Obesity rates in America have tripled from the 1960s to the 1970s and the columnist indicates that the blame on fats (but not sugar) in dietary guidelines of the time, are partly the reason. — SUZY HAZELWOOD/Pexels
Sometime ago, a friend asked a couple of pertinent questions about food in general and the festive dining seasons in particular: “Why is there so much conflicting advice about our diets? What is good for us to indulge in, and why is this information so difficult to obtain?”
Frankly, I think good dietary information is not difficult to find if one is sensible, but for many people living a hectic lifestyle, I can agree it may be complicated, if one does not cook and relies significantly on prepared and processed foods. Or trusted advice from their governments in the past.
Bad statistics
In the 1960s, the rate of obesity in the USA was 13% for adults. In 2020, the obesity rate in the USA has shot up to over 40% and rising. From its plateau in the 1960s and 1970s, obesity rates in the USA have more than tripled, and there is no doubt it can only be due to dietary changes. And the key reason for this dietary shift is mostly due to a man called Ancel Keys.
The death rate due to coronary heart disease in the 1950s-1960s was around 360 deaths per 100,000 population, compared to around 180 per 100,000 population today. As part of his research into this high ratio of coronary deaths in the 1950s, Keys conducted the Seven Countries’ Study, published in 1958, which seemed to demonstrate a link between fat intake and incidence of heart diseases.
The seven countries chosen were Finland, Greece, US, Italy, Yugoslavia, Netherlands, and Japan. On the surface, the incidence of heart disease seemed perfectly correlated with dietary fat intake; the lower the fat intake, the lower the rate of heart disease, and higher fat intake was tied to higher heart disease rates.
Fats like butter were demonised in Ansel Keys’ study, causing food producers to switch from using fats to processed grains, sugars and additives. — FELICITY TAI/Pexels
Based on this simple graph, Keys launched a campaign to demonise fats as the primary cause of heart diseases. The discovery of cholesterol plaques and other “fatty” deposits surrounding heart tissue probably also played a part in his campaign against fats.
There were several serious statistical problems with the Seven Countries’ Study. Firstly, if Keys had just included more countries into the study, the correlation between fat intake and heart disease would become much more tenuous (as his graph reflected the wealth of the countries more than diets).
Also, Keys focused only on fats, and no other components of diets that people were eating in different countries. If more food items were included, then he would have seen that other dietary items were also linked to heart diseases, and one of them was sugar.
Basically, Keys was a very forceful personality during his time, and a bad statistician. Nevertheless, Keys was a central figure in the publication of dietary guidelines for Americans (and the world) and his anti-fat prejudices were still a key influence on the first US Food Guide Pyramid published in 1992.
Other more carefully researched studies had already identified sugars and processed starches as potential causes of heart disease, with possibly the most notable being Pure, White and Deadly by John Yudkin, a book about the dangers of sugar. However, Keys’ influence on the American health community meant that he could and did ridicule Yudkin’s work, and such disdain of sugar as a factor in heart disease was generally supported in the press at the time.
So, why did the number of coronary deaths fall from the 1950s to around half of those levels today in the USA? Mainly, this is due to better medical care/procedures, combined with better medications for treatment and prolongation of life.
What is completely unambiguous is the increase in obesity, diabetes, and incidence of heart disease (not deaths) rates since the 1970s, starting firstly in the USA and then spreading outwards towards the rest of the world. And the 1992 US Food Guide Pyramid reflects how this phenomenon arose.
The US Food Guide Pyramid placed a huge focus on ingesting grains and carbohydrates, where the ratio is many more times carbohydrates than fats. The messaging was simply that carbohydrates are “heart healthy” and this advice was applied to children from the age of two years.
This caused all major food producers to switch from using fats in their products to using ingredients such as processed grains, sugars, and additives to compensate for the lack of “mouth feel” in food due to the elimination of fats. Even today, one can see processed foods marked as “containing 0% fat”, but which never mentions the additional sugars and highly processed starches used to replace the fat.
The underlying assumptions behind Keys’ work sounded plausible in theory. Carbohydrates have less than half the calories than fats, so removing dietary fats may sound like a simple way to cut down on weight gain. So why does this not work?
It is because the body does not behave like a physics experiment. Eating too much of the wrong carbohydrates, such as sugars and highly processed starches induces the production of insulin, an important hormone used to regulate glucose (sugar) levels in the blood. Overproduction of insulin induces glucose storage in the liver, muscles, and fatty tissues, resulting in more fat being deposited around the body.
The US Food Guide Pyramid placed a huge emphasis on grains and carbohydrates, but too much of the wrong carbs like white bread, can result in more fat being deposited in the body. — CATS COMING/Pexels
Ironically, too much insulin also means that the tissues that rely on receiving glucose for energy are deprived of glucose as the rest of the body are driven to convert glucose into fat. Therefore, people are often compelled to ingest even more sugar after having sugary foods, because parts of their bodies are running low on glucose due to too much insulin in their bloodstreams.
The persistent overproduction of insulin normally leads to obesity, insulin resistance, which turns into diabetes, which then leads to hypertension, heart diseases and other serious disorders. The usual precursor condition of insulin resistance is difficult to detect as there is no routine diagnostic for this. Normally, it is an assessment based on various diverse factors, and a complicated analysis of blood sugar levels over several months. So, often one does not see the negative effects of a bad diet until it is too late.
Just avoid the problem
The conclusion is governmental advice such as that offered by the 1992 US Food Guide Pyramid was generally not helpful to the health of populations. And because of that, many alternative ideas and theories now abound, mostly to commercially profit from various empty promises of a “better” diet or nutrition. However, many governments have also learnt from the science and their past mistakes and can now offer excellent dietary advice which are suited for their own populations.
Therefore, good dietary advice is available, but often it is not as palatable or convenient as believing something easier, or buying a ready-made product, marketed by expert psychologists and sales departments who know how to sell and prey on people’s confusion. An example is in my previous article 'The choices you think you have'.
As the festive season approaches, I am sure many of us will be overindulging in food and drink. Therefore, a suggestion may be to UNDERINDULGE in food and drink for a few weeks AFTER the fancy dinners and celebrations. And in all cases, eliminate whenever possible the consumption of sugars and processed starches.
Easy egg yolk garnishes for festive meals
For fun, here are very simple, delicious, and unusual garnishes for dishes served during festive dinners. It involves egg yolks as the main ingredient.
Egg yolk is the main ingredient in the columnist's egg yolk garnish. — KLAUS NIELSEN/Pexels
On deep dish, pour enough kosher or pure salt to make a flat bed of about 1.5 cms deep of salt (do NOT use table salt which has anti-caking agents). Then pat some indentations into the salt with a tablespoon, about 1 cm apart.
Carefully separate out some egg yolks and put only the yolks on the indentations, as many as you can fit on the bed of salt. Cover the egg yolks totally with another 1 cm of salt and leave in the refrigerator for 8 to 10 days.
Afterwards, remove the egg yolks carefully from the salt, clean them as much as possible, and place on some baking parchment on an oven tray. Dry the yolks for around 60-70 mins in a low oven set to 90C.
To serve, grate the dried yolks on top of meats, fishes, grilled vegetables, whatever. To make it more interesting, one can also mix sugar into the salt before curing the yolks, with up to 50% sugar in the salt mix. Note that I have not done this myself, but it sounds plausibly delicious too.
The second egg yolk garnish is mayonnaise, flavoured with garlic or dill or whatever herbs you like. You need a stick blender, an egg yolk, fresh juice from a lemon, dash of salt, and vegetable oil (I use olive oil). Plus, optionally some finely minced garlic or dill or any herbs you like. If you want to make more, then use double or triple the amount of ingredients.
Squeeze the juice of a lemon into a glass jug. Plonk in the egg yolk, salt, and any herbs you want. Start whizzing the ingredients with the stick blender while slowly pouring in the vegetable oil, until everything is smooth and firm. Serve the mayonnaise with meals.
The magic of mayonnaise happens because egg yolks contain lecithin, a natural emulsifying compound which can bond with water at one end of its structure and oil at the other end. This causes the thickening of the mayonnaise as the water-based and oil molecules are held suspended together by lecithin in an emulsion.
The views expressed here are entirely the writer’s own.
