Obesity is linked to more that 60 chronic diseases, and it is common knowledge that there is an epidemic of obesity around the world. Today, two thirds of adults, and nearly one third of children in America struggle with it. It seems like in the last 30 years, human waist lines have simply grown out of proportion. And if obesity rates stay consistent, by 2030, 51% of the American population will potentially be obese.
As far as dieting, or losing weight, people take two approaches that don't work for the long term.
Dr. John A. McDougall, MD
Physician, nutrition expert and author, "The Starch Solution"
And so, of course they say diets don't work. One approach is they try and starve themselves, and be hungry all the time. These are portion controlled diets, typical diets that people follow. They don't work because you're hungry all the time, and you can't tolerate that kind of pain. The alternative is the make yourself sick diets. And those are the high protein, high fat, low carbohydrate diets.
Over the last few decades, there has been an explosion of commercial diets in the U.S. Most of them revolving around the idea that eating few carbs, and lots of animal protein helps with weight loss, all orchestrated by multi-million dollar, ingenious advertising campaigns and celebrity endorsements. As a result, nowadays, most people associate carbs with weight gain. For many years, I worked really hard to cut my carbs, without any long term results, and without fully understanding why I was doing it. I wanted to find out what the latest science had to say about these low carb diets.
Robert Atkins, some years ago, in 1973, published his first book, in which he argued that it's not the problem with the fat, it's not the problem with the protein, but mostly fat, he said that's not the problem, the problem is we consume too much carbohydrates. And he made that point, we should be consuming low carb diet, he said. And then many of the other people wrote the same thing. The South Beach diet, is only a copycat, for the most part, of the Atkins diet. The Zone diet is basically a copycat, different name. The Blood type diet in many regards is also a copycat. Good Calories Bad Calories, Dairy 12, same thing. Even Marco Paleo, and I have to say, Omnivore's dilemma.
The Paleo diet in this day and time is a copycat. They may give it different names they may try to throw out you know, different types of arguments for why that's right, they're all wrong.
Dr. T. Colin Campbell, PHD
Professor Emeritus of Nutritional Biochemistry at Cornell University - Author of "The China Study"
Everybody wants to hear good news about their bad habits, so when you tell people that you can eat all the lobster you want, you can have steak, and eggs, and you know, some include dairy, some don't include dairy, but that's sounds good to people, because it sounds less restrictive.
Dr. Pamela A. Popper, PHD, ND
Diet expert and founder of The Wellness Forum
Over the last few decades, there has been an explosion of commercial diets in the U.S. Most of them revolving around the idea that eating few carbs, and lots of animal protein helps with weight loss, all orchestrated by multi-million dollar, ingenious advertising campaigns and celebrity endorsements. As a result, nowadays, most people associate carbs with wight gain. For many years, I worked really hard to cut my carbs, without any long term results, and without fully understanding why I was doing it. I wanted to find out what the latest science had to say about these low carb diets.
