Are carbohydrates essential ?

"There are three kinds of foods--fats, proteins, and carbohydrates. All of these provide calories. But the carbohydrates provide calories and nothing else. They have none of the essential elements to build up or to repair the tissues of the body. A man, given carbohydrates alone, however liberally, would starve to death on calories. The body must have proteins and animal fats. It has no need for carbohydrates, and, given the two essential foodstuffs, it can get all the calories it needs from them."

Sir Heneage Ogilvie, former vice president of the Royal College of Surgeons, England.

The earliest and primary proponent of an all animal-based diet was Vilhjalmur Stefansson, a Canadian explorer who lived with the Inuit for some time, and who witnessed their diet as essentially consisting of meat and fish, with very few carbohydrates - berries during the summer. Stefansson and a friend later volunteered for a one year experiment at Bellevue Hospital in New York to prove he could thrive on a diet of nothing but meat, meat fat and internal organs of animals.

His progress was closely monitored and experiments were done on his health throughout the year. At the end of the year, he did not show any symptoms of ill health; he did not develop scurvy , which many scientists had expected to manifest itself only a few months into the diet due to the lack of vitamin C in muscle meat. However, Stefansson and his partner did not eat just muscle meat - they ate fat, raw brain, raw liver (a significant source of vitamin C and others), and other varieties of offal. The no-carbohydrate and low carb diet often reverses type two diabetes.

We do not advocate a no carb diet, although this has been proved to be safe, it would be a very boring way to live. Some of us think of our way of life as being meat eating vegetarians. No, we are not trying to wind up vegetarians, but we base our food on fresh vegetables, then add high quality protein, then good fats. If you are consuming around 50 carbs per day, all from non starchy vegetables, you have a very large range to chose from. By eating the colours of the rainbow, and eating small portions, of many different types, you can get all the nutrients you need to stay healthy.

Is saturated fat bad for your heart ?

For decades we have been brainwashed into believing saturated fat causes heart disease. So many people believe this a fact. This is arguably, the most ludicrous piece of dietary information and biggest scam ever hoisted on the medical profession and general public.

A meta-analysis published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, pooled together data from 21 unique studies that included almost 350,000 people, about 11,000 of whom developed cardiovascular disease (CVD), tracked for an average of 14 years, and concluded that there is no relationship between the intake of saturated fat and the incidence of heart disease or stroke.

Conclusions: A meta-analysis of prospective epidemiologic studies showed that there is no significant evidence for concluding that dietary saturated fat is associated with an increased risk of CHD or CVD. More data are needed to elucidate whether CVD risks are likely to be influenced by the specific nutrients used to replace saturated fat.

http://www.ajcn.org/content/early/2010/01/13/ajcn.2009.27725.abstract

Dr. Malcolm Kendrick on…the idiotic dietary advice we give to diabetes patients

"Personally, I do not believe that fat consumption has the slightest impact on heart disease in people with or without diabetes, and I would defy anyone to unearth a controlled study on restriction of dietary fat that has shown any impact on CHD."

 At this stage we have got to come clean on a few issues. The low carb. life style has one major draw back, there is no money in following this way of life. By dumping the highly processed factory produced food, and staying nil/minimal med’s, the big food and pharmaceutical companies lose out big time. The profit margin on fresh food is very low, compared to the long shelf life, laboratory concocted poison, that has become the main stream food for so many in the so called developed world. All is not lost for them, they can afford to spend billions promoting the food that has led to an epidemic of obesity and it’s often associated type 2 diabetes. Ever wondered why a low carb way of life is not endorsed by DUK , and the majority of Healthcare professions ? Check out DUK and what it euphemistically calls  “acknowledgements.” Link

 With so many pharmaceutical companies and cereal manufacturers on board,  is DUK going to bite the hand that feeds ? Most Healthcare Professionals are held in the vice like grip of the NICE guidelines and are following the decades old dogma, of “cut the fat and up the carbs“. For close on forty years the so called American food pyramid has prevailed. “Up the carbs and drop the fat“ Result, a complete disaster. Massively increased obesity, diabetes, heart disease and stroke.

If you start researching low carb diets you will not take long to find articles referring to the scientifically unsupported, negative side of low carbing. The great myth often put out is that low carbers eat to much saturated fat, and that our cholesterol numbers will suffer. Total nonsense, and I will tell you why. The people with lowest cholesterol levels have the highest rate of heart disease. The Australian aborigines have that distinction. The Swiss have very high cholesterol levels and a very low rate of heart disease, fact. Not my opinion. That of the WHO.  

Mankind prospered and survived on a diet of meat, saturated fat, berries, nuts and vegetation, for thousands of years, why is it so bad for us ?

You will have to learn to cook and prepare your fresh food. The low carb way of life, is not a diet, because if you want to stay healthy, you will follow this road for the rest of your life. Time and effort must be put in to reap the many benefits this life style has to offer.