Scientific establishment divided

It has been almost a year since I came across this weird idea: animal fat is good; grains are bad; sugar is poison. These three phrases pretty much describe Paleo principles to a T.

I have slowly been discovering that I am not part of a weird fringe culture. I have been surprised over and over again that some of the smartest people I know eat the same way I do; it no longer surprises me to find out that another family in my kids' school is following the same principles. I am getting used to the idea of Primal Blueprint text showing up in the featured section of Borders.

Today I have learned that the mainstream science is beginning its slow and cumbersome turn.  The New York Times is literally asking "What if it's all been a Big Fat Lie?"

Now a small but growing minority of establishment researchers have come to take seriously what the low-carb-diet doctors have been saying all along. Walter Willett, chairman of the department of nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health, may be the most visible proponent of testing this heretic hypothesis. Willett is the de facto spokesman of the longest-running, most comprehensive diet and health studies ever performed, which have already cost upward of $100 million and include data on nearly 300,000 individuals. Those data, says Willett, clearly contradict the low-fat-is-good-health message ''and the idea that all fat is bad for you; the exclusive focus on adverse effects of fat may have contributed to the obesity epidemic.''

This situation is putting medical science in a rather awkward position.

If the members of the American medical establishment were to have a collective find-yourself-standing-naked-in-Times-Square-type nightmare, this might be it.

Bottom line, many of the key mainstream medical scientists are acknowledging that it is the recommendations of their colleagues over the last thirty years, manifested in the low-fat high-carb grain-heavy food pyramid is what's responsible for the obesity epidemic.

This is basic endocrinology, Ludwig [a researcher at Harvard Medical School who runs the pediatric obesity clinic at Children's Hospital Boston]  says, which is the study of hormones, and it is still considered radical because the low-fat dietary wisdom emerged in the 1960's from researchers almost exclusively concerned with the effect of fat on cholesterol and heart disease. At the time, Endocrinology 101 was still underdeveloped, and so it was ignored. Now that this science is becoming clear, it has to fight a quarter century of anti-fat prejudice.

So there you have it. When fat first got the bad rap, we didn't know about good fats and bad fats, we were happily producing hydrogenated oils and suddenly realized this might correlate to problems.  The technology and science are more sophisticated today. It is becoming easier to see that eating healthy fats and avoiding high carbs leads to better health - but it will take a generational turn-over in scientist before it becomes the mainstream thought.

Oh, did I say carbs?  Another interesting article by the same journalist relating to sugar: Is Sugar Toxic?  Another medical researcher, Robert Lustig, published a video presentation in which he did not admonish people against overinduging in sugar - but unabashedly used the words "toxic" and "poison" alongside sugar 13 times in his ninety minute lecture. If you read the article, you will learn:

• triglycerates (fat in the blood) are not caused by fat consumption. Instead, they are caused by excessive sugar rushing to the liver, particularly in liquid form (soft drinks)
• that the beginning of the diabetes epidemic coincided with the development of the soft drink & candy industry (1890-1920)
• that there has been a lot of research that suggested that sugar, not fat, was to blame for bad cholesterol, heart desease, and other problems commonly blamed on high fat diets

And here is how you get diabetes:

You secrete insulin in response to the foods you eat — particularly the carbohydrates — to keep blood sugar in control after a meal. When your cells are resistant to insulin, your body (your pancreas, to be precise) responds to rising blood sugar by pumping out more and more insulin. Eventually the pancreas can no longer keep up with the demand or it gives in to what diabetologists call “pancreatic exhaustion.” Now your blood sugar will rise out of control, and you’ve got diabetes.

But wait!

Not everyone with insulin resistance becomes diabetic; some continue to secrete enough insulin to overcome their cells’ resistance to the hormone. But having chronically elevated insulin levels has harmful effects of its own — heart disease, for one. A result is higher triglyceride levels and blood pressure, lower levels of HDL cholesterol (the “good cholesterol”), further worsening the insulin resistance — this is metabolic syndrome.

 OK, seriously, why are you still reading this post? Hopefully, I have convinced you of three things:

• There are real medical science authorities that are willing to back up the most controversial wacky ideas behind the Paleo lifestyle
• That there are some amazing resources you can follow to learn more about it
• That the notions about sugar & fat you grew up with can and should be questioned

Please leave a comment if I have failed...