Sweden gets it right

I sometimes think that I should go and live in a Scandinavian country. They get so many things right about how to run healthy, equitable, societies. In addition, the people who live there seem more balanced and, well, frankly, more grown up. So it comes as no surprise to me that if a nation was to turn round and begin the process of rejecting the absolute nonsense that a high fat diet is bad for you, then it would be a country in Scandinavia.

That Scandinavian country is Sweden1.

Now, I have been aware that there has been a movement towards a high fat low carb diet (HFLC) going on in Sweden for some years. This has been led recently by the heroic Dr Annika Dahlqvist, a General Practitioner who had been advising her diabetic patients to eat a low carb high fat diet (LCHF).

She was, of course, attacked by the idiots…sorry experts:

‘In 2007, the controversy began when two dieticians pointed out to Sweden’s National Board of Health and Welfare that LCHF dietary advice recommended to diabetic patients by general practitioner Dr Annika Dahlqvist was not compatible with either scientific evidence or conventional practice. However, following a report by diabetologist Dr Christian Berne, Dahlqvist was cleared.’

Cleared of what, exactly? Advising diabetic patients not to eat sugar. The mere fact that anyone could be dragged in front of the authorities for advising this just shows had completely mad the world of dietary advice has become. How entrenched the idiotic anti-fat dogma now is. How utterly divorced from reality and science.

As I have pointed out many times on this blog, and elsewhere, carbohydrates, at least all the carbohydrates humans can digest, are converted to sugar(s) in the GI system. They must be, because all that carbohydrates consist of are different number of sugar molecules bonded together in different ways. When you break them to bits in the digestive system, they become simple sugars.

As we all know, people with diabetes have problems with high blood sugar levels. So, dum de dum….let me think. Should diabetics eat carbohydrates/sugar, or should they eat fats. Yes, you are right, they should eat fats. This is a complete no brainer.

But, of course, the argument goes that diabetics are more likely to die of cardiovascular disease and eating fat increases cholesterol levels, and this increases your risk of cardiovascular disease. Well, this could obviously be a problem if any part of that causal chain were true. But it is all nonsense. As the latest Swedish report from the SBU (Swedish Council on Health Technology Assessment) makes clear (after reviewing 13,000 studies), a low carb diet leads to the terrible dangers of

‘…a greater increase in HDL cholesterol (“the good cholesterol”) without having any adverse effects on LDL cholesterol (“the bad cholesterol”). This applies to both the moderate low-carbohydrate intake of less than 40 percent of the total energy intake, as well as to the stricter low-carbohydrate diet, where carbohydrate intake is less than 20 percent of the total energy intake. In addition, the stricter low-carbohydrate diet will lead to improved glucose levels for individuals with obesity and diabetes, and to marginally decreased levels of triglycerides.’2

In short, when they looked at all the evidence, they found that low carb/high fat diets raise HDL cholesterol (the so-called ‘good’ cholesterol). They have no effect on LDL levels; they also lower blood sugar levels and triglyceride (VLDL) levels. All good and healthy, and all of which bascially means that insulin resistance has been reduced – the underlying cause of diabetes.

In reality all that the Swedes really ‘discovered’ is the quite astonishing fact that eating a high carbohydrate diet is bad for you, and worse for you if you are a diabetic. Well, blow me down with a feather. They have found exactly what a working knowledge of human biology/physiology would tell you would happen.

But we live in a wold controlled by entrenched stupidity, dogma, and the financial interests of massive companies who are making billions selling tasteless low fat mush. These companies know that the only way you can make low fat food, e.g. low fat yoghurt, taste like anything half palatable is to stuff it with sugar. Cheap, nasty, and damaging to health – also driving the ever increasing weight gain and diabetes in the Western World.

Why is everyone in the Western World becoming obese? Because we are replacing fat with sugar in many foodstuffs. The obesity ‘epidemic’ started at exactly the same time as the idiots, sorry experts, decreed that a healthy diet was a diet full of carbs. Which was, and remains, the exact and complete opposite of the truth.

However, anyone who dares to stand up and state the truth, gets dragged in from of organisations such as the National Board of health and Welfare. Eventually, however, the truth does emerge, as it must. Because the truth never dies. It can be stomped on, squashed, concreted over and napalmed. However, it lives on, taunting those who do everything in their power to deny its existence.

The truth is that all of the dietary advice we have been bombarded with for the last forty years about the dangers of fat consumption has been utterly and completely and damagingly wrong. Of course there will be a backlash against the Swedish report – there always is. Various powerful idiots, sorry experts, will be pushed in front of cameras to make various denunciations of the Swedes and their damaging and dangerous conclusions. The strings of these idiots will be jerked in unison by faceless marketers in companies that promote low fat spreads, and the like. Yes, you know who you are.

And yes, this stuff does make me angry. It is killing people prematurely, millions of people, all around the world.

1: http://coconutoil.com/sweden-becomes-first-western-nation-to-reject-low-fat-diet-dogma-in-favor-of-low-carb-high-fat-nutrition/

2: http://www.dietdoctor.com/swedish-expert-committee-low-carb-diet-effective-weight-loss

P.S:

Question: ‘What do you call five hundred dieticians lying at the bottom of the ocean?’
Answer: ‘A good start.’

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Author: Dr. Malcolm Kendrick
Author URL: https://drmalcolmkendrick.wordpress.com
Original Article Location: https://drmalcolmkendrick.org/2013/10/20/sweden-gets-is-right/