Improve your health: Lower your carbs

How come there  is no disease caused by the absence of carbohydrates?  This simple observation suggests that carbohydrates are not necessary for health and are not an essential food in our evolutionary history.  This is different from vitamin C or other essential nutrients whose absence will cause scurvy and eventually death.

From an evolutionary perspective, simple carbohydrates, especially sugars and high-fructose corn syrup, are significant contributing factors to the increasing epidemic of obesity, type 2 diabetes, metabolic syndrome,  coronary heart disease and  many  autoimmune disorders. The recommended nutritional guideline of the last forty years to reduce fats and increase carbohydrates were not based upon good science but on ideology influenced by agribusiness and the sugar industry (La Berge,  2008). The recommendations were WRONG AND HARMFUL (Taubes, 2016; see also: https://peperperspective.com/2017/02/18/read-the-case-against-sugar/).  It may explains why the obesity epidemic is not caused by eating or drinking too many calories but the eating the wrong type of calories; namely,  those found in simple carbohydrates and overly processed foods.  The increase in obesity appears highly correlated with the US low-fat diet recommendations published in 1977 as shown in figure 1.

Figure 1. Increase in U.S. obesity begins after the publication of the U.S. recommendations to eat a low-fat diet. Reproduced from National Center for Health Statistics (US). Health, United States, 2008: With Special Feature on the Health of Young Adults. Hyattsville (MD): National Center for Health Statistics (US); 2009 Mar. Chartbook

The harmful effects of the simple high carbohydrate diet  amplified with a decrease in physical activity interacts with your genetics.  People,  with a family risk factors of metabolic syndrome (type 2 diabetes) can improve their health by eating a low carbohydrate diet with lots of vegetables, fruit and fats.

Watch the superb video lectures by Professor Timothy Noakes, an emeritus professor of exercise and sports science at the University of Cape Town and by Gary Taubes, science writer and author of The case against sugar.  It may shift your perspective and improve your health.

Reference:

La Berge, A. F. (2008). How the ideology of low fat conquered America.  Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences, Volume 63, Issue 2, 1 April 2008, Pages 139–177, https://doi.org/10.1093/jhmas/jrn001

National Center for Health Statistics (US). Health, United States, 2008: With Special Feature on the Health of Young Adults. Hyattsville (MD): National Center for Health Statistics (US); 2009 Mar. Chartbook

Taubes, G. (2016). The Case Against Sugar. Portobello Books. ISBN 978-0-307-70164-0