What if It’s All Been a Big Fat Lie?
If you work out the numbers, you come to the surreal conclusion that you can eat lard straight from the can and conceivably reduce your risk of heart disease.
According to this article, the medical community has, for 30 years, denounced the Atkins Diet (eat all the protein and fat you want with no carbs), but has lately begun to realize there may be some validity to it. I was concerned that I was digging my family’s graves with a wooden spoon, with my pasta and potatoes. But then I refreshed my memory about what the Atkins Diet consists of.
To me, it sounds a lot like a “name your poison” argument. Eat cheeseburgers three times a day and have a heart attack, or eat a variety of foods and have one.
The underlying question for me is why has the medical establishment been so shrill in its denunciations of these ideas? And why should we accept their endorsement now, assuming they offer one?
A quick Googling tells me vegetarians like myself are doomed to apostasy in Dr Atkins world: fruits and vegetables are bad, bad, bad. This all runs counter to any nutitional information I have ever come across. A balanced diet and common sense — eat when you’re hungry, stop when you’re full, and lay off the Twinkies — would do more for this problem than all the books ever written on the subject.
The few extra pounds of evident prosperity I carry could have been avoided by managing my hankerings for various nutritionless goodies. Good old willpower goes a long way.
Courtesy of Frank.