Over the past year, not a single US state has seen a decline in obesity rates. Instead, the incidence of obesity has risen in 16 states, and 12 states now have obesity rates over 30 percent! A mere four years ago, only one state had such a high rate of obesity. At this pace, the rest of the nation will soon catch up... Two-thirds of all US states already have obesity rates exceeding 25 percent.
Overall, 75 percent of American adults and nearly one-third of children and teens are currently obese or overweight…
It should be quite clear to everyone that whatever agricultural policies, public health policies, and dietary recommendations we've employed in the US so far have been and still are severely flawed, because they're not making even the slightest dent in this epidemic.
So, what's missing?
Two Keys to Curb Out-of-Control Obesity…
I believe there are two primary dietary recommendations that could make all the difference in the world. Unfortunately, they're both extremely unpopular because accepting these recommendations means cutting profitability for the food industry, and major health agencies having to confess that they've been misleading you for a very long time...
The two primary keys I'm talking about are:
- Severely restricting carbohydrates (sugars, fructose, and grains) in your diet, and
- Increasing healthy fat consumption
While health authorities insist that sugar is fine "in moderation," and that grains are an essential part of a healthy diet and can actually help you prevent heart disease, they fail to take into consideration that:
- Fructose is the NUMBER ONE source of calories in the US. This means it's far from "moderate," and this is not at all surprising when you consider that fructose, primarily in the form of cheap high fructose corn syrup (HFCS), is in just about everything—even food items you'd never expect would need it, including diet foods and 'enhanced' water products. Even most infant formulas contain the sugar equivalent of one can of Coca-Cola!
- Refined carbohydrates (breakfast cereals, bagels, waffles etc) quickly breaks down to sugar, increase your insulin levels, and cause insulin resistance, which is the number one underlying factor of nearly every chronic disease known to man, including heart disease
They've been equally wrong about fat.
Fats in general are considered the dietary villains, especially saturated fat, which many people still claim will increase your risk of heart attacks and cardiovascular disease. However, this is simply untrue. The only really dangerous fat out there is trans fat (margarine, vegetable oils), which for a long time were touted as the answer to that heart-harming saturated fat. Talk about living in a topsy-turvy world...
Saturated fats are indeed good for you.
They provide the building blocks for your cell membranes and a variety of hormones and hormone like substances that are essential to your health, and saturated fats from animal and vegetable sources (such as meat, dairy, certain oils, and tropical plants like coconut) provide a concentrated source of energy in your diet—a source of energy that is far more ideal than carbohydrates, and that's why I chose these two specific "keys" in combination, because when you cut down on carbs, you generally need to increase your fat consumption.
Is Fructose the Reason Why You're Overweight?
If everyone could easily keep their total grams of fructose to below about 25 grams per day then I believe we would start seeing some radical changes in these crazy statistics in short order. But the key issue is that while that is theoretically possible, precious few people are actually doing it, and the reliance on processed food is the primary reason for this failure.
This is largely because the majority of fructose is hidden in all these processed foods so that it becomes very difficult to see just how much fructose you're consuming every single day.
The average American now consumes 1/3 of a pound of sugar DAILY. That's five ounces or 150 grams, half of which is fructose, which is 300 percent more than the amount that will trigger biochemical havoc. And many Americans consume more than twice that amount!
To put it into even further perspective, based on USDA estimates the average American consumes the equivalent of about TWO TONS of sugar during their lifetime. So is it really any wonder that the United States is the fattest of 33 countries, with a whopping 75 percent of Americans crowding into the overweight category?
I think that this post sums up the health crisis for me. All the evidence shows the epidemic exploding. It shows that the conventional wisdom is failing.
Mercola points the finger at the main culprit - Fructose. HFCS was introduced in the 1980's this was when the epidemic started.
Fructose is now in all processed food.
This reminds me of Dr John Snow who showed that a typhus epidemic in London was centred around ONE pump. All who drank from that pump, got sick and most died. The establishment of the day knew that disease was not carried by water but by Smells - The Miasma Theory! - they controlled the debate and shut Snow down. But they did find that sewage had contaminated the well and they did lock the well. The local epidemic stopped.
There was no Germ Theory at the time. Snow did not know why the sewage in the water was killing people. But it was clear that it was.
We know more now. We know that Fructose makes us fat. We know that animal fat does not. We know that we eat a lot of fructose. We know that fructose is now in all processed foods.
So when are we going to connect the dots?
When are we also going to give up on the Miasma Theory of our time?
I am sure that we will and then watch out all those who use HFCS. If I know this, so do they. It was the same with tobacco. They knew the real threat. But they confused the public.
How do these people go to work every day knowing what they do? When the public finally get it, they will be turned on.
