Yes, I eat FAT

When I started this blog I wrote that I am not going to go into the specifics of the LCHF diet as it is so well documented elsewhere. And indeed it is. But I feel the need to highlight the HF as I suspect that many people don’t get past the LC.

I eat lots of fat, particularly diary and nuts, but also that in meat. It is not making me ill, it is apears to be making me healthier and it is fuelling everything I do, including both high intensity excersise and marathons.

I have noticed that many commentators see the first two words ‘low carb’ and imply that this means high protein.  There are so many articles in the press these days about people who have become ill on low-carb diets; read them and you quickly discover that the subjects have simply lowered the carbs in their diet (and they are now starving) or that they have also dramatically increased the protein in their diet which can be bad in several ways and still does not provide sufficient energy for active people. This is not what LCHF is advocating, not by a long shot.

I think that as a society we have a deep-rooted fear of the word FAT. We have been conditioned to imagine it clogging up our arteries and killing us. Only 5 years ago the Food Standards Agency showed us this short film do demonstrate the dangers of fat: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X89nb47O00g  Not only was this film ludicrously incorrect (the fat in the fridge was liquid but in the pipe it was solid!) but it stated that fat builds up in your arteries and kills you. It does not. This is so far from the truth that it beggars belief. 

We have this lovely idea that carbs fuel us and fat makes us fat. When our parents were young their parents knew different, and they were healthier back then.  And it seems the more an ethnic group retains the lifestyle of our ancestors (Masai, Eskimos, remote Mongolians), the less the prevalence of heart disease. Their diets may be lacking in some areas but they are not short of energy and they are not dying of heart disease like we are.

We have come so far off the evolutionary rails in such a short space of time!