Jerry Wilson Over Coffee Appearing each Wednesday in the Edinburgh Courier, the weekly newspaper in Edinburgh, Indiana and periodically in Indiana's Daily Journal newspaper.

Closer Look at Research Shows Benefits of Low Carb Diet

Indianapolis was recently named a top 10 city. But before anyone stands up and cheers, let me divulge the category. According to Men’s Fitness magazine, Indianapolis is the tenth fattest city in the nation. Houston ranked the fattest.

And that’s not all. Indiana is the thirteenth fattest state in the country. So it’s not just a big city problem; it’s everywhere in Hoosierland. In fact, it’s everywhere in America. Statistics now rank 61 percent of Americans as being either overweight or obese. And a growing number of children and teens are falling into the overweight category as well.

That means all the nutritional advice of the United States Department of Agriculture has gone to “waist.” And I mean that pun literally. According to the most recent cutting edge research, coupled with older studies that have until recently been misinterpreted, the standard Food Pyramid diet promoted by the USDA is doing nothing but fattening us up.

In the mid-1990s a new diet craze began sweeping across America – the low carbohydrate diet. It was quickly labeled as a fad diet by most nutritionists and dieticians and tagged as risky by many doctors. After all, how could eating a diet that is very high in fat, including saturated fats, be healthy for anyone? And how could eating all that fat make you lose weight?

But the real scientific evidence is now beginning to pile up in support of the low carbohydrate, high fat diet. A recently-aired NBC news program featured an independent researcher who has studied the low carbohydrate diet and found that it not only works, but is apparently healthy. “It merits further study,” the researcher said, not wanting to provide a resounding endorsement for a diet that most of his peers still consider to be on the fringe.

Dr. Wolfgang Lutz, a medical practitioner, and Christian Allan, PhD, have been going through older health and nutrition studies from the 1950s and ‘60s and have determined that the original conclusions were biased. In their book, Life Without Bread, they blame the “fat-is-bad” theory on hearsay evidence and complacency within the scientific community. People don’t have the time or the inclination to interpret nutrition studies for themselves, so they rely on experts. “Unfortunately, many of these experts are themselves living in an illusory world,” complains Lutz. “They tend to focus only on what they have been brought up on or trained to believe, without removing the bias that exists in their perceptions.”

All these mixed signals confuse those who are trying to eat nutritious meals. And it does seem logical that, to lose fat on your body, you should have less fat in your diet.

But then it might help to think of what they feed hogs. Animal husbandry studies have shown that the perfect diet for fattening a hog the fastest contains 61 percent carbohydrates and only about 20 percent fat. But isn’t that almost precisely what the USDA Food Pyramid recommends for humans? They tell us to eat a diet consisting of 60 percent carbohydrates, 15 percent protein and 25 percent fat. That’s virtually the same diet used to fatten hogs.

In light of the USDA’s recommendations, it might sound silly, unworkable, even dangerous, but Lutz along with more and more health care professionals are finding that a better diet, and one that is much more healthy, is obtained by inverting the pyramid. A diet consisting of 60 or even 70 percent fat, 25 percent protein, and only 5 to 10 percent carbohydrates will cause weight loss in the obese, reduced blood pressure, lowered cholesterol, less anxiety, normalized blood sugar, and more energy.

All the studies aside, I can tell you from personal experience that a low carbohydrate way of eating works, and works well. The problem is it’s difficult to maintain in this world of fast food and mega-carb servings.

Consider all the pre-packaged foods and restaurant fair that we have to choose from. The typical breakfast might consist of a bowl of cereal or oatmeal, a piece of toast and a tall glass of orange juice. That’s virtually 100 percent carbohydrate. A peanut butter and jelly sandwich with potato chips and a can of pop for lunch isn’t much better. It’s no wonder we’re experiencing the fattening of America.

When restaurants start regularly offering low-carb meals and when pre-packaged foods start leaving out sugar and starch, then maybe we will find it easier to shed the tonnage.

Copyright © 2002 by Jerry Wilson.