I translate a long article in French. http://newsoftomorrow.org/vie/nutrition/michael-r-eades-a-propos-du-livre-de-nina-teicholz-the-big-fat-surprise
Michael R. Eades - About Nina Teicholz book, "The Big Fat Surprise"
May 15 2014 | Posted in: Nutrition
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(Source: Michael R. Eades, MD, proteinpower.com, May 13, 2014)
This account book Nina Teicholz The Big Fat Surprise is the most difficult and demanding than I ever wrote. It is challenging for several reasons. First, it is psychologically demanding because I want to write a good report that will encourage everyone to immediately buy the book and read it. Why? Because I think this is one of the most important books ever written on nutrition. Perhaps the most important. And I think I have a responsibility to encourage as many people as possible to get it.
On the other hand, this book is filled with so much valuable information that I could not bring myself to choose what I was going to put forward. An account book always presents excerpts, but there is there such an abundance of choice it took me forever to decide.
I can tell you categorically that there are not enough superlatives - at least in my vocabulary - to describe how much this book is wonderful and important. But I'll try anyway, because I really think it is a book of such high quality.
I met Nina Teicholz there five or six years when I was in New York. She told me she was converted to a low-fat diet to a high fat diet and she wrote a book. We did not discuss the book she wrote, so I do not know. We stayed sporadically in touch by e-mail and exchanged one or two scientific papers, but that's about it. I had not heard from her for a few years, when in September I received an unexpected email where she told me that the first version of his book was completed. She asked me if I could read it and give my feedback.
I hate these requests because all read a manuscript takes time. And if it is bad, what do you say? I wrote a number of books, and I know every effort it takes to write one. Even a bad one. So I hate to be put in the position of having to tell someone, your book is missing.
But demand for Nina then came that I was traveling and I had free time on a plane, so I said, of course, send it to me.
She sent me a number of files, some word, some in pdf. And she did not send me the entire book, but only the first half.
I started reading it and I was absolutely captivated. Instead of taking time to read the manuscript, I began to take more time to read his book as do all the other things I should do. It was so good point.
So I finished the game she had sent me, I wrote it for the rest - she sent me, and I devoured voraciously.
I made some suggestions - very few - and we continued to share a moment. A few months later, his publisher sent me a bound copy of what was basically a printed manuscript. It was not laid out like most of the tests. I have read this release and took lots of notes. Here is a typical example of what looked like the pages of my copy. Now you see why it was so difficult to decide which extracts I would choose me.
Since then, I received the proofs layouts, which I also read. So I read the book three times. All I ask you is to read it once. I guarantee you will thank me for doing so.
Nina Teicholz is married and has two children in New York. She is an investigative journalist and columnist culinary art. When she moved to New York, she followed a low-fat diet, the style of the food pyramid USDA. Her life changed when she began writing restaurant reviews. She ate everything she heads examined gave him, which was often "block, all kinds of pieces of beef prepared all imaginable ways, cream sauces, soups, cream, foie gras - all the food she had avoided in his life. "
She ate a huge amount of fatty foods, and despite his concerns, his cholesterol did not explode. But besides that, she lost five pounds she had trouble getting rid of.
His editor at Gourmet was asked to write an article on trans fats. This article ended up turning into a publishing contract and Herculean research to document and write The Big Fat Surprise (BFS). It tells the story of how we Americans who eat large amounts of saturated fats (while not suffering virtually no heart disease) have now ended up eating at the restaurant fats which, when heated, release a substance similar to lacquer which is so toxic that it must be cleaned in combination to hazardous materials.
I was investigating more, the more I realized that our dietary recommendations on fats - the ingredient that has obsessed our health authorities over the last 60 years - not just seem a little wrong but completely false. None of our common beliefs today fats in general and saturated fats in particular are, after careful consideration, accurate.
Finding the truth has become, for me, a consuming obsession for eight years. I read thousands of scientific articles, attended conferences, learned the intricacies of the science of nutrition, and interviewed nearly all nutrition experts living in the United States, sometimes several times, in addition to dozens others abroad. I also interviewed dozens of executives of the food business to understand how this industry giant influenced the science of nutrition. The results were surprising.
A popular belief is that the food industry is profit-driven at the root of all our food problems, and that somehow food companies are responsible for the corruption dietary recommendations for business needs. And it's true, they are not angels. In fact, the history of v égétales oils, including trans fatty acids, based in part on how food companies have stifled science to protect an essential ingredient in their industry.
However, I found that overall, the errors of the science of nutrition could not be carried on the adverse interests of agribusiness. The source of our dietary advice was erroneous in some ways more worrying because they appeared to have been motivated by experts from some of our most trusted institutions working for what they believed to be the public good.
Through my own research on men and Paleolithic diet, I knew they ate mainly meat. And the meat they ate was not what we consider today as the choice cuts. No steaks or fillets, but the viscera, bone, brain, and fat - all sources of saturated fats were probably what he preferred. I knew before the beginning of the 20th century, heart attacks were rare. While rare, in fact, that they were almost nonexistent. Doctors could never see their entire career.
What I did not know is that during this period without heart disease, people in the United States favored foods of animal origin and saturated fats. Even in Britain. In fact, people ate more meat than now. But today, heart disease is the leading cause of death. (Take a look at these two old articles (click here and here) that Nina referenced to see the change).
I had been a victim of myth in agrarian America before 1900 everyone ate grains and vegetables and some meat when they could have. Nina gives a lot of evil in The Big Fat Surprise to emphasize that this was not the case.
Not only European Americans ate mainly meat, but also Native Americans.
Meanwhile between 1898 and 1905, the Indians of the southwest were observed by the physician became anthropologist Aleš Hrdlička, who reported his observations in a report of 460 pages of the Smithsonian Institute. Native Americans he encountered had a diet consisting mainly of meat, usually buffalo meat, and yet, as Hrdlička observed, they seemed to have a dramatic health and that until an advanced age. The number of centenarians among these Indians was, according to the Census of 1900 in the United States, with 224 million men and 254 per million women, compared to only 3 per million men and 6 million women in the white population. Although Hrdlička notes that these figures are probably somewhat inaccurate, he wrote that "no error can not explain the extreme disproportion of centenarians observed." Among people aged over 90 years he has encountered, "none was demented or dependent. "
Hrdlička was also struck by the complete absence of chronic diseases in all of the studied Indian population. "Malignant diseases," he writes, "if they ever existed - and it would be hard to believe that this is not the case - must be extremely rare." We told him about "tumors" and he saw several fibroids, but never came across a clear case of tumor or cancer. Hrdlička writes that he has seen three cases of cardiovascular disease among more than two thousand Indians examined, and "not a single case pronounced" atherosclerosis. Varicose veins were rare. He did not observed appendicitis, peritonitis, ulcer of the stomach, or any "serious illness" of the liver. Although we can not infer that meat consumption was responsible for their good health and longevity, it would be logical to conclude that reliance on meat in no way affects human health. [My emphasis]
To put into perspective the census figures, I threw a glance at the most recent statistics for centenarians. In 2012, the United States, the rate of centenarians per million inhabitants was 173. So even if as Hrdlička said, the 1900 census was a little inaccurate, it is still surprising that a group of eaters bison, primitive people, had as many centenarians as we today with our antibiotics, clean water without parasites, and our advanced medical care.
How we went from a society consuming meat, butter and lard in today's society anxious about fat, heart attacks and constantly diet? The responsibility of one man.
Ancel Benjamin Keys.
Ancel Keys came up with the "diet-heart" hypothesis, alone catalyzed the movement that led us to where we are today. And he did it because he left his monstrous ego minimum tread the scientific integrity he had.
Here's what happened.
In a lecture in 1952 at Mt Sinai in New York (later published as an article which has received considerable attention), Keys has officially presented this idea, which he called his "diet-heart hypothesis "[fat in the diet -> increased blood cholesterol -> heart disease]. His graphic showed a close correlation between fat intake and mortality due to heart disease in six countries.
It was a perfect upward curve as the curve of growth of a child. Graphic Keys suggested that if you prolong the curve down to zero consumption of fat, your risk of heart disease almost disappear.
This exercise to "connect-the-dots" in 1952 was the seed that has now become the giant tree of our distrust of fat. All the evils that have been attributed to the fat over the years - not only heart disease, but obesity, cancer, diabetes, and more - resulting from the implementation of this idea among the authorities of the nutrition by Ancel Keys and perseverance to promote. Now, when you eat a salad with lean chicken breast for lunch and pasta rather than take steak dinner, the choice back to him. The influence of Keys on the world of nutrition has been unprecedented.
The graph of the six countries
Keys has traveled the world to promote his theory of fat-causes-heart disease using this famous painting by six countries. However, at a conference in Geneva, Switzerland, he is faced with a serious scientist who was very skeptical.
Yerushalmy Jacob, founder of the Department of Biostatistics at Berkeley, including that Keys had selected its data, and if all data were included, the graph showing the correlation between fat consumption and heart disease would be a lot of points scattered pell-mell on the page.
Yerushalmy and his colleague Herman Hilleboe issued a scathing refutation of the work of Keys. You can click on their article, Fat in the Diet and Mortality from Heart Disease: A methodologic Note that I put in my Dropbox, so you can see what looks like a real scientific slap. Read almost makes me pity Keys.
Keys how he responded to this item after its release?
Nina interviewed Henry Blackburn, the longtime associate of Keys, who was there when Keys was briefed.
"I remember the atmosphere in the lab when the study was published," he has said.
"The atmosphere ... bad? "Asked Nina.
"Mmmmmm," said Blackburn, who made a long pause.
Having been massacred by Yerushalmy and Hilleboe has only strengthened the determination of Keys. Not to go forward to do good science, but go ahead to prove his idea.
The skeptical response to his speech in Geneva and the resulting article
was humiliating, but important moment for him: Blackburn remembers that "this is * the * pivotal moment in the life of Keys." After the confrontation in Geneva "[Keys] got tired of being criticized and said," I'll show you guys "... and he designed the Seven Countries Study. "
Keys that has done is spend the rest of his career to wallow in confirmation bias. Instead of following the scientific method and try to refute his diet-heart hypothesis, it is given the mission to seek all that confirmed. And ignore or minimize the conflicting data.
Formidable powers of persuasion Keys and diplomas that have gradually his diet-heart hypothesis was accepted by everyone. Anyone who dared to disagree were attacked with violence in the pages of any newspaper which appeared the opposing argument.
Because of its capacity to promote continuous, Keys did not hesitate to trample his detractors, and in his annus mirabilis in 1961, he won three major victories. He made the cover of Time, he boarded the American Heart Association (AHA) in its anti-fat doctrine, and he convinced the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Victories on the AHA and the NIH were particularly important. The AHA was a huge lobbying agency and the NIH was the main source of funding. With these two agencies on its side, Keys could both promote its grease ideas to physicians and the public, and could obtain the necessary funds to study confirming its bias.
Because of this steamroller "diet-heart", the U.S. began to limit their fat intake, and to ensure that they consumed fat was polyunsaturated.
This posed a huge problem for the food industry. Saturated fats have certain cooking properties that are difficult to reproduce with polyunsaturated fatty acids. But the food industry had already developed trans fats, so they have used. Trans fats existed for half a century, so they were available. So they are served. Almost all processed foods now contain trans fats rather than saturated fats. At this time, trans fats were not called like that. They called polyunsaturated fats. And everyone thought it was good food for health.
The final triumph of Keys was when the government of the United States itself has yielded to the diet-heart hypothesis.
A non-scientist named Nick Mottern finally write the final report that came out of Washington and recommended a regime in which fat in general were reduced. Saturated fats should be more then 10% of the calories and the recommended dose of carbohydrates was 55-60%. It was a huge change from the years when we ate bacon and where most doctors never saw a heart attack.
The audience was a little incredulous, as usual with government reports. But the industry of the food did not see it that way. She was delighted.
Promotion of food-based carbohydrates such as cereals, bread, crackers and chips, was exactly the kind of dietary advice favored by large food companies, since they were the products sold. Recommend polyunsaturated rather than saturated fats has also served because these oils are a major ingredient of their cookies and crackers and was the main ingredient of their margarines and fats oils. The report Mottern, whose orientation was pro-carbohydrate and anti-animal fat, perfectly satisfied the food manufacturers.
Initially, the AHA and cardiologists were the only groups of physicians believe the low fat diet. Well soon, they all fell like dominoes. One of the last bastions were pediatricians. Children do not have heart disease, then why should they reduce fat, drink skim milk, etc.? But they soon ended by falling into line.
In one of the most disturbing descriptions of BFS, Nina refers to studies by British researchers on African children. They follow Gambian children a low fat diet after weaning (most of their calories came from fat polyunsaturated fats, nuts or vegetable oils) and compared to English children whose calories came mainly from whole milk and meat. The two groups of toddlers received the same number of calories, but
three years, the Gambian infants weighed 75% less than usual, according to standard growth charts, while the English babies were growing normally and weighed an average of three and a half kilos more than Gambians.
Nina wrote:
As an American mother, it was difficult for me to read this study without running immediately see the fat of my own food "early withdrawal" - which rather disturbed me. While the rice porridge, the first given to Gambian infants solid food, brought 5% of energy as fat, a pot full of rice Earth's Best (an organic brand) an American mother could give her baby contains zero grams of fat. Later, while the Gambian babies ate rice with peanut sauce, 18% fat, an American child would barely 1% fat with a pot of "turkey dinner and vegetables" of Earth's Best, which seems quite healthy (this is one of the only options for dinner with meat). Government data show that in recent decades, American children have reduced their consumption of fat, including saturated fats.
If we look at the results of studies on Gambian children, American children following a diet low in fat may face later health problems. Already, in countries that have not foolishly encouraged to reduce fat intake in children, they are larger than American children.
This is just one of the many truths revealed in BFS put me very angry. Believe me, it does not stop there, far from it. That is why it is so important that this book meticulously researched reaches a wide audience. It is only then that some changes may be made and that future generations will be spared the idiocy of "low fat".
As with all things that cause recurring discomfort, people started to get tired of the low fat diet. And they sought something new. As a system with perhaps a little more fat. And came to their rescue? None other than our old friend Ancel Keys.
During the years when Keys had enacted its diet-heart hypothesis, he had traveled the world and spent much time in Italy in his lavish property he had built overlooking the sea south of Naples (I always asked how he could afford such a place with the salary of a university, but I guess that's another story). When he was in Italy and other countries bordering the Mediterranean, Keys took notes on what in the diet of these people joined his own ideas about food, and it has more or less reduced all these different plans into one. And he published a study on the diet of Crete who laid the foundation for what became the Mediterranean Diet with a capital R, not to be confused with the Mediterranean diet with tiny r referring to what different people eat in question really.
In 1975, Keys has reissued his 1959 cookbook, Eat Well and Stay Well the Mediterranean Way, which was essentially a reformulation of its diet low in fat it was regarded as "Mediterranean". It was the first time that the Mediterranean Diet with a big R has entered the jargon. Keys was more or less retired at that time, so other Italian and Greek scientists have taken over.
The history of these scientists, using false data Keys on Crete (which is in itself an amazing story), came together to form the equivalent of a public relations firm in the industry olive oil, attractive dozens of American scientists and authors gastronomy is one of the most fascinating parts of BFS. It was a perfect combination. Scientists and authors gastronomy were receptive and would spend time on the Mediterranean coast, drinking wine and eating this food. These travel expenses paid were apparently medical conferences, but in reality, they were marketing ploys. The authors gastronomy and journalists looking for something new and exciting to write. The masses, tired of their poor food fat and tasteless, were ready to add fat to their diet, even if it was in the form of olive oil. And industry of olive oil was more than ready to help. And finance.
A handful of researchers have begun to explore the Mediterranean diet, but there was no Mediterranean Diet. There are many peoples around the Mediterranean, and many different systems, but no single Mediterranean Diet. Each research group has essentially made his own idea of the Mediterranean Diet to study.
You will be surprised - it mildly - to learn not only the structures of the different Mediterranean diets, but also the result of the studies.
I am always docked at parties or other events with questions about food. When I explain what I do, I can not tell you how many people tell me they follow a Mediterranean Diet or that their doctor told them to follow a Mediterranean Diet. Even doctors believe that the Mediterranean Diet is a diet that has been proven in terms of scientific research.
If only they knew.
Since the government has opted for the low-fat diet, the health of the population has become catastrophic. We are in the midst of an obesity epidemic that former TV star Jackie Gleason, nicknamed Fat Man, for a normal guy passed. Worse, we are in a diabetes epidemic that threatens to ruin us if it is not reversed.
And all this time, the population ingurgitait about 8 billion pounds of soybean oil (in 2001), which was largely partially hydrogenated part. Of course, partially hydrogenated fats are trans fats, but few people knew until recently. Exactly what wanted the food industry.
By carefully dealing with scientific and research funding, the food industry had managed to hide the public the deleterious effects of trans fatty acids. This is important because, writes Nina, trans fats "are the backbone of the food industry."
They were afraid early Malaysian producers of tropical oils naturally saturated, which could easily have occupied the market of trans fats if the public had been informed. But the American Soybean Association (ASA) was not going to let that happen, and so they attacked on tropical oils, calling them dangerous saturated fats. Of course, they were saturated fats, but dangerous, they certainly were not.
One of the people interviewed Nina, David Drake, a senior ASA tells how one of their marketing people invented the term "bacon tree" for tropical oils. Funny and intelligent. But devastating tropical oils.
Despite the work and the indignation of some scientists who remained marginalized by the food industry, trans fats have continued to be accepted unconsciously by everyone. The masses believed eat polyunsaturated fats and the food industry has kept in darkness. For how long?
Since the day ... hydrogenated oils were introduced as Crisco in 1911, until 2005, nearly a century later, not a single major scientific conference was devoted to trans fats.
It's really amazing.
Nina's description of Waterloo trans fat is fascinating. While they were unknown and ubiquitous, they have been identified, vilified and banned in record time. It is a real stroke of fate. Practically from one day to another, they are gone because of the junk science that demonized saturated fats. Not that trans fats are not bad because they are not, but it is ironic that they were denounced and killed by the same kind of junk science-based on-the-relationship- public who had popularized. I guess it's only fair.
The scariest part of The Big Fat Surprise comes next. This chapter is to be read at all costs. It shows in detail what has happened to trans fats, and it is not pretty. This is a great leap into the unknown, and these jumps often end badly.
The food industry was in a terrible dilemma. People read the labels and the large masses uninformed still thought that saturated fats are bad. They look tag packets to see the content of saturated fat.
Any increase ... these fat even 0.5 grams, could push customers [the food industry].
This was said a senior Nina interviewed.
Everyone is so sensitive to saturated fat. This is just our basic reality.
So the food industry could not use saturated fats, even tropical oils, and could also no longer use trans fats, so What would the packaged food manufacturers? You would rather not know, but for the sake of your health, you'd better read it to find out.
Nina ends his book with a rehabilitation of saturated fats. It explains in detail why saturated fats are not just not bad, but also that they are really good. And they are. Trust me. See after reading the last chapter, you will know why.
If you follow a low carbohydrate diet, but you had such doubts about saturated fat, this last chapter is for you.
You may be asked are: what if all the experts were right? Damn, I am asked myself. I eat tons of saturated fats, so I literally I bet with my life that saturated fats are not harmful. Read The Big Fat Surprise will relieve you of your anxieties. It will convert the fiercest skeptics, unless they are so stuck in their ideology that they can not accept anything. But just like us, eating fat, have suffered from our anguish, they will now suffer from them.
As I wrote at the beginning, there are not enough superlatives to describe this book. It will change your life.
I predict that within a few years, one or both of these things will happen after this important work.
Nina will be burned at the stake. Either we all cook our food with bacon, butter, beef tallow and duck fat, as in the days when Ancel Keys had not arrived on the scene. We eat as the time when heart disease were anomalies.
Buy this book now. You will not be disappointed. Give it to each lipophobic you know and who is able to read. It will change many minds.
Thank you for following me in this very long report. If you've read the book, or you will, do not hesitate to write your own review in the comments section. I look forward to reading them.
