Open Future Health

Everyone Knows What a Healthy Diet Is!

But the evidence shows that at least 70% of them are wrong.

If 31% of adults are obese and 36% more are already overweight, we clearly don't understand what a healthy diet is. We do know that the recommended diet for the last 50 years is NOT healthy for older adults.

We've had 40+ years of increasing obesity, while people have tried to generally eat to the recommended nutritional guidelines. "We should eat a low-fat high-carbohydrate diet, with many vegetables, fruit and healthy whole grains, plus a little meat, but preferably chicken. Result: Obesity. Local FileBut the guidelines remain the same. Something is wrong in the USA, where the failure of the guidelines is denied. Finally, good sense comes from Sweden.

Here's the problem, The Swedish Agency for Health Technology Assessment and Assessment of Social Services, says the best diet for short term weight loss is a low-carbohydrate high-fat diet. No argument.

However, the best long term diet for adults is not known. The best diet for children and adolescents is not known. The scientific evidence is "insufficient." Given the extreme difficulty of doing well controlled long term dietary studies, answers to these questions may never be known.

Scientific evidence supports an increase in the use of dairy products, and a reduction in the use of sugary drinks.

There is no basis for choosing between a Mediterranean diet or a low carbohydrate diet as a long term dietary option. There is no evidence of long term harm from either diet.

Drinking coffee lowers mortality, and is protective against diabetes. Drinking alcohol is protective against diabetes.

Scientific evidence of long term harm from eating, vegetables, fruit, whole grains, potatoes, soy products, red meat and meat products, is insufficient to make any determination.

In 2006 we had proof that something was wrong. The carefully constructed Local FileWomen's Health Initiative, reported on why they stopped their study early (1998). The group on the recommended diet had more heart attacks and were dying earlier, than the group which was not restricted. No reduction in heart disease, or strokes, or in breast cancer, or in colon cancer. In addition, there was no significant weight loss.

Conclusion: A diet high in carbohydrates, fruits and vegetables, high in whole grains, but with low fat, and low cholesterol, does NOT improve health.

What is a Healthy Diet?

The Healthy Diet is NOT Healthy

This is difficult to understand, but the "healthy diet" we've been told to eat for more than 50 years is the cause of the obesity in the community. The low-fat and high-carbohydrate diet, low in meat and saturated fats, is causing the problem. It's not you that's wrong.

There is access to all the evidence in this site, but you only need to know two things. First, Local FileThe Women's Health Initiative, a major study designed to prove that the low-fat and high-carbohydrate diet, was a healthy diet. The study was closed early because the recommended diet was apparently causing early deaths. This unexpected result is still causing all sorts of problems.

Confused by their results, researchers said: "Everybody knows what a healthy diet is," but their own research shows that a diet high in carbohydrates, fruits and vegetables, with low fat, does NOT improve health. In 2006 the results were reported.

By 2015, least two-dozen long term studies had demonstrated that the low-fat high-carbohydrate diet was not a healthy diet.

Secondly, that normal aging does not need to include, becoming fatter, having knee and hip replacements, getting heart disease and cancer and diabetes. Those things should be exceptional, but they have become normal. Why? Read about Local Filepeople in earlier times who were fit and healthy into their 90's and for whom heart disease was unknown. Can we learn from that?

That message has been offered to us many times, but we keep rejecting it, perhaps for language reasons, perhaps for cultural reasons, perhaps because it's about "them" and it doesn't seem to be about "us."

Real meal diets like he Banting Diet and the New Atkins diet, first appear in European literature in 1862. William Banting got the idea from an English doctor who had been to France. Local FileBanting wrote about his dietary success, and his work was widely accepted, even in the USA.

The first real science on obesity was done by WWW LinkDr Wilhelm Ebstein, who established a clinical laboratory in Germany. Ebstein was critical of Banting's diet saying that it contained too little fat to give Banting the energy he needed. It was Ebstein who first identified the low-carbohydrate high-fat diet, as a healthy diet.

Several people with strange foreign names, tried to inform Americans that there was a better more healthy diet. Local FileDr. Ales Hrdlicka, and WWW LinkDr. Vilhjalmur Stefansson for example. Stefansson wrote three books and subjected himself to a year confined to Bellevue Hospital, New York, to prove that his high fat diet was safe, and that he would remain perfectly healthy. Confounded, the doctors at Bellevue, chose to ignore what Stefansson had just demonstrated to be true.

People who were less "foreign" were also ignored. WWW LinkDr. Weston A Price, and WWW LinkDr George V Mann. What they were saying wasn't what the American community wanted to hear.

Better nutrition is the lowest cost way to avoid extensive medical intervention in your life when you get old. Your body has the ability to heal itself, if you give it a chance. That chance begins with the right diet for YOU.

As we say in the aside to the right, you need to estimate how much damage you've already done to yourself. Local FileHow free of metabolic syndrome symptoms are you? Then you get to choose a course of action. Stop doing the things that cause future ill health.

ANYBODY, at any age, who adopts a healthy diet, will benefit, almost immediately. If you sustain that diet, the benefit will multiply as your homeostatic system resets itself, and you become fully adapted to being more healthy.

Obesity in New Zealand

66% of New Zealand adults are overweight or even fatter.

The Annual Update of Key Results 2014/15: New Zealand Health Survey found that:
almost one in three adults (aged 15 years and over) were obese (31%)
a further 35% of adults were overweight but not obese
47% of Maori adults were obese
66% of Pacific adults were obese.

The BEST Diet? It depends on YOU.

How much damage have you already done to your metabolic system?

If you are genetically lucky, or if you've eaten sugar and carbohydrates in a moderate way all your life, your system may not be very carbohydrate intolerant. If that's the case, your dietary choices are not at all restricted. Eat a mixed diet, and your body metabolism will help you correct for occasional indulgences.

If you have a growing carbohydrate intolerance, you will find the Local Filesymptoms of metabolic syndrome developing. Time to act early, cutting out sugar, and cutting back on carbohydrates. Do that in your 30's, 40's, or 50's and protect your health status for when you are 85.

Half the adult population have metabolic syndrome. For you, to rebuild your health the options are few. Firstly use a Banting real meal diet, to get your weight back to normal. If you've done that well, you'll have learned quite a lot about ketosis. You need to decide Local Fileto what extent you want to be in ketosis and to remain in ketosis, to maintain your health.

The Best Diet is a Vegetarian Diet?

Advocates for a Vegetarian Diet are very passionate.

Local FileA vegetarian diet is very difficult to maintain and remain healthy. There is no scientific validation for a vegetarian lifestyle. The largest nutritional forum on the Internet, run by professionals, in 2013, banned any further posts by anyone trying to promote a vegetarian diet. The reason: it's scientifically unsound as a nutritional programme.

Committed vegetarians often have very strong personal reasons for their dietary choice. It's a choice that means taking personal responsibility for your own care, and accepting that there are likely to be long term health disadvantages for you as the result of your choice.

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