Are fats or carbs the real villains?
Adam’s journal
For as long as I can remember, I’ve tried to control the amount of fat in my diet. But, as teenagers are wont to do, my 15-year-old son, Theo, recently questioned that approach.
“You don’t need to limit fat,” he said, in that irritatingly certain tone that teens use to educate their parents. “Carbohydrates and sugar are the real issues.”
He went on to cite the work of the food author Michael Pollan — “The Omnivore’s Dilemma, In Defense of Food” — in support of his theory. I responded that, yes, it’s important to limit one’s intake of sugars and refined carbohydrates, but you also need to restrict the amount of fat you take in.
So who’s right?
Dr. Prescott prescribes
You know that I’d help you out if I could here. But sometimes, father doesn’t know best.
Starting in the 1970s, mounting evidence seemed to show that a diet high in saturated fats was a key risk factor for heart disease. Although research studies focused on saturated fats — mainly those derived from animals — many generalized this to mean all fats.
This oversimplification of dietary research led to a surge in foods that, while low in fat, were rich in refined carbohydrates and sugars. Think sweetened yogurts, baked potato chips and fat-free cookies.
Since that time, we’ve continued to see rates of heart disease (and obesity and diabetes) surge. Unfortunately, it looks like our efforts to avoid cardiovascular disease have only stoked its fires.
Subsequent research has repeatedly underscored that not all fats are bad for us. For example, a new study in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine found that when people replaced 5 percent of their daily calories from saturated fats (fat found in meat and milk products like cheese) with foods high in monounsaturated fat (things like olive oil and avocado), total mortality dropped by 27 percent, as did death rates from heart disease, cancer and neurodegenerative disease. The study, which tracked 126,000 men and women over a period of 32 years, also found a 13 percent drop in mortality when
BILLY GRAHAM
You’re right; I’m not a financial adviser — although I’ve been greatly helped in my ministry by men and women of integrity who were highly skilled in financial matters, and were also deeply committed to Jesus Christ. Perhaps God will lead you to someone like this who can advise you. The Bible subjects made a similar switch from saturated to polyunsaturated fats like those found in fish and nuts.
But when the saturated fats were replaced with transfats (the partially hydrogenated oils often found in foods like doughnuts and chips), mortality rates remained essentially unchanged. And replacing saturated fats with carbohydrates had only a marginal effect on total mortality — and none on cardiovascular disease death rates.
In other words, if you want to lower your chances of cardiovascular disease and death, your best approach is not to cut all fats out of your diet. Rather, it’s to replace “bad” fats (saturated and trans fats) with “good” ones (olive oil and those found in things like avocados, nuts and fish).
Indeed, in 2015 the Dietary Guidelines Committee sent recommendations to the federal government that, for the first time in 35 years, contained no upper limits on total fat. Interestingly, these developments are coming at a time when research is increasingly showing that a low-carb diet is also better for weight loss than a low-fat diet.
None of this is to say that highfat diets are always good for you — or that low-fat diets are always a bad thing. Instead of focusing on total fat, it’s important to look at what you’re eating: Try to get as much of your diet as possible from natural sources and avoid processed foods whenever possible. Oh, and hats off to Theo for his nutritional expertise. Maybe he’ll see this on online, and then he can tweet about how much more he knows than
his dad! says, “Plans fail for lack of counsel” (Proverbs 15:22).
At the same time, the Bible wisely warns us against taking on too much debt (especially unsecured debt). In ancient Israel, in fact, all outstanding debts were to be canceled every seven years, in order to keep people from accumulating too much indebtedness (see Deuteronomy 15:1-2). As a practical matter, if our debts become too great, they’ll preoccupy us more and more, and end up taking over our lives. The Bible warns, “The borrower is slave to the lender” (Proverbs 22:7).
The real issue, however, is this: what place do things have in your life? Have your possessions become so important to you that they now possess you, rather than you possessing them? Are you more concerned about impressing others than living wisely? Most of all, have things taken the place God should have in your lives?
Don’t wait for a crisis; now is the time to reorder your lives. Begin by turning to Jesus Christ and committing your lives and your possessions to Him. Then take practical steps to cut back on your spending and repay your debts as quickly as possible.