FOOD FOR THOUGHT #1

We often preach about the benefits of the Paleo Diet.  The Paleo Diet, in its essence is a low carbohydrate, high protein, high fat diet composed of naturally occurring real foods that have only one ingredient...i.e. beef, apple, coconut etc.  The next question you might ask is why would I eat a low carbohydrate, high fat, high protein diet when the medical and dietary community, not to mention the media has been spreading the belief that to be healthy we should eat fat free foods, cut the fat off our meat, avoid red meat, eat lots and lots of grains, bread, legumes, soy, and pasta?  That is a very good question that deserves answering.  I will try to shed some light on that subject, while hopefully not boring you to death.  It is a very complicated question and has a simple and yet complicated answer.  I will lay out the pieces, give you some time to think on them and then tie it all in at the end.   To be up front, this will be the basic condensed version and I will recommend some additional reading if you want more at the end.

 FFT#1

 The first road we have to go down is to talk about heart disease, cholesterol, and the science and egos that have led us astray over the last 50 years.  Just over 50 years ago, a scientist, named Keys, hypothesized that the increase of dietary fat and thus elevated cholesterol was responsible the increasing cases of heart disease in the Western World.   He based this on anecdotal evidence, associations, relationships and logical deductions.  Basically he observed that Americans were eating more fat and had more heart disease and that in other parts of the world where the fat intake was not increasing the population had much lower incidences of heart disease.  Around that time it also became possible, for the first time, to measure the total cholesterol in the human body.  He observed in some populations of heart disease patients (but not all) that they had elevated total cholesterol levels and that these populations (but not all) ate more fat.  The inference that was made was: eating more dietary fat, especially saturated fat (which is associated with meat but is not entirely true) led to higher total cholesterol which led to heart disease.  The problem was that NONE of the scientific studies done over the next 50 YEARS have supported this.  ALMOST ALL of the studies have found that an increase in dietary fat, even lard, when accompanied by a decrease in carbohydrates (especially processed carbs) have led to an occurrence of less heart disease and that measuring the total cholesterol has absolutely no predictive value in determining if someone is at risk of heart disease.    Why then have we been told to eat more carbs and less fat for years?  Because, the medical establishment jumped on the hypothesis, as did the media, and rolled it out as fact before any of the science was there to support it.  Now most of us at CrossFit Albuquerque are not particularly concerned with heart disease, but I bring it up because it was the single biggest factor that has led the to fattening of America.  This is installment number one.  Next we will talk some more about cholesterol as it is effected by diet and will get into the real meat of the discussion…refined carbohydrates, insulin and metabolic derangement.    

Comments

[Derek]

This will be a great discussion into the subject of how this really happens. I will post tomorrow when I have my Physiology book in front of me how sugar is more of a player in Cholesterol then fat!

Ben, great topic excited to see where to take this!

[Schwarty]

so.....cheezies are good or bad?

What about Vodka?