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What’s Wrong with the Diet of Today? 14

Is Your Dietitian Educated by The Coca Cola Company? 13

The Death of the Low-Fat Diet 28

Low Carb Seems to be Healthy In Every Way 43

Experienced Heart Surgeon About What Really Causes Heart Disease 25

Stunning: Saturated Fat and the European Paradox 143

Good Night, Low-Fat Diet 11

Should You Take Drugs for Mildly Elevated Blood Pressure? 58

The Death of the Low-Fat Diet

February 25 21:16 in Diabetes, Failed low fat diets, Heart Disease

Healthy high-fat food

It’s February 25, 2013, and the low-fat diet is dead.

The low-fat diet has been on life support since 2006, when the failure of the WHI trial was published. A low-fat diet did not succeed in preventing heart disease. Instead people with pre-existing heart disease had a 30 percent increase in risk of heart disease!

Now it’s game over. Today the result of another large trial is published in the The New England Journal of Medicine, the most prestigeous scientific journal in the world for this type of research.

About 7,500 people were randomized to either get advice on a low-fat diet or a Mediterranean diet with more fat, specifically olive oil or nuts. After almost five years the trial was stopped in advance. The result was clear. The group getting the low-fat diet advice got significantly more heart disease, again.

NEJM: Primary Prevention of Cardiovascular Disease with a Mediterranean Diet

An earlier report from the same trial looked at the risk of diabetes. People exposed to low-fat diet advice had a much higher risk of getting diabetes. And study after study show that people have a harder time losing weight on a low-fat diet. So it’s more obesity, more diabetes and more heart disease on low fat.

R.I.P. low-fat diet. Welcome back, fat.

Continued: What the Dangerous Low-Fat Diet Looked Like

Is Your Dietitian Educated by The Coca Cola Company?

February 15 9:03 in Heart Disease, Lobbyism, Sugar/fructose

This is, unbelievably, not a joke. This is how sick our world is. Recently a report came out on how the largest professional association of dietitians in the US has sold out to Coca Cola and Pepsico among other junk food companies, allowing them to buy enormous influence over the continuing education of dietitians. And here’s a shocking example of what the food industry gets in return.

A dietitian shared this example of a “shameful” webinar she was just invited to. Check it out. It’s The Coca Cola Company’s Beverage Institute For Health & Wellness that will teach dietitians about “Heart Healthy Lifestyle Counseling”!

It’s a bit of a mystery. What is The Coca Cola Company doing offering professional health education? Is that really what the company is about?

I’ll tell you what Coca Cola wants to teach the dietitians: It’s all about a balanced lifestyle. Sugar can be consumed as part of a balanced heart healthy diet. It’s all about calories anyway. And don’t believe anyone saying anything else! Oh yeah, and the most important thing is to exercise enough.

So when your dietitian uses those arguments, he or she might have been educated by Coca Cola.

The truth is that the more added sugar you get in your diet the more unbalanced it is. Sugar is consumed in vast excess by a large majority of the population today. And the more sugar you eat or drink the more calories you are likely to want. Consuming excess sugar makes you hungrier, then obese, then diabetic, then it gives you heart disease.

Unfortunately your dietitian might tell you a completely different story.

Good Night, Low-Fat Diet

February 7 10:18 in Failed low fat diets, Heart Disease, Industrial food-like products, Omega 6, Saturated fat

Omega-6 margarine spread might just kill you

The old fear of natural saturated fat (such as butter) has been on its way out for a long time. Repeated reviews of science have in recent years not shown any evidence that eating butter is anything but healthy. In Sweden (where I live) lots of people have understood this and sales of skim milk, low-fat margarine and other low-fat products have plummeted.

Here is another nail in the coffin for the fat-phobia and the low-fat hysteria. A review of previously unpublished (hidden) numbers from an older study shows that today’s margarines may not only be unnecessary. They may be directly harmful to the heart.

A disaster

The study involved nearly 500 men with heart disease. Half of them were randomly assigned to increase polyunsaturated omega-6-fat intake, including in the form of margarine (similar to Promise light spread* in the US), and were advised to reduce saturated fat (such as butter). The other half was left alone and allowed to continue eating as before.

When the study was stopped after three years there were significantly more deaths in the group that consumed omega-6-rich margarine. The risk of dying during the study was elevated by a whopping 62%. Those who escaped counseling on margarine clearly lived longer.

Now it’s revealed that the risk of death from heart disease also was significantly elevated, by as much as 74%(!), in the group that was given margarine.

Good night, fat phobia

When you add this previously hidden disastrous result to all other studies that have been done, there isn’t the slightest evidence that omega-6-rich margarine is good for your heart. On the contrary: The numbers are very close to (p=0.06) showing a statistically significant harmful effect from this margarine. A probable increased risk of dying from heart disease as a result of consuming margarine instead of butter.

Adults can of course avoid buying the junk. But not all get to choose. Where I live potentially heart damaging omega-6-rich margarine is the only alternative allowed in many day care centers and schools, citing official fat-fearing dietary advice.

Time to wake up, official dietary guideline authorities?

From the British Medical Journal

*/ Promise light spread contains 1900 mg of omega-6 and only 300 mg of omega-3 per serving.

Low Carb Seems to be Healthy In Every Way

August 25 2012 9:34 in Cholesterol, Heart Disease, High Blood Pressure, Insulin, Low Carb High Fat, Weight Loss

A new review of all major studies on low carb diets once again show good news. Not only the weight improves: All important risk factors for heart disease get better. That includes blood pressure, blood sugar and the cholesterol profile.

Insulin levels also drop, obviously. That should only surprise a few bloggers. Those who still refuse to believe that low carb diets lower insulin or that low insulin is important for weight loss.

Here’s the review

PS: For fast news consider following my Twitter-channel. I tweeted on this paper a few days ago.

Should You Take Drugs for Mildly Elevated Blood Pressure?

August 22 2012 9:48 in Heart Disease, High Blood Pressure

Medication for high blood pressure is extremely common. But who needs it? How high should the blood pressure be before medication is indicated? Usually a blood pressure above 140/90 is said to be high and a lot of people are then put on drugs.

But a new big review of all studies shows that it’s unclear if medication helps when blood pressure is only mildly elevated (140-159 systolic and/or 90-99 diastolic). It’s likely that the risk of side effects may outweigh the potential benefits in these cases.

Eating less sugar and starch may be a healthier way of lowering a mildly elevated blood pressure. A significantly reduced blood pressure has been shown in a number of studies testing low carb diets for weight loss (lower than on other weight loss diets). And I see it regularly in my patients.

Stunning: Saturated Fat and the European Paradox

June 17 2012 9:46 in Heart Disease, Saturated fat

Wow. This is mindblowing.

Have you heard about the French Paradox? French people traditionally eat a lot of saturated fat, like butter – yet they generally have less heart disease than other populations. A lot of brainpower has been wasted to explain this – do perhaps the red wine protect them?

It’s not a paradox. Continue Reading →

143

What’s Wrong with the Diet of Today?

May 3 2012 21:19 in Diabetes, Heart Disease, Metabolic syndrome, Paleo Diets, The Obesity Epidemic

Professor Loren Cordain

Why do so many people get obesity, diabetes and heart disease today? Perhaps the answer lies in evolution. But amazingly “modern” nutrition science pretty much ignores human evolution.

It’s been 153 years since Charles Darwin published his revolutionary book On the Origin of Species – but nutrition science hasn’t yet noticed. That’s why they’re stuck at a medieval level. That’s why dietitians usually are no help for people suffering from obesity or diabetes.

Professor Loren Cordain is perhaps the worlds number one expert on the evolution of the human diet. Here are a a few of his slides from the recent ASBP obesity conference. They tell us a lot: Continue Reading →

Experienced Heart Surgeon About What Really Causes Heart Disease

March 15 2012 21:18 in Heart Disease

Rarely have I received so many e-mails sharing a link as with this: Heart Surgeon Dwight Lundell’s text about what really causes heart disease. There is certainly a lot of truth to what he says:

World-Renowned Heart Surgeon Speaks Out On What Really Causes Heart Disease

The Death of the Low-Fat Diet

Is Your Dietitian Educated by The Coca Cola Company?