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Barry Groves on Dietary Fat

Barry Groves has an excellent talk about the importance of dietary fat. You can watch the video, and download the slides.

One thing that he explains that I always wondered about was where all of the fat comes from in a cows diet. Consider that a cow which can eat nothing but grass can produce over 100 pounds of milk a day, which at over 4% fat, is over four pounds of fat. But as far as I know, grass doesn't contain any fat. It turns out that the cow actually has the ability to turn the fiber in the grass into saturated fat. When you take this into account, a cow's diet is essentially 66% fat.

Another interesting point that he mentions is that since the U.S. government came out with their low-fat dietary recommendations in 1982, the cancer rate in the U.S. has increased from one in six to one in two.

If you want to see what has happened to U.S. obesity rates during the same time range, then have a look at these slides:

US Obesity Trends Among U.S. Adults

Or this video, which uses the same slides, but also talks about various research studies, all of which show that low-carb diets are superior for weight-loss than other diets tested. In the largest study, which tested Atkins against three other common diets, the Atkins diet had the best results, not only for weight loss, but in every category tested, which included:

• body fat %
• hip to weight ratio
• HDL
• LDL
• triglycerides
• cholesterol
• fasting insulin and glucose levels
• blood pressure

The Atkins diet also had the best compliance ratio, with only half as many subjects quitting the diet before the study was complete as with the diet based on official U.S. dietary guidelines.

Jimmy Moore has a summary of the talk.

Two Step Plan to Stop Childhood Obesity

In response the US federal government’s new 70 step plan to stop childhood obesity, I propose my own 2 step plan:

1. Remove corn, soy, and grain subsidies, which are keeping the cost of junk foods like flour, high-fructose corn syrup, and vegetable oils, artificially low.
2. Take the money saved on the grain subsidies, and instead use it to subsidize organic fruit and vegetables, grass-finished beef, free-range poultry and eggs, and whole-fat milk.

Economics will do the rest.

My plan would cost far less than the $10 billion Obama is asking for; in fact, it wouldn’t cost anything. I expect that my plan would yield much better results than the 5% reduction by 2030 that Obama’s plan is targeting.

While they’re at it, they should also ban aspartame, MSG, GMO crops, and the human consumption of unfermented soy.

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