Dr. Andrew Weil: Fat or Carbs: Which Is Worse?

Dr. Andrew Weil: Fat or Carbs: Which Is Worse?:
"Dr. Andrew Weil Founder and director of the Arizona Center for Integrative Medicine
Posted: July 2, 2010 08:00 AM

In my home state of Arizona, a restaurant named "Heart Attack Grill" does brisk business in Chandler, a Phoenix suburb. Waitresses in nurse-themed uniforms with miniskirts deliver single, double, triple and quadruple "bypass burgers" (featuring one, two, three and four hefty patties, respectively) dripping with cheese, to patrons who wear hospital gowns that double as bibs. The motto: "Taste Worth Dying For!"

Now, there is much for a medical doctor (as opposed to "Dr. Jon," the stethoscope-wearing, burger-flipping owner) to dislike in this establishment. If you visit, I implore you to steer clear of the white-flour buns, the sugary sodas and the piles of "flatliner fries" that accompany the burgers in the restaurant's signature bedpan plates. This is precisely the sort of processed-carbohydrate-intensive meal that, via this and other fast-food establishments, is propelling the epidemic of obesity and diabetes in America.

But the Grill's essential, in-your-face concept is that the saturated fat in beef clogs arteries, and hamburger meat is consequently among the most heart-damaging foods a human being can consume. As the Grill literature puts it, "The menu names imply coronary bypass surgery, and refer to the danger of developing atherosclerosis from the food's high proportion of saturated fat..." Aimed at a certain crowd, this is clever, edgy marketing. Some people enjoy flirting with death.

The problem? It's not true. The saturated fat lauded in this menu won't kill you. It may even be the safest element of the meal.

Saturated fat is made of fatty acid chains that cannot incorporate additional hydrogen atoms. It is often of animal origin, and is typically solid at room temperature. Its relative safety has been a theme in nutrition science for at least the last decade, but in my view, a significant exoneration took place in March of this year. An analysis that combined the results of 21 studies, published in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition found that "saturated fat was not associated with an increased risk" of coronary heart disease, stroke or coronary vascular disease.

Although this was not a true study, it was a big analysis. It aggregated information from nearly 348,000 participants, most of whom were healthy at the start of the studies. They were surveyed about their dietary habits and followed for five to 23 years. In that time, 11,000 developed heart disease or had a stroke. Researcher Ronald M. Krauss of the Children's Hospital Oakland Research Center in California found that there was no difference in the risk of heart disease or stroke between people with the lowest and highest intakes of saturated fat.

This contradicts nutritional dogma we've heard repeated since 1970, when a physiologist named Ancel Keys published his "Seven Countries" study that showed animal fat consumption strongly predicted heart attack risk. His conclusions influenced US dietary guidelines for decades to come, but other researchers pointed out that if 21 other countries had been included in that study, the association that Keys observed would have been seen as extremely weak.

Meanwhile, in the years since, there has been increasing evidence that added sweeteners in foods may contribute to heart disease. Sweeteners appear to lower levels of HDL cholesterol (the higher your HDL, the better) and raise triglycerides (the lower the better). That's according to a study of more than 6,000 adults by Emory University and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and published in April in The Journal of the American Medical Association.

People who received at least 25 percent of their daily calories from any type of sweetener had more than triple the normal risk of having low HDL levels than those who consumed less than five percent of their calories from sweeteners. Beyond that, those whose sugar intake made up 17.5 percent or more of daily calories were 20 to 30 percent more likely to have high triglycerides.

Science writer Gary Taubes has done more than anyone else to deconstruct the Keys mythos and replace it with a more sensible view, informed by better science. I recommend his book, Good Calories, Bad Calories: Challenging the Conventional Wisdom on Diet, Weight Control and Disease. It presents more than 600 pages of evidence that lead to these conclusions:

1. Dietary fat, whether saturated or not, is not a cause of obesity, heart disease or any other chronic disease of civilization.
2. The problem is the carbohydrates in the diet, their effect on insulin secretion, and thus the hormonal regulation of homeostasis -- the entire harmonic ensemble of the human body. The more easily digestible and refined the carbohydrates, the greater the effect on our health, weight and well-being.
3. Sugars -- sucrose and high-fructose corn syrup specifically -- are particularly harmful, probably because the combination of fructose and glucose simultaneously elevates insulin levels while overloading the liver with carbohydrates.
4. Through their direct effects on insulin and blood sugar, refined carbohydrates, starches and sugars are the dietary cause of coronary heart disease and diabetes. They are the most likely dietary causes of cancer, Alzheimer's disease and other chronic diseases of modern civilization.

My point here is not to promote meat consumption. I've written here previously about humanitarian and ecological reasons to avoid a meat-centric diet, especially if the meat comes from factory-farmed animals. Instead, my purpose is to emphasize that we would be much healthier as a nation if we stopped worrying so much about fats, and instead made a concerted effort to avoid processed, quick-digesting carbohydrates -- especially added sugars. The average American consumes almost 22 teaspoons of sugars that are added to foods each day. This obscene amount is the principal driver of the "diabesity" epidemic, sharply increases coronary risks and promises to make this generation of children the first in American history that will die sooner than their parents.

My Anti-Inflammatory Food Pyramid emphasizes whole or minimally processed foods -- especially vegetables -- with low glycemic loads. That means consuming these foods keeps blood sugar levels relatively stable, which in turn lowers both fat deposition and heart-disease risk. If you make a concerted effort to eat such foods and avoid sugar, you'll soon lose your taste for it. The natural sugars in fruits and vegetables will provide all the sweetness you desire.

While saturated fat appears to have no effect on heart health, eating too much can crowd out vitamins, minerals and fiber needed for optimal health. So I recommend sticking to a "saturated fat budget" which can be "spent" on an occasional steak (from organic, grass-fed, grass-finished cattle, see LocalHarvest for sources), some butter, or, as I do, high quality, natural cheese a few times a week.

Andrew Weil, M.D., invites you to join the conversation: become a fan on Facebook, follow him on Twitter, and check out his Daily Health Tips Blog. Dr. Weil is the founder and director of the Arizona Center for Integrative Medicine and the editorial director of www.DrWeil.com.

Food Holds the Ultimate Leverage, Part II (Opinion)

Food Holds the Ultimate Leverage, Part II (Opinion)
In Part 1 we learned that controlling the food supply equates to having enormous leverage over the masses. During the Great Depression days, Americans were kept alive because of their ties to the rural farming communities. Families could grow food or rely upon their relatives to help sustain them. But in this world where we are clueless about where our food comes from or how to produce it, we have become extremely vulnerable. And, as food prices rise many will have little choice other that to shift to a diet of cheap, fatty, mass-produced foods loaded with sugar, salt, and synthetic chemicals, already a staple of the nation's poor.

Junk food, already a major contributor to obesity, diabetes and heart disease, is often the only food available to those living in the inner cities because decent supermarkets and decent foods are beyond their reach both geographically and financially. And as this blight continues and our economy deteriorates even more, the middle class will soon join their ranks.

When you walk down the street, look at people. What you will see are people wasting their bodies just like we waste our land. You will see bodies that are fat, weak, unhappy, sickly and gross - basically, the cash crop for the manufacturers of the pharmaceuticals. Our bodies have become nothing more than a shipping carton used to transport our brains and our few employable muscles back and forth to work.

The people will eat what the corporations decide what they should eat. They will become detached from what really provides life; they will become the slaves of the producers, and mindless zombies. The concept of the new model farms is to turn us all into machines. How can you mechanize production without mechanizing consumption?

So, the first step is to have the communities take back local food production and in the process, reclaim our lives which have been subjugated by corporate culture and brainwashing. We need to go back to the values that sustain a community. We need to re-connect with nature and life and to realize that our existence relies upon our relationship with God and each other. We need to realize that we all have the same Father making us all brothers and sisters in the truest sense of the words. It is this realization that will save us.

If not, then we will continue in an economy that focuses on technology, weapons, bling, and drugs. We will continue to be deprived of clothing, food, shelter and water. We will continue to fight wars just to acquire resources that we never owned anyway. If we adopt the consciousness that we are caretakers and not owners why would there be a need for war? The resources were here long before we got here and will be here long after we are gone. That makes God the true owner.

So, if a nation has a resource we don't have and we have a resource they don't have and we trade, this will bring harmony, peace and abundance and no need for wars. The problem is that no one can exploit anyone for money in a culture like this. The horror!

Aloha

Food Holds the Ultimate Leverage, Part I (Opinion)

Food Holds the Ultimate Leverage, Part I (Opinion)
He who controls the food supply can and will have leverage and control over the people. If we take back our agriculture and can buy and raise produce locally, we can begin to break the grip of the corporations that control a food system that is fragile, unsafe and destined for collapse just like our financial system.

If we continue to allow the corporations to decide what we eat and how food is raised, harvested and distributed, then we will bear the burden of high prices and shortages and become dependent on cheap, mass produced food loaded with sugar, fat and salt. We will open the door to more obesity, diabetes, heart disease and high blood pressure.

Already the effects of climate change, droughts and rising fossil fuel costs have wreaked havoc on the environments of millions. One sixth of the world's population, or approximately one billion people, subsist on less than $1 per day. And out of this number, about 160 million people get by on less than 50 cents a day. How would you like to be in a situation where 60% of your income was spent on food?

Food riots have brought about food rationing; 33 million Americans ( one in nine) are on food stamps and in 20 states, as many as one in eight are on food stamps. With an average monthly food stamp benefit of $113.87 per person, many, many people are without adequate food. Even more depressing is the fact that Congress allocated $54 billion for food stamps in the current fiscal year, up from $39 billion, but in the new fiscal year, costs are estimated at $60 billion.

The large factory farms have wiped out the small farmers. Our soil has been poisoned with enormous quantities of pesticides, and contaminated animals in overcrowded stockyards are fed a flowing and endless supply of antibiotics, steroids, and growth hormones. The garbage that has been pumped into the water systems has caused algae build up and mass dying of fish in the rivers and streams.

Because of the blight of changing weather patterns and chemical pollution, crop yields in the Northeast are rapidly becoming less and less. And the Food Modernization Act, another gift from the Washington politicians that serve the big corporations and not the people, means that the small farms will soon be a thing of the past.

The entire economy built around food is unsafe and unethical and it is the food that is the greatest place for communities to start taking back power. Look at reality. The national food system is collapsing. The Central Valley of California produces more than 50% of what we eat. So what happens when gasoline hits $5 a gallon or a heavy drought blankets the cropland? Chaos happens! This unstable system of food production must be replaced with small, diverse sources that will provide a greater food security.

There was a study done by Cornell University to determine whether or not New York state could feed itself. What they found was even if all agricultural land was used and food distribution was optimized to minimize the total distance that the food needed to travel, New York state could only meet 34% of their total food needs.

What's even worse is that New York City, that relied upon New Jersey for food supplies, now has to face the fact that the, if you will pardon the expression, "Garden State" has had their farms give way to housing developments. Adding insult to injury is the fact that the upstate farming communities in New York have been gutted by industrial farming.

Stay tuned for Part 2

Organic Growing Guides

Organic Growing Guides

Vegetables

Arugula Asparagus Beet Bok Choy Broccoli Brussels Cabbage Carrot Cauliflower Celery Chard Chili Collard Cress Cucumber Eggplant Endive Kale Kohlrabi Leek Lettuce Mustard Okra Onion Parsnip Peppers Potato Radicchio Radish Rhubarb Rutabaga Scallion Shallot Spinach Squash Tomato Turnip Zucchini

Fruits

Cantaloupe Honeydew Melon Pumpkin Strawberry Watermelon

Legumes

Bean Lentil Pea Peanut

Grains

Amaranth Barley Corn Flax Kamut Millet Oat Quinoa Rice Rye Spelt Wheat

Herbs

Basil Catnip Chive Cilantro Dill Fennel Garlic Garlic Chive Marjoram Oregano Parsley Peppermint Sage Thyme