Weight gain, what’s the deal?
Over the past two decades, the UK’s rates of obesity and type 2 diabetes have spiralled, something that has invariably been blamed on our intake of saturated fat. Conventional nutrition science argues this leads to elevated cholesterol levels and a greater risk of heart disease, but there is real evidence to persuade us to rethink this idea. As far back as the 1950’s, and even more so since the 1980’s, fat has been unfairly demonised, when in fact our excessive carbohydrate and sugar consumption is to blame for many of these societal health problems, a concept that has begun to interest increasing numbers of scientists.
National legislation, the global food industry and the £2bn a year UK diet industry have this fundamental belief system about obesity, that it’s caused by caloric imbalance or overeating. So the idea is that we’re taking in more calories than we’re expending, and so the cure is to eat less, and reduce our calorie intake. However, this long-in-the-tooth concept is now being challenged as being “biologically naive,” and rather than being about calories, obesity is actually a hormonal regulatory defect. The conventional approaches don’t work because while we can sustain eating less for a while, (no more then a 10% loss of our current body weight), eventually the hunger gets us because we’re semi-starving ourselves. So, wrong approach – and when it fails, society will disapprovingly wag their critical fingers and remind us of two of the seven deadly sins: gluttony and/or sloth. These are the well worn criticisms that dieters suffer as a consequence for failed sustained attempts at weight loss.
Obesity is not a caloric imbalance problem, it’s a hormonal regulation problem. Fat accumulation is primarily regulated by the hormone insulin, and the idea is that for those who are obese, diabetic, or predisposed, they have to minimise their insulin levels to solve the problem. By restricting carbohydrate, (not banishing it!) minimises insulin production, and so instead of accumulating fat, your body is able to use up its reserves.
Critics will argue that many studies and human trials are only short-term, for a couple of months, and the diets are often poorly defined. However, in America alone, the onslaught of diabetes and the obesity is costing over $1bn a day in direct medical care. If this sum of money could be translated into rigorous clinical trials of different diets, governments might learn enough to save trillions of dollars down the line. Ideally, this would be trials involving several tens of thousands of people on the spectrum from overweight to obese, and pre-diabetic to diabetics. You could compare a number of well established eating patterns, veganism, keto, Mediterranean, etc. The frank reality is that such a study (over a three year period) would have an estimated cost in the region of $20-30m.
Aside from a revised way of eating being accused as too restrictive, there’s also now a worthy focus on ethical and environmental issues. Veganism being a front runner. Although a vegan diet can be applauded from an ethical stand point, it does distract us from the fundamental principle of nutritional value. From an evolutionary stand point, our brains did not increase threefold in size from simply eating a plant based diet. In short, no human population has ever evolved to be vegan. Our ancestors, who are still on a physiological par with us today, would most certainly chose and consume animal products were they available. Furthermore, our biology has evolved to expect a variety of foods across the seasons, to fast overnight, and to experience times of feasting and famine. But this is in direct contrast to recent events. More recently we have transitioned from an industrialised to a digitalised revolution. The last thirty years have further catapulted us into a more sedentary lifestyle coupled with a greater reliance on consuming an abundance of ultra-processed food and the consequences of a Western-style diet that ultimately lacks nourishment. It has been scientifically proven that humans prioritise eating a target amount of protein over the other two macronutrients of carbohydrates and fats. Sadly, we live in a protein-poor but energy-rich world. This results in our body over eating carbs and fats to try to reach our protein target, thus, risking obesity.
The very progress of our evolution from ape to man suggest that there are robust reasons to consume animal products and not only plants, aside from personal tastes and preferences. From a biological stand point, proteins and their building blocks supply nitrogen, with which we make all sorts of other important things, including hormones, enzymes, and our information-storing DNA. If we don’t ingest protein, we don’t live. However, if someone’s struggling with their weight, or is becoming diabetic, they could certainly try a vegan or a vegetarian diet. If they get healthier, then great, but if they don’t get healthier and they don’t have ethical issues with eating animals, then we should not disregard the importance of meat and it’s protein value. This does not mean we have to go keto-diet crazy. Neither does this mean we eradicate our carbohydrate consumption. Yes, when the only available diet is high in protein, humans will under consume carbs and fats. But it’s all about balance. To get the best nutritional value from protein sources, it is recommended to eat 10-15% of your daily food consumption. Short and simple.
Finally, what has been discussed are mere jigsaw pieces in the puzzle of sustainable healthy eating. Other aspects that can be considered are:
Avoid ultra-processed foods
Choose high-protein foods from a variety of animal and/or plant sources
Increase your fibre intake
Don’t obsess about calories.
Be restrained when adding sugar and salt to food, and choose healthy added fats
Embrace the fact that there will be an element of trial and error
The flip side is don’t eat more protein than you feel you want. Your body is very smart and can tell when you’ve consumed too little and too much.
Encourage physical activity
To help boost cellular and DNA repair and maintenance, fast overnight and limit snacking between main meals.
Sleep well
Get active – outdoors if possible - and sociable.
Learn how to cook from fresh
Eat the foods you like (while minimising ultra-processed foods).
Extracts taken from David Cox from https://www.theguardian.com