Your Health Problems

What health problems do you have? If you are young, and if you are fit and healthy and not overweight, you have many dietary options, that an old person like myself does not have. If you look after your health by eating a sensible mixed diet in a moderate way, you might be able to avoid metabolic syndrome.

However, most of us have not been able to do that, and poor health has been the long term result. For us there is every reason to choose a different diet.

Eating a little bit of everything in moderation is often claimed to be the best diet. However it's very clear that this does not work. Moderation has no definition. If this was a valid idea almost nobody would get metabolic syndrome, where in fact almost everybody develops it.

Going Beyond the Science - Choosing Your Diet

The McGovern Dietary Guidelines

The Dietary Guidelines for Americans, in the end became a political document. No food group was excluded. The food industry and the various groups representing American farmers all got a place at the table.

Over time we've allowed industry to tell us what we should or should not be eating.

E. H. "Pete" Ahrens

Pete Ahrens, was able to convince George McGovern that nutritional science was not mature enough to recommend a best diet for human nutrition. Ahrens said that he had made personal choices about what he and his family should be eating, but he had no way to prove that this personal decision was valid.

Today's Science

Since the late 1990's there has been a good deal of new dietary research, that was never possible in the previous 30 years. One example of that is The New Atkins Diet, a book and a dietary programme, strongly supported by new science. The lead authors were Dr Eric Westman, Dr Jeff Volek and Dr Stephen Phinney, all of whom have worked in the area of low carbohydrate diets for many years.

Here is a link to 23 studies, 19 of which support the use of low carbohydrate and high fat diets for weight loss.

Best Diet?

You need to choose. We can't depend on science to guarantee that we are making the best choice. What science can do is be clear about wrong choices. Both vegetarian diets and the standard American diet can clearly be seen as poor choices. A vegan diet is clearly a very bad choice.

Science can say what NOT to DO. For instance it's quite clear that added sugar in your diet isn't a healthy option. Beyond that we ourselves have to choose. The Take-Out Diet gives you a sensible way to begin. Then over time as your knowledge grows, you may choose to take that diet in a slightly different direction.