A big fat lie

A coworker forwarded this fascinating New York Times article this morning.  This is probably one of the more interesting news articles I've read in a good long while and it's got huge implications.  It's long, for sure, but well worth taking the time to read all the way through.

What if It's All Been a Big Fat Lie?

If the members of the American medical establishment were to have a collective find-yourself-standing-naked-in-Times-Square-type nightmare, this might be it. They spend 30 years ridiculing Robert Atkins, author of the phenomenally-best-selling ''Dr. Atkins' Diet Revolution'' and ''Dr. Atkins' New Diet Revolution,'' accusing the Manhattan doctor of quackery and fraud, only to discover that the unrepentant Atkins was right all along. Or maybe it's this: they find that their very own dietary recommendations -- eat less fat and more carbohydrates -- are the cause of the rampaging epidemic of obesity in America. Or, just possibly this: they find out both of the above are true.

The article goes through a very long and detailed description of how some bad science in the 50s, 60s and 70s led one of our heroes, George McGovern, to lead a senate panel that concluded we needed to push public policy in the direction of reducing fat in our diet.  This whole story reads like a train wreck just itching to happen.

What's amazing to me is that we initially actually had it right.  All the way back in the 1800 we knew that high carbs led to obesity:

In ''The Physiology of Taste,'' for instance, an 1825 discourse considered among the most famous books ever written about food, the French gastronome Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin says that he could easily identify the causes of obesity after 30 years of listening to one ''stout party'' after another proclaiming the joys of bread, rice and (from a ''particularly stout party'') potatoes.

I find it particularly amazing just how little science there actually was behind the original recommendations.  This was a classic case of changing the facts to fit the theory rather than changing the theory to fit the facts, as Howard Dean used to call it.  It is also a classic example of how quickly and completely groupthink can completely take over and cause a massive train wreck.  This part is especially interesting:

What's more, the number of misconceptions propagated about the most basic research can be staggering. Researchers will be suitably scientific describing the limitations of their own experiments, and then will cite something as gospel truth because they read it in a magazine. The classic example is the statement heard repeatedly that 95 percent of all dieters never lose weight, and 95 percent of those who do will not keep it off. This will be correctly attributed to the University of Pennsylvania psychiatrist Albert Stunkard, but it will go unmentioned that this statement is based on 100 patients who passed through Stunkard's obesity clinic during the Eisenhower administration.

Where the article gets really interesting, though, is in the explanation of just how wrong all of this science was and in what ways.  We seemed to have no understanding at all of how the body processes fat and carbohydrates and did the exact opposite of what we should have.  The very thing we were doing to reduce heart disease was actually causing it.

But it gets even weirder than that. Foods considered more or less deadly under the low-fat dogma turn out to be comparatively benign if you actually look at their fat content. More than two-thirds of the fat in a porterhouse steak, for instance, will definitively improve your cholesterol profile (at least in comparison with the baked potato next to it); it's true that the remainder will raise your L.D.L., the bad stuff, but it will also boost your H.D.L. The same is true for lard. If you work out the numbers, you come to the surreal conclusion that you can eat lard straight from the can and conceivably reduce your risk of heart disease.

It reminded me a hell of a lot of the scene in Woody Allen's Sleeper:

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.

•  Please tip your servers

  For what it's worth, I tend not to eat a lot of carbs but am not on a diet.  For whatever reason I have just never been a huge fan of bread and potatoes and such.  I tend to eat a lot of Asian food and I also tend to go for wraps rather than regular sandwiches.  I also tend to eat a lot of green things and not a lot of sweet things.  I probably also am a bit more active than most people - I walk a LOT.  I've been pretty stable at 145 lbs and a 28 in waist since high school.

  by Sean Robertson on Fri Jun 01, 2007 at 12:05:01 PM PDT

•  Holy crap

  Just realized the article was 5 years old.  LOL  It's still worth reading, though, so I'll leave it up.

  by Sean Robertson on Fri Jun 01, 2007 at 12:05:37 PM PDT

•  After twenty years, learned this the hard way

  by bunny99 on Fri Jun 01, 2007 at 12:29:46 PM PDT

•  Obesity is a by-product of a poor diet and it's

  precisely because most poor people are eating carbs like pasta & bread as they happen to be the cheapest items in supermarkets. Elect a proper geovernment that can look after its people, not one that is wasting valuable resources for a stupid and senseless war.

  by Asinus Asinum Fricat on Fri Jun 01, 2007 at 12:34:41 PM PDT

•  the benign condition of ketosis

  The low fat gurus tried to make a low carb regime sound dangerous because under it more of a person's energy comes from ketone bodies than from sugar. They succeeded in this because ketosis sounds close to ketoacidosis, a truly dangerous condition that diabetics can enter if they are metabolically unbalanced. However we have practical, on the ground evidence that ketosis is not harmful because for decades the only treatment for epilepsy was a ketogenic diet. Kids grew up and flourished on a low carb diet that was more extreme than Atkins.

  I personally need to stay low on the carbs - I inherited the predisposition to diabetes and this helps ward that off. If you think about the diet we ate for a million years before agriculture, it is obvious that our bodies are well designed to live in ketosis.

  by Wee Mama on Fri Jun 01, 2007 at 12:37:39 PM PDT

•  My mother told me years ago that the only

  man that could support me was a butcher, so I married one.

  I had always eaten a lot of meat, vegetables, little starch.

  In the 90's I bought into the idea that maybe I did eat too much meat, and decided to modify my diet.  I started eating more carbs, and my weight went thru the roof.  Even after I went back to plan one, I had a hard time dropping the weight back off.

  Just had a physical a few months ago, now in my 60's, I have NO measurable health risks......none, nadda.

  by importer on Fri Jun 01, 2007 at 12:43:41 PM PDT

•  I got the worst dietary habits you'll ever see

  I never eat breakfast. I often eat a very large serving of one thing (no balanced diet here), and some times I go up to 48 hours without eating anything at all

  I snack on hershey bars and M&Ms whenever I feel like it

  I couldn't tell a carbhydrate from a fire hydrant

  oh, and did I mention that I weigh about 180 pounds ???

  been that way for about 25 years

  what's the point ???

  I don't know

  but all this diet stuff is a total mystery to me anyway

  by Zapp Branigan on Fri Jun 01, 2007 at 01:06:30 PM PDT

•  More info on this at the

  Weston A. Price Foundation

  I'm invited to a potluck tomorrow with some Mennonites (I'm Jewish, gulp) and the requirement for the dish is that it adhere to WAPF principles. I expected to find recipes, or something. All I can tell is that it's traditional, heavy on the meat and lard. Since the only thing we have coming out of our garden right now is salad fixin's, that's what I'm bringing, with plenty of olive oil in the Caesar dressing.

  Years ago I adhered to an extremely low-fat diet for several years. I was a competitive athlete at the time, which confounds this. I didn't have a weight problem, but I had the not uncommon amenorrhoea, and developed adrenal insufficiency and hypothyroid. I think the lack of fat was the cause of my body not being able to synthesize the hormones.

  Thanks for posting this.

  by Halcyon on Fri Jun 01, 2007 at 03:22:38 PM PDT