We’re All Guinea Pigs in a Failed Decades-Long Diet Experiment | VICE | United States: Overseas, national health authorities followed America's lead on fat. The results have been similarly grim. Earlier this year, a UK nonprofit called the National Obesity Forum (NOF) published a blistering condemnation of its government's diet and nutrition policies.
In its report, the NOF argues that advice to cut back on fat and cholesterol is "the root cause" of Britain's skyrocketing rates of obesity and diabetes. Speaking shortly after the report's publication, Aseem Malhotra, a British cardiologist who consulted on the NOF report, said, "The change in dietary advice to promote low-fat foods is perhaps the biggest mistake in modern medical history.
Along with ripping its government's "failed policies," the NOF report called for a "complete overhaul of dietary advice and public health messaging."
In a recent editorial appearing in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, researcher Zoe Harcombe from the University of the West of Scotland explains that obesity rates among British men and women rose from 2.7 percent in 1972 to 23 percent and 26 percent, respectively, by 1999.
"There are only three macronutrients," Harcombe told VICE, "protein, fat, and carbohydrates." Nearly everything you eat or drink contains one or more of these. And if you followed the government's advice to eat less fat, it's inevitable that your carb consumption would shoot up, she said. That's just what happened at a population level during the 1980s and 90s.
In its report, the NOF argues that advice to cut back on fat and cholesterol is "the root cause" of Britain's skyrocketing rates of obesity and diabetes. Speaking shortly after the report's publication, Aseem Malhotra, a British cardiologist who consulted on the NOF report, said, "The change in dietary advice to promote low-fat foods is perhaps the biggest mistake in modern medical history.
Along with ripping its government's "failed policies," the NOF report called for a "complete overhaul of dietary advice and public health messaging."
In a recent editorial appearing in the British Journal of Sports Medicine, researcher Zoe Harcombe from the University of the West of Scotland explains that obesity rates among British men and women rose from 2.7 percent in 1972 to 23 percent and 26 percent, respectively, by 1999.
"There are only three macronutrients," Harcombe told VICE, "protein, fat, and carbohydrates." Nearly everything you eat or drink contains one or more of these. And if you followed the government's advice to eat less fat, it's inevitable that your carb consumption would shoot up, she said. That's just what happened at a population level during the 1980s and 90s.
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