Prevention is better than cure, is one of those sayings that is self evidently correct to anyone who has ever had to deal with any thorny problem in life.
And the saying is especially true for health problems, which it refers to in the first place.
I think most people would agree it would be far better avoiding health issues, if that is possible, than having to try cure them, while suffering the consequences of disease and ill health!
Civilisation Becoming Too Successful
One of the themes on this site is promoting the benefit of looking after one’s self and one’s family, while becoming an asset to the broader community, instead of a liability.
In some respects those values are being forgotten, partly because our society has become so successful.
Life was a lot harder in the past (even the quite recent past), for the average person. And in that harder, tougher environment, looking after yourself and your family was just what one had to do to survive. So the need to be more self reliant, become capable enough to handle the much harder daily struggle to survive and prosper was relatively self evident to most people.
However in our very successful civilisation, where life has become incredibly easy, the need to look after one’s self becomes less of an urgent issue in modern times. Many people now expect other people to do that for them. In any event the hard lessons previous generations had to learn, have been largely forgotten. All the effort, wisdom and courage it took to build our smooth running current civilisation is taken for granted, or just dismissed as “outdated” and thus no longer relevant?
In particular, the availability of food is no longer the issue that it was in the past for many people in the western world. Many people living in our modern successful societies probably very rarely, if indeed ever, miss a meal caused by the forced scarcity of food. In fact many people clearly eat too much, given the dramatic rise in obesity and related health issues.
And in addition to that, there are so many different types of food readily available in bewildering rows stocking the shelves of your local supermarket. But is all that food actually good for us?
Keeping yourself, and your family fit and healthy, free from disease, where possible, is an obvious key aspect of being more self reliant and being an asset to your society.
This article explores to what degree is the modern diet and lifestyle conducive to long term health.
It is suspected the modern conventional wisdom on this matter is not necessarily to be accepted given that a large degree of modern illnesses are linked to issues like metabolic syndrome and insulin resistance, both of which are thought to be caused, at least in part, by our modern diet and eating habits.
Health Issues Possibly Related to Modern Diet
The prevalence of obesity within the population of many western countries seems to have undergone an inflection change in trend during the 1970’s.
The above graph, from a Lancet article, shows after the 1970’s a rapid increase in upward trend is evident. This pattern seems evident in many countries.
It would be uncontentious to assume that the wide spread prevalence of obesity can be linked to diet and eating habits? So does our conventional idea of what represents healthy eating habits and healthy food cause this scourge of dramatically increasing obesity? The question is what changed in the 1970’s if that is so?
“Saturated fat has been demonized ever since Ancel Keys’s landmark ‘seven countries’ study in 1970,” writes Aseem Malhotra in a British Medical Journal review appropriately called “Saturated fat is not the major issue.
As Malhotra and numerous other researchers point out, correlation is not causation, and Keys neglected to account for many factors that could also contribute to heart disease. Keys cherry-picked his data, conveniently excluding whatever didn’t fit his hypothesis. (Mark Hyman MD)”
Another issue which seems relevant is metabolic syndrome.
Metabolic syndrome refers to a cluster of metabolic dysregulations including insulin resistance, elevated triglyceride levels in the blood (atherogenic dyslipidemia), central obesity, and hypertension. If left untreated, metabolic syndrome is significantly associated with an increased risk of developing diabetes and cardiovascular diseases, which are the leading cause of death world wide.
Again if one looks at trends in diabetes incidence over the years we see the same inflection point in the 1970’s, as this article points out. The graph below is from that article.
Fasting and Feeding States
Having evolved to survive the harsh wild African plains hundreds of thousands of years ago, humans are designed to go without food for relatively long periods, when necessary, while still remaining active. In fact it is when one has gone without food for some time, that even more activity may be necessary to find some food urgently.
Our bodies go into a fasting state, when we have have not eaten for about 8 to 12 hours. In this state, the body tends to take stock of available resources, and then if necessary, re-assign resources from sources that are currently not being used to those parts of the body that need them. The obvious example is when in the fasted state, you go into ketosis where stored fat is burned as the body’s primary energy source. But it is less well known that, if necessary, other cellular structures and proteins are broken down and used as well (a process called autophagy). One might even think of the approach taken by the body while in a fasting state as a “stock taking and spring cleaning” type of approach, where everything that the body has packed away on the shelves of the warehouse (as an analogy) is evaluated in terms of the current need, and where necessary, those stored or unused resources are broken down and used for other functions required for immediate survival.
In the much more difficult environment of our ancient past, it was no doubt normal and common to be in a fasted state quite frequently. And also to be in that fasted state for prolonged periods, from time to time.
And that is exactly how our bodies are designed to operate normally.
When we do find food and start eating, you then switch into a feeding state, during which you are absorbing the food you have eaten. During that state it is difficult to burn stored fat, because raised insulin levels (the hormone which drives the storage process) tends to prevent access to those fat stores. To continue using the warehouse analogy, the body is focused on packing the warehouse shelves, and thus cannot unpack them at the same time.
A key point to note is that it can take 6 hours, or longer, for insulin levels to drop after you stop eating. And insulin levels are driven much higher when your blood glucose is high, and high blood glucose is caused by eating carbs, far more than fat, especially carbs in the form of liquids or finely ground powders. So during that period, your energy requirements HAVE to be satisfied from carbs, because high insulin levels block access to burning fat stored on your body. Which is why you may experience waves of energy level fluctuations, where a few hours after eating you feel drained and in need of more food (because blood glucose levels have been depleted, and you cannot access stored fat as a source of energy), which makes you want to eat again, and thus the cycle continues, resulting in it being difficult to EVER get into a fasted state.
It is now suspected that for long term good health it is in fact desirable to frequently and routinely cycle from the feeding state into the fasted state. It is also perhaps beneficial to fast for extended periods occasionally from time to time. Which is simply the way we were designed to operate.
For example, some of the latest research into intermittent fasting and autophagy, as well as ketosis show promising effects of reducing some modern diseases such as cardio-vascular diseases, strokes, diabetes, dementia, and perhaps even reduce the incidence and effects of some forms of cancer. Not to mention reduce obesity.
But most modern people almost never go into the fasted state at all! Many are simply eating constantly!
Contradictions With the “Official” Western Diet
There is quite a significant problem becoming evident, in that the diet and eating patterns promoted as “healthy” by established convention, is in complete contradiction to emerging new thinking based on some form of high-fat, low-carb diet such as the Keto diet, or Prof. Noakes’ Banting Diet, which seem to show rapid and long lasting health benefits to those that try those approaches.
The problem is that in many respects, the two different theories are mutually exclusive.
Another problem is that ordinary people have no way of drawing any clear conclusions for themselves because any search for more information yields a sharply divided set of opinions among professionals in the field. So one is forced to “pick sides” as it were from a position of relative ignorance, which is hardly ideal.
A further problem is the recent loss of credibility of the health institutions we once trusted implicitly, due to patently misguided policies and even downright false public guidance in times of recent crisis. Furthermore available information and opinions tend to be slanted towards the established group think, while dissenting opinions tend to be censored, de-ranked from search engines, or deliberately presented in a bad light by the main stream media channels.
Just some examples of this contradiction between the two approaches are listed in the table below as an illustration of the stark differences between the established convention and new emerging thinking. But please note the comments in the table are listed to represent examples of what proponents of the different approaches tend to say (in highly summarised form, to fit into a table), when promoting their ideas, they are NOT intended to be taken as “right” vs “wrong” on their face value, or that YOU should adopt one or the other. The purpose is to highlight the stark contradictions between the two approaches.
| Topic | Conventional Thinking | Emerging Thinking |
| Fats | Fat is bad, you should avoid eating fat as far as possible. Rather eat “low fat” food which has had some sort industrial process applied to reduce fat content. Fat ingestion causes heart disease resulting from high cholesterol. | Saturated (animal) fat and mono-unsaturated fat (eg. extra virgin olive oil) are good for you. You should eat a lot of that. It should replace carbohydrates as your primary source of energy. Fat ingestion does not necessarily cause cholesterol related disease. However trans fats and poly-unsaturated fats are bad for you and should be avoided, which includes seed oils (sunflower oil etc). Deep fried food in oxidised seed oils are especially bad for you. |
| Carbohydrates | Carbs form the base of the traditional food pyramid and thus form the largest proportion of the “official healthy diet”. You need carbs for daily energy. Athletes should eat a lot of carbs as an energy source. | Carbs should not be a large proportion of your diet. All carbs are turned into glucose in your blood stream. Very high insulin levels are needed to get rid of all that blood glucose, where blood glucose levels need to be very precisely controlled to protect your brain. So your body HAS to get rid of high blood glucose by burning it, or storing it. High levels of carb intake can lead to insulin resistance among other health problems. The less carbs you eat regularly the better. Fat is a far better source of energy, because the energy release is steady and ingested fat does not elevate insulin levels. If you rely on carbs as your energy source you tend “be on a roller coaster” with regard to your energy levels, getting a quick spike as the glucose forms in your blood stream, but then running out of energy shortly thereafter, and needing to ingest more, to keep the cycle going. So you tend to be hungry again shortly there after. As a result, your insulin levels remain high continuously (it takes insulin 6 or more hours to drop down to fasting levels after you eat). |
| Butter | Butter is bad. Rather eat margarine. | Butter is a form of saturated animal fat and is good for you on that basis. |
| Margarine | Margarine is a healthier alternative to butter. | Margarine is extremely unhealthy because it is essentially hydrogenated seed oil, an unhealthy form of fat. |
| Sugar | Too much sugar is bad, rather use artificial sweetners. | Sugar is very bad for you and should be cut out of your diet completely if possible. If you do nothing else, at least stop eating sugar. Artificial sweeteners are worse than sugar, some of which have been found to be carcigenic. Many fruits are very high in sugar (fructose is a sugar). Those should be significantly reduced as well. |
| Meat | Meat is not very good for you, you should not eat too much meat, especially red meat, rather eat vegetables. And you should avoid fatty meat, rather cut off the fat and discard that. | Meat is good for you, especially meat from naturally fed animals. Fatty meat is equally good for you. |
| Eggs | Eggs are not very good for you. You should not eat too many eggs. | Eggs are good for you. An excellent source of protein. |
| Vegetables | All vegetables are good for you. Soy is a healthier alternative source of protein to meat. | Avoid starchy vegetables which are another form of carbs. Soy is perhaps detrimental to your long term health, certainly more so than meat. Non starchy vegetables are generally good for you. |
| Fruit | Fruit is good for you, you should eat plenty of fruit. | Eating fruit high in sugar is essentially the same thing as eating sugar. And you should cut out sugar as far as possible. |
| Highly processed foods | Highly processed foods have long shelf lives, are convenient to prepare and easy to digest. | Highly processed food is very bad for you. They have suffered severe nutrient degradation in the processes they were subject to, which may include severe heat, pressure, chemical alteration, very fine grinding etc. They also have harmful dyes and other things like emulsifiers and “flavour enhancers” included, even elements to make the food addictive, so you don’t want to stop eating it. You should avoid highly processed foods as far as possible. Rather eat the original fresh whole food which you prepare and cook yourself. |
| Meal frequency | You should eat many small meals a day to improve metabolism and long term health | You should practice intermittent fasting where you maximise the time you spend in the fasted state each day, reducing the number of meals accordingly, even down to just one large meal a day. |
| Milk and Cream | Only drink low fat milk. Full fat cream is bad for you. | Only drink full fat milk and cream is good for you as a source of saturated fat, among other nutrients. |
| Healthy Food Type Proportions | The traditional “food pyramid” suggests 40% Carbs (Cereals and Pasta etc), 35% Fruit and Vegetables (of which some will be carbs as well, in the form of starchy vegetables, and some will be sugar in the form of fruit), 20% Protein, 5% Fat and Sugar | The Keto Diet suggests about 70% Fat, 25% Protein, 5% Carbs and 0% Sugar, at least to start with, to train your body to run on fat instead carbs. Note fruit and vegetables are implicitly included in the above percentages, but need to be considered in terms of the proportion of carbs vs protein vs sugar within each type of plant ingested. And in addition, one needs to realise there are portions of some vegetables which humans cannot absorb which may still be technically a form of carbohydrate (which is called “roughage” or “dietary fibre”), which just passes through without being absorbed. Dietary fibre is a useful part of one’s diet for maintaining regular bowel movement among other things, but does not “count as carbs” for a Keto diet. So while one might eat vegetables which are high in dietary fibre on a Keto diet, that dietary fibre proportion is not considered to contribute towards your carb intake, in the above food type proportional guidelines. |
Non-Conclusion
As can be seen from this table there are a number of points in which the two approaches are diametrically opposite to each other, coming to completely different and contradictory conclusions about the same subjects.
Unfortunately the best that can be said about the choice between the two approaches is that until the supposed “experts” can come to some agreement, one has to make up one’s own mind.
One way of doing that is looking at the results of the two approaches when adopted by people you may know. As well as consulting any health professionals you may trust, for their advice and opinions.
Although it should be remembered that all new scientific breakthroughs tend to come from “unconventional individuals” operating on the fringes. New breakthroughs in thinking CANNOT, by definition, come from the establishment who will tend to conform to conventional group think. And it is quite normal for the establishment to bitterly oppose new ideas and thinking which goes against the established norm, while ostracising and even quite harshly persecuting the dissenting individuals, as we have seen in well known examples throughout history. In some cases the establishment group think persists for long periods against the new thinking, despite mounting evidence to the contrary. Which may be what we are seeing here?
