By Lubna Abdel-Aziz Here we go again on the perpetual merry-go-round diet, round and round it goes and where it stops nobody knows. What is good? What is bad? What is in? What is out? What is rash? What is crash? "'tis a puzzlement!" Swinging like a pendulum to and fro, we recently landed on the carb dominion. Millions of us were seduced by the sight of carbs, devouring every last carb morsel - grains, vegetables, fruits, anything and everything except meat. Fat was the enemy to shun and despise. The sight of butter alone was able to create a state of panic or even a sudden heart attack. The result is, that we are getting larger and larger, and more confused than ever. Now the tables have been turned, carbs are down and fat is up, according to several recent studies. FAT, that dreadful white enemy of man, has become his best friend. A new book on the endless list of nutrition publications has the medical community up in arms. Science writer and journalist Gary Taubes in his recent book: Good Calories, Bad Calories: Challenging the Conventional Wisdom on Diet, Weight Control, and Disease, argues that it is the consumption of carbohydrates, and not excess calories that makes people fat as well as sick. No more exercise? How marvellous! Eat all you want, and just sit and watch TV all day? A veritable dream come true. Not quite, but almost so. According to the five-year research by Taubes, there is more than a century of evidence that sugar, flour and white rice, result in obesity, diabetes, cancer, and "half a dozen other so-called civilization diseases." What about fat? "No," says Taubes, "whether saturated or not, fat is not the cause of obesity, heart disease..." etc, etc, etc. FAT is innocent? Incredible! The enemy therefore is that white monster known as sugar. "Sugar, sucrose, and high-fructose corn syrup specifically, are particularly harmful because the combination of glucose and fructose simultaneously elevate the insulin level, while overloading the liver with carbohydrates." This we can accept, but how can half the world live without potatoes and the other half without rice? For the past 2 million years there has been a transition in man's diet from "carbohydrate poor to carbohydrate rich" diets. Before the introduction of agriculture, man lived mainly on animal protein. Primitive cultures that primarily ate meat from the hunt lived in relatively good health. With farming, came grains and digestible starches to supplement the hunter's diet. Those who switched to a grain-rich diet from farming suffered poor health and a smaller stature. With time, the increasing refinement of these carbohydrates, and the dramatic increase in fructose consumption resulted in what British epidemiologists called "sick individual and sick populations." In his seminal essay of this title, he recommended that we remove those "unnatural factors" and restore "biological normality," the condition to which presumably we are genetically adapted. There is absolute scientific evidence that carbohydrates are pathogenic, according to Taubes. Drop that donut! Eating red meat and natural animal fats and restricting carbohydrates, is not only healthy, but will prevent and cure many diseases that were once blamed on age, genes or bad luck. The underlying reasons for the spread of these diseases may indeed be a diet high in carbs and low in fat. He incriminates carbohydrates as a "sinister, sly food category that has been getting away with murder." Optimal health lies in keeping carbohydrates to an absolute minimum. Can all this be true? The design of our digestive enzymes shows that mankind is mainly a carnivorous species, with some ability to digest carbs from fruits and vegetables. Health is damaged when the ratio of carbohydrates exceeds that of our carnivorous make-up. Grains have a very high level of omega-6 fatty acids which are pro-inflammatory. They are a poor source of proteins and are the most allergenic of all foods. Say it is not so! "The notion that fruits and whole grains are healthy foods will be reviewed by future scientists as the biggest lie and fraud in the history of the world." Scientific evidence is available at present to disclose such a fallacy, but allies and manufacturers of bread, cereal, candy, pasta, rice, and thousands of carb products will not allow such knowledge to come to light. The scientific minimum daily requirement of carbohydrates is ZERO. Carbs are simply not an essential element for health maintenance. Yes, but to claim carbs cause cancer? Is that not stretching the facts? Several studies by Taubes and others claim that a high carb diet increases risks of breast, pancreatic, and colorectal cancer. Carbohydrates drive insulin production, signaling the body to release cortisol and adrenaline hormones which suppress the immune system, increasing our susceptibility to allergies, infections, and degenerative diseases. In effect, cancer is considered an immune deficiency disease, in which the immune system has been compromised or incapacitated. Enough said! There goes my favourite slice of cake with my afternoon tea, there goes that delicious chocolate morsel, morning cereal, slice of bread and honey, fettuccini, rice and beans, lentil soup and passion fruit. What is there left to nourish us poor vegetarians? Taubes' five-year research cannot be dismissed. Clinical findings of his and others, such as the Robert Atkins principle, the Zone diet, the Protein Power Lifeplan, the South Beach diet, support the proximity between carbohydrates and obesity. We are now consuming the highest levels of sugar in history. In the 50s when Ancel Keys advocated a high carb, low fat diet, the medical community jumped on it, banishing fat as the number one public enemy. With such clear evidence to the contrary, it is slowly beginning to modify its recommendations for a healthy diet. A low carb diet has been around since 1863 when William Banting, an English casket maker published his Letter on Corpulence Addressed to the Public. So, whether the question is obesity or general good health, we can find one truth in this dizzying confusion -- a low carb, very low carb diet, devoid of sugar, starch and flour, and high in meat and protein is healthy. It is even difficult for this pen to write that fat is desirable, but there you go... "Man shall not live by bread alone." Today he need not, or should not, at least until the next discovery. "Confusion now hath made his masterpiece!" Roast beef, Medium, is not only a food, it is a philosophy Edna Ferber (1887-1968)
