Low-Fat, High-Carb Diets Reverse Insulin Resistance

Dr. George Lund­berg, the for­mer edi­tor-in-chief of JAMA, gra­cious­ly invit­ed me to coau­thor this edi­to­r­i­al on how starchy, low-fat diets reverse insulin resis­tance!

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High-Calcium Diets Probably Cause Osteoporosis

At least every 5 years, the U.S. Depart­ment of Agri­cul­ture and the U.S. Depart­ment of Health and Human Ser­vices are required by fed­er­al law to issue Dietary Guide­lines for Amer­i­cans. Accord­ing to the law, these guide­lines are sup­posed to be based on the best avail­able sci­ence. Yet some of their rec­om­men­da­tions don’t seem to have any basis in sci­ence at all. In par­tic­u­lar, I think that their rec­om­men­da­tions about cal­ci­um intake will make the prob­lem of osteo­poro­sis worse, not bet­ter.
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Can You Get Too Much Omega 3 Fatty Acid?

Late­ly, many peo­ple have been claim­ing that fish is health food. The Amer­i­can Heart Asso­ci­a­tion and the Amer­i­can Dia­betes Asso­ci­a­tion urge peo­ple to eat fish. Yet if peo­ple fol­low that advice, they’ll still be at risk for heart dis­ease and dia­betes and they might increase their risk for can­cer. The omega 3 fat­ty acids in fish oil can end up in the fat­ty deposits that clog people’s arter­ies. Like oth­er fats, they pro­mote insulin resis­tance. Also, eat­ing too much omega 3 fat­ty acid could pro­mote can­cer by sup­press­ing the immune sys­tem.

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The USDA’s “My Plate” Makes No Sense

If you’ve ever watched Sesame Street, you may remem­ber the song about cat­e­gories: “One of these things is not like the oth­ers. One of these things just doesn’t belong.” That song ran through my head when I looked at the USDA’s My Plate food group sys­tem, which fea­tures veg­eta­bles, fruits, grains, dairy, and pro­tein. One of the foods groups isn’t like the oth­ers and just doesn’t belong. Can you guess which one?

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The Cholesterol Wars: the Skeptics vs. the Preponderance of Evidence

Most of our major caus­es of death and dis­abil­i­ty in the Unit­ed States today are a direct result of the stan­dard Amer­i­can diet. It would be bad enough if peo­ple knew that their eat­ing habits were endan­ger­ing their health. What’s worse is that peo­ple are harm­ing them­selves unknow­ing­ly, by eat­ing foods that they have been told are good for them and even essen­tial to good health. This tragedy goes on part­ly because peo­ple don’t want to hear bad news about their bad habits. How­ev­er, I think that a major part of the prob­lem is that most Amer­i­cans have had a poor sci­ence edu­ca­tion and most of their doc­tors have had poor train­ing in nutri­tion. As a result, they don’t know how to make sense of the sci­en­tif­ic research that is now so eas­i­ly avail­able to them through the Inter­net. As a result, they are eas­i­ly fooled by peo­ple who call them­selves skep­tics but real­ly should be clas­si­fied as deniers.

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