Hi eveybody. The national post here in TO has been running a 4 part series on obesity.

www.nationalpost.ca

click on arts and life. Low fat diets may help cause obesity.

Hi HLFan,

I read this in my morning paper and was going to post this, but you beat me to it . I'll copy the story over here because sometimes... down the road in the distant future the link won't work. I thought it was a great article because it briefly explains the problem (obesity) and the science behind why LCing works.

Low-fat diets may help cause obesity
North Americans eating less fat but bigger portions

Brad Evenson

National Post

Wednesday, November 06, 2002

Perhaps the biggest irony of Canada's obesity crisis is that it began when the government started telling people to eat less fat.

Over the past 30 years, reducing dietary fat has become a tenet of healthy living, like consuming more green vegetables. The surge to low-fat has begotten a generation of bland new food products, Elizabeth Taylor's pasta diet and countless boring arguments over the merits of butter versus margarine.

"In America, we no longer fear God or the communists, but we fear fat," David Kritchevsky, a highly regarded scientist at the Wistar Institute in Philadelphia once quipped.

But it turns out the whole low-fat notion was based on rather soft science. Countless studies going back to the 1970s have failed to prove a link between a fatty diet and body fat. Indeed, there is no evidence eating fat increases a person's risk of disease.

The central anti-fat argument is that dietary fat, which is found mainly in meat and dairy products, raises the level of cholesterol in the blood. This cholesterol builds up as plaque on the arteries, gobs of which break loose and block blood flow to the heart or brain. Hence the nickname for steak and eggs -- "heart attack on a plate."

But there is a big flaw in this argument: While the prevalence of adult obesity has climbed to nearly 30%, the rate of heart disease and stroke has not climbed with it. Along with the obvious fact that North Americans are eating less fat but still getting fat, this has led to a reconsideration of the low-fat dogma.

What could be sweeter vindication for Robert Atkins, author of the blockbuster 1972 diet book Dr. Atkins' Diet Revolution? Thirty years ago, Atkins aroused the ire of the American medical establishment when he promised readers they could lose weight on a diet of meat, eggs and butter. The real evil foods, he declared, were refined carbohydrates such as pasta, sugar, rice and bagels. Fat was no danger, he said.

The Atkins diet is based on the idea that carbohydrates are converted into blood sugars. The pancreas increases insulin production, which transports these sugars into the muscles and liver. Whatever carbohydrates the body doesn't need are converted into fat.

By contrast, dietary fat does not cause this sharp spike in insulin production, giving the body more time to use up the excess calories.

Some scientists point out that insulin causes blood sugar to drop, which makes people feel hungry soon after a meal full of such starchy foods as rice or potatoes. But fat makes people feel full, a point echoed by a host of Atkins' diet descendants, including The Zone, Sugar Busters! and Protein Power.

The reason so many North Americans are fat, researchers now believe, is they have increased their total caloric intake by eating less fat but bigger servings of less satisfying, low-fat food.

The most recent research says foods with a high glycemic index may be the biggest problem. These are foods with sugars that are absorbed into the bloodstream quickly. The most obvious examples are sweet beverages such as Coca-Cola and gourmet coffee drinks, which are "100% fat-free" but laden with as much as 300 calories a serving. These "wet carbohydrates" take almost no time to digest, so they are converted more quickly to fat.

By contrast, vegetables are rich in carbohydrates but take a long time to digest, so they have a lower glycemic index. Similarly, complex carbohydrates such as whole wheat breads have a lower index than fluffy white breads.

So far, however, the government is still fixated on fat. Health Canada's Web site advises visitors: "Eating well doesn't mean giving up the foods you love; it means choosing wisely from a variety of foods and choosing lower fat foods more often."

bevenson~nationalpost.com

© Copyright 2002 National Post

Thank you so much, Ruth. You are a saint. I was at work and was really in a rush but I made lots of copies for my low-cal friends!!

Hug, Nancy