Asymmetrical Information

From the desk of Jane Galt:

So I've been looking into

So I've been looking into the "High fat diets cause heart disease" "No they don't -- high carb diets do!" "You're wrong!" "No, you're wrong!" "You're a big fat doody-head" "Well, my Daddy can beat up your daddy!" arguments.

Best article is here. And it's just what we didn't want to hear: no, fat isn't that harmful -- but saturated fat, the kind in steak, cheese, and butter, is.

No, carbs aren't the devil, but chowing on potatoes and white bread all day isn't good for you either.

In other words, lean meat, whole grains, and lots and lots of veggies and fruit. This from the author of the Harvard study that people have been touting as "establishing no link between fat intake and heart disease". It's the same old boring, less tasty diet we've all been trying to avoid by cutting out the carbs or the meat or what have you. Yes, Atkins may lower your cholesterol. But its long term weight-loss outcomes are no better than any restrictive diet; some people stay on it, but most people don't, and then they gain the weight back. And the cholesterol lowering effects seem to be related to the weight loss, not the fat metabolism. Of course, if that's the only way you can lose weight, and you can stick with it, then it's a lot better than chowing on eight pounds of pasta a night. But it's not a magic bullet. Any more than the Dean Ornish "Extremely Healthy But Impossible for All But the Tastebud-Deprived" diet is a magic bullet.

This is just not the diet any of us wanted to hear was good for us -- not meat and potatoes men, nor sweet-toothed gals. That's probably why almost everyone is looking for a restrictive diet that allows them their favorite foods, instead of biting the bullet and seeking moderation. Trying to adopt this guy's diet would have half of my friends up on their chair screaming "Flopsy! Mopsy! Cottontail! Time for supper" and the other half begging to be taken to the nearest Olive Garden. It tells us we have to moderate the best tasting parts of our diet: the succulent red meat, the roasted chicken tender with fat, the pasta and bread and luscious, saturated-fat-and-sugar-nirvana of the dessert menu.

There are in-betweens. I hate brown rice. But I like converted rice, which has more fiber and nutrients than "white" rice. I hate couscous. But I like lentil-barley soup. Just as you don't have to give up all meat to cut down on your saturated fats, you don't have to start looking for recipes for millet to improve your carb-picture. You can go pretty far just by limiting yourself to, say, white bread, pasta or potatoes only once a day.

I know, I know. Moderation. Snore. But remember this: if you go on Atkins, or Ornish, or any of the other highly restricted diets, and you lose weight, and you can't stick with it, recent advances in our knowlege about the hormones that regulate appetite indicate that you'll almost inevitably gain back more than you lost. So baby steps beat springing forward and then falling back.

And one thing I have learned from all this: a medium rare buffalo meat burger is not only low in fat and high in protein, but also damn tasty.

Posted by Jane Galt at September 6, 2002 11:31 AM | TrackBack | Technorati inbound links