Skip to Content.
Sympa Menu

livingontheland - [Livingontheland] Fat or Carbs: Which Is Worse?

livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org

Subject: Healthy soil and sustainable growing

List archive

Chronological Thread  
  • From: "Tradingpost" <tradingpost@lobo.net>
  • To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [Livingontheland] Fat or Carbs: Which Is Worse?
  • Date: Sun, 04 Jul 2010 21:30:45 -0600


[and this adds great support to the move to grow your own, cook from basic
foods, and eat low on the food chain]

"Through their direct effects on insulin and blood sugar, refined
carbohydrates, starches and sugars are the dietary cause of coronary heart
disease and diabetes. They are the most likely dietary causes of cancer,
Alzheimer's disease and other chronic diseases of modern civilization."
-- Dr. Andrew Weil


Fat or Carbs: Which Is Worse?
Dr. Andrew Weil
Founder and director of the Arizona Center for Integrative Medicine
Posted: July 2, 2010 08:00 AM
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/andrew-weil-md/healthy-eating_b_629422.html

In my home state of Arizona, a restaurant named "Heart Attack Grill" does
brisk business in Chandler, a Phoenix suburb. Waitresses in nurse-themed
uniforms with miniskirts deliver single, double, triple and quadruple "bypass
burgers" (featuring one, two, three and four hefty patties, respectively)
dripping with cheese, to patrons who wear hospital gowns that double as bibs.
The motto: "Taste Worth Dying For!"

Now, there is much for a medical doctor (as opposed to "Dr. Jon," the
stethoscope-wearing, burger-flipping owner) to dislike in this establishment.
If you visit, I implore you to steer clear of the white-flour buns, the
sugary sodas and the piles of "flatliner fries" that accompany the burgers in
the restaurant's signature bedpan plates. This is precisely the sort of
processed-carbohydrate-intensive meal that, via this and other fast-food
establishments, is propelling the epidemic of obesity and diabetes in America.

But the Grill's essential, in-your-face concept is that the saturated fat in
beef clogs arteries, and hamburger meat is consequently among the most
heart-damaging foods a human being can consume. As the Grill literature puts
it, "The menu names imply coronary bypass surgery, and refer to the danger of
developing atherosclerosis from the food's high proportion of saturated
fat..." Aimed at a certain crowd, this is clever, edgy marketing. Some people
enjoy flirting with death.

The problem? It's not true. The saturated fat lauded in this menu won't kill
you. It may even be the safest element of the meal.

Saturated fat is made of fatty acid chains that cannot incorporate additional
hydrogen atoms. It is often of animal origin, and is typically solid at room
temperature. Its relative safety has been a theme in nutrition science for at
least the last decade, but in my view, a significant exoneration took place
in March of this year. An analysis that combined the results of 21 studies,
published in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition found that "saturated
fat was not associated with an increased risk" of coronary heart disease,
stroke or coronary vascular disease.

Although this was not a true study, it was a big analysis. It aggregated
information from nearly 348,000 participants, most of whom were healthy at
the start of the studies. They were surveyed about their dietary habits and
followed for five to 23 years. In that time, 11,000 developed heart disease
or had a stroke. Researcher Ronald M. Krauss of the Children's Hospital
Oakland Research Center in California found that there was no difference in
the risk of heart disease or stroke between people with the lowest and
highest intakes of saturated fat.

This contradicts nutritional dogma we've heard repeated since 1970, when a
physiologist named Ancel Keys published his "Seven Countries" study that
showed animal fat consumption strongly predicted heart attack risk. His
conclusions influenced US dietary guidelines for decades to come, but other
researchers pointed out that if 21 other countries had been included in that
study, the association that Keys observed would have been seen as extremely
weak.

Meanwhile, in the years since, there has been increasing evidence that added
sweeteners in foods may contribute to heart disease. Sweeteners appear to
lower levels of HDL cholesterol (the higher your HDL, the better) and raise
triglycerides (the lower the better). That's according to a study of more
than 6,000 adults by Emory University and the Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention, and published in April in The Journal of the American Medical
Association.

People who received at least 25 percent of their daily calories from any type
of sweetener had more than triple the normal risk of having low HDL levels
than those who consumed less than five percent of their calories from
sweeteners. Beyond that, those whose sugar intake made up 17.5 percent or
more of daily calories were 20 to 30 percent more likely to have high
triglycerides.

Science writer Gary Taubes has done more than anyone else to deconstruct the
Keys mythos and replace it with a more sensible view, informed by better
science. I recommend his book, Good Calories, Bad Calories: Challenging the
Conventional Wisdom on Diet, Weight Control and Disease. It presents more
than 600 pages of evidence that lead to these conclusions:

1. Dietary fat, whether saturated or not, is not a cause of obesity, heart
disease or any other chronic disease of civilization.

2. The problem is the carbohydrates in the diet, their effect on insulin
secretion, and thus the hormonal regulation of homeostasis -- the entire
harmonic ensemble of the human body. The more easily digestible and refined
the carbohydrates, the greater the effect on our health, weight and
well-being.

3. Sugars -- sucrose and high-fructose corn syrup specifically -- are
particularly harmful, probably because the combination of fructose and
glucose simultaneously elevates insulin levels while overloading the liver
with carbohydrates.

4. Through their direct effects on insulin and blood sugar, refined
carbohydrates, starches and sugars are the dietary cause of coronary heart
disease and diabetes. They are the most likely dietary causes of cancer,
Alzheimer's disease and other chronic diseases of modern civilization.

My point here is not to promote meat consumption. I've written here
previously about humanitarian and ecological reasons to avoid a meat-centric
diet, especially if the meat comes from factory-farmed animals. Instead, my
purpose is to emphasize that we would be much healthier as a nation if we
stopped worrying so much about fats, and instead made a concerted effort to
avoid processed, quick-digesting carbohydrates -- especially added sugars.
The average American consumes almost 22 teaspoons of sugars that are added to
foods each day. This obscene amount is the principal driver of the
"diabesity" epidemic, sharply increases coronary risks and promises to make
this generation of children the first in American history that will die
sooner than their parents.

My Anti-Inflammatory Food Pyramid emphasizes whole or minimally processed
foods -- especially vegetables -- with low glycemic loads. That means
consuming these foods keeps blood sugar levels relatively stable, which in
turn lowers both fat deposition and heart-disease risk. If you make a
concerted effort to eat such foods and avoid sugar, you'll soon lose your
taste for it. The natural sugars in fruits and vegetables will provide all
the sweetness you desire.

While saturated fat appears to have no effect on heart health, eating too
much can crowd out vitamins, minerals and fiber needed for optimal health. So
I recommend sticking to a "saturated fat budget" which can be "spent" on an
occasional steak (from organic, grass-fed, grass-finished cattle, see
LocalHarvest for sources), some butter, or, as I do, high quality, natural
cheese a few times a week.

Andrew Weil, M.D., invites you to join the conversation: become a fan on
Facebook, follow him on Twitter, and check out his Daily Health Tips Blog.
Dr. Weil is the founder and director of the Arizona Center for Integrative
Medicine and the editorial director of www.DrWeil.com.






Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.

Top of Page