Why low fat (original) (raw)
Why low fatJeff2022-01-08T17:08:18+00:00
Why Low Fat?
Low Fat Diets Shown to Reverse & Prevent Diseases
Why do we recommend a diet lower in fat?
For the basic reason that the therapeutic diets – the plant-based diets that have been studied and shown to effectively reverse multiple diseases – are all low in fat. The diets that prevent and reverse heart disease, Type 2 diabetes, autoimmune diseases, lower PSA in prostate cancer patients, and so forth – are all low in fat. The published studies of plant-based researchers who’ve shown reversal, such as Morrison, Pritikin, Ornish, Esselstyn, McDougall, and Barnard – are all low in fat (generally around 10% of calories from fat, sometimes allowing up to 15%).
The diets of cultures where chronic diseases don’t exist and longevity is common, such as the Okinawans in Japan, the Tarahumara Indians in Northern Mexico, the Vilcamba in the Andes of Ecuador, people in Malaysia, Paraguay and Kenya – are all low in fat (again, around 10% of calories from fat).
In the early 1970s, Nathan Pritikin produced an extensive review of studies that showed:
that the high-fat, high-in-cholesterol, high-in-simple carbohydrates Western diet is responsible for a myriad of degenerative conditions which are separate manifestations of the same basic malady. Pritikin liked to make an analogy with poisoning by a substance like arsenic, but, in this case, he said, we were being poisoned by substances in our everyday diet which in excess acted like toxins. In different individuals, or even in the same individual, the degenerative conditions produced could be atherosclerosis and coronary heart disease, hypertension, adult-onset diabetes, certain cancers, and conditions like gall bladder disease, gout, glaucoma, and osteoarthritis.
His report focused especially on a wealth of research already developed by that time showing that consumption of high levels of fat – regardless of whether the fat came from animal or plant sources – promoted disease. Since Pritikin’s report of nearly 50 years ago, many additional important studies have corroborated his basic conclusions, and his point of view of the critical role of diet in creating or reversing disease – has won wide acceptance.
If the low-fat diet is the gold standard in plant-based research for disease prevention and reversal, it stands to reason that trying to follow those basic principles is beneficial. Someone who is young and not sick may have more “leeway” in what they eat, than someone who is trying to reverse established disease. But the overall principles of the therapeutic diet are valuable and have been shown to be beneficial repeatedly in the scientific literature.
Low Fat and Longevity
The Standard American Diet has about 35 percent of calories from fat, the therapeutic plant-based diet provides around 10 percent of calories from fat.
According to T. Colin Campbell, PhD, Author of The China Study, and Professor Emeritus of Nutritional Biochemistry at Cornell University, a whole food, plant-based diet, without added oil and refined carbohydrates, has the greatest ability to restore and maintain health. This is a diet,
“fashioned over millions of years by nature and its nutritional composition just so happens to be about 10-12% fat, 10-12% protein and 75-80% carbohydrates, while being chock full of life-promoting antioxidants and the right kinds and ratios of fats, proteins and carbohydrates.” (source)
So over a million years this low-fat plant-centered diet has been an ideal diet for humans.
And populations continuing to eat this way have not only avoided problems like heart disease, and obesity, they also acquired something else: longevity. They live much longer on average than other cultures in the world. And they don’t just live longer, they’ve lived in better health to the very end of their lives. Many people who have spent their lives eating this way – they don’t need wheelchairs or have to be put away in assisted-living facilities when they turn 95.
This low-fat plant-based diet kept them in very good shape right to the end or their long lives.
Researchers who study longevity often focus on areas where a large percentage of people have reached the age of one hundred or more, and are still in excellent health. You may have heard of “Blue Zones,” which refer to populations in the world with unusually high concentrations of healthy centenarians.
Okinawa, an island in Japan, is a Blue Zone and has some of the longest-lived people on the planet. So what were these people eating who live much more often past age 100?
Well the Japanese government studied and kept records of these people’s diets beginning many years ago.
Here is what these healthiest and longest-lived Okinawans ate:
This data was collected in 1949 –you can see they ate almost 70% sweet potatoes, 12% rice, 7% other grains. Then legumes (beans) were 6%, and they ate very little oils, fish, meat, nuts, dairy.
So the Okinawan starch-based diet derived about 88 percent of its calories from complex carbohydrates (sweet potatoes, rice, and other grains).
We know Okinawans eating this way don’t develop the diseases that cause premature deaths in the West, like cancer, diabetes and heart disease.
Here’s another chart, which comes from one of these longevity studies. It shows some common diseases and the incidence per hundred thousand people, for each of the three areas — Okinawa, mainland Japan, and the United States.
As you can see, the Okinawans have a fraction of these diseases, compared to the other populations: women in the United States have twelve times more incidences of heart disease and six times more breast cancer than women in Okinawa. This low-fat pattern of eating can prevent and reverse many serious Western diet-inflicted diseases.
So we recommend a diet that is low in fat, somewhere around 10 to 15%. Again, this is the plant-based diet-pattern used to reverse diseases, you can find it in programs like Esselstyn, Ornish, McDougall, Pritikin – and more recently in places like MasteringDiabetes where it’s used to reverse insulin resistance permanently.
How does this translate to dietary advice?
Restrict or eliminate all oils, including olive oil – oils are processed foods, empty calories devoid of much nutrition. Restrict plant-foods which are high in fats like avocados, nuts, nut butters, olives, soy and others with high levels of fat.
Note that we do permit one to two ounces of nuts a day for healthy people not trying to lose weight or reverse heart disease, and modest amounts of plant fats, keeping total fats to 10 to 15% of total calories. For those working to reverse heart disease, the heart disease-reversal programs all dramatically restrict or eliminate these overt fats. For example, Ornish allows a very small amount of nuts, such as nuts (he gives an example of allowing only 2 cashews for people reversing heart disease), whereas Esselstyn recommends no nuts, peanuts or peanut butter, for those with established heart disease. (He does allow nuts, avocados, etc. for people with no heart disease who have cholesterol of no more than 150 and LDL under 80 without cholesterol lowering drugs. Chestnuts are the one nut okay to eat on his program, because of their very low fat content.)
Again, if you don’t have heart disease or other problems, and are at your desired weight, more fat is okay. But as Michael Greger MD has said, when advocating the low-fat plant based diet:
“Look, there is only 1 diet that has ever been shown to reverse our number 1 killer, heart disease, in the majority of patients, and that is a plant-based diet. So should that not be the default diet until proven otherwise?” Source
Dr. Greger notes the only diets proven to reverse heart disease in medical literature are the low-fat plant-based diets, like Ornish, Esselstyn and Pritikin (Greger often tells of his grandmother’s life being extended, her severe heart disease reversed, by the lowfat plant-centered diet of Pritikin). Greger argues these diets should be “default” due to their proven ability to reverse heart disease. We agree.
Did the low-fat diet “fail?”
Some gurus who push high-protein or high-fat diets claim that in the 80’s and 90’s, Americans tried the low-fat diet and it didn’t work! They say Americans supposedly followed government advice and ate more carbs and less fat — and as a result got fatter! So therefore, according to these gurus, the low-fat diet was a failure.
But this is wholly false. The public never went on a low-fat diet.
When you look at the actual data, collected by USDA, you see that the public actually dramatically increased calorie intake by 500 calories per day during this period, and dramatically increased fat intake. No wonder they got fatter!
Watch this 7 minute video for an excellent and succinct explanation, along with the evidence:
Some vegan doctors recommend higher fat vegan diets: Beware
There are a small number of plant-based doctors who believe that higher fat diets are the way to go. We’ve made several videos showing there’s no evidence developed to date to support their position (and we examine the studies paid for by the olive oil and nut industries that these doctors often tout).
Below are two such videos.
Don’t Be Duped by Bad Science – Part 1 of Fats:
High Plant-Fat Diet Promotes Disease – Part 2 of Fats:
Which Vegan Doctors Should You Rely on?
