Animal agriculture faces the challenge of the mistaken belief that animal products are the cause of this epidemic. The irony is that science has shown that diets based on animal products provide a solution to these diseases. The topic of this talk is the difference between the official dietary recommendations and what the science has in fact demonstrated regarding the importance of animal products in the human diet

… Since the early 80s the official policy of the United States government has been that every American over the age of 2 including pregnant and lactating women needs to be on a low-fat, reduced red meat high carbohydrate diet to reduce their risk of heart disease, avoid obesity and related chronic diseases. This policy was the product of faulty reasoning and corrupt science and this corruption continues to influence the discussion of diet, nutrition and human health today. It has negatively impacted animal agriculture and produced an epidemic of chronic illness in the United States. These guidelines have been a tragic failure.

To demonstrate how ingrained this low-fat-is-good-health-message has become, let’s contrast some examples of conventional wisdom with what science has actually demonstrated.

If I say cholesterol, do you think “harmful” when you should be thinking “essential”?
The science has shown that:

• Dietary cholesterol has no meaningful effect on total cholesterol (TC) levels.

• Total cholesterol is unrelated to risk of Coronary Heart Disease (CHD)
• Low Density Lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol is at best a marginal risk factor for CHD.
• Higher TC is associated with greater longevity for women and seniors.
• Lower TC is in fact associated with greater cancer mortality risk

If I say “saturated fat”, do you think “artery clogging”?
The science has shown that:

• Saturated fat does not cause heart disease.

• A low-fat diet will increase your risk of Cardio-Vascular Disease (CVD)
• High fat diets produce greater weight loss, better blood glucose control, and reduced CVD risks.

If I say Whole Grains, do you think “healthy” when you should be thinking “harmful?”
The science has shown:

• Dietary fat, whether saturated or not, does not cause heart disease

• Carbohydrates do, because of their effect on the hormone insulin

We’ve been told to limit our intake of saturated fat, and the terms saturated fat and animal fat are often treated as if they are synonymous but animal fat is in fact a mixture of different fatty acids. These mixtures differ between animal species and can be influenced by production practices. In general beef fat is 50 percent saturated fatty acids, 1/3 of which is stearic fatty acid which our bodies convert to oleic fatty acid – the primary fatty acid in olive oil. Forty-two percent are monounsaturated fatty acids but 90% of these are oleic acid, and 4% are polyunsaturated fatty acids. Science has shown that eating beef tallow will improve your blood lipid profile and therefore lower your coronary heart disease risk.

The science has shown:

• No association between meat consumption and cancer

• Refined carbohydrates, starches, and sugars are the most likely dietary causes of cancer, Alzheimer’s Disease, and the other common chronic diseases of modern times.

Because the focus of medicine has not been on nutrition, and because of the “low-fat-diet is the healthy diet” dogma, many of our physicians are not well-informed about general nutrition.

A study published in 2005 asked physicians several general nutrition questions:

• 93% did not know that a low-fat diet, in general, would increase blood triglycerides.

• 75% did not know a low-fat diet would decrease HDL, 50% thought that a low-fat diet would not change HDL.
• 50% did not know carbohydrate was the diet component most likely to raise triglycerides.

Since an increased level of triglycerides, and a reduced level of HDL are indicators of increased coronary heart disease risk, science has shown that a low-fat diet which is by definition a high-carbohydrate diet will increase a person’s coronary heart disease risk.

My own personal moment of clarity [was] Christmas of 2007. At my heaviest, I was over 220 lbs. Several friends had been diagnosed with pre-diabetes, and I learned that I had some risk factors for that condition as well. I had tried various methods of losing weight, but without significant or lasting success. …I’ve achieved a 45lb weight loss by adopting a way of eating that emphasizes animal fats and animal proteins while reducing carbohydrates. As I’ve studied I’ve come to realize that I had been the victim of a massive disinformation campaign that was waged upon the American people to convince us that a low fat, reduced cholesterol high carbohydrate diet is the healthy diet (pictured: Time Magazine March 26 1984 issue

Humans require animal protein and animal fat for optimal health. Optimal is the key word here. Humans are an amazingly adaptive species. If we weren’t we wouldn’t have spread so far across the face of the earth under so many different conditions. But Survival should not be confused with optimal health.

There are such things as “essential amino acids”. These are amino acids that our bodies require but cannot manufacture so they must be present in our diet. Animal protein is referred to as high-quality or “complete” because it contains all of the essential amino acids in the proper amounts. There is no such thing as a “complete plant protein.”

There are such things as “essential fatty acids.” Again, these are required by our bodies but we cannot synthesize them. We can obtain these from plant as well as animal sources, but plant sources tend to be too high in omega-6. Diets containing too much omega-6 are thought to produce inflammation and chronic inflammation is thought to contribute to chronic diseases including CHD. Animal products have the optimal ratio of omega-6 to omega-3 fatty acids.

Despite the fact that there is no such thing as an “essential carbohydrate”, the official guidelines suggest that 60% of our calories come from carbohydrates. And the American public has tried to follow these guidelines. Since 1977 when these dietary recommendations were first proposed by Senator McGovern’s subcommittee, we’ve seen:

• A decrease in red meat consumption

• A decrease in total fat consumption
• An increase in vegetable oil consumption
• An increase in grain product and sugar (HFCS) consumption
• An increase in leisure activity

We were supposed to make those changes to reduce our risk of heart disease and to avoid obesity and related diseases like diabetes

So how’s that been working?

Since 1977, we have seen:

• Significant increases in obesity

• Significant increases in type 2 diabetes
• No decrease in the rate of heart disease
• Significant increase in a relatively new condition called non-alcoholic fatty liver disease

Clearly we have not seen the results that we were promised by the experts.

“We’ve all been unwitting subjects in a long observational study, the hypothesis of which is that a low-fat, high-carb diet will reduce obesity, diabetes, and the other so-called diseases of civilization. In my view, it hasn’t worked out all that well.” Michael R. Eades, M.D.

What a wonderful understatement.

Remember when we called type II diabetes “adult onset diabetes”? Every day the US government feeds more than 53 million people, many of whom are school children. Any government program must adhere to the official dietary guidelines. So here we have a healthy school lunch for elementary school children in Columbia Missouri (pictured: smuckers uncrustables peanut butter and grape jelly sandwich, goldfish crackers, rice krispies treat, chocolate skim milk, and an apple). It’s healthy because it’s low fat but low fat diets are by definition high carbohydrate diets. And this amount of carbohydrate, the equivalent of 2/3rds of a cup of sugar is more than the amount of carbohydrates contained in 3 ½ 12oz pepsis (127g). Is it any wonder that our children are contracting type II diabetes?

Part of what makes all of this so very tragic is that when these guidelines were first proposed, the science warned that high carbohydrate low fat diets could harm the American public. Going back 150 years, European and American physicians serving remote populations who were still eating their traditional diets observed the absence of diseases these physicians had been well taught to recognize. When sugar and white flour were introduced to these people’s diets, these diseases appeared.
The list of these diseases, which have been referred to as “Diseases of Civilization” or “Western Diseases”, is remarkably similar to the list of diseases now thought to belong to what is referred to as “Metabolic Syndrome”.

Conventional wisdom suggests that obesity increases ones risk of contracting these diseases, but science has demonstrated that obesity itself is a metabolic disorder. Obesity is a symptom of a disrupted metabolism not a cause of disease. So what is the metabolic disrupter? What makes us fat? Science has shown us that it’s the carbohydrates that make us sick and fat.

This is a graphic representation of the 2005 dietary guidelines (pictured: USDA 2005 food pyramid). They are revised every 5 years, so we are due for a new version. Unless some significant changes are made in the draft that was released earlier this year, they are going to suggest that we need to continue doing the same thing only harder – with further reductions in dietary fat, saturated fat, cholesterol, and salt. These guidelines are the result of ideology, dogma, and politics, not science.

In fact, the science has shown:

• These guidelines are not appropriate for population-wide diet recommendations, especially in regard to restrictions on dietary fat, saturated fat, cholesterol and salt.

• Reducing the recommended intake of sugars and starches will produce health benefits for many.
• Increasing intake of animal protein above current guidelines would benefit many.
• These guidelines may in fact lead to increased risk of weight gain, diabetes and chronic diseases.

Today, 2 out of 3 Americans are overweight. One out of 3 are obese. Today, 1 out of 10 Americans has type II diabetes and 1 out of 5 over the age of 65 have type II diabetes

“Let your food be your medicine and your medicine be your food” Hippocrates 460-359BC

Imagine if we could achieve this paradigm change. But we can only achieve this goal if we have an understanding of diet, nutrition and human health that is truly science-based. Imagine the impact on animal agriculture as a growing portion of the American public comes to realize that their diet should be based on animal fats and animal protein, not grain products. Think about the changes that could occur if public policy were truly based on the available science instead of dogma, ideology and politics.”

“…copious evidence exists in contradiction to the low-fat-is-good-health hypotheses, while the alternative hypothesis may fit the data better but has never been adequately tested.” Gary Taubes

And Landstuhl CrossFit’s take? It is exciting to see that this information is not news to a lot of people – word is spreading as more folks are personally testing the paleo diet and getting convincing results – 30 days is all it takes to achieve marked improvements in health, energy, and body composition. Hopefully word will reach Germany sometime soon, before they reach the same level of crisis America is in.