In my local newspaper yesterday, I caught a glimpse of an article in a section that I typically avoid because it’s typically nonsense, the Health and Fitness section. Had I not read this article, I could’ve saved myself a good deal of time, but that wouldn’t have been nearly as much fun. The article is Swallowing some statistics could kill you. The first article of the two-part series is here: There is no diet magic: Healthy eating is the key. Having read that nonsense, I had to drop Dr. Bryant Stamford, Professor and Chair of the Department of Exercise Science at Hanover College and author of the articles, a line.

Here is the text of the email that I sent:

Dr. Stamford,
I read with great interest your recent two-part article in my local newspaper, The Courier-Journal. The first article was titled “There is no diet magic: Healthy eating is the key” and the second was “Swallowing some statistics could kill you”. By the end of your second article, I could only shake my head and think “This is what passes for journalistic integrity in the C-J?”

In your first article, you state this absolute nonsense: “One legacy of the Atkins craze and its millions of devotees, is that Americans are now fatter than ever before.” Please back that up with facts. Show me studies proving that those on the Atkins Diet are fatter than they started. Not a single data point from a friend of yours that ate bologna and pork rinds. You and I both know that isn’t the spirit of the Atkins Diet (or any other low-carb diet), but that doesn’t stop the anti-low-carb folks from spreading the message that Atkins is nothing but “cheese wrapped in bacon.” The fact is that Americans are fatter by trying to follow the completely ridiculous advice of the Food Guide Pyramid, which focuses on grains rather than fruits and vegetables. There is also the emphasis on “low-fat” everything. Please explain to me how eating a diet based on a food that absolutely must be processed is the proper diet. Why would you take a natural food and remove the fat? Somehow processing the food makes it better than its natural state?

You are aware that grains contain antinutrients, such as phytic acid (which binds to important minerals) and enzyme inhibitors (which stress digestion), yes? Our ancestors ate grains properly, sprouted or fermented, rather than extruded in the way we make our fluffy quick-rise breads and crunchy breakfast cereals. The sprouting and fermentation processes neutralize the antinutrients. The extrusion process does not.(1) Yet well-meaning, but misguided, “nutrition experts” keep throwing out that politically correct line of “eat more whole grains.” As a Dr, I’m sure you are also aware that wheat gluten is quite the gut irritant, even for those without diagnosed gluten insensitivity. Can you please explain how a diet high in whole grains avoids these problems?

Here’s an interesting tidbit from the USDA Fact Book (2):
Of that 24.5-percent increase [in caloric intake], grains (mainly refined grain products) contributed 9.5 percentage points; added fats and oils, 9.0 percentage points; added sugars, 4.7 percentage points; fruits and vegetables together, 1.5 percentage points; meats and nuts together, 1 percentage point; and dairy products and eggs together, -1.5 percentage point.

Interesting indeed sir. Americans are eating nearly 25% more calories than they were in 1970 (this data is from 2000). Of this increase, over 14% of that is carbs from grains and sugars. Meat, oils, and nuts are an additional 10% of calories, yet you’re saying that alone is the cause of our obesity problems? What about all of those grains? Dairy and egg consumption are actually down, meaning that something, quite likely the 14% of calories from grains and sugars, have reduced our protein intake. Yeah, it was the Atkins Diet that made us all so fat. Sure. Atkins has been a diet followed by few Americans, so placing the blame there is absurd.

Your second article is the one that really made me laugh however. First, to even begin to compare a high-fat diet to smoking is dishonest. Your readers deserve better. Here’s where it gets really good though:
“In relating this to heart disease, one example would be the extremely low-fat diets in Third World countries and the fact that heart disease is virtually nonexistent there. There is a very high correlation, but it cannot be concluded that the low-fat diets cause the absence of heart disease. Similarly, when folks from Third World countries migrate to the United States and eat lots of fat, as we do, their risk of heart disease rises dramatically. Is this type of information meaningful? Apparently not to the author.”

Where to start… Do you truly believe that the hallmark of the American diet is that it contains lots of fat? What about the hundreds of pounds of sugar eaten per capita? What about the lack of fruits and vegetables? You see, people love to compare Diet X against the Standard American Diet (SAD) and say “See, this is better than a high-fat diet.” Whether it is willful or inadvertent, it is dishonest. Here is the SAD in a nutshell: lots of grain-fed meats, lots of processed grains and sugar, very few fruits and vegetables, a low intake of long-chain omega-3 fatty acids, a high intake of omega-6 fatty acids, and a low intake of vitamins and minerals. Yet somehow, it manages to get boiled down to “Look at all that red meat and fat.” What about the rest of the diet? This is the same disingenuous tactic employed by those trying to prove a vegetarian diet is more healthful than the SAD. Eating nothing but mustard would probably be better than the SAD, but at least have the decency to report the SAD as what it is: a diet high in improperly-raised meats and low in vitamins and minerals. Are you aware that the white potato, a starchy tuber seriously lacking in nutrients compared to green stuff, is the most widely consumed vegetable in the United States?(3) Worse, over 40% of those are turned into French fries and hash browns. Do those foods qualify as “high-fat” or will you do your readers the justice they deserve and call them “processed, nutrient-void, starchy carbs that will put your blood sugar through the roof”?

Nothing about the Western Diet is natural. The meat animals are force-fed corn (which coincidentally gives rise to E.coli 0157:H7 due to acidification of the digestive tract), animal remnants, antibiotics, and growth hormones. Would a diet based around grass-fed or wild meats have the same problems? It seems highly unlikely since our ancestors have been eating meat for millions of years and weren’t dying left and right. But no one wants to do such a comparison. Perhaps they stick with the lowest common denominator, the Western Diet, because it’s easy to trump and get a headline. Here’s a dose of reality: when you take a group of people that are unaccustomed to processed foods and start feeding them foods such as flour, sugar, and trans fats, they quickly degenerate to look like the typical American with the same health problems. Note that it’s not an increase in fat. It’s an increase in junk foods, which are invariably high in processed grains and sugars. The works of Weston A. Price, who I would presume has spent more time exploring indigenous cultures than either you or I, back this up.(4)

What about the extremely high-fat diets in hunter-gatherer populations? What about the Inuit that eat a diet that is virtually devoid of any plant matter? Why do these people not keel over from heart disease? Some like to claim some genetic anomaly, but when the Inuit are fed an American diet, they suddenly develop the same diseases we do. Why is that? It’s certainly not the fat content because they consume the majority of their calories as fat. So what is it Dr. Stamford? Could it be the 130+ pounds of added sugar per capita?

If you were to put diet into an evolutionary context, you’d realize that it isn’t fat that’s killing people. It’s processed foods. Nearly every traditional culture, whether they are mostly pastoral or mostly agricultural, thrive on their diet, with a wide range of macronutrient compositions. The Masai drink the blood of their kills. Why don’t they die on the spot? Throughout evolution, the human diet was marked by consumption of meat, every bit of fat on the animal (brains, bone marrow, kidney fat, etc were the first foods eaten), and organs. In fact, our ancestors were known to leave the muscle meats behind when meat was plentiful, eating only the organs, fat, and bone marrow. Meat consumption was balanced with seasonal fruits, vegetables, and tubers, yet for most of our evolution, grain consumption was minimal. It’s interesting that fruits and vegetables wouldn’t have been readily available in the winter (even tropical areas have fruiting and flowering seasons) lending one to come to the obviously conclusion that the dead months were low-carb.

You also denigrate saturated fat with this quote: “For example, a high-saturated fat intake raises serum cholesterol, one of the major risk factors for heart disease. The higher the cholesterol, the higher the risk. Thus, rid your diet of saturated fat to lower your cholesterol, and in turn lower your risk of heart disease.”
What about the Pacific Islanders that consume saturated fats from coconut and palm fruits, yet don’t exhibit the levels of heart disease we have here? Genetic anomaly again? Are you aware that saturated red palm oil is the 2nd most widely consumed oil in the world, 1st if you remove the United States and our prodigious consumption of soybean oil? You should do some research into how polyunsaturated fats suppress the immune system and are prone to oxidation. Ray Peat’s website is a good start. It’s odd that these facts never see the light of day amongst those of you peddling misinformation. I believe it’s called “selection bias”. You’ve also completely ignored the differences between LDL, VLDL, HDL, and triglycerides. Are you aware that triglycerides and small, dense LDL are prime markers of heart disease and that high levels of carbohydrates increase the levels of these substances? Saturated fat actually improves the HDL/LDL ratio by raising both and fat as a whole produces large, fluffy LDLs, the benign type.

Have you ever considered that the cholesterol hypothesis is a bunch of hooey? I encourage you to read The Great Cholesterol Con by Anthony Colpo (or a different book by the same name by Uffe Rafnskov).(5) If you will take the effort to read these books and the debunking of the cholesterol hypothesis with an open mind, you very well might learn something that will be beneficial to your readers. Here’s a little of what you’ll learn (you may already be aware of this. If so, forgive me.): Cholesterol is essential to the workings of the body, being the building block of cell membranes and the steroid hormones.(6) Cholesterol doesn’t damage arteries; it repairs damage. High blood sugar and high insulin damage arteries, therefore cholesterol comes to the rescue to repair the damage. Blaming cholesterol is akin to blaming the ambulance that shows up at the scene of an accident for the carnage. High cholesterol itself is either a warning sign (a symptom of something else such as a high carb diet that keeps blood sugar elevated) or a benign condition.

Finally, I find it absolutely hilarious that you refuse to mention Gary Taubes’ book “Good Calories, Bad Calories” because “I don’t want to add fuel to the fire.” Have you actually read the book and thought through the studies that Taubes presents with an open mind? I think the reality is that you don’t want your readers to pick up the book and learn something that might improve their health. If you have read the book, can you debunk Taubes’ hypothesis with something other than “well everyone knows fat is bad for you.” Sorry, that explanation doesn’t cut it with people that actually think. I have a feeling that you’ve just dismissed the book in your first article with nothing more than a read of the back cover. Luckily, you didn’t mention the book’s name, so perhaps some of your readers will not be swayed by your obvious bias.

You’re in the same camp as Dr. Ornish, clinging to an outdated and unproven dietary recommendation. I typically let such ridiculous displays of dishonesty and untruth go. However, you are spreading your brand to the hundreds of thousands of citizens in my community, a community that is not known for its small waistlines and that could really use good advice. But as Upton Sinclair once remarked: “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”

I look forward to hearing back from you.

Sincerely,
Scott Kustes
Modern Forager

References:
(1) Be Kind to Your Grains - Weston A Price
(2) USDA Fact Book
(3) Potatoes
(4) Weston A. Price - Nutrition and Physical Degeneration
(5) Anthony Colpo’s “The Great Cholesterol Con”
(6) Cholesterol and Health

Our buddy Jimmy Moore of Livin’ La Vida Low Carb has also taken a shot at Dr. Stamford before: Professor: Atkins Diet Made America ‘A Much Fatter Society’.

We’ll see if Dr. Stamford responds.


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