“[Eating less] causes the condition it is meant to cure. The more that we endure cycles of dieting, the more our bodies become trained to seek out food, slow down vital functions, and conserve built-in energy in the form of body fat.” – Geoffrey Cannon, Author
“All dieters share this same sad story of weight loss and regain. It’s a virtual guarantee. The cycle has been scientifically established, and its truth has been forged in the tears of millions of dieters. Yet nutritional authorities continue to preach that caloric reduction will lead to nirvana of permanent weight loss. In what universe do they live?” – Jason Fung, The Obesity Code: Unlocking the Secrets of Weight Loss
By Richard Tardif
In the 1950s, it was hypothesized and then promoted by Dr. Ancel Keys that it was saturated fat responsible for the climbing rates of heart disease, a fear mongering medical condition of its time. In turn, the near collective idea of science, was to win the war on heart disease and the best scientific advice, which was considered the best advice at the time, was to cut out the traditional bacon and eggs breakfast, along with most other saturated fats, and increase carbohydrates. We demonized fat, and lionized the carbs.
The anti-fat philosophy was simple. Don’t eat it. Saturated fat became the enemy. Carbohydrates became our allies, stacking up in our cupboards, and we collectively went into a honeymoon phase. It wasn’t so much a lie, but a mistake science and government committed to – and it’s led to obesity, and we continued to simultaneously follow the new guidelines. The thing is, heart disease among North Americans increased.
Ancel Keys was a Harvard-trained physiologist and epidemiologist. He did some research on human starvation in the mid-20th century before moving on to study heart disease for which he is most famous. By the time Keys made the cover of Time magazine on January 13, 1961, Westerners had already been introduced to the idea saturated fats were clogging their arteries and eventually leading to heart disease. So, less fat was the answer to heart disease. The idea began so grounded in science that no one bothered to fund studies that may prove otherwise.
What was actually happening was also simple. Those who reduce fat tend to replace it with carb-heavy products like bread, pasta and white rice. Snacks were marketed as great for you, packaged and choked with sugar, sugar being the first known fat replacer, because fat is actually tasty, and no one would eat anything unless it had some taste. Ultimately, this seeming revelation to eat carb-heavy products in place of saturated fats was one of the biggest nutritional mistakes in history.
Real foods would be increasingly replaced over the next five decades by the processed fat replacers, steering us without a braking system toward today’s high levels of obesity, increasing rates of Type 2 Diabetes, especially in our children, and towards uncontainable increases of chronic diseases: Heart disease, stroke, high blood pressure, some cancers, gallbladder disease and gallstones, osteoarthritis, gout, and breathing problems, such as sleep apnea and asthma, to name a few.
Let’s just eat in moderation?
Richard Tardif is a personal fitness trainer, author, and an award-winning journalist writing teaching about health and wellness. Richard’s first book Stop the Denial: A Case for Embracing the Truth about Fitness, challenges, surprises, and inspires you to embrace a fitness lifestyle that will work in achieving your individual goals.
