Large-Scale Dietary Study: Fats Good, Carbs Bad (cbsnews.com)

An anonymous reader quotes CBS: New research suggests that it's not the fat in your diet that's raising your risk of premature death, it's too many carbohydrates -- especially the refined, processed kinds of carbs -- that may be the real killer... People with a high fat intake -- about 35 percent of their daily diet -- had a 23 percent lower risk of early death and 18 percent lower risk of stroke compared to people who ate less fat, said lead author Mahshid Dehghan. She's an investigator with the Population Health Research Institute at McMaster University in Ontario... At the same time, high-carb diets -- containing an average 77 percent carbohydrates -- were associated with a 28 percent increased risk of death versus low-carb diets, Dehghan said...

For this study, Dehghan and her colleagues tracked the diet and health of more than 135,000 people, aged 35 to 70, from 18 countries around the world, to gain a global perspective on the health effects of diet. Participants provided detailed information on their social and economic status, lifestyle, medical history and current health. They also completed a questionnaire on their regular diet, which researchers used to calculate their average daily calories from fats, carbohydrates and proteins. The research team then tracked the participants' health for about seven years on average, with follow-up visits at least every three years.

Comments

Re:No shit

[Archtech]

around the time they started taking fat out of everything and replacing it with sugar.

That would be around the time of the Neolithic Revolution, right?

As a matter of fact, no. I think it was Dr John Yudkin, in his fine book "Pure, White and Deadly" who pointed out that in Elizabethan England refined sugar was about as expensive as cocaine is today. It was definitely a drug for the wealthy.

Everything changed when the New World was discovered and exploited. It was found that the West Indies provided ideal conditions for growing sugar cane in vast amounts. Then the only problem was finding human workers who could survive the conditions - Europeans died (in the classic phrase) "like flies". Eventually it was discovered that West Africans tended to do much better, and could indeed provide many years of labour before dying. That kicked the slave trade into high gear, which in turn flooded Western markets with cheap sugar. Ironically, the horrible treatment of slaves led - as one of its by-products - to the sickness, suffering and premature death of millions who consumed the "product". And manufacturers like Messrs Tate & Lyle, who now appear in the light of mass murderers, became extremely rich.

There was one serious problem with slavery. It seems incompatible with Christianity (at least with the New Testament). An ingenious way around this objection was soon found: to claim, with all kinds of spurious arguments, that black people were not fully human. Thus the demand for sugar led to slavery, which led to racism as we know it.

Re:Makes sense.

[Archtech]

TFA says:

"All foods contain three major macronutrients essential for life -- fat, carbohydrate and protein".

That, too, turns out not to be the case. Protein and fat are necessary for life, but carbohydrate isn't. You will not be able to find any requirement for carbohydrate itself, nor for anything that comes with it. But if you examine carefully the constituents of a nice piece of fatty meat, you might be surprised to find how very nourishing it is. Vitamins A, D, E, K2 and the whole range of B vitamins are there, plus most of the essential minerals - and, what's more, in the appropriate proportions. That's not surprising, as the meat came from an animal that was in good health (until it was slaughtered).

And by the way, the proportions of saturated and unsaturated fats in red meat are almost exactly the same as in olive oil.