carnivores rejoice: moderation and activity are the best bet

If anyone following this thread has access to _Science_, the weekly research journal of the AAAS, this week's issue has a lengthy article on dietary fat that will make most people scratch their head. It reviews the remarkable paucity of data supporting the commonly reported guideline to reduce animal fat for health and obesity prevention.

Essentially, the guidelines for reducing dietary fat, and all the experts who believe in them, seem to have been to some extent victims of a highly politicized process of heavily skewed research interpretation. "It's a story of what can happen when the demands of public health policy--and the demands of the public for simple advice--run up against the confusing ambiguity of real science."

According the the article, much of which rings true to me. Obesity plus other risk factors equal risk of problems from heart disease and diabetes, but the direct effect of fat is highly questionable, and the most common result of reducing dietary fat is compensating with other things.

The article concludes with a quote about the desperation of the enterprise of discovering useful dietary guidelines:
"When you don't have any real good answers in this business, you have to accept a few not so good ones as the next best thing."

"The Soft Science of Dietary Fat," Gary Taubes, _Science_,
Vol. 291, 5513, 30 March 2001, pp. 2536-2545.

Atkins is probably smiling broadly, feeling very vindicated. But he doesn't fare any better in the long run, because few people can forever give up the temptation of the sweet and chewy dense carbos and their quick glycemic energy reward. Changing the proportion of particular nutrients by itself doesn't seem to be any miracle solution. Partly because we're 'wired' to enjoy and crave certain sensations that are currently exploited best by chemicals that provide too much energy too fast to be metabolized in the brain and muscles.

Until and unless we come up with a safe, effective biochemical or genetic solution for altering body fat set point in the long run, to succeed people will have to learn fuel themselves to reasonably emphasize nutrition over comfort, and to challenge their bodies reasonably. Preferably learning these things as part of their lifestyle from an early age. There are social influences to be sure, the convenience of modern life and the easy availability of calorically dense, attractive, flavorful, nutritionally bankrupt foods. But I'm not sure how much we can do about those as individuals.

Replies:

Pass the eggs, please, by Monica, 04/08/01

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