Magazine watch (and paradigm shift)

[Guest guest]

In Discover this month is an article talking about " What scientists believe you

should eat " featuring the views of Walter Willett. Willett published a " ground

breaking

paper in 1991 declaring trans-fats to be bad (controversial at the time). He

has made a new " food pyramid " .

This new pyramid basically reflects a lot of stuff on this list, such as

fat with every meal, few high-glycemic carbs, eat eggs, etc. The

one real difference is that he really feels the source of fat

is important, based in the Nurses Health Study -- the individuals

with high saturated fat (milk and meat) percentages did measurably

worse, and that this was correlated with the Lyon study. And that

this disagrees with what Uffe Ravnkov wrote in the " Cholesterol

Myths " .

I have two comments on that:

1. This IS the middle of a paradigm shift. The first was to low-fat,

now the shift is back to fat. It's pretty much shifted. Invest in

olive oil.

2. Willett strikes me as a careful researcher. I'm betting there IS

a real connection between saturated fat and disease in the Nurses

Study. But sheesh, that is ALL grain fed beef and milk cows we

are talking about. So they are catching up to us, not quite there

yet.

3. This article seemed to allude to the fact that heart disease dropped

somewhat in the '70s (as someone here said also). That was about

when wheat consumption hit a low too:

For nearly 100 years, per capita

wheat consumption had declined in the

U.S., as physical labor declined and diets

diversified. Wheat consumption had

dropped from over 225 pounds per person

in 1879 to 180 pounds in 1925, bottoming

out at 110 pounds in 1972.

(Agricultural Outlook/August 2000)

That may have been part of an overall carb

drop, or maybe just wheat, it doesn't say. But the article

DOES talk about the fact that overload on carbs (a pre-diabetic

condition of insulin resistance) does cause plaque (not fat).

Anyway, if you have a couple of bucks to splurge when

you are shopping this month, it's a good mag!

=============

Another big paradigm shift marker this month: Reader's Digest

(Feb) listed Celiac disease (basically advanced gluten intolerance)

as one of the TOP TEN non-diagnosed diseases in the US.

Remember, you heard it here first!

(I don't have the article, my market only has Jan still).

-- Heidi