Why Fat is Good For You and Sugar/Carbs Made Us Fat.

Today we’re going to talk about how we were all tricked by the diet and food industries and the government. We’re also going to talk about why our hormones got all messed up and how all calories are not created equal. 

But first a little bit of history. In 1980 the US ranked 11th in longevity, today we are 26^th.

Every 34 seconds, a person in the US dies from heart disease. Americans have the poorest health in the industrial world despite spending the most per capital on health care.

The life expectancy has been lowered for the first time in about 25 years. Meaning, that children today are not expected to live as long as their parents according to the CDC.

A third to a half of our children are expected to get type 2 diabetes in their lifetime.

One in two men and one in three women are expected to have cancer, and yet heart disease is still the leading cause of death. The Framingham Heart Study which is the longest run study on heart disease shows that cholesterol does not cause heart disease yet; how many people are on medication for cholesterol?

The American Cancer Society says that only five to ten percent of cancers are inherited via gene mutation the others are caused by environmental factors and lifestyle and that more than half of all cancer deaths could be prevented by making healthy choices. 

Obesity is now considered a disease. That is horrible because it leads to so many other conditions including heart disease, cancer, type-2 diabetes, high blood, pressure, asthma, PCOS, sleep apnea, gall bladder disease and so much more. 

Many experts agree that degenerative disease is highly preventable. 

Wow!

So, why did we get so sick? 

Well, I’m going to show you a quick little map that I found on the CDC website. 

Obesity is the second leading cause of preventable deaths and in 1985 the country was doing pretty well. This map shows the obesity trends and the light blue stands for under 10% and the dark blue is 10 to 14 percent of each state that’s obese.

Look at the progression in 1986 a few more states go to the dark blue color also in 87 so you can see that the prevalence of obesity is climbing in 1990 about half of the country is in the 10 to 14 percent range. In 1991, we have to add a new color so now four states are between 15 and 19 percent obese and that number continues to climb. 

In 1995 half the states are between 15 and 19 percent obese. In 96 we have to add a new color because now three states are over 20% obese and that number continues to climb. In 1999 about half of the states are over 20% obese.

In 2001, we add another color for over 25%. You will see that number continuing to climb in 2004-2005 as we add another color for the over 30% obese category, in three states. So you must wonder why this is happening. 

The summary you can see very clearly is that in 1990 we were about 10% obese, in 2000 we were about 20% obese, and in 2010 we are about 25 or so more percent this is crazy.

Why did our country get obese? Why is our country so sick? 

Well, do you remember that little movement that it was like a low-fat nonfat movement where everybody was not eating fat because of cholesterol. 

Well, that was because there was a researcher and his name is Ansel Keys and he had a hypothesis that there was a correlation between consumption of saturated fat and heart disease. He did an international study and compared all these different countries and their diets.

What happened was, any of the countries that didn’t fall along his hypotheses he took out the data from his published publication. So he didn’t publish the data that showed that there really wasn’t a correlation, but nobody knew it at the time, so fat was demonized.

Then what happened? They took out the fat from many foods and they filled it with something else to make the food taste good and that was sugar. 

I loved it back then because I thought I was doing everything right. I remember eating fat free Snack Wells and Entenmann’s pastries and thinking, “oh no problem it’s not fattening I can eat as much as I want”

Or what about some bagels but no cream cheese or potatoes but no butter and just fat-free sour cream? I remember living off of burritos with fat-free beans, fat-free cheese, fat-free sour cream and fat-free tortillas and I thought I was doing myself a favor. And I ate lots and lots of salad with fat-free dressing or just vinegar or lemon juice and it was horrible. 

The fat-free cheese had to be the worst. That was like eating rubber.

I was always hungry because I wasn’t eating enough fat. So three meals a day, two snacks a day, my blood sugar was raising and lowering, spiking out of control, and it was crazy. But the worst part was the constipation. I don’t know if you remember that part of it, but without fat to lube the pipes things got backed up and it was pretty uncomfortable.

So there was a lot of problems with not having fat. 

One of the biggest ones is cholesterol. Cholesterol is responsible for hormone production. So when we remove fat from our diet, we also remove cholesterol, because we have that big fear of it.

I recommend this great book it’s called Cholesterol Clarity and it will really explain the whole thing about the cholesterol problem and how we really need cholesterol for hormone production.

So, you want to eat fat. That is what I want to show you. All calories are not created equal, when we removed fat calories and add in sugar calories everything gets all wonky.

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