The first hominids evolved over millions of years, feeding on what Nature gave them: fish, meat, eggs, berries and aerial parts of plants. The development of the human brain would have been favored by a diet that essentially provided fats and proteins extracted from the animals that primitive man hunted and fished.
The introduction in 1977 of the new dietary guidelines for Americans, based on a high-carbohydrate, low-fat diet, precisely the opposite of the diet we've had for millions of years, has had a disastrous effect on our health.
Obesity, type 2 diabetes, metabolic syndrome and cancer have been increasing rapidly in the population of most Western countries, reaching levels never seen before.
In fact, it is common to consider that saturated fats are the main cause of obesity, cardiovascular disease and diabetes, but in reality, there is no study to prove it.
This idea that saturated fats are the main enemy of our heart health came from a study carried out in the 50s of the twentieth century on the relationship between the consumption of saturated fats and the incidence of cardiovascular disease in the population of dozens of countries.
Everyone believed the conclusions of the author of this study, Ancel Keys, and no one noticed that he had eliminated from his statistics countries like Norway and the Netherlands, which, despite having high consumption of saturated fats, had a very low incidence of cardiovascular problems.
On the other hand, it also excluded countries such as Chile from the study, which despite consuming few saturated fats had a high incidence of this type of disease.
The conclusions, made at the expense of manipulating the results, have dictated nutritional guidelines on fat in recent decades. In particular, they made us fear saturated fats in meat, dairy and eggs.
Numerous studies show that carbohydrates are more harmful to health than saturated fats, increasing blood sugar and cholesterol levels, and promoting type 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease and cancer.
Everything leads us to believe that a well-formulated, low-carbohydrate diet improves blood glucose, cholesterol and triglycerides and reduces inflammatory processes, avoiding the use of medication.
Sweden was the first western country to issue guidelines that reject the low-fat diet dogma in favor of reducing carbohydrates and increasing fats in the diet.
This change in nutritional guidelines followed the publication of a study carried out by the Swedish Independent Council for Health Technology Assessment, after reviewing 16.000 scientific papers published up to May 2013.
This resulted in the proposal of a new food pyramid, recommended since 2013, where carbohydrate suppliers such as cereals, tubers and pulses are at the top and vegetables, with almost residual values of this macronutrient, are the basis of food.
We get fat because we eat too many carbohydrates. Rather than looking at the fat content of foods, we should rather look at the sugar and other carbohydrate content.
Author: Ana Carvalhas is a nutritionist
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