SACN or Sack ‘em: the committee that’s confused about carbs

by Hannah Sutter

Just how much of your diet should be made up of carbohydrates and how much of fat? The long running advice that carbs should form the basis of a healthy balanced diet has recently been coming under heavy attack – here (Why demonising fat is daft) and here (Saturated fat is not the major issue) for instance. So is there any chance that official advice might change?

Unknown to all but a few experts, a government committee has been investigating this question for an astonishing five years.  Hannah Sutter, an ex-corporate lawyer with a detailed knowledge of nutrition has been investigating that committee and has been appalled by what she has found.

About ten years ago for various personal reasons I became interested in the benefits of an Atkins-type low carbohydrate diet. I read a lot of research material, talked to many experts and became convinced that the advice to follow a low fat/high carbohydrate diet has been disastrous for our national health. I now run an organisation called Natural Ketosis which helps about 200 people a month follow a proper controlled low carbohydrate/high fat diet and I’ve seen dramatic health benefits as a result.

However I was always astounded at the apparent refusal of those supporting the classic low fat diet to consider the mounting evidence against it. So putting my investigative lawyer’s hat back on I set out to discover where in the government labyrinth this policy was monitored. This was how I discovered the little known Department of Health’s Scientific Advisory Committee on Nutrition (SACN) which is overseen by the Food Standards Agency.

Since 2008 it has been leisurely considering just how much carbohydrate we should be getting. It meets every few months and the minutes of their meetings are available on line, although also not easy to find. For an ostensibly public body, you need to be pretty determined to find out about SACN’s activities and what I found was alarming.

I acknowledge my own prejudice but I believe I’m a good enough lawyer to be able to weigh up evidence impartially.  I was amazed at the gaps in the expertise of the committee, their clear commercial interests and the way they evaluated evidence.  All suggested that it was not fit to make an informed judgement about the benefits of a high or low carbohydrate diet.

Conflict of Interest

The first thing that jumped out from the data was that the majority of the members of this committee, directly or indirectly, receive income from companies that make money out of carbohydrates or low fat products, in which some or part of the fat is often replaced by a carbohydrate, usually sugar. Here is a table of members’ declared interests:

Prof Tim Key Veterinary medicine. Epidemiology Vegan and vegetarian
Prof Julie Lovegrove Nutritionist GSK consultancy ;Unilever; Jordan Cereals; Sainsburys; Sugar Nutrtiion UK
Dr David Mela Eating Behaviours Employee and shareholder of Unilever
Prof Angus Walls Dental Expert GSK pay a consultancy fee and research funding
Prof Ian Young Clinical pathologist No interests declared
Prof Ian MacDonald Metabolic physiology Mars; Unilever; Coca Cola –research funding
Prof Ian Johnson Nutritionist Barry Callebaut (world’s largest chocolate manufacturer) – consultant

It’s worth noting that this information is not easily available from just visiting the site. You have to hunt for it.   The fact that a conflict of interest is declared does not delete the conflict.

Hannah Sutter

Hannah Sutter

Hannah Sutter was a lawyer for 17 years before becoming involved in the low carb diet and obesity. See her book ‘Big Fat Lies’. She runs a specialist service for people wanting to use the diet to reverse obesity, treat diabetes and for general wellbeing. www.bigfatlies.co.uk. Clinical trials are being run on her range of completely natural low carb high protein foods.
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35 Comments

  • Please continue with your good work. All governments are packed with vested interests and until the population wakes up they are either killing us thru disease or manipulating the masses for their own commercial benefit nothing will change.

    Perhaps you could go back to the war data on diet as in that period the UK was the healthiest it has ever been! ie virtually no sugar and no processed foods

  • Hannah, entirely excellent article. Alas nothing unanticipated or shocking about it. The pattern across the western world is as follows: Food industry out to maximise profits leads to large scale saturation of the food markets with carb loaded processed foods. The more of these foods we consume the sicker we become. In steps big pharma to aid our sickness. You see it’s a perfect relationship between the food industry and the drugs industry, both are equally responsible for the current health demise of the population and it’s blatantly obvious that if the representatives of this carb committee have a conflict of interest, then of course they will either drag their heels and or find favourably in the interest of the culprits .I.e. big pharma and the food industry.

  • Thanks for this excellent article, am personally interested in this field of study. Will be following carefully.

  • I didn’t see where epidemiology was given preference in http://www.sacn.gov.uk/pdfs/grading_system_for_cho_evidence_conclusions_web.pdf ?

    Personally I regard epidemiology as a version of astrology, but the above appears to give due weight to RCTs for example “In keeping with SACN’s approach to evaluating evidence, the word “association” will be used to describe the evidence from cohort studies and the word “effect” will be used when referring to randomised controlled trials (RCTs).”

  • This article provides a perfect example of why, increasingly, people are looking beyond ‘official recommendations’, doing their own research, and coming to their own conclusions: that much of conventional nutritional wisdom is wrong, and that many so-called ‘experts’ are simply not to be trusted.

  • What a great piece, thanks so much for sharing this.

  • Hannah, entirely excellent article. Alas nothing unanticipated or shocking about it. The pattern across the western world is as follows: Food industry out to maximise profits leads to large scale saturation of the food markets with carb loaded processed foods. The more of these foods we consume the sicker we become. In steps big pharma to aid our sickness. You see it’s a perfect relationship between the food industry and the drugs industry, both are equally responsible for the current health demise of the population and it’s blatantly obvious that if the representatives of this carb committee have a conflict of interest, then of course they will either drag their heels and or find favourably in the interest of the culprits .I.e. big pharma and the food industry.

  • Thanks for this great article. Atkins was right all along. Also a Dr Bernstein in New York uses this sort of diet for type i and type ii diabetics.

  • Being diagnosed T2 diabetic a few years ago made me examine different diets and foods and see what effect it would have on blood sugar, cholesterol, triglycerides etc etc. I was determined to tackle this condition without drugs or at least delay taking them as long as possible. Without a doubt a low carb diet is the one to follow. My average blood sugars (HbA1c) are being kept at almost non diabetic levels and if I followed the low carb regime more religiously I am certain they would be even lower. Triglycerides, cholesterol etc are all being kept within normal levels. The worst carbs, especially from a T2 diabetic point of view, are of course the refined variety (sugar, white flour, white rice etc) and these I have cut out as much as possible although not entirely. So I fully endorse what Hanna Sutter is saying.

  • It’s completely wrong-headed to start arguing from “Food industry out to maximise profits leads to large scale saturation of the food markets with carb loaded processed foods. ” The food industry will be happy to turn a profit from selling whatever people want. The trouble is that what they want is determined (in large part) by government propaganda based on incompetent or dishonest medical science. In other words, the rot started in the universities and medical research institutes, and can be defeated only by defeating the people therein. Persuade everyone to want high fat, and just watch the food industry supply it with gusto.

    • Its not completly wrong, its called opinion. thats what i was expressing, I was not arguing. 10 corporations control nearly all of what we buy. Example: $200 billion-corporation Nestle — famous for chocolate, but which is the biggest food company in the world — owns nearly 8,000 different brands worldwide, and takes stake in or is partnered with a swath of others. Included in this network is shampoo company L’Oreal, baby food giant Gerber, clothing brand Diesel, and pet food makers Purina and Friskies. Nestle is a major sponsor of quite a number of the leading dietician associations throughout the world. (Conflict of interest)The buying public don’t really choose their foods there chosen for them. With the right advertising and spin food companies sell. Have you ever wondered why wheat is in so many products? Because it gives us a high, bbt the “high” of wheat is not like the high of heroine, morphine, or Oxycontin. This opiate, while it binds to the opiate receptors of the brain, doesn’t make us high. It makes us hungry. This is the effect exerted by gliadin, the protein in wheat.For the best part we may think we choose our own food but?

  • It’s not a matter of opinion but a matter of fact that the great campaign against fat and for carbohydrates was not initiated by the food companies; it started with medical scientists such as the notorious Ancel Keys.

    • I’m no fan of Keys, but in fairness it was the 1950s before we felt his effect, and unfortunately were still suffering from his cherry picked 7 countries study. You can go back to 1911 to see the ruthlessness of the food industry. Downturn in candles needed what do P&G do they introduce Crisco. It was an era when wives stayed home and cooked with plenty of butter and lard. The challenge for Crisco was to convince the stay-at-home housewife about the merits of this imitation food. P&G’s first ad campaign introduced the all-vegetable shortening as “a healthier alternative to cooking with animal fats. . . and more economical than butter.” With one sentence, P&G had taken on its two closest competitors—lard and butter, that was 1911. The Story of Crisco is recognized as a classic in the subtle art of persuasion. Its language and contextual variety are “representative of the pre-WWI social milieu and reflect the urbanization, domestication, commercialization, education (or lack thereof) and simple sophistication of the times.”3 Crisco is presented as healthier, more digestible, cleaner, more economical, more enlightened and more modern than lard. Women who use Crisco are portrayed as good wives and mothers, their houses are free of strong cooking odors and their children grow up with good characters (because, according to the tortured logic of P&G’s advertising department, Crisco is easier to digest).
      P&G also had the brilliant idea of presenting Crisco to the Jewish housewife as a kosher food, one that behaved like butter but could be used with meats. Because it made kosher cooking easier, Jews adopted Crisco and margarine—imitation lard and imitation butter—more quickly than other groups, with unforeseen consequences, you see the illusion of choice and decision.
      Notice that every time we are told that something is bad for our health there always just happens to be companies waiting in the wings with the so called healthier alternative. Food companies are ruthless so are Pharma companies.

      • All beside the point: they’ll try too turn a penny from any food fad. Why shouldn’t they? The source of the fad is the problem, and the source is bad, or dishonest, medical science. Obsessing about the food companies is silly because it distracts from the real problem which is the structure of incentives on medical (and other) scientists to lie; that way lies power, without the tedious business of having to do a better job than your scientific competitors.

        • Not to distract from Hannah excellent piece, it’s best if we agree to disagree. I fully take on board the validity of your posts but for me the worldwide epidemic of obesity clearly points to a structure that is built into the very fabric of our economy and culture. It could be called the medical, agricultural, food industrial complex. It is what is known as “structural violence”–the social, political, economic and environmental conditions that foster and promote the development of disease. The more we eat the fatter we become. The fatter we become the more we develop heart disease, diabetes, cancer and a myriad of other chronic ailments. The sicker our population, the more medications are sold for high cholesterol, diabetes, high blood pressure, depression, and many other lifestyle-driven diseases. The toxic triad of big farming, big food, and big pharma profits from creating a nation of sick and fat citizens. Through innovation and creativity we can create a new economy based on products and services that make people thin and healthy instead of sick and fat. Business can do well by doing good! Il wrap up this post and leave you with this, the average two year old can identify, by name, junk food brands in supermarkets, but many elementary school children can’t readily differentiate between a potato and a tomato let alone the short coming of Keys or Government .

  • Well said Hannah,
    Ever since Dr Ancel Keys cobbled together an unsound hypothesis it has become increasingly the case that, “the very agencies charged with protecting our well-being are behind all the biological mayhem, in the fisrt place”
    In six decades of research, and countless billions of dollars spent trying, neither saturaturated fat and/or cholesterol have ever been associated with heart disease to standards that satisfy the Bradford-Hill criteria. It’s comperable to a ghost hunt. Isn’t it time the die hards said to themselves, ‘haven’t we collected enough lack of evidence?’
    For us to grow overweight or even obese requires two primary ingredients. (1) gluocse in the blood and plentiful supply with (2) insulin, in plentiful supply. These conditions are met with repetitive feeding of ‘fast’, ‘white’, carbohydrates. Obesity is very visual evidence of there being too little fat in a persons diet, odd as that may sound. The associated involvement of cortisol in the prcocess, in effect amplyfying the affair of fat-sequestration, should not be overlooked.
    While Aseem Malhortas piece (Saturated fat is not the major issue) is a step forwards did you spot the several holes in it?

    • Is how it to ought to have read .. !
      Well said Hannah,
      Ever since Dr Ancel Keys cobbled together an unsound hypothesis it has become increasingly the case that, “the very agencies charged with protecting our well-being are behind all the biological mayhem, in the first place”
      In six decades of research, and countless billions of dollars spent trying, neither saturated fat and/or cholesterol have ever been associated with heart disease to standards that satisfy the Bradford-Hill criteria. It’s comparable to a ghost hunt. Isn’t it time the die-hards said to themselves, ‘haven’t we collected enough lack of evidence?’
      For us to grow overweight or even obese requires two primary ingredients. (1) glucose in the blood and plentiful supply with (2) insulin, in plentiful supply. These conditions are met with repetitive feeding of ‘fast’, ‘white’, carbohydrates.
      Obesity is very visual evidence of there being too little fat in a persons diet, as opposed to too much, odd as that may sound.
      The associated involvement of cortisol in the process, in effect amplifying the affair of fat-sequestration, should not be overlooked.
      While Aseem Malhortas piece (Saturated fat is not the major issue) is a step forwards did you spot the several holes in it?

  • Here’s the sequence of events as I see it. A person following the official dietary guidelines has an obesity problem. They do some research and decide to try a low carb, high fat diet, e.g. Atkins. The diet works for them. They are so impressed they start to evangelize low carb, high fat diets to the extent they believe it’s the right approach for everybody. People who fit this story are a minority. There are plenty of people following official guidelines without an obesity problem. There are people with an obesity problem for whom the low carb, high fat diet does not work.

    The real problem here is practically everyone is pushing a diet they think is right for everyone. This is plainly wrong; there is no single diet appropriate for everyone. There is plenty of scientific evidence that ABO blood type is a factor in diet. Generally people with type A blood do poorly on Atkins, probably because type A is associated with low levels of the enzyme Intestinal Alkaline Phosphatase (IAP), which is involved with the digestion of fat.

    I have even created a blog describing the major factors of why ABO blood type affects diet at http://drrggibbs.blogspot.com/. This blog contains links to other blogs that cite various papers about blood type and diet.

    • Editorial

      Sure you are right about horses for courses with diet as with most other things. I think what particularly irritates those who have benefited from the low carb approach is the total refusal of the dietary establishment to investigate or consider it, let alone make an attempt to understand the underlying biochemistry. The remarkable lack of understanding shown by the SACN is a strong and dispiriting example. The other element the I think distinguishes low from high carbs is that it looks – and I put it no stronger – based on the biochemistry as if the very low carb/ketosis approach has the potential to be a useful option for treating the big four metabolic disorders. The wilful ignoring of this potential and/or attempt to sweep it under the carpet – see also SACN – has nothing to do with the evidence based approach that dietetic establishment claims to lay so much store by.

      • And what I find irritating is that the advocates of low carb diets make no attempt to identify who benefits from the low carb approach and who doesn’t. I only see a dogmatic support for low carb. But as I stated, there is published evidence about the suitability of various dietary approaches that is strongly related to ABO blood type. I just don’t see anyone other than Dr. d’Adamo willing to look at this evidence

    • Dr Gibbs,
      have you looked at cortisol, insulin, and gluconeogenesis? Hence the question, in persons with elevated cortisol, can proteins lead to weight gain and/or hyperinsulinaemia?
      Then can we, if look at rising rates of diabetes, weight issues, alzheiners, cancer etc, realistically attribute these to blood type?
      Is the distribution of blood type really changing fast enough to account for these?
      It isn’t all about food, btw, it is about hormones, and hormonal cascades. Sure diets bear upon hormones, but so do other environmental factors as I am sure you well know.
      Providing we do not lose sight of what is a growing biochemical mayhem in the species we call humam I can see blood types and typing diets are ‘intersting’ for sure.

      • Christoper,
        This has nothing to do with a changing distribution of blood types. It’s about eating foods that may be ok for one blood type but not for another. So the change in dietary habits, e.g. eat more carbs, can result in people switching to foods that are inappropriate for their blood type. I outlined the science behind this in my blog http://drrggibbs.blogspot.com/. Of course there are other factors at work, but if an individual is trying to find an appropriate diet, the impact of blood type cannot be ignored.

        • Dr Gibbs,
          I think it’s fair to say that the heart disease, obesity and possibly aging are directly affected, if not caused by the intake of too much sugar, regardless of its source .Regardless of blood type, when we eat we are feeding our cells after all they’re the ones that are really doing the eating, so when eating if we avoid foods that turn to sugars doesn’t it follow that we will automatically be improving our communication of our internal network of cells.
          My problem with the Doctor d’Adamo is as follows:
          Blood group O is described by D’Adamo as the hunter. He recommends that those of this blood group eat a higher protein diet. The group is alleged by D’Adamo to be the first blood type and to have originated 30,000 years ago. But in fact Type O blood isn’t the oldest blood type, nor was it formed by human dietary patterns. A, B, and O arose almost 20 million years ago in a far-off ancestor common to humans and other primates – long before humans hunted, gathered, farmed, domesticated animals, or even existed. In fact, if anything, it’s type A blood that’s the oldest.

          Blood group A is called the agrarian or cultivator by D’Adamo, who believes this type dates from the dawn of agriculture, 20,000 years ago. He recommends that individuals of blood group A eat a diet that emphasizes vegetables and is free of red meat, but if type A blood arose in response to agriculture, why would the Australian aboriginal diet of meat, marrow, and foraged plant foods, or the Sami diet of reindeer blood, meat, and milk and fatty fish both give rise to a preponderance of type A blood carriers? Type A is supposed to be founded on agriculture – grains, beans, with very little animal products. If a high-animal foods diet selects against type A blood, why does it flourish in these populations?

          B is called the nomad by D’Adamo, who estimates this group to have arrived 10,000 years ago. He states that this type is associated with a strong immune system and a flexible digestive system. He also asserts that people of blood type B are the only people able to thrive on dairy products, this is contradicted by the fact that while people with blood type B tend to be from Asia (specifically, China or India),lactose intolerance is most common among people of Asian, South American, and African descent and least common among those descended from northern Europe or northwestern India

          • Danny,
            I strongly disagree with your first statement; the body is quite capable of processing reasonable quantities of sugar. If sugar were such a villain it wouldn’t taste so good.

            Too much attention is paid to d’Adamo’s attempt to put a time line on blood groups. What is important is how blood type affects diet now. The assertion that A is the oldest blood group may not be true. See http://mbe.oxfordjournals.org/content/29/7/1791.abstract, which says
            “Functional A and B alleles are distinguished at two critical sites in exon 7 of the human ABO blood group gene. The most frequent nonfunctional O alleles have one-base deletion in exon 6 producing a frameshift, and it has the A type signature in two critical sites in exon 7. Previous studies indicated that B and O alleles were derived from A allele in human lineage. In this study, we conducted a phylogenetic network analysis using six representative haplotypes: A101, A201, B101, O01, O02, and O09. The result indicated that the A allele, possibly once extinct in the human lineage a long time ago, was resurrected by a recombination between B and O alleles less than 300,000 years ago.”

            d’Adamo has very specific recommendations about different foods and doesn’t generalize to saying things like dairy is bad unless you are type B, or type A should eat grains and beans and no meat.

            Sorry I don’t have time to be more specific in my response.

        • I have it on good authority that in the next series of Downton Abbey Mrs Patmore may be heard to say, in a non-culinary context, that:

          “Many a pudding may merit an egg, or even more, but there is no merit in over-egging any pudding.”

          I read ‘Eat right for you type’ and if it is a mjort contribution to cognition then aspects of it passed me by. I am not dismissing typing out of hand but I do not see it as being right there at the top of the causal pyramid.

          Hormones are the middle-men linking cause with effect. Hormones can be lined to ffos, and perhaps blood type, but we are children of a quantum universe,. Free-electrons matter and so do photons, according to Wiley and Formby.

          Clearly all species that photosynthesise are light sensitive. But then so too are species that metabolise. leshy species are as light sensitive as the leafy types – just in alternate ways.

          Fleshy species exibit behaviours (mating, herding, even birthing etc.) that are evidently in tune with day length and the seasons, and their daily routine is in sync with light and dark. I am out and about at 2am when (me and) all the little birdies should be tucked up in bed, but on industustrial parks and in cities, anywhere in proximity to high levels of lighting, the little birdies are twittering away. The light bears uponhormones, and normones bear upn behaviour. We are not any different.

          So I am not saying your egg doesn’t matter, but unless you have contemplated how free-electron deficiency (through no longer having effective and conductive contact with ground) and light polution and indadequate sleep, sleeping in the day instead of at night, can bear upon people’s hormones then I deem it likely that you are trying to steam your pudding with only half the ingredients list.

          The distribution of blood types is unlikely to change fast, but the incidence of certain conditions is increasing fast, we are being told, even from afar this says to me that certain changing habits or environment are no longer a good match for what human physiology would prefer.

          Of course the distribution of blood types cannot be changing, and that was my point, blood type is not a causal factor, though something that interacts with blood type and/or hormones may be. Then unless I can be party to strong evidence with an extremely high coefficient of correlation, that the changes we are witnessing attach to one blood group or another, then I reserve the right to remian markedly sceptic. The ‘effects’ are evident in too many people to my eyes, though of course I cannot discern blood type from thier look alone.

          But neither if you look at someone who is overweight can you second guess the hormonal balance, levels of cortisol, levels of insulin, insulin resistance, or even cationic duress, but actually, we do know, or we can learn, that aspects of diet and environment can bear upon these cascades.

          It is good to debate. It is good for debate to be open to others. There is nothing of merit and no shame in either winning or losing in any debate. The truth is the victor or casualty, and should be seen as such.

          The truth is what we’re after.

        • Dear Dr Gibbs,

          “the body is quite capable of processing reasonable quantities of sugar. If sugar were such a villain it wouldn’t taste so good.”

          In evolutionary terms the availability of readily digestible and sweet polysaccharides varied with the seasons, being plentiful in the summer, and scarcer in the winter. That’s why blood glucose and insulin have significant command over the process of fat sequestration. Deposition of body-fat arises in summer, guided by insulin, as preparation for the reduction in supply of food expected in winter. It’s just that in modernity this ‘summer’ arises all year round.

          Sure, sugar may taste good, but availability was always highly restricted, so natures’ direction is to ‘get plenty while you can’. This is no longer helpful.

          Have a think about the collective mitochondrial demand for energy. It doesn’t have to be supplied by glucose, not all of it, ketones work just fine, and I’d hazard guess a mix is OK. The pattern of this collective demand is broadly 1 calorie every forty seconds. Next consider the pattern of supply, at ingestion phase or, if you like, at the postprandial phase. (The two are similar but not entirely the same). This (these) may be 700 calories taken at intervals three times per day.

          Now forget medicine and think systems analysis. There is evidently a need for attenuation between the point and pattern of supply, and the point and pattern of consumption. How does peaky supply become attenuated to meet relatively flat-line demand at point of use? Now you blow the dust of a textbook of medical physiology and figure how physiology handles the process. (While your in their can you find time to check how fats can make us obese or diabetic – because Ewan McNay has jumped the process of peer review to have Jessica Griggs of New Scientist inform folks it can.)

          Fat deposition that persists through winter right through to spring is evidence of insulin remaining at summer levels through autumn and winter. So the evolutionary advantage of sequestering energy as body-fat never actually gets converted back to energy (lipolysis and ketosis) or turned to actual advantage with a corresponding seasonal decline (over winter) in BMI.

          Glucose and insulin combine to create triglycerides that get sequestered as body-fat when the supply of readily digestible polysaccharides is plentiful. Some of the meatier polysaccharides we call ‘soluble fibre’ help because they help attenuate digestion within the digestive tract. Fats do the same, especially the stable saturated ones.

          Then there is the issue of cortisol and insulin. Does cortisol bear upon insulin and amplify it’s presence? Does cortisol command a cascade that increases gluconeogeneis 6 -10 fold as my ageing book suggests, and so can the protein that gets converted to glucose (from gluconeogeneis) add gearing to the conversion of blood glucose to triglycerides, do these additional triglycerides get assimilated into certain factions of lipoproteins that convey it to the adipose sites for deposition?

          Of course, seasonal metabolic dynamism no longer matters to humans, because food is plentiful all year round.

          Affordability, unfortunately, is a function of the periodic decline in capacity to have new money (from lending) coming to market in keeping with the markets expectations of ‘gains’. This creates a kind of scarcity of money, and the scarcity (decline in the ease with which gains can be made) drives down wages (wage repression) and so the (in)affordability of food is not a cost of living issue, it’s just that earnings of those on low incomes cease to meet the costs so well. This drives people down the food chain in effect, and since polysaccharides arise early in the food chain, determining also the costs of production are lower, the masses that suffer wage repression are driven to consume more low-grade fodder in the form of refined and processed readily digestible polysaccharides (carbs).

          The interests represented on the panel of the SACN are those whose intent on profit (measured in units of fiat currency) leads to the relentless trend in the level of asymmetry seen in the distribution of wealth and indebtedness that dictates relentless lending cannot be sustained. Without lending there is a decline in the availability of the unity via which we measure a ‘gain’.

          Imagine yourself summing all the financial assets throughout the world. Now imagine yourself doing the same for liabilities. There is no need to complete these tasks.

          Any person who has actually given any study and thought to the business of money supply knows to expect assets and liabilities to balance, and knows the relative distribution is what makes for the greatest man-made selection pressure ever created, second only to the incapacity of the world most intelligent species to make optimal use of the intelligence it was born with.

          It doesn’t have to be this way. We don’t have to do away with money (fiat currency). We can implement and embrace alternative (complimentary) currencies designed to alternate standards. These currencies could be designed to preserve economic democracy not denude it. They could (have) be(en) available and in place, embraced and backed by sovereign states, in readiness for the times when fiat currencies become scarce. Think this sounds odd?

          Bitcoin is just one example.

          Think about this:

          Diseases or conditions that associate with insulin or chronic hyperinsulinaemia associate with conditions created by the distribution of fiat currency (wealth and debt). It sin’t complicated, just needs a clear, open, and informed mind. Which conditions associate with hyperinsulinaemia? Obesity, diabetes, cancers(?), Alzeimers, etc. Need to know more?

          But it isn’t all about food, or fiat currency. Anything that can adversely influence hormones is suspect. Stress, light polution, free-electron deficiency, don’t rule ‘em out in the rush to embrace Peter d’Adamos take on things.

          Now from a nutritional or dietary perspective the modern human no longer has much need of the more seasonally dynamic aspects of metabolism. If we’re gaining weight and turning insulin resistant, then that’s what the SACN ought to be looking at. Save that The FSA no longer has the remit to nanny us on our choice of diet. If remit and common sense could be united then restoration of remit would be no bad thing, and it could save the nation far more than it’s former Chief Scientist, Dr Andrew Wadge, could ever have imagined or related in his blog ‘The appliance of science’.

          In the harsh light of day people do actually go hungry for the want of a bit of decent science.

          I acknowledge you are busy, Dr Gibbs, but isn’t that part of the issue, perhaps, and with much empathy and the very greatest of respect, that you are kept so occupied treating the effects of all this biochemical mayhem in the modern human that you don’t have sufficient time for real reflection?

          Remember the systemic analysis.

          To enable a species so enterprising and creative as ours aspects of the diet had to alter, as did patterns of eating. But the patterns of eating make attenuation that bit more important. Aspects of human physiology can buffer energy. If we’re overweight, whatever our blood type, we asking more of physiology than it can deliver. Of course, if blood type has bearing upon endocrinology, and we should expect it may, we need informed discussion as to how to contribute to cognitive gains.

          With kind regards.

          Hope this helps you too, Hannah.

          My qualifications extend to LGV(C+E). It would be prudent to check my reasoning, folks.

          Apologies I could net be concise, there is a lot of ground to be gained, clearly.

          Chris

          • Editorial

            Great comment. Fascinating to see it put it in an evolutionary perspective although I have to confess I did get a bit lost in the currency/bitcoin analogy. Love the idea of thinking about energy supply in terms of money supply (have I got that right?) but it was just was a bit too condensed for my limited knowledge of systems theory/economics. Very much appreciate your taking New Scientist to task for bald statement about high fat diets causing diabetes based on high fat diets fed to rats.

            You might be interested in this discussion of what exactly is contained in “high fat” mouse chow and just what else it contains, including hefty amounts of high density carbohydrates.

            It is a report from UC Davies dated 2007/8 which can be found at:
            http://www.ucdmc.ucdavis.edu/welcome/features/20080702_diet_warden/

            Majority of studies of high-fat diets in mice inaccurately portrayed

            Studies in mice provide the foundation for much of the belief that high-fat diets are detrimental to human health. However, the majority of studies on the health effects of high-fat diets in mice published in five respected scientific journals in 2007 were not accurately portrayed, a survey by researchers at UC Davis has found.

            “The bottom line is, unless the studies we do on mice are appropriately designed, we can’t use the information to give people recommendations on diet,” said study co-author Craig Warden, a professor of pediatrics and neurobiology, physiology and behavior in the Rowe Program on Genomics.
            The survey results are described in a commentary published in the April 2008 issue of the journal Cell Metabolism. The commentary discusses research utilizing high-fat mouse diets that was published in 2007 in the journals Cell Metabolism, Diabetes, The Journal of Clinical Investigation, Nature and Nature Medicine.

            These studies’ major failing, Warden said, is comparing mice fed high-fat “defined” diets, often consisting of 60 percent lard, 20 percent sucrose and 20 percent casein or milk protein — the mouse equivalent of “pork rinds, ribs and Coke” — with mice fed a vegetable-based high-fiber “undefined” diet called chow composed of varying amounts of carbohydrate, fat and protein.

            “This is a call to conduct diet studies correctly, because unless we get them right, they’re meaningless.”
            — Craig Warden, study co-author

            “Many papers using animal models draw conclusions about dietary effects from the comparison of natural-ingredient chow with defined diets, despite marked differences in micro- and macronutrient content,” the commentary says. “When comparing the effects of a chow diet with a high-fat diet the effects of the dietary fat will be confounded with the effects of other components in the diet.”

            Warden added that two important differences between chow and high-fat defined diets are the contents of soy and sucrose. Chow is made from varying amounts of soy, which contains plant estrogens that affect food and water intake, anxiety-related behaviors, activity levels and the development of adipose tissue, or fat. And the sucrose in the high-fat diet has been linked to weight gain and insulin resistance. These factors are not taken into consideration when comparing the high-fat and chow diets.

            Of the 35 studies surveyed, only five, or 14 percent, got it right. Forty-three percent of papers derived conclusions about effects of high-fat diets from comparisons of chow to a defined high-fat diet. Thirty four percent presented data without enough information to evaluate diet comparisons, because the publications did not provide details on diet. In 9 percent of the studies, both chow and high-fat diets were used but no direct comparison was made between the two.

            “I and my collaborators were stunned that a majority of the literature used inappropriate comparisons of chow to defined diets or used unspecified diets,” Warden said “Many of the reports from the animal-model literature have mischaracterized the effects of fat and carbohydrate on obesity and many other traits and diseases. This is a call to conduct diet studies correctly, because unless we get them right, they’re meaningless.”

            Warden’s research uses molecular genetics techniques in mouse models to study the impact of natural genetic variants on obesity and on response to diet and exercise. He has identified a protein that alters levels of hypothalamic alpha-melanocyte stimulating hormone (alpha-MSH) — a natural food intake inhibitor. This protein is a potential drug target because inhibitors decrease hunger. He also studies whether some people are genetically programmed to fail to maintain weight loss following gastric bypass surgery.

            Collaborating with Warden on the commentary is Janis S. Fisler, associate, Department of Nutrition, UC Davis. The research was funded by a grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the Robert C. and Veronica Atkins Foundation.

          • Chris,
            Brilliant comment was most informative and educational, thank you.

  • Jerome, thank you, and thanks for the steer on mouse / rat chow.
    Jessica Griggs write up in New Scientist of Ewan McNays work on Alzeimers was dire; especially in the way it insinuated dietary fats were causally linked with type-2 diabetes.
    Who are they trying to con?
    In the lab diabetes can be induced in rats so people like McNay can study Alzeimers. Diabetes in rats, then, is a man-made phenomenon.
    Diabetes in man is a man-made phenomenon; why not? It oughtn’t be too hard to figure the cause, cos were replicating the condition in rats. It is the ‘chow’, of course (notwithstanding blood-group may be an additional concern).
    What’s wrong with modern man-chow? Too much like rat-chow, it may seem.
    Insulin and insulin resistance figure in type-2 diabetes, and by implication, now, the same is true for Alzeimers.
    So there is a low-input solution available to humans wishing to avoid dementia later in life: Give up man-chow and eat real food with real fats.

    • Just to reiterate what I was trying to say about blood type. No one in the mainstream medical community is taking a serious look at how a food may be toxic for one person and beneficial for another. Blood group is a major factor, but not the only factor, determining this. I just looked at the presentation by Prof. Noakes at http://www.health.uct.ac.za/centenary/past_events/centenary_debate/. He talks about “carbohydrate resistance” without saying how it’s really defined or diagnosed. He would find a lot of the answers in the work of Dr. D’Adamo.

      BTW, I am not a medical doctor.

  • excellent article. I’ve wondered for ages about how the gov recommendations are arrived at. Scandalous. Great standard of debates in the comments.


  • Next time you’re found
    With your chin on the ground
    There’s a lot to be learned
    So look around

    Just what makes that little old ant
    Think he’ll move that rubber tree plant
    Anyone knows an ant, can’t
    Move a rubber tree plant

    But he’s got high hopes
    He’s got high hopes
    He’s got high apple pie
    In the sky hopes

    So any time you’re gettin’ low
    ‘Stead of lettin’ go, just remember that ant
    Oops, there goes another rubber tree plant
    Oops, there goes another rubber tree plant
    Oops, there goes another rubber tree plant

    When troubles call
    And your back’s to the wall
    There a lot to be learned
    That wall could fall

    Once there was a silly old ram
    Thought he’d punch a hole in a dam
    No one could make that ram, scram
    He kept buttin’ that dam

    ‘Cause he had high hopes
    He had high hopes
    He had high apple pie
    In the sky hopes

    So any time you’re feelin’ bad
    ‘Stead of feelin’ sad, just remember that ram
    Oops, there goes a billion kilowatt dam
    Oops, there goes a billion kilowatt dam
    Oops, there goes a billion kilowatt dam

    All problems just a toy balloon
    They’ll be bursted soon, they’re just bound to go pop
    Oops, there goes another problem kerplop
    Oops, there goes another problem kerplop
    Oops, there goes another problem kerplop, kerplop ” (1)

    “But if a few such people will re-examine the evidence for what everybody knows. they will realaize that there must still be a lot of things that nobody knows – and perhaps nobody eeven suspects. Then perhaps we shall get to the truth. We certainly will not get at it by assuming on inadeqaute grounds that we have it already.” (2)

    Oops there falls a silly and toxic hypothesis upon arteriosclerosis, cholesterol and saturated fat. Damn, it doesn’t scan.

    Oops there goes the hy-poth-e-sis upon fat. Better?

    1, Lyric; J. VAN HEUSEN, S. CAHN
    2, JAL Gorringe MD FRCPEd; A fresh look at what everybody knows about- ischaemic heart disease: discussion paper
    http://europepmc.org/articles/PMC1439901/pdf/jrsocmed00223-0044.pdf

  • You say,
    “Carbohydrates do not change the way they affect the body in a gradual way – a few percentage points up leading to a bit more of this or a bit less of that. Instead the effect of a high carbohydrate intake – over 120 grams a day – is quite different to what happens on a very , very low carbohydrate diet.”

    I’m not disputing that, but from the point of view of someone wanting to lose a few inches from their waist without doing anything extreme, I think a moderate cutback in carbs has a significant effect. The Government carbohydrate recommendation for an adult male is 365g a day. I lost three inches from my waist over a year by cutting back to around 200g and increasing protein and fat. This sort of modification would appeal to more people and is not that difficult. Cut back bread to two slices a day. Swop biscuit and cake snacks for nuts and hard boiled eggs. Swop cereal breakfast for chicken and mayonnaise on toast. Swop some potato for carrot.

  • Sounds like Channel 4 and Dispatches have been asking questions about this story as well: http://www.foodnavigator.com/Science-Nutrition/Conflict-of-interest-On-the-sugar-payroll. One to watch I think!

  • Yes Channel 4 and Dispatches have been asking question but they like most people fail to even scratch the surface on basic human biochemistry and whilst Dr Lustig et all are all very lovely right now it is a little disconcerting that few so called experts have picked up that starch and sugar are closely related and that any campaign against sugar has to be a campaign against starch.

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