The Big Fat Myth Exposed.

First of all, I would like to reiterate that, when it came to dietary fat consumption, I had it all wrong until quite recently. I feel fortunate that I went about doing some serious reading and research and, thankfully, I found the truth and I’m now benefitting big time. I have never felt healthier or had so much control over my appetite and weight. Add to that my improved endurance, performance and recovery from training and racing, also, my brain function has increased amazingly.

May I remind you all that if you, like I was, are under the impression that generally eating fat, particularly saturated fat and cholesterol, is bad for you and for your heart and arteries, then you are completely normal. We have all been deceived over the past 60 years and the world has suffered with an endless rise of disease and illness which could easily have been avoided.

I have some more books that I can’t recommend highly enough. They will prove to you the myth of the low fat diet and what damage is being done inside your body and brain from all those carbohydrates (mainly the grains and sugar), as well as the ‘vegetable oils’, which are rampant in our food supply because they were supposedly good for you or doing no harm.

In the blog which I posted on February 28, 2015 - http://ironmanlincoln.blogspot.com.au/2015/02/where-did-it-all-go-wrong.html - I gave a brief overview of where the idea of eating a low fat/high carbohydrate diet came from and how this became the dietary advice in order to be healthy. I mentioned Ancel Keys and his ‘Diet-Heart Hypothesis’ and that he manipulated the right people with the data he cherry picked from his ‘Seven Countries Study’ to supposedly prove his hypothesis. Well, the first book I recommend will give you all the details around that part of history and a whole lot more that was built around the Diet-Heart Hypothesis. You will be amazed at the extent that people, organisations, companies and governments have gone to over the years to protect this theory, and their bank accounts, while only ever basing it on extremely weak associations from biased and poorly conducted epidemiological studies and, at times, non-factual ‘evidence’.

Book #1: The Big Fat Surprise, by Nina Teicholz.

Below is the description as found on Amazon.com.

In The Big Fat Surprise, investigative journalist Nina Teicholz reveals the unthinkable: that everything we thought we knew about dietary fat is wrong. She documents how the low-fat nutrition advice of the past sixty years has amounted to a vast uncontrolled experiment on the entire population, with disastrous consequences for our health.

For decades, we have been told that the best possible diet involves cutting back on fat, especially saturated fat, and that if we are not getting healthier or thinner it must be because we are not trying hard enough. But what if the low-fat diet is itself the problem? What if the very foods we’ve been denying ourselves—the creamy cheeses, the sizzling steaks—are themselves the key to reversing the epidemics of obesity, diabetes, and heart disease?

In this captivating, vibrant, and convincing narrative, based on a nine-year-long investigation, Teicholz shows how the misinformation about saturated fats took hold in the scientific community and the public imagination, and how recent findings have overturned these beliefs. She explains why the Mediterranean Diet is not the healthiest, and how we might be replacing trans fats with something even worse. This startling history demonstrates how nutrition science has gotten it so wrong: how overzealous researchers, through a combination of ego, bias, and premature institutional consensus, have allowed dangerous misrepresentations to become dietary dogma.

With eye-opening scientific rigor, The Big Fat Surprise upends the conventional wisdom about all fats with the groundbreaking claim that more, not less, dietary fat—including saturated fat—is what leads to better health and wellness. Science shows that we have been needlessly avoiding meat, cheese, whole milk, and eggs for decades and that we can now, guilt-free, welcome these delicious foods back into our lives.

There is so much amazing information in this book to definitively prove the low-fat theory wrong that I will probably take several blog posts to review the book properly. One thing I would like to mention is that a quarter of the book is dedicated to the references for her research. Nina investigated for nine years going through a massive amount of scientific and medical research data and, also, conducted days and days of interviews with important people from both sides of the argument to produce this outstanding book. Therefore, it can’t be said she hasn’t been thorough.

I look forward to bringing you a more detailed review of this book but I suggest you don’t wait for that and get yourself a copy as soon as possible. If you’re not convinced from the things I have been writing about so far, I’m sure you will be after reading The Big Fat Surprise.

Book #2: Grain Brain, by Dr David Perlmutter.

This will be an excellent book for you to follow on from reading The Big Fat Surprise. Dr David Perlmutter explains how what we eat and how it is dealt with via our digestive system has an intricate and vital relationship with the function and development of our brain. Below is the description as found on Amazon.com.

Renowned neurologist David Perlmutter, MD, blows the lid off a topic that's been buried in medical literature for far too long: carbs are destroying your brain. And not just unhealthy carbs, but even ‘healthy’ ones like whole grains can cause dementia, ADHD, anxiety, chronic headaches, depression, and much more. Dr. Perlmutter explains what happens when the brain encounters common ingredients in your daily bread and fruit bowls, why your brain thrives on fat and cholesterol, and how you can spur the growth of new brain cells at any age. He offers an in-depth look at how we can take control of our "smart genes" through specific dietary choices and lifestyle habits, demonstrating how to remedy our most feared maladies without drugs. With a revolutionary 4-week plan, GRAIN BRAIN teaches us how we can reprogram our genetic destiny for the better. 

The vast majority of our brain is built out of fat and cholesterol but eating predominantly carbohydrates, as well as sugars, and not much of the right fats, such as saturated animal fats, will result in poorly controlled or chronically high blood sugar which becomes harder to deal with the longer you keep eating them. This problem with blood sugar can not only result in Type 2 diabetes, heart disease and/or weight problems but it causes a mass of inflammation within your body and brain which is a critical factor in the development of brain diseases, such as, dementia, Alzheimer’s, Multiple Sclerosis, Schizophrenia, Tourette’s Syndrome, ADHD, seizures and many more. Why do you think Alzheimer’s is being referred to as ‘Type 3 Diabetes’?

Dr. Perlmutter explains how inflammation is at the root of many different health issues but other areas of your body can register inflammation by producing pain, However, your brain does not have pain receptors. Therefore, you can only really measure the deterioration of your brain through its everyday function. Because it is a slow deterioration over many years, it’s generally excepted to be a part of getting old and simply unavoidable. Grain Brain shows you that what you eat and how you live plays the most crucial and influential role in your brain’s health and your ability to live long with your brain function in tact. Genetics may play a role but our food can even change our genetic destiny and how they then may effect the future generations of your family.

As I keep reading more and more of the truth about food, I am gradually building a vast mental library of information to draw on when I am talking to people in the hope that I can encourage them to make significant dietary changes. So many people don’t consider that food plays the biggest role in our health and that most, if not all, diseases and illnesses we may get are inevitable due to aging or simply unlucky, unless you smoke or drink alcohol often. However, food is something that we can control and is what builds our bodies so how could it not be the biggest part of our future health?

There are lots of conflicting messages through advertising and other media reports about what is healthy and what isn’t. The phrase ‘everything in moderation’ is thrown around like confetti and is simply an excuse that huge amounts of people can use to justify what they eat and drink and how often, or, for food companies to make their products not sound so bad by saying that consuming their products, or consuming sugar for example, in moderation is part of a healthy diet. However, that is not the answer to health at all because it doesn’t tell anyone what is moderation for any individual item. For example, in all truthfulness, no one should ever drink Coke, in fact, let’s just say soft drinks. They are that bad that even drinking them once a month will never have any benefits on you and only make your body work harder than it should to counteract its harmful effects. I place them in the same category as smoking and alcohol. They’re just not worth it. Therefore, moderation for soft drink is never.

I will expand on some of these thoughts in the future but, for the time being, please try and get your hands on the books I have mentioned and start to build your own mental library of knowledge and truth.

Cheers,

Lincoln.