There was a programme on TV tonight, in the supposedly high-brow Horizon series, purporting to tell us The Truth About Fat. It didn’t.
It told us things it didn’t mean to tell us, for instance that science still subscribes to archaic systems of research and that there is, as ever, a predominance of reductionist thinking out there. It told us that research is often conducted by suitably studious men in white coats peering through heavy-framed spectacles, and it reinforced my own understanding that most of this kind of science can’t see the wood for the trees. It even told us that there is at least one person who claims to understand the psychology of why we get fat, but whose size suggests that she is a poor advert for her own findings.
But it didn’t tell us the truth about fat.
If you are going to get at the truth of something, you have to be brave enough to ask the right questions. In the absence of the right questions, there are no meaningful answers, only more confusion. Confusion leads to more of the wrong questions and ever more fantastical answers. Before we know it, we are all tumbling down the rabbit hole into the parallel universe that some now see as the real world. It isn’t. It is the land of the White Rabbit, the Cheshire Cat and the Mad Hatter, to say nothing of all the characters in tonight’s documentary.
The truth about fat is simple: real fat does not make us fat. What makes us fat is sugar, more particularly modern refined sugar like glucose-fructose syrup, sucrose and carbohydrates that turn to sugar in the body. The main cause of obesity (supported by a variety of subsidiary causes) is the over-consumption of nutritionally empty, processed, refined sugar-laden foods that disrupt hormonal balance and throw internal body systems into turmoil, with obvious results. It’s that simple – modern processed food makes us fat.
A traditional diet, based on fresh, seasonal, uncontaminated whole foods, such as pasture-fed meat and eggs, raw milk, butter, cream and cheese, as well as a few organically grown fruits and vegetables and a small amount of grains (preferably in the form of sourdough breads), will keep us fit, healthy and slim for life. Deviate from this into a diet laced with sugar, refined flour, pasteurised dairy products, fizzy drinks and factory candy bars, and you are on the road to nowhere, apart from the outsize shop, the diabetes clinic, the pharmacy counter and the cancer ward.
Don’t take my word for it though. All I am doing is listening to those who will not go down the rabbit hole. There is enough information out there to fill a good sized library, but you won’t find it openly displayed. This kind of truth hurts. In particular, it hurts the food giants who make such huge profits from selling us killer foods. But, as they used to say, the truth is out there. All you have to do is look for it. In the light of the current debate, and to find the truth about fat that wasn’t divulged during the hour-long Horizon programme, start with the link below – at least it will explain what the programme was not able to:
And keep away from the rabbit hole . . .