Healthy Eating Advice! Now there is a great mine of detail where the devil hides.In the 1960s-70s it was eat less saturated fat, salt and sugar to avoid atherosclerosis, or heart disease. In the 2000s it is eat less saturated fat, salt and sugar and exercise more to combat obesity.
The incontrovertible evidence emerging from the past 50 years is that The Official Healthy Eating Advice in Britain and in the USA since the 1950s has contributed to the rise in obesity, heart disease, hypertension and diabetes among the populations of both countries. This is a bold statement that requires a serious examination of its validity.
Given either the pre WW2 or the immediate post war data referring to the incidence of obesity, heart disease and diabetes –take your pick – a distinct rise in the numbers occurred from the 1960s and has grown rapidly since then, according to the health authorities in both the USA and Britain, verified by the World Health Organisation.
What can be the cause of these developments? What developments have occurred which may have a causal role in this?
The first event has taken place soon after the United Nations stated concern in the 1950s that the world’s population may not be fed adequately if we feed our animals with grains and then eat the animals.
This event was the publication of research result by Dr. Ancel Keys of the USA that consuming animal fats, saturated fats, has a link with heart disease due to their cholesterol content. Dr Ancel Keys examined data from 18 countries, selected 6 and concluded that there was a co-relation between fat consumption in these 6 countries and the incidence of heart disease there. This report resulted in an avalanche of other scientific reports from all parts of the world, linking saturated fat with heart disease. The war on cholesterol was launched world wide.
The obvious advice was born. Eat less saturated fat, salt and sugar to avoid atherosclerosis, or heart disease. Use and consume only polyunsaturated fat. Better still, use carbohydrates, or starches, as the main source or energy in your diet.
At the same time serious marketing took place for margarine, a hydrogenated polyunsaturated spread, developed during WW2 in the States. During the following decades, right up to our days, these impressions prevail in the minds of the population.
When you look into the detail (where the devil lies) it has turned out that the good Dr Keys only looked at the fats available for consumption in the 6 countries and not what was actually consumed and, the data from the other 12 countries did not support his argument.
Dr Keys also referred to a study involving over 200 dead soldiers who were subjected to port mortem examination and were found to have very high levels of cholesterol in their bodies. It was assumed that this situation has arisen from the diet these soldiers have consumed. What those who supported this theory ignored was that the primary function of cholesterol in the body is to form cell walls, besides creating bile acid. It is enough to startle someone suddenly to create extra cholesterol in their blood stream – the fight or flight syndrome. Extra cholesterol is synthesised in the body if there is a danger of injury, ready to form new cells in a healing process. These dead
soldiers were probably frightened out of their wits before dying, producing a very high level of cholesterol. So much for scientific understanding of cholesterol in the 1950s!
Two other vital factors have been and still are ignored by the promoters of the Healthy Eating Advice.
(1) The human body creates saturated fat when storing energy in case famine arrives. Thus, saturated fat is the most effective for energy conversion in human metabolism, and,
(2) Polyunsaturated fats contain a very high proportion of linoleic acid, a substance that was used in spare parts surgery as immune system suppressant to prevent organ rejection. They only stopped using it when it was proved that this concentration of linoleic acid causes cancer. Besides, when polyunsaturated fats are heated they produce a high level of trans fats.
That is the case even these days, despite the fact that Dr Ancel Keys, himself has said much later that his report was proven to be wrong. Several decades of consumption of polyunsaturated fats resulted in the increase in the incidence of hypertension and heart disease – even cancer.
The advisors promoting their version of Healthy Eating went much further. They promoted carbohydrates in favour of fats as sources of energy in food, due to the fact that carbohydrates represent half the calories of fats and contain no cholesterol. True. Unfortunately, this advice ignores another vital fact – the detail again - that, with the exception of a situation of acute hunger, glucose, or blood sugar is metabolised from carbohydrates only and it is the excess glucose in the blood that is transformed into body fat by insulin in the human body.
This process does not take place if fat is used as the main source of energy in food as fat creates ketone bodies as sources of energy. Any excess of these are removed from the body.
Carbohydrates, such as bread, cakes, pasta, potatoes, rice, are moorish. They also metabolise fast in the body. They turn into glucose too quick to be used as energy in normal situation. An insulin dump into the blood stream clears the glucose out, depositing it as fat. The person feels hungry again, reaching for more food, probably a sandwich or cake – more carbohydrates. The cycle begins again. The person creates fat at the same time as feeling hungry. A prolonger process of forcing the pancreas to produce insulin frequently leads to disorder of one kind or another, commonly referred to as Diabetes 1 or Diabetes 2.
Most of these facts were known by an average GP in the 1940s. Modern health professionals have been educated under the glass ceiling of the phoney war on cholesterol and it consequent Healthy Eating Advice.
But the GPs of the 1940s did not seek research grants from multinational company’s who produce cures for hypertension, heart disease and diabetes.
I would like to quote from a heart surgeon who performed over 5000 heart surgeries and has seen the actual evidence of the consequences of Healthy Eating Advice. Dr. Dwight Lundell is the past Chief of Staff and Chief of Surgery at Banner Heart Hospital, Mesa, AZ. Here it is what he has written:
“We physicians with all our training, knowledge and authority often acquire a rather large ego that tends to make it difficult to admit we are wrong. So, here it is. I freely admit to being wrong. As a heart surgeon with 25 years performing over 5,000 open-heart surgeries, today is my day to right the wrong with medical and scientific fact.
I trained for many years with other prominent physicians labeled “opinion makers.”
Bombarded with scientific literature, continually attending education seminars, we opinion makers insisted heart disease resulted from the simple fact of elevated blood cholesterol.
The only accepted therapy was prescribing medications to lower cholesterol and a diet that severely restricted fat intake. The latter of course we insisted would lower cholesterol and heart disease. Deviations from these recommendations were considered heresy and could quite possibly result in malpractice.
It Is Not Working!
These recommendations are no longer scientifically or morally defensible. The discovery a few years ago that inflammation in the artery wall is the real cause of heart disease is slowly leading to a paradigm shift in how heart disease and other chronic ailments will be treated.
The long-established dietary recommendations have created epidemics of obesity and diabetes, the consequences of which dwarf any historical plague in terms of mortality, human suffering and dire economic consequences.
Despite the fact that 25% of the population takes expensive statin medications and despite the fact we have reduced the fat content of our diets, more Americans will die this year of heart disease than ever before.
Statistics from the American Heart Association show that 75 million Americans currently suffer from heart disease, 20 million have diabetes and 57 million have prediabetes. These disorders are affecting younger and younger people in greater numbers every year.
Inflammation Traps Cholesterol
Simply stated, without inflammation being present in the body, there is no way that cholesterol would accumulate in the wall of the blood vessel and cause heart disease and strokes. Without inflammation, cholesterol would move freely throughout the body as nature intended. It is inflammation that causes cholesterol to become trapped. Inflammation is not complicated — it is quite simply your body’s natural defense to a foreign invader such as a bacteria, toxin or virus. The cycle of inflammation is perfect in how it protects your body from these bacterial and viral invaders. However, if we chronically expose the body to injury by toxins or foods the human body was never designed to process, a condition occurs called chronic inflammation. Chronic inflammation is just as harmful as acute inflammation is beneficial. What thoughtful person would willfully expose himself repeatedly to foods or other substances that are known to cause injury to the body? Well, smokers perhaps, but at least they made that choice willfully.
Low-Fat, No Fat Brings Repeated Injury
The rest of us have simply followed the recommended mainstream diet that is low in fat and high in polyunsaturated fats and carbohydrates, not knowing we were causing repeated injury to our blood vessels. This repeated injury creates chronic inflammation leading to heart disease, stroke, diabetes and obesity. Let me repeat that.
The injury and inflammation in our blood
vessels is caused by the low fat diet that has been recommended for years by mainstream
medicine.
What are the biggest culprits of chronic inflammation? Quite simply, they are the overload of simple, highly processed carbohydrates (sugar, flour and all the products made from them) and the excess consumption of Omega-6 vegetable oils like soybean, corn and sunflower that are found in many
processed foods.
Take a moment to visualize rubbing a stiff brush repeatedly over soft skin until it becomes quite red and nearly bleeding. Let’s say you kept this up several times a day, every day for five years. If you could tolerate his painful brushing, you would have a bleeding, swollen infected area that became worse with each repeated injury.
Inflammatory Process
Regardless of where the inflammatory process occurs, externally or internally, it is the same. I have peered inside thousands upon thousands of arteries. A diseased artery looks as if someone took a brush and scrubbed repeatedly against its wall. Several times a day, every day, the foods we eat create small injuries compounding into more injuries, causing the body to respond continuously and appropriately with inflammation. While we savor the tantalizing taste of a sweet roll, our bodies respond alarmingly as if a foreign invader arrived declaring war. Foods loaded with sugars and simple
carbohydrates, or processed with Omega-6 oils for long shelf life have been the mainstay of the American diet for six decades. These foods have been slowly poisoning everyone.
How does eating a simple sweet roll create a cascade of inflammation to make you sick?
Imagine spilling syrup on your keyboard and you have a visual of what occurs inside the cell. When we consume simple carbohydrates such as sugar, blood sugar rises rapidly. In response, your pancreas secretes insulin whose primary purpose is to drive sugar into each cell where it is stored for energy. If the cell is full and does not need glucose, it is rejected to avoid extra sugar gumming up the works.
When your full cells reject the extra glucose, blood sugar rises producing more insulin and the glucose converts to stored fat.
What does all this have to do with inflammation? Blood sugar is controlled in a very narrow range. Extra sugar molecules attach to a variety of proteins that in turn injure the blood vessel wall. This repeated injury to the blood vessel wall sets off inflammation. When you spike your blood sugar level several times a day, every day, it is exactly like taking sandpaper to the inside of your delicate blood vessels.
While you may not be able to see it, rest assured it is there. I saw it in over 5,000 surgical patients spanning 25 years who all shared one common denominator — inflammation in their arteries.
Packaged Foods, Omega-6
Let’s get back to the sweet roll. That innocent looking goody not only contains sugars, it is baked in one of many Omega-6 oils such as soybean. Chips and fries are soaked in soybean oil; processed foods are manufactured with Omega-6 oils for longer shelf life. While Omega-6’s are essential –they are part of every cell membrane controlling what goes in and out of the cell — they must be in the correct balance with omega-3’s. If the balance shifts by consuming excessive Omega-6, the cell membrane produces chemicals called cytokines that directly cause inflammation. Today’s mainstream American diet has produced an extreme imbalance of these two fats. The ratio of imbalance ranges from 15:1 to as high as 30:1 in favor of Omega-6. That’s a tremendous amount of cytokines causing inflammation. In today’s food environment, a 3:1 ratio would be optimal and healthy. To make matters worse, the excess weight you are carrying from eating these foods creates overloaded fat cells that pour out large quantities of pro-inflammatory chemicals that add to the injury caused by having high blood sugar. The process that began with a sweet roll turns into a vicious cycle over time that creates heart isease, high blood pressure, diabetes and finally, Alzheimer’s disease, as the inflammatory process continues unabated. There is no escaping the more we consume prepared and processed foods, the more we trip the inflammation switch little by little each day. The human body cannot process, nor was it
designed to consume, foods packed with sugars and soaked in Omega-6 oils.
Quieting Inflammation
There is but one answer to quieting inflammation, and that is returning to foods closer to their natural state and adding essential nutrients. To build muscle, eat more protein. Choose carbohydrates that are very complex such as colorful fruits and vegetables. Cut down or eliminate inflammation-causing Omega-6 fats like corn and soybean oil and the processed foods made from them. One tablespoon of corn oil contains 7,280 mg of Omega-6; soybean contains 6,940 mg. Use olive oil and real butter preferably from grass fed beef. Animal fats contain less than 20% Omega-6 and are much less likely to
cause inflammation than the supposedly healthy oils labeled polyunsaturated. Forget the “science” that has been drummed into your head for decades. The science that saturated fat alone causes heart disease is non-existent. The science that saturated fat raises blood cholesterol is also very weak. Since we now know that cholesterol is not the cause of heart disease, the concern about saturated fat is even more absurd today.
The cholesterol theory led to the no-fat, low-fat recommendations that in turn created the very foods now causing an epidemic of inflammation. Mainstream medicine made a terrible mistake when it advised people to avoid saturated fat in favor of foods high in Omega-6 fats. We now have an epidemic of arterial inflammation leading to heart disease and other silent killers.
What you can do is choose whole foods your grandmother served and not those your mom turned to as grocery store aisles filled with manufactured foods. By eliminating inflammatory foods and adding very specific essential nutrients proven in my clinic to quiet inflammation, you will reverse years of damage in your arteries and throughout your body from consuming the typical American diet.”
Bon Appetite.