We are fed-up with the Australian media giving legitimacy to the Paleo-Atkins/low-carb diet. Today our Sunday newspaper features an article ‘against the grain’ featuring a chef who thinks that humans have evolved to be carnivores and that “there are more than 200 potential adverse health effects clearly linked to grain consumption”. None are listed. Right beside that article is a weekly celebrity diet analysis that fails to criticize a low-carb diet day and also promotes the health benefits of eating higher saturated fat cuts of chicken, not just the breast meat. Two weeks ago our daily newspaper featured the “World’s Best Diet”, a diet co-authored by a leading Australian nutrition researcher who once endorsed a book by Neal Barnard with the comment “Dr. Barnard’s book is no exaggeration. With the right diet, the signs and symptoms of diabetes can be reversed, and he’s got the evidence to prove it”. However, the “World’s Best Diet” is quite the opposite to Dr Barnard’s low-fat plant-based diet. It’s more like a meat industry advertorial that touts the benefits of eating even more ‘protein’ which inevitably means more meat, chicken, fish, eggs and dairy foods – the very fat rich foods that are making people sick and destroying the environment. ‘Protein’ is promoted as a means of increasing satiety so that people don’t get fat from eating too much. Our take on the ‘protein for satiety’ mantra is that they are really saying to eat more fat rich, high protein food so that you don’t eat too much fat rich, high protein food. The Australian medical professionals’ media, whilst not fully supporting the Paleo-Atkins diet, has subtly moved in this direction by promoting low GI, higher-protein nutrition in the management of chronic disease. At the same time there is an absence of any reporting related to WFPB and its therapeutic effects, even when important articles, such as the TMAO story and Esselstyn’s latest intervention study, are published in peer-reviewed journals. A recent editorial on weight loss in an Australian medical journal commented that “Low-carbohydrate, high-protein diets can be useful in achieving short-term weight loss but caution is needed because there is evidence of long-term cardiovascular risk”. So they know that these diets are unhealthy yet continue to promote them. The Paleo-Atkins diet can lead to weight loss, which in itself can lead to improvements in disease risk indicators such as blood cholesterol. Whether these measurements improve also depends on how bad the diet was before the change. A recent study that looked at the effects of a Paleo diet on healthy young subjects reveals its true effect on blood cholesterol. The bottom line was that despite some weight loss occurring, their cholesterol measurements got worse, particularly in those who had the best cholesterol readings to begin with. Contrast this to the dramatic improvements in cholesterol levels which occur when people change to a low fat, whole foods, plant-based diet. (NB A link to the recent study is in the comment stream below)
Posted on: Sun, 07 Sep 2014 07:07:49 +0000
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