Hearty Facts: Are Carbohydrates or Fat Worse for the Body
At Inside Health, our Quantum Nutrition Testing clients often as us about diet advice, and these conversations usually include some “shocking” information about fat. Dietary fat has been victimized for many years. Despite a lack of definitive evidence that dietary fat from natural sources like meat and dairy can have any negative affect on our health, it has sadly been an easy target and a misinformed public has been chasing their tail since the 1950’s in a quest for health. If this “new” way of health actually worked, we would all be skinny and heart disease would be a distant memory. Instead…well, we know that’s not the case.
Here are two sources to consider. The first is from a news broadcast featuring a heart surgeon who has performed over 5,000 open heart surgeries who is now presenting the culmination of his research and experience, debunking this idea about fat being bad. I think it’s funny that the interviewer uses the word “revolutionary”, since the only revolutionary thing that actually happened was that we as a society lost our way from how we are supposed to eat and we have been lulled to sleep by modern advertising that tells us we are actually eating as healthy as possible, despite our current deplorable health status (but thank God there’s a pill to fix that, right?!).
The next thing is a reading that we give all of our patients who ask us about fat.
“Carbs against Cardio: More Evidence that Refined Carbohydrates, not Fats, Threaten the Heart”
Scientific American Magazine – April 27, 2010
Some excerpts:
“… compared the reported daily food intake of nearly 350,000 people against their risk of developing cardiovascular disease over a period of five to 23 years. The analysis, overseen by Ronald M. Krauss, director of atherosclerosis research at the Children’s Hospital Oakland Research Institute, found no association between the amount of saturated fat consumed and the risk of heart disease.”
“… Stampfer’s findings do not merely suggest that saturated fats are not so bad; they indicate that carbohydrates could be worse. A 1997 study he co-authored in the Journal of the American Medical Association evaluated 65,000 women and found that the quintile of women who ate the most easily digestible and readily absorbed carbohydrates—that is, those with the highest glycemic index—were 47 percent more likely to acquire type 2 diabetes than those in the quintile with the lowest average glycemic-index score. (The amount of fat the women ate did not affect diabetes risk.) And a 2007 Dutch study of 15,000 women … who were overweight and in the quartile that consumed meals with the highest average glycemic load, a metric that incorporates portion size, were 79 percent more likely to develop coronary vascular disease .…”
“Another issue facing regulatory agencies, notes Harvard’s Stampfer, is that “the sugared beverage industry is lobbying very hard and trying to cast doubt on all these studies.”
“… Some monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats, such as those found in fish and olive oil, can protect against heart disease. What is more, some high-fiber carbohydrates are unquestionably good for the body. But saturated fats may ultimately be neutral compared with processed carbs and sugars such as those found in cereals, breads, pasta and cookies.”
“If you reduce saturated fat and replace it with high glycemic-index carbohydrates, you may not only not get benefits—you might actually produce harm,” Ludwig argues. The next time you eat a piece of buttered toast, he says, consider that “butter is actually the more healthful component.”
If that rocked your world, we’re just getting warmed up!
Get started on you journey to health today by contacting us for an appointment.
-Inside Health
Quantum Nutrition Testing