Are We Truly A Healthier Nation Now That We Have A Fat Phobia?
By:
A. Lloyd Tucker
Let's take a look at how the United States, and much of the rest of the world, actually entered into the current death throes of failing health: obesity epidemic, heart disease epidemic, diabetes epidemic, cancer epidemic, and a host of other degenerative diseases currently plaguing our nation--as well as much of the rest of the world.
Just How Bad Is Our Health?
Well, let's take a look at just one of the above diseases for starters: As of 2017, according to https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-71908-9 the top five nations plagued with type 2 diabetes were in order:
"The five highest prevalence of type two diabetes were observed in China (89.5 million), India (67.8 million), United States (30.7 million), Indonesia (21.0 million), and Mexico (13.1 million). The top five countries of deaths were India (254,555), China (153,185), Indonesia (97,005), United States (68,558), and Mexico (64,067).Sep 8, 2020". Click here to see a more detailed table.
You might ask, "I thought you were talking about heart disease; why are you quoting statistics on type 2 diabetes?"
Hold that thought: you just might have a "Big Fat Surprise" in store for you. Remember: these degenerative diseases often travel together.
How Did We Get Into This Mess?
But, the question was: how did we get to where we are today? It likely started with the misconception that saturated fat caused an increase in cholesterol and that high cholesterol was the cause of heart disease. This very flawed and non-scientific concept was perpetuated by a very head-strong and dogmatic biologist from the University of Minnesota. In this series of articles on our health, we are going to be looking at those degenerative diseases that tend to travel together(diabetes, heart disease, cancer, obesity, and alzheimer's disease) and why animal fat is not their cause. Keep in mind, what causes one of these diseases, also causes or is strongly implicated in the development of the others.
In the 1950s Ancel Benjamin Keys was a biologist and pathologist at the University of Minnesota. One of his most famous--or infamous--studies was the Seven Nations Study where it is said he cherry-picked only the information that fitted his preconceived hypothesis that saturated fat caused high cholesterol and high cholesterol caused the buildup of plaque in the arteries which choked off the blood flow and promoted heart attacks. To get a better and more in depth understanding of Key's underhanded science, read "The Big Fat Surprise".
So, hold onto your reading seat and get prepared for a long and informative journey into the biochemistry of food. In our upcoming series of articles we will investigate the real root causes of our health issues and why Alzheimer's disease is now called, by some doctors, type 3 diabetes. We will be looking at the different types of fats, what good carbohydrates are, and what bad carbohydrates are. We will surprise you about why our government has been so wrong for so long and how science never lies, but some scientists do.