The Physical Performance Podcast

I recently spoke to the guys at The Physical Performance Show and featured on their podcast.

See their blurb and outline below:

In episode 126 of The Physical Performance Show Brad Beer has a conversation with Dr Peter Brukner OAM – Prof Sports Medicine, Author, Founder SugarByHalf.

By way of introduction, Dr Brukner is an OAM Order of Australia Medallist and he’s a world renowned Sports and Exercise Medicine Physician and Researcher. Up until recently Dr. Brukner was the team Doctor for the Australian Cricket Team, a position that he held for 5 years.  Dr. Brukner held similar positions at the Liverpool Football Club and Melbourne and Collingwood AFL Clubs and the Australian Soccer Team and also Sports Doctor across multiple National Olympic Commonwealth Games Athletics Teams.

Dr. Brukner is a Professor of Sports Medicine at Latrobe University, he is also the author of numerous books including Clinical Sports Medicine and Food for Sport. Dr. Peter Brukner is also the author of the recently released A fat lot of Good – how the experts got food and diet so wrong and how you can take back control of your health.  The information inside this book will really have an impact on your physical performance and your health.  ‘A Fat Lot of Good’ is an exploration into our current food guidelines and how Dr Brukner believes we got it so wrong.  He shares how he changed to a low carbohydrate, High Fat consumption and he shares why he made this change and how it can improve your health.

Dr Brukner is spending and devoting the remainder of his career on his campaign called Sugar by Half that is aiming to reduce added sugars by 50% to better our health. During this conversation we discuss the low carb, high fat lifestyle eating, the benefits of it, the state of the nation, how we got it so wrong, the demonising of fats and how that happened.  Why we don’t need to drink as much as we think we do, the five golden tips, eating and diet for athletes as well as debunking a few myths.

Timeline:

0:00 Start
1:30 Introduction to Dr Peter Brukner
5:50 Why Peter wrote the book ‘A fat lot of Good’
13:00 Peter’s health now
17:15 Shane Watson – Australian Cricketer
20:20 The 5 Rules of this way of life.
33:00 High Obesity Rates
38:00 Dietary Guidelines from the 1980s
46:00 Eating fat to lose fat.
48:20 Brain Fog
53:00 Salt
56:00 Sugar by half campaign
1:02:00 Athlete nutrition
1:06:00 Best Advice – Just eat real food
1:07:00 Physical Challenge: 20 push up challenge
1:08:20 Purchase a copy of the book
1:15:42 Finish

Monthly Blog - June 2018

What’s in this month’s blog…….

• What have I been up to
• A Fat Lot of Good update
• Book of the Month – What the Fast
• Website of the Month – Ditch the Carbs
• Movie of the Month – The Magic Pill
• Food of the Month – Greek yoghurt
• Research Paper of the Month – The Virta story
• My story – Cheryl Smith

What have I been up to

It’s been another busy month on the road

First stop was Sydney for the Low Carb Down Under Sydney show run by doctors Doron Sher and Paul Mason. Great line up of speakers, packed house at Sydney Uni and a great dinner afterwards.  

Always a joy catching up with Gary Fettke and Maryanne Demasi. Sold lots of books too.

Next was another trip to Sydney to have lunch with Sami Inkinen. A long way to go for lunch you might say, but Sami is pretty special. Click this link to have a read of this article from Forbes.

Sami is a hugely successful entrepreneur businessman (Trulia.com), a world champion ironman triathlete, and the star of the movie Cereal Killers 2 in which he and his wife Meredith rowed a boat from San Francisco to Hawaii in record time on a low carb high fat diet. Here is the Cereal Killers 2 trailer. Worth watching the whole thing if you haven’t already.

Sami’s current project is Virta Health which is a online program to reverse Type 2 diabetes without the use of medications by focusing on diet and lifestyle.

Low carb pioneers Steve Phinney and Jeff Volek (pictured) are involved as well as Sarah Hallberg who has an outstanding TED talk with 3.4M viewers here.

 Karim Khan and I with Jeff Volek

Virta has been going for a couple of years now and initial results are very impressive. The Virta studies are highlighted in this month’s medical journal articles later in this blog.

Then it was on to Europe.

I have been to hundreds of conferences in my medical career, but I have never experienced anything like what I witnessed at the Public Health Collaboration conference in London recently.

Professor Tim Noakes, the South African who has, more than anyone else, influenced people around the word to abandon the low fat way of eating and adopt a low carb healthy fat lifestyle, or as the South Africans call it, the Banting Diet was one of the invited speakers a the conference. For the past couple of years Tim has been involved in a ‘trial’ after he was accused of giving misleading advice over twitter some years ago. He has been the subject of a bitter, nasty campaign to discredit him led by the dietitians and certain medical practitioners in South Africa. Tim was found ‘not guilty’ at his trial, but the prosecution appealed the verdict. The appeal was held in February this year and at the time of the conference we were still awaiting the result.

I gave the opening address of the conference held at the Royal College of general Practitioners in London and was asked to give a “State of the Nation’ address updating the audience on what had been happening in the low carb world in th previous 12 months. I presented the more important research papers that had been published since the 2017 meeting and then concluded by saying how fortunate we were to have a number of low carb ‘heroes’ speaking at the meeting including Sam Feltham, Zoe Harcombe, Aseem Malhotra and David Unwin. Then when I spoke abut our ‘superhero Tim Noakes’ the audience as one stood up and gave him a standing ovation. Amazing!

Tim gave his keynote address on Sunday morning and took the audience on his journey of the last few years. It was a dramatic, emotional story and he had the audience spellbound for over an hour. The Liverpool born and bred Professor finished his talk by playing the Liverpool football cub anthem ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’ which was an appropriate theme for his struggles. As you can see from this brief video excerpt, for the whole three minutes of the song, the audience gave Tim a standing ovation. It was incredibly emotional and I doubt there was a dry eye in the house. Have a listen. I have never witnessed anything like it at a conference.

Tim was responsible for getting me started on my low carb journey and this is what I say in the ‘My story’ section of the book ….

Soon after that birthday, I read something from my old friend and colleague Professor Tim Noakes, who is generally considered to be the pre-eminent sports scientist in the world. Tim had started advocating a low-carb diet without the usual restrictions on fat. He was on this diet himself with dramatic results, and was encouraging others, including athletes, to adopt it too. Tim is a lateral thinker who constantly challenges the orthodoxies of sports science. He wrote Lore of Running, a massive tome that’s essential reading for any serious runner or sports scientist, and has fascinating thoughts on a whole range of topics (including cricket and Bradman’s backlift!). So when Tim Noakes comes out and states categorically that everything we believe about diet, obesity and heart disease is wrong, we all need to sit up and take notice. 

But surely, I thought, the medical, nutrition and sports science community could not have been so far off the mark for all these years in advocating a diet low in saturated fat (to prevent heart disease) and high in complex carbohydrates (to fuel exercise). And yet that’s exactly what Noakes was saying. He even apologised for advocating a high-carb diet in Lore of Running – no doubt he will change that for the next edition.

Tim’s conversion certainly got me thinking. I wanted to find out more.

And here we are with a certain book …..

Some of the heroes are shown here – Aseem Malhotra, Zoe Harcombe and David Unwin. David’s wife Jenny is trying to work the camera and my friend Karim Khan, the editor of the British Journal of Sports Medicine has photobombed in!

And then just last week, the verdict of the Tim Noakes appeal hearing was finally announced and Tim was completely exonerated (again). Here are two excellent descriptions of the whole saga, the first from Tim’s co-author in the Lore of Nutrition, Marika Sboros and the other from Nina Teicholz – both worth a read.

After the London conference Diana and I had a week until the next gig in Barcelona, so we headed to Spain and the Basque country. First stop was Bilbao home of the magnificent Guggenheim Museum

The area is famous for its food and wine and we got into the local version of tapas the pintxos – going from bar to bar and tasting the delicacies laid out on the bars.

From Bilbao it was a short train trip to San Sebastian a lovely old town also full of interesting bars and restaurants. Unfortunately it rained most of the time which restricted our moving around during the day but not our dining at night. Also got to watch the Champions League final in a bar full of fellow noisy Liverpool supporters – they don’t like Real Madrid in that part of Spain. Wrong result regrettably but a great atmosphere. It was good to see my grandson Teddy was up early at home to watch it as well in his Liverpool onesie!

Next we spent a few days in a small clifftop village called Alquezar, halfway between San Sebastian and Barcelona. Spectacular place with some great walks along the flooded river.

Then to Barcelona wearing my sports medicine hat for the Football Medicine conference, 3000 delegates from 90 odd countries coming together at the  magnificent Camp Nou stadium home of the famous Barcelona Football club.

Our sports medicine textbook is always popular at these conferences and Karim and I spent lots of time signing copies and having photos.

Then it was time to go home and enjoy some time in Melbourne before heading back to Europe in July.

Now I don’t want you to think I am at home twiddling my thumbs. The weekend after returning from Europe I was keynote speaker at the Massage and Myotherapy conference on the Gold Coast.  Spoke about nutrition up there as well, as massage therapists can play a very influential role in improving their clients’ health. I also had the chance to speak to a group of GPs at a Primary Health Care clinic in Werribee, a suburb in Melbourne’s west.

 A Fat Lot of Good

My book has been out for a few weeks now and seems to be selling well. The publishers have already ordered a reprint so I guess that is a good sign. I have been signing books at various bookshops around the country and it has been pretty prominent in most of them.

I even snuck into the top ten best sellers section ….. and then two weeks later up to No 8 !!

Have continued to do plenty of media appearances the latest being on ABC radio Melbourne with the brilliant Lindy Burns. The station received a massive response to posting the interview on Facebook and Lindy has changed her eating habits as well and tells me she is loving it.

Bumped into a familiar face at Sydney airport - 

Usman has been on a healthy real food diet for the past six years.

A number of people have been enquiring how best to obtain a copy of the book if you are out of Australia. The best way is to go on to the Book Depository website and order through there. They offer free postage.

BOOK REVIEWS

Book reviews for A Fat Lot of Goo dare starting to roll in. Here is one from  Brisbane. It starts like this ….

A Fat Lot of Good by Dr Peter Brukner will be essential reading if you want to learn about the low carb and healthy fat (LCHF) diet that is starting to overtake the paleo diet:

Read it in full here

And Bondi Beauty likes it too …

BOOK OF THE MONTH - WHAT THE FAST

A couple of years ago Auckland Professor of Public Health Grant Schofield along with dietitian Caryn Zinn and chef Craig Rodger put out an excellent book about low carb eating called What the Fat. It is one of my favourites.

Well they have done it again. This time a similar book about fasting called, very cleverly, What the Fast.

Both these books are a nice mix of science and recipes.

WEBSITE OF THE MONTH - DITCH THE CARBS

That’s Libby next to the copy of A Fat Lot of Good with Grant Schofield behind us.

Libby Jenkinson is a pharmacist and mother of three who had always struggled with her weight until she discovered LCHF eating. She started a small website as a part time hobby three years ago and it has been a huge success – 1 million visits a month. That Iis a mind boggling figure. It really is a fantastic site.

If you are a parent struggling to think of good ideas for your childrens’ meals then this is the site for you.

https://www.ditchthecarbs.com

FILM OF THE MONTH - THE MAGIC PILL

Pete Evans doco/movie The Magic Pill has certainly been in the headlines recently.

Here is a trailer …

The newly elected President of the AMA (Australian Medical Association) Dr Tony Bartone even wanted Netflix to remove the movie saying “Netflix should do the responsible thing. They shouldn’t screen it. The risk of misinformation … is too great.”

Well I think the movie is great. It is entertaining, informative and sends the right message. I suspect Dr Bartone has not actually watched the movie – if he had, he would have been impressed. There are a lot of people who love to criticize Pete Evans, but as far as what food we should be eating, he is pretty much spot on.

It is interesting that doctors and dietitians don’t like anyone else commenting on food health issues. Medical arrogance I call it. Most doctors know absolutely nothing about nutrition – if they did they would not have gone along with the food and pharmaceutical industries’ promotion of a low fat diet for the past 40 years – a diet which has had disastrous consequences for us all.

Make up your own mind – have a look at The Magic Pill on Netflix.

FOOD OF THE MONTH - GREEK YOGHURT

I love Greek yoghurt. I have it most days, often with my mixture of nuts and seeds along with some berries. A great morning meal.

A year or two ago it was hard to find a full fat Greek yoghurt in the crowded yoghurt section of your supermarket – all the yoghurts were low fat and many of them were ‘fruit yoghurts’ – all of which have high levels of sugar. But recently there seems to have been increased demand for full fat Greek yoghurts and they are not so hard to find. Make sure you get a full fat Greek yoghurt not a low fat or ‘lite’.

What do I look for in a Greek yoghurt? Well once I am satisfied that they are full fat, I check that there is no added sugar – the sugar content should be no higher than 5 or 6 grams per 100 mls which is the amount of natural sugar (lactose). Anything more than that probably has some form of added sugar. I also look for flavor and texture.

Choice recently published a good review of Greek yoghurts and tested 23 different ones. Here is the link to the Choice article with a spreadsheet comparing nutrient values.

https://www.choice.com.au/food-and-drink/dairy/yoghurt-and-ice-cream/articles/greek-yoghurt

They ranked three yoghurts highest for taste - Coles Greek Style Natural Yoghurt, Farmers Union Greek Style All Natural Yogurt, and Tamar Valley Greek Style All Natural Yoghurt. I tend to agree. I mainly use Tamar Valley but I am more than happy with the other two choices. My wife is a big fan of the Farmers Union brand.

RESEARCH PAPER OF THE MONTH

Earlier in this blog I mentioned meeting up with Sami Inkinen the founder of Virta Health. Virta which is an online program to reverse Type 2 diabetes has recently published its first 12 month results and they are worth a close look.

As you can see they have pretty impressive reductions in all these parameters – weight, diabetes control, insulin resistance, use of medications etc.

Here is their weight data and unlike most weight loss programs this one seems sustainable

MY STORY

Each month I intend to publish as story from one of my readers, so please send us your stories. They are inspirational. 

CHERYL SMITH - My keto journey so far...

I have struggled with my weight as long as I can remember and have been a yo-yo dieter for most of my adult life (and yes there are very few diets I haven't tried, had a measure of short term success with and then failed). I wanted to find a way to be "healthy" but always found myself falling off the bandwagon and putting all the lost weight, and usually more, back on. 

From my mid to late teens onwards I had issues with abdominal weight, irritable bowel, irregular menstrual cycle, hair loss, depression and yet was never thoroughly investigated.

A series of events after moving to Australia led to me being diagnosed with Autoimmune hypothyroidism, insulin resistance, non alcoholic fatty liver disease and PCOS.

I knew my lifestyle was the main problem but felt powerless to consistently change my way of living, instead giving in to huge carb cravings and feeding what had become an incessant appetite. In addition to the above issues I increasingly experienced bloating, fatigue and physical pain in my joints and back.

As a health care professional I was all too aware of where this road was taking me and I was becoming desperate to change direction. 

Fast forward to January of this year, I was the heaviest I'd ever been at 100kg and my blood tests weren't painting a pretty picture; they were a bit of a slap in the face to be honest- definitely a wake-up call!!!

I decided to go back (yes this was my 2nd attempt) on a ketogenic way of eating. 

Just after that decision I came across exogenous ketones and decided to use them to help the transition my way into ketosis. I love the keto way of eating, after all what's not to love about meat with creamy homemade sauces and vegetables dripping in butter!!!! So for me I've never struggled with the concept of adding the fat, reducing carbs has been my challenge.

Very quickly I noticed I wasn't feeling hungry as often so I started intermittent fasting (minimum of 16 hours in every 24) and for me that has been the most positive change. I only eat when I'm hungry and no longer because it's lunchtime or dinnertime.

What changes have I seen in the last four months? I sleep better, have more energy, the brain fog has gone, I have seen improvements in my memory and focus, I no longer have a constant background level of pain and the bloating has gone. A few weeks ago I found myself wanting to exercise!! 

And then there's the weight loss, currently sitting at a 21kg weight loss in the last 3 1/2 months. 

Have I arrived? No! But I am enjoying this new road I am travelling and the people who have joined me along the way! 

FINAL WORD

That’s it for this month. I am going to try and blog more frequently (and shorter) in future, so stay tuned. 

Peter Brukner

BRILLIANT DECEPTION BY THE BEVERAGES COUNCIL

You have to hand it to the Australian Beverages Council. In a desperate attempt to stave off the introduction of a sugar tax, the Council today pledged a ‘voluntary reduction in total sugar in their beverages of 10% by 2020 and 20% by 2025.’

This seems at first glance like a truly noble gesture to improve the health of Australians. The reality of course is very different.

The Council is assessing any reduction in sugar by quantifying ‘aggregated sales weighted volume data’ using 2016 as a baseline. Well it so happens that sales of soft drinks in this country have declined by 7.5% in the past year so the Beverages Council will achieve its aim of a reduction in total sugar intake by its declining business – talk about making a success out of a failure – brilliant. Whoever thought of that is a genius.

They of course have no intention of reducing the sugar contents of their big sellers – Coke and Pepsi.

Instead, as a result of increasing public awareness of the dangers of excess sugar intake with campaigns such as SugarByHalf, I Quit Sugar etc, sales of soft drinks are steadily declining especially in higher socio-economic areas. These are largely being replaced by increased bottled water sales and as the same companies that make the soft drinks own most of the bottled water brands, the net economic impact on these big multinationals is minimal.

The saddest thing about today’s announcement was the pathetic endorsement by Australia’s (Ill) Health Minister Greg Hunt who has also been conned by the Beverages Industry, continuing the government’s subservience to the food and drink industry who have blocked all attempts to improve the health of Australians.

Depressing.

Australia's Obesity Crisis

The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare today released its Australia’s Health 2018 paper. As always it is full of fascinating information, but I want to focus on the most disturbing aspect of the whole report – Australia’s massive obesity problem.

Here are some of the high(low)lights contained in the report:

·      Australia’s measured obesity rate now ranks fifth among Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development (OECD) countries

·      Over the past two decades, the proportion of Australians with a healthy body weight has decreased, and the proportion who are obese has increased.

·      The rate of severe obesity (BMI >35) has almost doubled between 1995 and 2014/15

Before we go any further, just a brief reminder of how obesity is classified. The most popular method of classifying obesity is by your Body Mass Index or BMI which is calculated by 

Here are the categories of obesity:

Based on measured BMI, in 2014–15:

• almost two-thirds (63%) of Australians aged 18 and over were overweight or obese (36% overweight but not obese, and 28% obese)
• overall, men (71%) had higher rates of overweight and obesity than women (56%). A greater proportion of men (42%) than women (29%) were overweight but not obese, while a similar proportion of men (28%) and women (27%) were obese
• men were most likely to be overweight but not obese at age 35–44 (48%), and to be obese at age 65–74 (38%). Women were most likely to be overweight but not obese at age 75–84 (41%), and obese at age 55–64 (35%) (Figure 4.10.1). 

Children (in 2014–15)

·      one in 5 (20%) children aged 2–4 were overweight or obese—11% were overweight but not obese, and 8.7% were obese (ABS 2015)

·      more than 1 in 4 (28%) children and young people aged 5–17 were overweight or obese—20% were overweight but not obese, and 7.4% were obese

·      for both children and young people aged 2–4 and 5–17, similar proportions of boys and girls were obese

·      boys were most likely to be overweight but not obese at age 16–17 (29%), while this was most likely for girls at age 8–11 (21%). The highest prevalence of obesity was at age 16–17 for boys (8.2%) and age 5–7 for girls (12%) (Figure 4.10.2)

Adults in 2014–15 were significantly more likely to be obese than adults of the same age 20 years earlier for all but one age group. The largest relative difference was at age 18–21: in 2014–15, 15% of adults were obese at age 18–21, almost double the proportion who were obese at the same age in 1995 (7.2%) 

Since 1995, the proportion of Australian adults with a BMI in the more severe obesity ranges (class II and class III obesity) has increased. This proportion almost doubled between 1995 and 2014–15, from 4.9% to 9.4% among Australian adults (Table 4.10.1). 

Chronic conditions among overweight and obese adults

Among adults, overweight and obesity increases the likelihood of developing many chronic conditions, including some cancers, some cardiovascular diseases, asthma, back pain and problems, chronic kidney disease, dementia, diabetes, gallbladder disease, gout, and osteoarthritis (AIHW 2017a).

In 2014–15, Australian adults who were overweight or obese reported higher rates of many chronic conditions than adults of normal weight For several conditions, obese adults were more likely to report that they had a chronic condition than adults who were overweight but not obese, who in turn reported higher rates than adults of normal weight.

Quite apart from the human cost, the financial cost to this country of obesity is massive.

How much longer are we going to sit back while our children and adults get fatter and sicker?

The PHC London Conference - May 2018

As I mentioned in my tribute to Tim Noakes last week, I recently gave the opening address at the 2018 PHC conference in London.

I guess the first thing you want to know if what on earth does PHC stand for and what is it all about.

Well PHC stands for Pubic Health Collaboration – ‘a charity dedicated to informing and implementing healthy decisions for better public health’.

PHC was  established by Sam Feltham a few years ago. You can read more about it at https://phcuk.org

It has lots of interesting information but my fave section has always been the constantly updated list of randomised controlled trials (RCTs) comparing low fat and low carb diets.

Sam Feltham has an interesting story. As the PHC website puts it ‘Sam has been in the health and fitness industry for over a decade. Starting out as a party coordinator at a sports centre and working his way up to studying at the European Institute of Fitness and qualifying as a Master Personal Trainer. After 5 years of running a fitness boot camp business Sam decided to move away from that business in order to fully focus on improving public health by setting up and directing the Public Health Collaboration.’

But what Sam is best known for are his two experiments performed under Smash the Fat where for two 21 day periods he took in nearly 6000 calories from firstly a low carb high fat diet and then later a low fat high carb diet and compared the outcomes. There are some pretty impressive photos associated with that.

If you would like to read more about Sam’s experiments have a look here

Anyhow getting back to the conference which incidentally was held at the headquarters of the Royal College of General Practitioners (RCGP) in Central London. It had a star studded line up of speakers in addition to Tim Noakes who was clearly the star of the show. Zoe Harcombe, David Unwin, Aseem Malhotra, Zoe Williams, the list is a long one. All great speakers. You can see some of them here.

I was going to write a comprehensive review of the whole conference, but the brilliant Marika Sboros has beaten me to it and I could not do as good a job, so I am giving you the links to Marika’s two part report on the conference.

Marika is a health journalist from South Africa who has co-authored the Lore of Nutrition with Tim Noakes. I am sure you will enjoy her summary.

Part One available here

Part Two available here

All in all a very successful conference and credit to Sam Feltham for superb organization. We look forward to the 2019 edition.

Public Health Collaboration Conference in London - Professor Tim Noakes

I have been to hundreds of conferences in my medical career, but I have never experienced anything like what I witnessed at the Public Health Collaboration conference in London on the weekend.

Professor Tim Noakes, the South African who has, more than anyone else, influenced people around the word to abandon the low fat way of eating and adopt a low carb healthy fat lifestyle, or as the South Africans call it, the Banting Diet was one of the invited speakers a the conference. For the past couple of years Tim has been involved in a ‘trial’ after he was accused of giving misleading advice over twitter some years ago. He has been the subject of a bitter, nasty campaign to discredit him led by the dietitians and certain medical practitioners in South Africa. Tim was found ‘not guilty’ at his trial, but the prosecution appealed the verdict. The appeal was held in February this year and we still await the result.

Tim gave his keynote address on Sunday morning and took the audience on his journey of the last few years. It was a dramatic, emotional story and he had the audience spellbound for over an hour. The Liverpool born and bred Professor finished his talk by playing the Liverpool football cub anthem ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’ which was an appropriate theme for his struggles. As you can see from this brief video excerpt, for the whole three minutes of the song, the audience gave Tim a standing ovation. It was incredibly emotional and I doubt there was a dry eye in the house. Have a listen. I have never witnessed anything like it at a conference.

Tim was responsible for getting me started on my low carb journey and this is what I say in the ‘My story’ section of the book ….

Soon after that birthday, I read something from my old friend and colleague Professor Tim Noakes, who is generally considered to be the pre-eminent sports scientist in the world. Tim had started advocating a low-carb diet without the usual restrictions on fat. He was on this diet himself with dramatic results, and was encouraging others, including athletes, to adopt it too. Tim is a lateral thinker who constantly challenges the orthodoxies of sports science. He wrote Lore of Running, a massive tome that’s essential reading for any serious runner or sports scientist, and has fascinating thoughts on a whole range of topics (including cricket and Bradman’s backlift!). So when Tim Noakes comes out and states categorically that everything we believe about diet, obesity and heart disease is wrong, we all need to sit up and take notice.

But surely, I thought, the medical, nutrition and sports science community could not have been so far off the mark for all these years in advocating a diet low in saturated fat (to prevent heart disease) and high in complex carbohydrates (to fuel exercise). And yet that’s exactly what Noakes was saying. He even apologised for advocating a high-carb diet in Lore of Running – no doubt he will change that for the next edition.

Tim’s conversion certainly got me thinking. I wanted to find out more.

And here we are with a certain book …..

That’s all for today but I will do another blog summarizing the conference in the next couple of days.

Peter

Dr Richard Bernstein and 'Diabetes Solution'

Type 1 diabetics have traditionally been advised to have a diet high in carbohydrates and to use their insulin injections to keep their blood sugars under control. However frequently blood sugar control is poor with large fluctuations and high HbA1c levels.

For some time now, especially following the publication of Dr Richard Bernstein’s book Diabetes Solution, there has been a small but rapidly growing Facebook group mainly comprising of parents of children with Type 1 diabetes called TypeOneGrit. These people use a low carb diet to improve control of blood glucose levels and to lower the required dose of insulin.

This week in the medical journal Pediatrics a study was published which looked at the blood sugar control of a group of people from the TypeOneGrit group – 316 in all of whom 130 were children. The study was not a randomized controlled trial, but rather an observational trial which is not as rigorous. The most striking finding of the new report was that HbA1C levels, on average, fell from 7.15 percent, in the diabetic range, to 5.67 percent, which is normal.

The New York Times article below gives a good summary of the paper here.

Richard Bernstein has an interesting story. He was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes in 1946 at the age of 12. In 1969, after following diabetes guidelines for more than twenty years, Richard had many of the debilitating complications of the disease. Sick and tired of being at the mercy of his disease, he obtained one of the early blood glucose meters. He discovered that he could normalize his blood glucose through diet, exercise and medication.

When the then-engineer Richard Bernstein tried to persuade the medical community that he had found the answer, the medical community roundly ignored him—even told him that it was impossible. So, in his mid-forties, he decided to leave his successful career in business and go to medical school.

He then wrote his book Diabetes Solution in 1997 and it has had a massive impact on thousands of diabetics around the word. Bernstein has now been living with his diabetes for 72 years, possibly longer than any diabetic in the world. He is still going strong.

The Science of Sugar

Three international obesity experts, NHS Consultant Cardiologist Dr Aseem Malhotra, Professor Robert Lustig of the University of California San Francisco and Professor Grant Schofield, Auckland University of Technology have authored the most comprehensive up to date report on the science of sugar with an eight point plan that if implemented will result in a reversal in the epidemic of type 2 diabetes within 3 years.

The peer reviewed academic publication entitled “ The science against sugar, alone, is insufficient in tackling the obesity and type 2 diabetes crises —we must also overcome opposition from vested interests” published in the Journal of Insulin Resistance makes comparisons with tackling the obesity epidemic with taking on Big Tobacco.

“We should not wait decades to solve our current problems with sugar. It took 44 years from the 1950 publication of the first study to link smoking to lung cancer, to the attorney general of Mississippi suing Big Tobacco to recoup medical costs related to the disease. Big Tobacco sowed doubt that cigarettes were harmful, confused the public, persistently denied their effects, bought the loyalty of scientists, and gave ammunition to political allies” they write.

“Now, the science demonstrating sugar’s role in diet-related disease is incontrovertible, but science alone cannot curb the obesity and type 2 diabetes epidemics. Opposition from vested interests that profit from diminishing society’s health must be overcome.”

“As with tobacco, policy changes that target availability, affordability or acceptability (the Mexico sugar tax, for example) are overwhelmingly effective in curbing sugar consumption. But the sugar industry, their partners, and political allies utilise numerous instruments to deflect culpability and derail policy change. Some involve influencing science, and some influencing public opinion” they continue

The authors describe in detail and reference examples adopted by the sugar industry to deflect blame away from sugar’s role in obesity and type 2 diabetes which includes paying scientists, obfuscating scientific research, co-opting public health experts and influencing public opinion.

“For years, soft drink companies’ public relations machinery, have pushed the lack of physical activity as a cause of obesity, when there is evidence to reveal that although sedentary lifestyle contributes to chronic disease physical activity, impact is minimal at best and you cannot outrun a bad diet.

The experts provide an eight point public health intervention plan, all of which are evidence based to reduce population sugar consumption, and all of which were successful in curbing tobacco use which will start to show a decline in the prevalence of type 2 diabetes within 3 years if implemented.

1.   Education for the public should emphasise that there is no biological need or nutritional value of added sugar. Industry should be forced to label added and free sugars on food products in teaspoons rather than grams, which will make it easier to understand.

2.   There should be a complete ban of companies associated with sugary products from sponsoring sporting events. We encourage celebrities in the entertainment industry and sporting role models (as Indian cricketer Virat Kohli and American basketballer Steph Curry have already done) to publicly dissociate themselves from sugary product endorsement.

3.   We call for a ban on loss leading in supermarkets, and running end-of-aisle loss leading on sugary and junk foods and drinks.

4. Sugary drinks taxes should extend to sugary foods as well.

5.   We call for a complete ban of all sugary drink advertising (including fruit juice) on TV and internet demand services.

6. We recommend the discontinuing all governmental food subsidies, especially commodity crops such as sugar, which contribute to health detriments. These subsidies distort the market, and increase the costs of non-subsidised crops, making them unaffordable for many. No industry should be provided a subsidy for hurting people.

7.   Policy should prevent all dietetic organisations from accepting money or endorsing companies that market processed foods. If they do, they cannot be allowed to claim their dietary advice is independent.

8. We recommend splitting healthy eating and physical activity as separate and independent public health goals. We strongly recommend avoiding sedentary lifestyles through promotion of physical activity to prevent chronic disease for all ages and sizes, because “you can’t outrun a bad diet”. However, physical (in)activity is often conflated as an alternative solution to obesity on a simple energy in and out equation. The evidence for this approach is weak. This approach necessarily ignores the metabolic complexity and unnecessarily pitches two independently healthy behaviours against each other on just one poor health outcome (obesity). The issue of relieving the burden of nutrition-related disease needs to improve diet, not physical activity.

To read the full study please click here.

Eggs, eggs, eggs

I was planning on writing something about eggs in my next monthly blog, but a new research paper out today has prompted me to bring that forward.  The paper from researchers at the Boden Institute at Sydney University have now conducted two studies examining the effect of consumption of eggs on cardiovascular risk factors in those with Type 2 diabetes and pre-diabetes. The first, published in 2015, was a three month trial in which participants aimed to maintain their weight while embarking on a high-egg (12 eggs per week) or low-egg (fewer than two eggs per week) diet. At the end of three months, there were no differences in cardiovascular risk markers identified between the two groups.

In the group’s latest paper published this week, also in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, the same participants subsequently followed a weight loss diet for three months maintaining the same high (12) and low (<2) weekly egg intake and were then followed up for an additional 6 months. The two groups lost a similar amount of weight and there was no difference in the cardiovascular risk factors at any stage. 

The researchers concluded that ‘a healthy diet based on population guidelines and including more eggs than currently recommended by some countries may be safely consumed'.

This is what I have to say about eggs in A Fat Lot of Good.

Eggs have had a bad rap for years and were probably the main victim of our cholesterol obsession. Now that it’s been agreed that cholesterol in food has no effect of cholesterol levels in the body, we can go back to enjoying the wonderful benefits of eggs. It used to make me feel like crying to see people asking for egg white-only omelets when all the goodness was in the yolks!

Eggs are one of the most nutrient-dense foods, and arguably the single healthiest food there is. They contain protein, healthy fats, vitamins, minerals, various antioxidants, choline, selenium, vitamin D and riboflavin. I certainly try to eat two to three eggs a day, usually at breakfast, but I’m not that fussed about what time of day I eat them.

A study from Finland found that egg consumption was associated with a lower risk of type 2 diabetes as well as with lower blood glucose levels. Men who ate about four eggs per week had a 37 per cent lower risk of type 2 diabetes than men who only ate one egg per week.

Similarly to beef and salmon, eggs from pasture-raised (properly free-range) chickens have an overall healthier nutrient profile, with more vitamins A, D and E, and higher omega-3 and lower omega-6 levels.

Remember, all the goodness is in the yolk, so please no more egg white omelets. And it’s never too early to start kids on eggs – a recent study showed an increase in growth among egg-eating 6–9-month-old babies.

Eat your eggs with nutrient-dense low carb foods such as smoked salmon and non-starchy vegetables like spinach or avocado, rather than toast. The traditional eggs and bacon is a pretty good way to go as well. 

So there is no longer any need to be afraid of eggs.  I would have at least 10 eggs a week.

Monthly Blog - May 2018

Hi everyone. Welcome to the first of my monthly blogs. In these blogs I want to give you lots of background information as well as giving you my thoughts on the the latest research, media posts, newspaper articles etc

What have I been doing?

2018 has been a busy one for me, finishing A Fat Lot of Good, speaking at a number of international conferences and working on the SugarByHalf campaign.

My first conference was the Wales Exercise Medicine Symposium in Cardiff in late January. London cardiologist Aseem Malhotra and I gave the Keynote addresses to an enthusiastic audience. My topic was Why we are getting fatter and sicker - and what you can do about it. It was also a chance to catch up with Zoe Harcombe author of The Obesity Epidemic and we had a great dinned cooked by her husband Andy at their beautiful cottage in a village in the Welsh countryside. After the symposium I spent afew days in London speaking on nutrition matters to the sport and exercise medicine doctors in London and also at Arsenal Football Club. Got to see some Premier League games as well.

Went straight from the UK to the Australasian College of Sports and Exercise Physicians conference on the Gold Coast. I was one of the Founding Executive members of the College and has two terms as President back in its formative years. It was great to catch up with old friends and wonderful to see the College thriving. My talk there was entitled What the sports physician needs to know about nutrition. It went down well.

The next international gig was the Low Carb Breckenridge conference on the beautiful ski resort of Breckenridge, Colorado at the end of February. I have skied all my life so I couldn’t resist the urge to go over a few days early and have a couple of days skiing with my son Joe and his girlfriend Caroline who came over from Los Angeles where they both work as scriptwriters. The conference was brilliant with an amazing array of outstanding speakers, mainly American, including Nina Teicholz, Ivor Cummins, Dave Feldman, Andrew Mente, Steve Phinney, Robb Wolf, Andrea Eenfeldt, Georgia Ede, Ben Bickman, Jake Kushner, Eric Kossof, Sarah Hallberg, Eric Westman, Dave Diamond, Mike Eades and lots of others. I felt very privileged to be part of it. My topic was Fats or Carbs? What is the best fuel for high performance? I was also part of a panel (see below).The conference is run every year by Jeff Gerber (Denver’s Diet Doctor) and our very own Rod Tayler of Low Carb Down Under. The talks will soon be available online and I will let you know where in a future blog. 

After a couple of weeks back in Melbourne for, among other things, my daughter Julia’s wedding- a great day - I was back on the road with a quick dash across the Tasman wearing my sports medicine hat to speak at the International Shock Wave Therapy conference in Auckland. I did get the chance to catch up with some of the Auckland low carb group (below) – Grant Schofield, Catherine Crofts, George Henderson and the wonderful Libby from DitchtheCarbs. Grant has a new book out which I will review next month and I will also do a feature soon on Libby’s website.

Back to Melbourne for ten days including the first in a series of talks I will be giving to general practitioners who are part of the Primary Health Care group. These have been organised by their Head Dietitian Nicole Moore, and both Rod Tayler and I will be crisscrossing the country over the next few months introducing GPs to the concept of healthy eating.

After that it was back to the US as an invited speaker at the AMSSM (American Medical Society for Sports Medicine) meeting in Orlando, Florida. The topic of my keynote was Fats or Carbs – what is the best fuel for performance. This conference is the main US one for primary care sports medicine docs and was attended by over 2000 doctors. My talk created quite a stir and I suspect many of the audience have gone home with the aim of improving their diet. I have to admit somewhere like the Disney resort is not the easiest place in the world to eat properly but we managed OK. It is pretty scary to see what the crowds of people at Disney World were eating. It is no wonder the US has such a high rate of obesity.

BOOK LAUNCH: 

A FAT LOT OF GOOD

Well the day has finally arrived – Monday April 30 the official publication date of A Fat Lot of Good – and I missed it!! I was on a flight back from the U.S. and  I spent publication day in the air. It was pretty exciting when I landed to walk past the airport bookshop and see a copy of the book prominently displayed.

On Saturday I spoke at the Low Carb Down Under conference in Sydney. A packed house of 250 listened to a great array of speakers including our hosts Doron Sher and Paul Mason as well as Gary Fettke, Maryanne Demasi, Rod Tayler, Vanessa Muratore, Jessica Turton, Taryn Polovin and Lindsay Woods.

Always love catching up wth Gary and Maryanne, two courageous outspoken advocates of healthy eating.

Managed to sell out all copies of A Fat Lot of Good at the conference!

What’s next?

I have a few talks in Melbourne before heading to the UK for the Public Health Collaboration conference in London on May 19&20. I am giving the Opening Address at the conference and other speakers include Aseem Malhotra, Zoe Harcombe, David Unwin and Tim Noakes.

What is SugarByHalf up to?

Things are always busy at SugarByHalf. Our wonderful Campaign Manager Tania Sincock has been in Sydney at an Action on Obesity meeting and is developing good relations with the other bodies interested in this area. We are developing a national campaign which we are hoping to roll out later this year – all we need is more funding!!

PERSON OF THE MONTH: NINA TEICHOLZ

Nina Teicholz is a New York-based journalist who grew up in California and subsequently attended Stanford, Yale and Oxford Universities. She became interested in dietary fats while writing a series of food articles for Gourmet and started to research the topic. Her years of research culminated in the publication of her classic book The Big Fat Surprise: Why Butter, Meat and Cheese Belong in a Healthy Diet (see below) in 2014.

Since then Nina’s passion has been to update the U.S Dietary Guidelines and she has been supported in this work by the Laura and John Arnold Foundation.

She published a controversial article in the British Medical Journal in 2015. Read here

The article challenged many of the accepted beliefs in nutrition and was widely criticized. Despite pressure from a number of lobby groups associated with the food industry, the BMJ refused to retract the article.

Nina is currently leading a group called the Nutrition Coalition to tackle the U.S. Guidelines.

Nina is one of the most impressive people I have met and we were delighted to host her visit to Australia last year for one of Rod Tayler’s Low Carb Down Under conferences

BOOK OF THE MONTH: THE BIG FAT SURPRISE

Nina’s 2014 book, The Big Fat Surprise: Why Butter, Meat and Cheese Belong in a Healthy Diet, traces the history of US diet guidelines; in the book she investigates the science behind the guidelines and the influence of industry lobbying on them, and also questioned their emphasis on avoiding saturated fat. Nina advises readers to "eat butter; drink milk whole, and feed it to the whole family. Stock up on creamy cheeses, offal, and sausage, and yes, bacon".

The book made The New York Times Best Seller list that year, and was named one of the Top 10 Non-Fiction Books of 2014 by The Wall Street Journal and one of the year's best science books by The Economist.

I reckon this is the best book I have ever read and I would encourage any health professional, or indeed anyone interested in nutrition, to read it. It is a fascinating tale of politics and health. I carry some copies around with me and if any health professional shows any interest in this area, I give them a copy of the book. I don’t ask for payment but instead I ask them when they have finished reading it to pass it on to another health professional. I defy anyone to read that book and not be blown away by the story. It will change your life for ever.

On my list of Top Ten books found elsewhere on this site, A Big Fat Surprise in Number 1.

WEBSITE OF THE MONTH: WWW.DIETDOCTOR.COM

This is the number one low carb website in the world. It was started by Dr Andreas Eenfeldt, a very tall, charming, ever-smiling Swedish doctor who gave up his medical practice in 2015 to devote himself to the website. It started off in Swedish in 2007 and has become the biggest health blog in Sweden and soon after he launched an English version (2011) which has become huge (250,000 visits per day)

Andreas now has 17 co-workers and there is a vast amount of material on the site with new videos, podcasts, interviews and articles being posted daily.  The site is completely free from ads, product sales or industry sponsorship and instead fully funded by the people, via over 40,000 optional members. I strongly recommend subscribing.

Whether you are just starting out on your low carb journey, or you are already firmly committed but want more information, and even if you just want to explore these new concepts, then this is the website for you. On my list of Top Ten websites found elsewhere on this site, DietDoctor in Number 1.

PODCAST OF THE MONTH: NINA ON JOE ROGAN

Joe Rogan is a well known stand up comedian with a number of hour long TV comedy specials under his belt, On top of that he is a former Tae Kwon Do champion and expert commentator on UFC fight cards. He has a very popular long form podcast and he had an excellent chat with Nina Teicholz a few months ago.

FOOD OF THE MONTH: BREAD

This is part of what I say in the book about bread ….

I don’t know how many people, when I tell them I’ve given up eating bread along with other carbs, have said, ‘I could give up everything else, but not bread.’ Bread has long been known as the ‘staff of life’, and the Bible says, ‘Give us this day our daily bread.’ So why are we saying now that bread may be not so healthy for us?

Bread is made from a combination of flour, yeast, and sometimes sugar  and salt. The flour usually comes from wheat, although other forms of flour exist – such as spelt (an older form of wheat), rye and barley. The problem is that bread is just not good for you. Dr William Davis, a car­diologist and the author of Wheat Belly, calls wheat ‘the perfect chronic poison’. Or as Michael Pollan says in his book Food Rules, ‘The whiter the bread, the sooner you’re dead.’

There are two ways in which bread negatively affects our health. The first is that bread (and wheat and flour) is full of carbs and has a very high glycemic index, which means that eating bread causes a rapid spike in glucose and insulin levels.

The second problem revolves around the hundreds of different pro­teins contained in wheat. The best known of these is gluten, which has glue-like properties (hence the name glu-ten) that are responsible for dough’s stickiness.

A significant proportion of the population appears to be sensitive to gluten. Ingesting gluten gives them a range of symptoms including abdominal pain, bloat­ing, discomfort and diarrhoea. Gluten and other wheat proteins may increase intestinal permeability resulting in an autoimmune response to substances not usually present in the gut wall and bloodstream.

The author of Grain Brain, American doctor David Perlmutter, suggests that the proteins in wheat have an adverse effect on brain function, which may be related to the gut–brain connection. In his experience, removing gluten from the diet results in an improvement in symptoms.

Gluten is only one of many proteins contained in wheat and it is likely that many people are sensitive to various different proteins. By avoiding bread and other products derived from wheat products, many have experi­enced improvements in health.

If you’re insulin sensitive and can tolerate bread, sourdough bread may have some health advantages over conventional bread. Sourdough is an old form of bread leavening that relies on a mix of wild yeast and lactic acid bacteria, rather than added baker’s yeast. Its lower gluten and phytate lev­els due to the fermentation process make it more nutritious and easier to digest. Sourdough bread also seems less likely to spike your blood sugar levels. Wholegrain sourdough is preferable.

Wraps aren’t so great. Even though the fillings are often healthy, the wraps themselves are no different in their content from regular white bread.

But we’ve been eating bread forever …..

If the human race has been eating bread for centuries without any ill effect, why are we having problems now? According to William Davis, wheat today is completely different from the wheat that was eaten years ago. We used to consume ancient varieties of wheat such as emmer, einkorn and kamut, but most of the wheat eaten today is high-yield dwarf wheat developed by cross-breeding and genetic manipulation in the 20th century.

Dwarf wheat has shorter stems and a much greater yield, which makes the grain it produces cheaper than the older varieties and more economically viable. Wheat is also processed differently now. Since the late 19th century, milling techniques have made it possible to produce large quantities of refined wheat flour cheaply. In white flour, the nutri­tious components of the grain (the bran and germ) have been removed from the endosperm, where most of the starchy carbs are contained. This makes it much less nutrient dense and means it spikes blood sugar very quickly.

And we used to prepare our grains differently. They were soaked, sprouted and fermented, and bread was baked using slow-rise yeast. Sprouting and fermenting grains increases the quantity of the amino acid lysine, reduces anti-nutrients (such as phytate acid and lectins), disables enzyme inhibitors and makes the nutrients more accessible. Commercial bread is made with bleached flour and baked with quick-rise yeast. The grains certainly aren’t soaked, sprouted or fermented.

As a result, Davis says, modern wheat is less nutritious than old wheat. The amount of minerals such as zinc, copper, iron and magnesium has decreased by a quarter. It also contains more gluten. Some studies show, for example, that people with coeliac disease can eat older wheat varieties without a reaction.4 Relative to older wheat varieties, modern wheat has been said to have adverse effects on cholesterol, blood mineral content and inflammatory markers, potentially contributing to disease.

All of this probably explains the widespread lack of tolerance to mod­ern wheat. It takes generations for the human body to adapt to these sorts of changes.

Do we need to eat grains at all?

While there is no doubt that whole grains are better for us than refined grains, the question is do we need grains at all. The Dietary Guidelines have grains and cereals on the bottom rung of the Food Pyramid and want us to eat lots of them.

We certainly don’t need to eat grains as there are no nutrients that cannot be supplies by other foods. However whole grains certainly have some benefits particularly as a source of fibre.

While many people tolerate grains well, there is a significant proportion of the population who are better off without grains altogether. Especially if you have some gastrointestinal (GI) symptoms such as bloating, or if you have been diagnosed with GI disorders such as IBS (irritable bowel syndrome) or GERD (gastro-esophageal reflux disease) then you should consider at least a trial of grain-free low carb eating. I have had numerous patients who stopped eating grains especially all wheat-containing foods for another reason (e.g. weight loss), whose GI symptoms disappeared once they ceased the grains.

Flour alternatives

Flour is the basis of so many modern foods, it’s hard to avoid it completely, but flour alternatives, such as almond flour and coconut flour are good for cooking, and aren’t associated with the same health issues as wheat flour.

There are plenty of low-carb breads available that are made from flour alternatives such as almond and coconut meal. Be wary of commercial gluten-free breads, as they often contain other high-GI starches.

The simplest gluten-free bread recipes contain almond flour, eggs and baking powder, although most are very dense. Adding the egg yolks and whites separately, then folding in the whites after beating, can help overcome that problem. If you want to bake your own low-carb bread, there are lots of recipes on the internet. One of my favorites is from the great website Ditch the Carbs

Libby’s 3 Seed Bread recipe

Ingredients

• 35 g chia seeds
• 75 g sunflower seeds
• 75 g pumpkin seeds
•  25 g coconut flour
• 75 g psyllium husks
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1/4 tsp salt optional
• 50 g butter melted
• 2 eggs
• 250 ml water warm

Cooking

Place all the dry ingredients in a large mixing bowl and stir.
Add the melted butter and eggs. Stir until almost mixed.
Add the warm water and stir until all the ingredients are full incorporated.
Place in a loaf tin and bake at 180C/350F for 35-45 minutes. Ensure it is golden on the outside and cooked in the centre. Cooking times may vary with each oven.

Here is a selection of recipes for other low carb breads

 Diet Doctor: Best breads https://www.dietdoctor.com/low-carb/keto/recipes/bread

Ditch the Carbs Best 20 breads https://www.ditchthecarbs.com/best-low-carb-breads-on-the-internet/

MEDIA ARTICLES OF THE MONTH: THE AGE

My favorite article for the month was from Peter Martin the Economics editor of The Age/ looking at the effect of the UK sugar tax even before it came into law. Maybe we should try the same here!! READ HERE

MEDICAL JOURNAL ARTICLES OF THE MONTH: PURE STUDY

For this blog’s medical journal articles I want to go back to a series of articles published last year on the PURE study. The PURE study is arguably the most important nutrition research study ever done. PURE stands for Prospective Urban Rural Epidemiology and in these papers the researchers investigated the effect of dietary nutrients from over 120,000 participants from 18 countries in North America, South America, Europe, Africa, and Asia. In the two papers I am going to briefly describe here, they looked at the effect of dietary nutrients on:

1.     blood lipids and blood pressure

2.     cardiovascular disease and mortality

The first study investigated the effect of dietary nutrients on blood lipids and

blood pressure, two of the most important risk factors for cardiovascular disease. They also aimed to examine the association of isocaloric replacement of saturated fatty acid with other nutrients on these cardiovascular disease risk markers, and to assess whether the changes in risk markers with changes in total fat and saturated fatty acid vary significantly by level of intake. They also compared whether the associations observed between saturated fatty acid and carbohydrate intake and cardiovascular disease could be explained by their associations with specific lipid markers.

Their findings suggest that reducing saturated fatty acid intake and replacing it with carbohydrate has an adverse effect on blood lipids. Substituting saturated fatty acids with unsaturated fats might be beneficial for some risk markers (LDL cholesterol and blood pressure), but might worsen others (HDL cholesterol and triglycerides).

They concluded that the current recommendation to reduce total fat and saturated fatty acids, which leads to a de facto increase in carbohydrate intake, is not supported by our data. SEE HERE

In the second PURE study published in The Lancet the investigators found that fats, including saturated fatty acids, are not harmful and diets high in carbohydrate have adverse effects on total mortality. They did not observe any detrimental effect of higher fat intake on cardiovascular events.

They concluded that their data across 18 countries adds to the large and growing body of evidence that increased fats are not associated with higher cardiovascular disease or mortality. I

The implications of all the available evidence were that removing current restrictions on fat intake but limiting carbohydrate intake (when high) might improve health. Dietary guidelines might need to be reconsidered in light of consistent findings from the present study, especially in countries outside of Europe and North America. SEE HERE

THE PR CAMPAIGN BEGINS AT TRIPLE M

Was great to catch up with Eddie and Luke Darcy this morning to discuss A Fat Lot of Good. They are both very interested in diet and  lifestyle issues and  are very supportive of the low sugar, avoid processed food philosophy contained in the book. As you can see from the photo they are both looking very healthy. Luke is also a big fan of meditation which is something I also discuss in the book - it is not just about nutrition - I cover other lifestyle issues (exercise, stress, sleep, sun etc) as well..

I first met Eddie when he was cadet sports reporter at Channel 10 in the late 80s when I was cub doctor at Melbourne. Eddie used to come to training and we would chat on the boundary line. As far as I am concerned he has never changed - always friendly, enthusiastic, passionate and interested in what I am doing. Was good to see him again this morning.

Have a listen to my chat on Triple M breakfast this morning