Relatively flat in the '60s and '70s, obesity began to increase after 1980, the year the "low fat" Dietary Guidelines for Americas became the cornerstone of U.S. nutrition policy. If you limit fat and foods that contain fat - like red meat - you must increase something and for a majority of Americans that something has been carbohydrates.
For more than 30 years, we've been told to emphasize foods that raise blood sugar: Pasta, cereal, fruit, fruit juices, and other carbohydrates. As a result, we have increased our consumption of grain products, breakfast cereal, breakfast pastry, soybeans, sugar, high fructose corn syrup, fruit juices and a host of "low fat" products displaying the American Heart Association low fat "seal of approval."
Carbohydrates elevate blood sugar; protein and fat do not. Elevated blood sugar is associated with higher levels of the hormone insulin. Insulin is the fat storage hormone. Insulin escorts blood sugar or glucose into our cells and converts the excess into body-made-fat. While calories from protein and fat are used for cell membrane structure and building hormones, carbs are only used for energy - and the liver converts the excess into fat.
As long as blood sugar and insulin remains elevated, stored fat (adipose tissue) is locked up - not available as energy to the body's trillions of hungry cells. Cellular starvation - a result of eating excess carbs - is the cause of obesity.
Eating too much is not the cause of obesity. (A lean person with a "healthy appetite" is never accused of eating too much.) The problem: We are eating excess food that raises blood sugar and insulin levels which result in fat storage and cellular starvation. Cellular starvation leads to hunger and cravings for more carbohydrate.
It is what we eat; the quality of the calories and how those calories affect our hormones and metabolism. If you emphasize high quality animal protein and natural fat, you will not get fat. Eat fat and your body burns fat. Eat excess carbs and your body makes, stores, and locks up fat.
The CDC in Atlanta is calling the the obesity and diabetes epidemics "dangerous runaway trains." In 49 states, the obesity rate is over 20 percent. Heart disease has not gone down as promised and heart failure is already the #1 Medicare expenditure.
The first step in ending obesity and type II diabetes is revising the "low fat" high carbohydrate Dietary Guidelines for Americans - up for revision in 2015.
