To be pissed off about the so called healthy eating advice we've been given for years ?

[Scarletohello]

I did the Atkins diet about 8 years ago when it was considered faddy and dangerous. Low fat was the healthy way to go. I got so much hostility about it, almost like I was a climate change denier. To my surprise,I lost 2 stone easily and quickly. Unfortunately I got scared by all the health warnings about how bad it was for you so eventually went back to a ' normal' diet. And put it all on again. Am currently watching the C4 doc about how sugar is bad for you. Of course it bloody is !!

Why can't the authorities wake up and realise its not fat that makes you fat? It's sugar and fast acting carbs.

It's time we had a major overhaul in our thinking about what really makes us fat...

"Why be angry over well-meant, well-supported, well-researched advice that reflects the knowledge of the times?"

But that's the thing, it's not well supported or researched, and the fact that the NHS has teemed up with Nestle shows that it's not in the least well meant

The evidence for low fat/high carb diets is from skewed, flawed research trials funded by huge grain companies and by big pharma who rely on these skewed results to sell billions of pounds worth of statins and diabetes drugs. It's in their best interest to do this. The NHS is playing right into their hands.

Low-fat processed food is usually stuffed full of sugar. It's what manufacturers do, they stick 'low fat' on the packaging to con you it's healthy while carefully not mentioning the sugar.

Consumer groups, doctors and dietitians have argued for more than a decade for traffic light labels, that should you on the front of the pack whether a product is high in fat, salt and sugar - so you can see at a glance rather than being misled. And for every food producer and retailer to use the same system.

The food industry has been VERY resistant. Even now, we don't have full traffic light labelling that is the same in every store.

The key here is in the word diet. You need a balanced diet, not a crash diet that you cant sustain, as otherwise you will put the weight back on.

A balanced diet, and exercise.

My dad has spent his life on the atkins diet without knowing, he had a stroke that put him in a wheelchair.

Too much fat clog up your veins and is not good for your heart and arteries. Your gallbladder will not see the difference between Tuscan Olive Oil, Omega3, avocados and smoked salmon (fats that are so called good) and lard, and you may end up with gall problems or gall stones.

Balance!

It seems to me that a lot of people go on crazy diets so they can cram in extra cakes/crisps and alcohol.....

Healthy balanced diet, away from excess fat and sugar, and exercise, and you are half way there.

Where are all these government recommendations for low fat/high carb diets?

Where are all these government recommendations for low fat/high carb diets?

Merry, diabetics are advised to follow a low gi diet, which contains loads of carbs in the form of whole grain pasta, bread etc.
These things, although whole grain, still cause insulin spikes.

I don't know enough about this side of things to comment, but there is information out there.

Quint, there is growing evidence that stress plays a huge part in health, and bad fats contribute to this, as bodies don't know how to deal with them.

My husband (fit, healthy, active) had a stroke last year. We are under huge amounts of stress most of the time, that is the only thing that is unhealthy about his lifestyle.

Here

There are others, if you google NHS low GI.

I don't think eating that much meat is healthy or sustainable for the planet we live in.

The nhs general diet advice certainly seems to advocate high carb to me. Can't link but look at their eat well plate for example-biggest sections equally are fruit and veg, and carbs

It was well-researched at the time, but times have moved on and new research is gaining ground. Unfortunately, the NHS is such a juggernaut that it responds very slowly.

I dislike this dependence on an authority to tell us what to do. We should think for ourselves, study up, discuss, self-evaluate. Ie exactly what we are doing here on MN. And teach our dc what we believe.

surely if you just cut out the cakes and biscuits and sugar in your tea, you would lose weight, even if you ate loads of pasta!

Unfortunately not if you are insulin resistant.

It is not that easy to eat a load of calories in fat, unless it is combined with sugar

On the contrary: butter, olive oil, mayonnaise, pine seeds, egg yolk - all very rich in fats (mostly healthy fats) and highly palatable. Not forgetting things like the skin on roast chicken (in moderation, of course).

ILoveG, I haven't been formally diagnosed with insulin resistance. I gather the test is very expensive and rarely done on the NHS. But I meet a few of the diagnostic criteria so felt it would do no harm to live as if I were anyway. It is absolutely linked to PCOS, which I also suspect I have, and is a major cause of both type II diabetes AND obesity. So those fat people bringing diabetes on themselves may not be quite as feckless as some think.

When I was last pregnant, I took part in a research study for obese women. I was pretty shocked at how much junk food I was told to eat as healthy swaps - low fat rubbish and sweeteners everywhere. When I queried this with the person in charge, she told me it was a first step - that diet fizzy drinks were of course worse than water, but more palatable to someone used to the full sugar stuff and not very aware of the health implications. Interestingly when I asked how successful the intervention was, she said the best results came from women who had stopped drinking large amounts of full sugar fizzy drinks.

As with all other health professionals, my size was a mystery to them given my diet.

When pregnant my high blood sugar was also picked up on and labelled gestational diabetes (whereas sadly in fact it's just high blood sugar.) I was told to eat an amount of carbs that would have seen me on insulin, with the consequent complications for me and my baby, whereas in fact I controlled it entirely by eating a low carb diet, with plenty of vegetables and pulses.

YANBU OP.

The heaviest I have ever been was on a high carb low fat diet (was constantly hungry too!).

Reverted back to Atkins to get off last of the baby weight and was such a revelation! Not only did my last 3kg fly off but I felt amazing. I went straight to OWL phase so was having fruit, nuts etc from the get go and loads of cals to maintain bf. My digestion was so much better and my endo symptons reduced without wheat. A few carbs have come back into my diet- oats, rice, occasional pulses and potato- but weight is staying off for me and DH.

Dukan didn't work so well when we tried it once. Weight came straight back. I think you need the fat of the Atkins. So many crazy myths about Atkins!

We have ghee, olive oil, and coconut oil and whatever is naturally occurring. So many people still think 'good fats' are refined rubbish high in PUFAs like canola and that crap.

Actually quint, triglycerides are mostly formed as part of insulin resistance and NOT fat intake per se.

I only advocate healthy eating, not fad diets. Eat food that, before cooked looks rather similar to what it did when it was growing/swimming/running around the field. Use natural products, not chemical concoctions.
However, the remarks about Dr. Atkins dying of heart failure are a bit of a red herring - he was actually rather old when he died, in his 80's -

PleaseLeave low carb doesn't have to mean eating lots of meat, you do get vegetarians that eat a low carb diet.

I can see why advocating paleo eating would be healthy and sustainable.

But not low carbing.

Cutting our processed food and refined sugar is a good thing.

But there's nothing wrong with fruit, bread and potatoes and lots wrong with a diet that consists mainly of fat.

For about 80% of my diet I stick to the 'if it grew or lived you can eat it' rule. The other 20% is diet/low fat fizz, yogurt and processed rubbish and I am underweight. I just make sure I don't go over 1200 calories which is ample for a very small woman.

Content may be important. But quantity is far more so.

My dad has just gad heary bypass surgery and his doctor said it is yhe sugar which makes the arteries sticky and then when you eat fatty food the fat thrn sticks to the arteries and cligs them up.

So if people could cut out excess sugar before the damage is done then presumably they could eat high fat food because that fat would then pass through the arteries instead of getting stuck to them.

Once the damage has been done though, I think you then have to eat low fat and low sugar, which leaves quite a limited diet when you look at most food in the supermarket, which has all been tampered with.

I read somewhere that margerine is very close in chemical structure to plastic. Any doctor who tells people to eat that shit, shouldn't be allowed to give nutrition advice.

Low carb can be lots of vegetables and fish. I don't even bother with cream.

SidandAndyssextoy Thank you for your reply. Type 2 runs in my family (Mum and grandma were both slim to start with , grandma still is) and I really want to prevent it before it's too late.

Until the US surgeon general decided that it was fat that caused the problem, most weight loss advice was geared around reducing sugar and other carbohydrates. In fact, John Yudkin wrote "Pure, white and deadly" about added sugar in the 1960's I think.

The US food production industry re-tooled to produce low-fat versions of foods which then had sugar added to make them palatable. The spread of US culture and eating habits caused the adoption of US-style high sugar eating in countries that hadn't had a problem.

Lustig's book is really interesting, and he's written a new preface to Pure white and deadly, too.

Low carb doesn't necessarily mean 'Atkins'. I generally eat more vegetables that usual when I'm low carbing, just very few of the starchy ones.

YABU. It's quite possible to be a healthy weight with a balanced diet that includes the better kind of carbohydrates.

Cogito, you're right, but for many people (myself included), having carbs, even the good kind, triggers cravings for more carbs.

Different ways of eating suit different people, but I reckon that for the majority of people seeing drs for conditions linked to obesity, the NHS guidelines for eating will not help them to keep,weight off long term.

The perception of Atkins as high fat rubs off on low carb. Low carb can be very healthy, it just doesn't do sugar. It's not necessarily high fat / no carb.

Manic you said "For about 80% of my diet I stick to the 'if it grew or lived you can eat it' rule. The other 20% is diet/low fat fizz, yogurt and processed rubbish and I am underweight. I just make sure I don't go over 1200 calories which is ample for a very small woman."

I'm sorry if this sounds blunt but you are starving yourself to remain underweight, it wouldn't matter what you ate as long as it totalled up to 1200kcal because it simply is not enough to maintain a healthy weight - ie one that is not underweight. I'd be surprised if you are getting all the nutrients your body needs, as you are only eating 960kcal of real food on a daily basis, I hope you are taking multivitamins.