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.