by Liz Pavek

Humans do not need dietary carbohydrates for anything. Even the US Government admits that humans can live for years without carbohydrates of any kind. (This is because there is sufficient glycogen in the meats we eat to supply us, as well as the glycogen that our bodies easily make from stored fat.) In the 1920's the Polar explorer, Vilhjalmur Stefansson and a colleague lived for a year on nothing but meat, fat, and water. The medical community was convinced they'd be dead in a week. 

The fact that the fat was essential in this experiment was not evident until the fourth day, when Stefansson and his partner became quite ill. It was learned that their meat was being trimmed very lean. When the fat was left on the meat and more was added, the nausea went away completely and never returned.  At the end of the 1-year experiment, Stefansson and his companion were in perfect health. Both had lost about 6 pounds.

Eskimos on their traditional diet have eaten this way for hundreds of thousands of years. There is little or no difference between the physiology of an Eskimo, a Caucasian, an American Indian, African Maasai, or an Aborigine.  Metabolically, we are all the same. Yet, the African Maasai eat little more than whole milk and blood from their cattle, and they are very tall, very slender people, noted for their endurance.  The Eskimos on their traditional diet ate nothing but meat, fish, fat, and melted snow for most of the year.   A few berries, roots, and grasses varied the diet a little in the summer.  But there are no grain farms above the Arctic Circle. Bread, beans, rice, refined fats, and sugar are mortal poisons to Eskimos, Aborigines, and Indians. Why should we White people be any different?  So, where did the idea of high-carbohydrate eating come from?  (...deafening silence here...) No matter what anybody tells you, remember this: the body makes no stored fat from consumed fat. Period.  It can only make stored body fat from carbohydrates.

Medical schools and teaching hospitals are all bought and paid for by the big food and pharmaceutical manufacturers, who OWN most of the sugar producers. Read the labels of any processed food (besides canned string beans, of course), especially the stuff in boxes, and note how many ingredients there end in "-ose." Every one of those "-ose" ingredients is a form of some kind of sugar: dextrose, maltose, sucrose, lactose, maltodextrose, fructose, etc. Some processed foods even have every one of those sugars in some amount.  Then check the label to see how many of these counterfeit "Frankenfoods" contain hydrogenated or partially-hydrogenated (they're the same thing) fats. High temperatures during refining turns some unsaturated fats into varnish, and hydrogenating causes trans- fats to form, which are toxic beyond belief.  It stands to reason that the food giants are going to emphasize (at the expense of the health of Americans) the foods that contain more of these ingredients, since they are cheap to produce and provide a wide profit margin. 

 

                            An American diet that is 65% BREAD??  

 

Sounds like a Third-World country to me.  Forty years ago, America had the highest-protein-diet in the world, and we were the envy of every other country because of it.  Countries even asked for foreign aid in order to improve the protein levels in the diets of their people. Now, instead of the U.S. providing protein foods (anything but SOY!--which see) or husbandry technology to the developing countries in order to improve their diets, the people of the United States are being asked to consume a diet that  resembles a Third World diet in more ways than one.  What's wrong with this picture?  

The food manufacturers/sugar/food oil refiners have discovered that  not only can they make vast fortunes off this stuff, but they learned they could put anything in bread and people would eat it and think they were getting healthful foods. Some years ago, when the dietary fiber craze first took hold, there was even a "high-fiber" bread that contained sawdust (they called it "unrefined plant cellulose").

The more I learn about the things people are eating and getting sick from, the more I realize that the ADA/FDA/AHA/CDC/food giants cartel has decided that it's very handy to have 270,000,000 guinea pigs.

The number of diabetes Type II cases has more than tripled in the 20 years or so since the ADA/AHA decision to axe meat and natural tropical fat from the diet of Americans. Not only that, but the disease is appearing in younger and younger patients. The number of obese schoolchildren has more than tripled in the same period. The number of morbidly obese  (40% or more overweight) people has skyrocketed, and many of them are children. Something is not right here, and the only thing that has changed has been the de-emphasis of meat/fat, and the new emphasis on high-carbohydrate, fat-free foods, laced with hydrogenated, adulterated, cremated and manipulated vegetable oils, which are so toxic that the medical establishment has actually had to issue a warning against the trans-fats in margarines and an admission that butter is not the villain they once claimed it was. 

 Something that I have never been able to figure out is this:  a.)  If humans have been eating butter, lard, eggs, tallow, and tropical fats in copious amounts for thousands of years and staying healthy; b.) why and how did these fats suddenly become toxic and dangerous to humans?   Also, c.) if the consumption of these fats did not produce an epidemic of heart and artery disease in all the thousands of years of human consumption previous to the present generation, why did these diseases only make their appearance after the saturated fat was removed and replace with synthetic and toxic placebos?  And, d.)  why are there so few scientists questioning this faulty reasoning, and e.) why are Americans so STUPIDLY eating everything they are told to consume if the instructions come from the government or from their doctor or are read portentously by some talking head on network television?

The government and the medical community have been known to make decisions that do not have our best interests at heart (Consider the fact that doctors/ pharmaceuticals, etc. make much more money by just treating the symptoms of diabetes or coronary heart disease/hypertension over a period of years than they ever would if they cured it).  Pharmaceutical companies really and actually want people to be sick so they can produce medications which will alleviate a few of the symptoms but don't cure the disease outright. Curing disease is not co$t-effective for doctors and pharmaceutical companies.  (Psssstt....Here's a secret: If the patients get cured, they stop going to the doctors, who then would have to stop prescribing those expensive little money-making medications). 

Who could make up a scenario like this?  A movie couldn’t even be made of it, because nobody would believe it, and yet, this is what is going on every day in the United States.  Think your doctor would never kowtow to the system?  Watch him next time you go to him, and see if he doesn’t prescribe something and/or tell you to avoid saturated fats and eat lots of "complex carbohydrates."  Even though your good, kind, dedicated doctor doesn’t take money or bribes as payoffs, he always prescribes something.

I will never understand the "thinking" that makes otherwise intelligent doctors and medical schools demand that saturated fats be removed from the diet.  The same saturated fats which have been proven not only by research but by hundreds of thousands of years of history to be not only not dangerous, but essential to human diets are routinely being replaced with synthetic placebos.  WHY?  And why are these "experts" so unwilling to admit things like the following:

  --  "...The much-maligned saturated fats—which Americans are trying to avoid—are not the cause of our modern diseases. In fact, they play many important roles in the body chemistry:

Saturated fatty acids constitute at least 50% of the cell membranes. They are what gives our cells necessary stiffness and integrity.

They play a vital role in the health of our bones. For calcium to be effectively incorporated into the skeletal structure, at least 50% of the dietary fats should be saturated.³⁸  [Does this help to explain why there is such a market for calcium supplements?  A diet deprived of saturated fats would produce frail bones.  --  Liz]

They  lower Lp(a), ["bad" cholesterol] a substance in the blood that indicates proneness to heart disease.³⁹  

They protect the liver from alcohol and other toxins, such as Tylenol.⁴⁰

They enhance the immune system.⁴¹

They are needed for the proper utilization of essential fatty acids. Elongated omega-3 fatty acids are better retained in the tissues when the diet is rich in saturated fats. ⁴²

Saturated 18-carbon stearic acid and 16-carbon palmitic acid are the preferred foods for the heart, which is why the fat around the heart muscle is highly saturated.⁴³

Short- and medium-chain saturated fatty acids have important antimicrobial properties. They protect us against harmful microorganisms in the digestive tract.

The best way to treat heart disease, then, is not to focus on lowering cholesterol—either by drugs or diet—but to consume a diet that provides animal foods rich in vitamins B₆ and B₁₂; to bolster thyroid function by daily use of natural sea salt, a good source of usable iodine; to avoid vitamin and mineral deficiencies that make the artery walls more prone to ruptures and the buildup of plaque; to include the antimicrobial fats in the diet; and to eliminate processed foods containing refined carbohydrates, oxidized cholesterol and free-radical-containing vegetable oils that cause the body to need constant repair." 

  --  From "The Skinny on Fats" page of  Weston A. Price Foundation  website.  To follow the references in the quotation above, go to this website.

And, how about the little gem below?  Did you know that the medication you are taking for your non-existent (this is more than likely a fact (check this link for proof)) cholesterol problem has been killing people just like you?  Now, whom do you suppose has been making money hand over fist from the manufacture and marketing of anti-cholesterol medications?

"All of the popular cholesterol-lowering drugs commonly known as ‘statins’, can cause the same adverse effects as Baycol," says Dr. Joseph Mercola, Medical Director of the Optimal Wellness Center in Schaumburg, Illinois, "since they all act through the same biochemical process." Baycol was voluntarily recalled earlier this month by its manufacturer, Bayer AG, after it was discovered that many people were being stricken with a condition known as rhabdomyolysis. It has since been ascertained that at least 52 people have died as a result, according to the Associated Press.  

                --  from Dr. Stephen Byrne's email newsletter for September 2001.

Sigh...I guess I'll just go back to my den and stop trying to change anybody's minds.  Doctors and governments are gods, right?  What right do I have to tell people that the Emperor has no clothes?

_______________________

Further references, especially regarding small children and lack of fat:

Shull, M.W., Reed, R.B., Valadian, I., Palombo, R., Thorne, H. and Dwyer, J.T. 1977. Velocities of growth in vegetarian preschool children. Pediatrics 60:410-417.

O'Connell, J.M., Dibley, M.J., Sierra, J., Wallace, B., Marks, J.S. and Yip, R. 1989. Growth of vegetarian children: the farm study. Pediatrics 84:475-481.

Saunders, T.A.B. and Manning, J. 1992. The growth and development of vegan children. Journal of Human Nutrition and Dietetics 5:11-21.

Saunders, T.A.B. 1988. Growth and development of British vegan children. American Journal of Clinical Nutrition 48:822-825

Pugliese, M.T. Weyman-Daum, M., Moses, N. and Lifshitz, F. 1987. Parental health beliefs as a cause of nonorganic failure to thrive. Pediatrics 80:175-182.