saturated fat consumption was inversely related to strokes.
The researchers say, ever so politely, that "dietary guidelines should be reconsidered in light of these findings."
This research adds to a growing body of evidence that the government's war on fats has been dangerously misguided, if not deadly.
For example, a 2010 study in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, after looking at years of research, concluded that "there is no significant evidence for concluding that dietary saturated fat is associated with an increased risk of coronary heart disease."
Other studies have found that whole milk lowers the risk of obesity.
Yet the government still admonishes against saturated fats and tells people to drink skim milk.
Meanwhile, government's push for a low-fat, high-carb diets has contributed to the explosion in obesity in the U.S.
The national obesity rate had been relatively flat between 1960 and 1980 — the first year the USDA issued its nutrition guidelines. But less than a decade after 1980, obesity rates shot up from 15% to 23%.
But don't expect the USDA to "reconsider" its guidelines, much less admit it was wrong, based on the new findings, since doing so would undermine the government's credibility.
This is the problem when science becomes politicized. And it's a prime example of why the public should be extremely wary of any claims that science is "settled" on any issue as complicated as health, nutrition, or, say, predicted changes in global climate 100 years from nowYou can find the editorial here.
1 comment:
My son had a heart condition diagnosed when he was a child. The family diet went low cholesterol, low fat, and pump up the carbs. I ended up with high cholesterol, hypertension and eventually type II diabetes.
My doctor now recommended a no sugar, low carb diet and that I eat two eggs daily, switch over from the heart healthy margarine to butter, and drink a glass of whole milk daily. I was also to eat 5 to 6 helpings of vegetables.
After a year of that diet I had lost 25 lbs. My cholesterol was low enough my meds were cut back, my blood pressure was about the same, and my A1C was good enough my diabetes meds were also reduced. I have slowed with my weight loss but my meds are controlling everything at the reduced rates.
High carbs, low fat foods, high salt/suger, and artificial foods are killing the population.
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