It's the Insulin Stupid!

[MikePollard]

There has been something of a hiatus recently in the ‘saturated fat is bad, unrefined carbohydrate good controversy’.

Firstly, along came Denise Minger's latest very long blog suggesting there is magic at either end of the spectrum, ie. you can eat high carbohydrate or high fat and achieve similar results.

One in the eye for the likes of me!

rawfoodsos.com/

Having an open mind I can entertain anything that doesn’t chime with my world view but have always been puzzled by the Okinawa, Kitavan conundrum that confounds the high fat theory of optimum health.

I was left swinging in the breeze.

Then along came Dr. Fung and his reply to Denise’s work:

intensivedietarymanagement....

Anyway you look at it, control of insulin is king, and whatever way you do it is OK by me, though I’d suggest that a lifestyle based on bland, unrefined carbohydrate is unsustainable and should not be taken as largesse to embrace your Cheerios as heart healthy.

On the back of this comes the Li Yanping paper:

hsph.harvard.edu/news/press...

…which again sees saturated fat as the villain.

I’m drying out here, but it needs a bigger brain than mine to tease out the detail. However, I’d suggest there might be an element of confirmation bias at the start of the study but notwithstanding, below is the bigger brain:

docsopinion.com/2015/10/19/...

The take home for me is that we have had a problem for 40 odd years. We have been following the guidelines and have become sicker and sicker to the extent that one out of three school children are overweight or obese if we believe the statistics. The tubby children you see running around the playground are in a lot of trouble and it’s not from fat shaming! They are at the start of a journey that leads to morbid obesity, diabetes, heart disease, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s - all implicated in misguided dietary and pharmaceutical regimes that will bankrupt the NHS and blight millions of lives if not addressed.

[Penel]

Thanks for the post Mike, but I think my brain is in meltdown!

The studies on high carb diets were new to me. Fascinating stuff.

Bottom line....don't eat junk foods?

[MikePollard in reply to Penel]

Take your time, it's worth it.

[Penel]

Have you had a chance to read the "raw food" blog from Mick's post?

It's very long, but amongst other things, it describes the diet devised by Walter Kempner which reversed metabolic syndrome through the Rice Diet: based on white rice, fruit and sugar. Fascinating paradox (and no, I'm not advocating it).

We've debated yoghurt before. As far as I'm aware modern research has the consumption of plain, unsweetened yoghurt related inversely to the development of diabetes.