A Big Fat Lie

Michael Lam, MD, MPH
www.DrLam.com

Introduction

When 19th century English carpenter William Banting advanced the low carbohydrate, high fat diet to lose weight back in 1862, it made headline news. You see, Banting suffered from a life-long history of obesity. He was 5 feet 5 inches tall, and weighed in at 202 pounds at age 66. After a relentless search for ways to slim down, he was finally able to shed 46 pounds over 38 weeks. His diet consisted of bacon, beef, mutton, kidneys, fish, vegetables (except potato), tea (without milk or sugar). Conspicuously absent was pastry, grain products, starches, and sugar. Banting died in 1878 at the ripe old age of 81 with normal weight. Banting was so successful with his diet that he published a booklet called the Banting Diet. The medical profession criticized this book as "unscientific". Why would the medical profession reject something that evidently works? The concept of eating meat which contains large amounts of fat to lose weight simply is one that was too advanced for the medical profession then. Since fat has the most calories per gram, it is logical to limit fat intake if one wants to lose weight. Certainly, this hypothesis appears to make perfect sense on the surface.

Clinical trials on obesity, conducted through the last century, fail to support this theory. In fact, the opposite is true. The amount of weight loss appears to be inversely proportional to the carbohydrate content of the food. When a high-fat, lower carbohydrate diet is taken, the rate of weight loss is greater. The converse is also true. Despite this, the medical profession continues to turn its head away from this truth.

Now let us fast-forward to the year 1972. This is when cardiologist Dr. Robert Atkins first advanced his "Diet Revolution". In short, Dr. Atkins reiterated and pushed forward the Banting diet. As expected, it was rejected by the medical profession and the public at large. To them, it was an unproven "new concept" still. On the contrary, Americans were just about fully convinced that fats, particularly the saturated fats of meat and dairy products, were the primary nutritional evil in their normal diet. Research studies released during that period also pointed to high blood cholesterol as the number one cause of heart disease, and that a diet high in fat was the number one culprit.

Not so, according to Dr. Atkins. He believed that consuming too many carbohydrates and not fats caused the epidemic of obesity in Americans. Atkins advanced the promise that we would lose weight even if we were to indulge in steak, eggs and butter to our heart's desire. He believed that fats were harmless and it was actually the carbohydrates, pastas, rice, bagels and sugar that caused obesity and heart diseases. In his book, Dr. Atkins's Diet Revolution, which stirred many emotions amongst the American population, he allowed his readers to eat animal fat without restriction. However, starches or refined carbohydrates, sugars or anything made from flour were discouraged. He even banned fruit juices, and permitted only a moderate amount of vegetables, although the latter were negotiable as the diet progressed.

Dr. Atkins's following was large, and there were so many debates regarding this topic, that Dr. Atkins had to defend his fatty diet in Congressional hearings. His low-carbohydrate message seemed destined to be relegated to the realm of unscientific fantasy and borderline quackery.

150 Years Later

150 years later, the medical community is still debating this subject. However, the trend is clearly reversing. More researchers are leaning towards the Atkins camp, having seen three decades of reduced cholesterol consumption but exploding obesity. Could Banting and Dr. Atkins have been right all along?

Banting and Dr. Atkins are joined by a growing number of respected scientists who had written decades worth of best-selling diet books, including ''The Zone,'' and ''Sugar Busters''  telling us that fats are alright. They do not make us fat. The main culprits are actually the refined carbohydrates, such as pasta, rice and bread, (items that are at the base of the famous Food Guide Pyramid and items that actually provide the main bulk of the calories that our body requires). However, Dr. Atkins says that by eating fewer carbohydrates, we will definitely lose weight and live longer.

Walter Willett, chairman of the department of nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health agrees.  According to him, data collected from a large group study of 300,000 people and costing more than $100 million, clearly contradict the low-fat-is-good-health message. The exclusive three decades focused on the adverse effects of fats, may have contributed to the obesity epidemic because people were told to switch to carbohydrates.

For many people, the low-fat diets are counterproductive for two reasons. Many people switch to low-fat diets using the wrong substitute. They take in excessive carbohydrates such as pasta and potato to replace fats. As a result, this creates a chronic high blood sugar level, leading to obesity, insulin resistance and ultimately diabetes. Such low-fat diets (and resulting high carbohydrate diets) have the paradoxical effect of making people feel more hungry and gaining weight as people are turned into a carbohydrate addict.