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Why Grain-Based Diet Recommendations are Finished

Is that a pork chop? This looks a lot like a low-carb diet.

Bye-bye, Ancel Keys. You were on the cover of Time once, sternly warning readers about cholesterol. Now the agencies you once guided are about to throw you under the bus for three reasons:


  1. Well-done intervention studies have shown the superiority of low-carb diets v. high-carb diets in terms of weight loss and lipids. This is the reason that sounds good. The rest of the story is that the the effects of insulin and carbohydrates on hunger and weight gain have been well-known for a long time--so long that they're described in endocrinology textbooks. Before that, weight gain from starchy diet was described in literature from the nineteenth century.
  2. The well-done intervention studies and the Internet have made it impossible for health "charities" to continue advising high-carb diets for diabetes and weight gain without fear of lawsuits. The Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics did enough applauding of the science and the USDA's positive reaction to it to give themselves carpal tunnel, but really, their lawyers must have told them they needed to swallow their pride, get with the times and cover their asses. Nobody stands up and applauds when they find out they've been horribly wrong.
  3. The USDA as a government agency wouldn't be subject to lawsuits from people who suffered amputation, blindness, neuropathy and kidney failure from following the advice they pushed, just irrelevance and ridicule. But now that Obamacare is in place and young, healthy people haven't exactly rushed to sign up, the costs of amputation, blindness, neuropathy and kidney failure and the medications needed to prevent them for people with the genes for diabetes will be too much to bear. Those who are very sick from diabetes--or IBS, other GI problems, heart disease, autoimmune problems, and other illnesses caused by a diet perfect for fattening livestock--not only need a lot of care, god bless them, but as a group are less able to be productive, or pay taxes, to put a sharp point on it. Pharmaceutical companies might dream of a population on medications from cradle to grave, but there must be people in the federal government up nights wondering how they're going to pay for it.


Now that groups like the AHA and ADA can't promote a grain-based diet and sugar anymore without fear of reprisal, it'll be interesting to see who they whore themselves out to next.
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Comments

Galina L. said…
The new recommendation did left me wondering - what the hell finally got the message through?
May 22, 2015
Lori Miller said…
These groups have to have known for a long time that the diets they promoted were devastating to the people they purported to represent. But newer, better studies, a slew of low-carb and paleo books, and an army of bloggers, podcasters and chat room moderators with easy access to Pubmed and an audience have overrun the gatekeepers. Dancers have a term that fits: highjacking the lead.
May 22, 2015
Lowcarb team member said…
"But newer, better studies, a slew of low-carb and paleo books, and an army of bloggers, podcasters and chat room moderators with easy access to Pubmed and an audience have overrun the gatekeepers."

... and we all do our best to keep spreading the news about healthier ways.

All the best Jan
May 24, 2015
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