It’s the french fries and soda, and not the burgers, that make us fat

I am on what used to be called the “Atkins diet,” since fallen into disfavor. I have lost 19 pounds, feel great, have tremendous energy and eat when I am hungry. I am not following anyone’s guidelines, not being a fan of gurus. I just avoid carbohydrates in general, and sugar and refined starches in particular. And it works. It’s that simple. It works.

For a long time these type of diets, sometimes called “caveman” eating, were popular. I did it once before, in the late 1990’s, and it worked then too. But I remember hearing on the news one day that the “fad” was over, and people were going back to “normal” eating habits. After that announcement, people did indeed go back to “normal” eating habits. We are fat as ever, of course. I suspect that the fading of the “fad” was mere advertising-based news manipulation. That happens far more than people know.

I’m just speculating, but I think the problem is twofold: One, carbs are cheap. Back during the Nixon Administration, as I recently learned, food price inflation was a concern, and Nixon turned to Earl Butz, Secretary of Agriculture and a brilliant agricultural economist, who recommended that we turn towards raising more carb-intensive food and get away from meat-centered diets. Grazing animals are raised on carbohydrates, so that bypassing them and feeding the carbs directly to us is a real money-saver.

The other is that food science, like drug science, is largely funded by food manufacturers, so the the results of research is drawn like a magnet to please the funding source. That’s not overt, but rather instinctive. General Foods, for instance, is in the value-added business, taking corn and potatoes and soy and changing them into prepared foods, juices and soda. Even the sugar comes from corn. Flavoring and colors are artificial.* The more steps involved in food preparation, the greater the profit margin.

General Foods also funds all kinds of food research.

So we really don’t know what meat-centered low-carb diets do to us, because it’s really not studied. But science that existed prior to the Butz era was pretty straightforward. Sugar was to be avoided.** Sugar and starch were known to cause weight gain and bad teeth. The military would take obese draftees off carbs to slim them down.

Gary Taubes, a science journalist, wrote recently in the New York Times Magazine about these matters, and has published two books on the subject, one for science-based readers, and one for general consumption, no pun intended. His bottom line is that low-carbing shows positive results, and other forms of dieting do not; and that science on the subject has been misguided for forty years now. He further states that excessive carbs, especially refined sugar and high-fructose corn syrup (only slightly different in chemical makeup), lead not only to obesity and diabetes, but also heart disease and cancer, even Alzheimer’s.
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*See the January 2001 issue of Atlantic Monthly for an article by Eric Schlosser, “Why McDonald’s Fries Taste so Good”, not online. It’s about the flavors we take for granted and where they really come from. If they did not add back artificial flavor and color to processed foods, we’d be eating gray goop.

**Diabetes, when I was a kid, was called “sugar diabetes”.