Weight Maven

At the risk of piling on (this has been all over Twitter and the blogosphere), I think it’s worth commenting on yesterday’s article in the LA Times that points “accusingly at sugar and refined grains” saying that “cutting carbohydrates is the key to reversing obesity, heart disease, Type 2 diabetes and hypertension.”

I don’t think the story is as remarkable for what it says, although it’s pretty impressive to have Dr. Walter Willett, the chair of the department of nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health say:

Fat is not the problem. … If Americans could eliminate sugary beverages, potatoes, white bread, pasta, white rice and sugary snacks, we would wipe out almost all the problems we have with weight and diabetes and other metabolic diseases.

No, while I think that’s certainly amazing, what I find remarkable is that this story actually appeared in the national mainstream media (the LA Times is in the top 5 for circulation). It feels like an important sequel to Gary Taubes’ What if It’s All Been a Big Fat Lie? for the NY Times in 2002.

But there’s something else.

Living in a paradigm shift?

I realize that nutrition science is young and also a wicked problem. That said, I’m not at all surprised by the news re carbs: it’s stuff that folks like Taubes and Lustig and others in the low-carb and paleo/primal camps have been saying for years.

But for some reason, seeing this article was a bit of an emperor’s new clothes moment for me. I mean, what if? What if fat isn’t the villain and refined carbs — the kind of stuff that has made up a huge percentage of the standard American diet — is?

For one, couldn’t it mean that for the last half-century or so, the US has been undergoing a pretty damn scary public health experiment? Maybe it’s me, but it …

Just. Boggles. The. Mind.

If I wasn’t so old (and if it wasn’t apparently a waste of time), I’d so consider getting a PhD and making this my dissertation. What I’d probably look at specifically is to what extent we owe this scary state of affairs to the fact that two doctors — Ancel Keys and Robert Atkins — were both pretty much asswipes.

But for now, I’m just going to continue to try and undo the damage of decades of listening to what is looking like the worst possible advice when it came to food and weight.