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In 1977, the McGovern Commission, chaired by then-Senator George McGovern, issued dietary guidelines that we follow to this day. The commission recommended that Americans receive no more than 30 percent of their energy requirements from fat and that we consume no more that 10 percent of our calories as saturated fat.
Dr. Robert Olson, professor of medicine and chairman of the Biochemistry Department at St. Louis University and an expert on nutrition science argued that the recommendations were not supported by the available science. In Dr. Olson's words:
"I pleaded in my report and will plead again orally here for more research on the problem before we make announcements to the American public."
Senator McGovern, speaking for the commission stated that:
"Senators don't have the luxury the research scientist does of waiting until every last shred of evidence is in."
Senator McGovern's comment concerning "every last shred of evidence" was widely off the mark. It was never a question of having supportive, but incomplete, evidence. There simply was no convincing scientific evidence at all in support of the commission's recommendations. There still isn't.
At the time that the commission issued its dietary guidelines, only 2,500 men had been studied in randomized control trials, the gold standard in clinical research. No study included women. No study showed that a low-fat diet was superior to a diet higher in fat content in any measure of health outcome. In fact, in the one study that compared a 10 percent saturated fat intake to a diet with unrestricted saturated fat, the low-fat subjects had a higher death rate from all causes, including heart disease.
Yet, without any study recommending the dietary guidelines, and without any science to back up the guidelines, and with some evidence that the contrary was in fact true, 220 million Americans were advised to lower their saturated fat intake.
Unfortunately, these recommendations were not only wrong, they were dangerously wrong. They have helped lead the way to the present epidemics in type-two diabetes, obesity, coronary heart disease, and hypertension: the modern day "Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse."
When the food manufacturers started removing the fat from our food, the taste went with the fat. The answer: Add sugar and lots of it. This worked well economically as the introduction of high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) made cheap sugar plentiful.
It didn't work so well metabolically. The huge increases in our sugar intake have exceeded our physiologic limits. The result is the pathophysiology that we see all around us.
Sugars occur naturally in nature in fruits (fructose) and milk (lactose). These sugars are fine when consumed. The problem is that sugar is now added to a dizzying array of processed foods. It is this added sugar that causes problems. All of the added sugars we consume, whether table sugar (sucrose), high-fructose corn syrup, agave nectar or whatever are combinations of fructose and glucose. The fructose is the sweet part. Table sugar is half fructose and half glucose. HFCS is 55 percent or more fructose.
The liver is the only organ in the body that can process fructose. The huge fructose dose we get, for example, when drinking a sugary soda, overloads our liver's ability to handle the sugar in a healthy way. The liver shovels as much of the fructose into the furnaces that produce energy in our mitochondria as the furnaces can handle. The liver converts a bunch more into glycogen, stored starch, and shelves this energy for a rainy day.
But what to do with the huge pile of fructose remaining? The liver has only one choice: DNL, de novo lipogenesis, new fat-making. The liver turns the excess fructose into fat. We store the fat everywhere, our cheeks, our bellies, our thighs, our arms and legs, even our fingers.
Read more here: http://www.truth-out.org/
Dr. Robert Olson, professor of medicine and chairman of the Biochemistry Department at St. Louis University and an expert on nutrition science argued that the recommendations were not supported by the available science. In Dr. Olson's words:
"I pleaded in my report and will plead again orally here for more research on the problem before we make announcements to the American public."
Senator McGovern, speaking for the commission stated that:
"Senators don't have the luxury the research scientist does of waiting until every last shred of evidence is in."
Senator McGovern's comment concerning "every last shred of evidence" was widely off the mark. It was never a question of having supportive, but incomplete, evidence. There simply was no convincing scientific evidence at all in support of the commission's recommendations. There still isn't.
At the time that the commission issued its dietary guidelines, only 2,500 men had been studied in randomized control trials, the gold standard in clinical research. No study included women. No study showed that a low-fat diet was superior to a diet higher in fat content in any measure of health outcome. In fact, in the one study that compared a 10 percent saturated fat intake to a diet with unrestricted saturated fat, the low-fat subjects had a higher death rate from all causes, including heart disease.
Yet, without any study recommending the dietary guidelines, and without any science to back up the guidelines, and with some evidence that the contrary was in fact true, 220 million Americans were advised to lower their saturated fat intake.
Unfortunately, these recommendations were not only wrong, they were dangerously wrong. They have helped lead the way to the present epidemics in type-two diabetes, obesity, coronary heart disease, and hypertension: the modern day "Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse."
When the food manufacturers started removing the fat from our food, the taste went with the fat. The answer: Add sugar and lots of it. This worked well economically as the introduction of high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) made cheap sugar plentiful.
It didn't work so well metabolically. The huge increases in our sugar intake have exceeded our physiologic limits. The result is the pathophysiology that we see all around us.
Sugars occur naturally in nature in fruits (fructose) and milk (lactose). These sugars are fine when consumed. The problem is that sugar is now added to a dizzying array of processed foods. It is this added sugar that causes problems. All of the added sugars we consume, whether table sugar (sucrose), high-fructose corn syrup, agave nectar or whatever are combinations of fructose and glucose. The fructose is the sweet part. Table sugar is half fructose and half glucose. HFCS is 55 percent or more fructose.
The liver is the only organ in the body that can process fructose. The huge fructose dose we get, for example, when drinking a sugary soda, overloads our liver's ability to handle the sugar in a healthy way. The liver shovels as much of the fructose into the furnaces that produce energy in our mitochondria as the furnaces can handle. The liver converts a bunch more into glycogen, stored starch, and shelves this energy for a rainy day.
But what to do with the huge pile of fructose remaining? The liver has only one choice: DNL, de novo lipogenesis, new fat-making. The liver turns the excess fructose into fat. We store the fat everywhere, our cheeks, our bellies, our thighs, our arms and legs, even our fingers.
Read more here: http://www.truth-out.org/
