Jamie has been very busy with his Food Revolution Day which is part of his campaign to persuade governments to take action to combat obesity. While this is obviously a laudable objective, the harsh reality is that the strategies he is advocating are doomed to failure. So before you agree to lend your support to this initiative, it is important to examine what exactly Jamie is promoting. I have no quarrel with his encouragement of cooking skills and the use of whole foods. However digging a bit deeper it is evident that when it comes to the dietary guidelines, he is endorsing precisely those that are still being advocated by governments and the mainstream health professionals, which have not worked. There is no question that these have prompted the vilification of fat and contributed to increased consumption of carbohydrates which is probably the prime cause of the increase in the incidence in obesity.
On one of Jamie’s websites there is an article entitled “Understanding good and bad fats” (1). Here is an extract:
“In the Western world, fat consumption is far too high. The World Health Organisation (WHO) has estimated that by 2015, 1.6 billion adults will be overweight – that’s almost a quarter of the world’s population! Although we all need a small amount of fat in our diet, we need to be careful about the amount of fat we’re consuming, as there are many associated health problems such as weight gain, and higher risk of diabetes, cancer and heart disease.”
It continues:
“A diet rich in saturated fat can cause the cholesterol level in the blood to rise, which in turn can lead to thinning of the arteries, potentially causing a blockage and increasing the risk of a heart attack. We should all aim to keep the levels of saturated fat in our diet low.”
“The best source of omega 6 is seeds and their oils (hemp, pumpkin, sunflower, sesame and corn). These fatty acids are also found in a wide variety of nuts, grains and vegetables – so an easy way of getting some into your diet is using vegetable oils for cooking. Omega 6 fatty acids are also helpful in the clotting of blood, skin health, and to help lower cholesterol.
“A healthy diet is all about balance. Bear in mind the proportion of fatty foods you should be having at each meal according to the eatwell plate (see Understanding the eatwell plate), and try to make sure your meal includes foods from all of the different food groups. Fat is a small, but essential, part of the diet. Try to make good choices about the types of fat you eat and this should help to keep your cholesterol low, and your arteries healthy.”
Unfortunately this is the same old rubbish that has got us into trouble in the first place! It really is about time that Jamie and his advisers got themselves up to date. They have slavishly followed the government guidelines to such an extent that they support the notoriously discredited Eatwell plate.
Are they not aware of the fact that the “cholesterol theory” just does not stand up to rigorous examination? There is actually an increase in total mortality with low cholesterol values: the highest life expectancy is found in those with raised cholesterol levels, especially women. It is now becoming very clear that the support for cholesterol as a risk factor for heart disease is primarily limited to the pharmaceutical industry so that it can justify the case for the use of statins.
To be fair, Jamie is taking a strong line on sugar which is absolutely correct. However if progress is to be made then people have to be advised on a suitable replacement for the sugar which is removed from the existing diet. With the conventional approach the answer is the complex carbohydrates but these also cause the blood glucose to increase, which is the real problem. This is because insulin has to be produced by the pancreas to cope with the sugar. If the body is continually subjected to high sugar/carbohydrate then there will be insulin resistance, which is damage to the organs leading to a range of chronic diseases. Eventually the pancreas cannot cope and the result is Type 2 Diabetes.
The ideal replacement is fat but here again Jamie gets it wrong. Olive oil a monounsaturated fat is absolutely fine but Omega-6s/vegetable oils are a big NO NO. Current diets in the UK and in many other countries are far too high in Omega-6 content and there is not enough Omega-3. At these levels the excess Omega-6s contribute to the development of inflammation which can trigger the processes leading to heart disease and cancer. It is rather ironic that we should be consuming MORE saturated fat. The arguments to lower it have all been discredited. In fact the consumption has fallen in the last 40 years and where did it get us? So butter, cheese, full fat milk and the fat in meat, especially from grass-fed animals is all good news.
If Jamie is genuinely interested in tackling obesity (and I have no reason to believe otherwise) then he really must take a good hard look at the nutritional advice he is promoting. The relevant information is not hard to find. There are plenty of books and blogs available.
I would suggest that his starting point might be to go to the Diet Doctor website (2). Here he will see that Sweden is the one country where the increasing trend in obesity has been halted and that it is now starting to come down. Guess what? Butter consumption is now higher than it ever as before and there has actually been a shortage.
He should also make himself familiar with what is happening in South Africa. Go to the Biz News website and look at some of the articles by Marika Sboros (3).
Here is very good scientific paper which sets out the case in support of diets which are LOW in carbohydrates and HIGH in fat (4).
Finally he should read the books by Gary Taubes (5), Nina Teicholz (6), Zoe Harcombe (7) and Tim Noakes et al (8).
REFERENCES
- http://www.jamieshomecookingskills.com/pdfs/fact-sheets/Understanding%20good%20and%20bad%20fats.pdf
- http://www.dietdoctor.com/obesity-is-exploding-in-europe-except-in-this-country
- http://www.biznews.com/category/lchf-health-summit/
- http://www.nutritionjrnl.com/article/S0899-9007(14)00332-3/pdf
- Gary Taubes (2007) “The Diet Delusion” Vermillion: London
- Nina Teicholz. (2014)“The Big Fat Surprise: Why Butter, Meat and Cheese Belong in a Healthy Diet” Simon & Shuster: New York
- Zoe Harcombe (2010) “The Obesity Epidemic” Columbus
- T Noakes, S-A Creed, J Proudfoot & D Grier (2014) “The Real Meal Revolution: Changing the World, One Meal at a Time” Quivertree Publications
I can see you read the literature and just wanted to make you aware of this paper: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3555979/ I also believed in LCHF diets until I read this meta-analysis! It is a bit of a game-changer as far as I am concerned. See what you think!
Many thanks. I had come across it and I appreciate we must not dismiss such reports. So much is dependent on exactly how the investigations were conducted with respect to diet and individuals involved. On the other hand, the evidence that insulin is the key to many of our current problems just gets stronger by the day. What I find especially striking is that the LCHF approach seems to be genuinely effective whatever the disease/condition considered which contrasts with the fat/cholesterol theory when all the emphasis was on heart disease. I am also impressed by personal case histories (including myself) where the lives of individuals have been transformed by switching to LCHF.
V
Message from the U.S.
The paper on low carbohydrate diets will, to my mind, be less likely to change the game and more likely to muddy the water. The phrases “high fat” and “LCHF” appear nowhere in the paper. Instead, low fat diets are compared to low carb diets. (See Richard Feinman’s The World Turned Upside Down: The Second Low-Carbohydrate Revolution to see why there are not many low carb/high fat studies.) And we’re still being told that “Low-carbohydrate diets tend to result in reduced intake of fiber and fruits, and increased intake of protein from animal sources, cholesterol and saturated fat…all of which are risk factors for mortality and CVD.” Of course, when this paper was published in January 2013, the nutrition guidelines had yet to be revised to lift the ban on animal protein, cholesterol, and saturated fat.
The paper also assumes that folks dropping carb calories are replacing them with protein calories. Such folks are likely to drop dead from rabbit starvation, also known as protein poisoning or, my favorite, mal de caribou. Nowhere is there a discussion of what happens if you hold your protein intake constant and flip your daily portions of fat and carbs. I’ve been doing exactly that and have had my A1c fall to 5.1 (from 5.6) in three months along with my waist shrinking from 46 inches to 40 inches.
Of course, a paper titled Low-Carbohydrate Diets and All-Cause Mortality (Low carbs are linked to death!) sounds like enough to scare anyone away from fat and protein. And it is that fear of real food which, in this diner’s opinion, is making so many in the world so sick.
Many thanks. Your comments are very pertinent and helpful.
V
Jerome Burne recently wrote:
“What it does highlight, it seems to me, is that evidence based medicine has reached a point similar to what was happening in banking before the crash, which was relying on what turned out to be toxic debt packages tied up with complex mathematics. They bought the system down because certainly no ordinary investor and very few of those in the industry could actually understand them, let alone query them. And of course their one comprehensible message was what everyone wanted to hear.
I think it is fair to say that few doctors would feel competent to critique most meta-analyses let alone spot what CTT was doing with the data. What else is going on in those data bundles that the rest of the profession rely on to make prescribing decisions and who is responsible for verifying them?”
I think this comment is very relevant to the paper about a meta-analysis of studies of LCHF diets discussed above.
The problem is that it takes a mountain of work to actually understand such a study, and the assumptions that went into it.
Furthermore, the very fact that a meta-analysis was needed indicates that the effect size is small – whereas we have been, and are still being told that saturated fat is a real villain!
David, many thanks for this. Joel is absolutely spot on. Peter C Gøtzsche has provide more than enough evidence in his aptly titles book “deadly Medicines and Organised Crime: How Big Pharma Has Corrupted Healthcare”. The politicians are pathetic but eventually there will be an explosion which will make the banking crisis look lie a storm in a tea cup.
V