News: The Earth revolves around the Sun!

In the year 1615 Galileo Galilei, an astronomer, proved through painstaking observation with the newly invented telescope and his own calculations that the Earth revolves around the Sun. He was called in front of the Roman Inquisition to answer to the charges of heresy. What appeared to be merely common sense was, none-the-less, proven untrue. The paradigm of the geocentric view of the universe came into conflict with cold scientific facts that, in fact, we live in a heliocentric solar system. 

We now stand at a point where our current paradigm regarding the composition of a healthy diet is about to change. The common orthodox belief that eating fat makes people get fat has been proven false. But, the contemporary counterpart to the Roman Inquisition, the USDA Guidelines Writing Committee refuses to believe it. They are the group who judge what is orthodoxy and what is lunacy.  The Guidelines writers have been making tiny revisions to the orthodox diet recommendations every 5 years since the 1980s. When faced with strong evidence to the contrary, they pretend not to notice and then continue along the same course. Under their watch, an obesity epidemic has blossomed. They got it wrong. They got it completely backwards. Last January they got a chance to reboot the Guidelines....and they blew it yet again. 

It is time to stand up and say "The Emperor has no Clothes!" Its time to throw away the myth that all calories are the same, that exercising more and eating less will make skinny.

There are many courageous people who are now calling for change. Dr. Robert Lustig is leading the charge about sugar. Journalists Gary Taubes and Nina Teicholz have written extensively about the sorry state of nutrition science and why our present fat-phobia is unfounded.

South African Professor Tim Noakes is perhaps the closest example of a modern day Galileo. After advising a low carb diet to a pregnant woman, the South African dietitians Association accused him of malpractice. His case is going through the court system presently.  Dr Noakes fortunately has much science on his side. 

Dr. Noakes is a legendary sports and exercise physiologist who is famous for popularizing carb-loading and inventing sports gels. Despite being a lifelong endurance athlete and following his own diet advise he discovered he was becoming diabetic and fat around his waist.  Late into his career he bravely admitted that he had been wrong. He cured his diabetes and became a strong supporter of low carb and high fat diets. He literally tore pages out of his own textbook.

I find it is easy to convince people to avoid carbs. More difficult is convincing people to eat more fat. That is my mission.  Read more in the book: Eat Fat, Get Thin. See my earlier blog entry for the link.