.gif "IP Gear")
mountaindog1
IFBB Pro / Featured Member / Kilo Klub
IFBB PROS
Featured Member
Kilo Klub Member
Registered
- Joined
- Jan 8, 2007
- Messages
- 2,579
I copied this from an article Jonny Bowden wrote - another one of my favorite authors. This is huge. You guys who read alot no doubt know who Dr Weil is.
===============================================
You know Dr. Andrew Weil, right? The grandfatherly, kindly guy with the big beard who is the "face" of integrative medicine in America? The Harvard trained doctor, author of "Spontaneous Healing," editor-in-chief of the journal Integrative Medicine and the founder of the program in Integrative Medicine at the University of Arizona among dozens of other accomplishments.
Well, guess what? Dr. Weil has had an epiphany.
Or at least that's what it seems like based on a wonderful -- yet completely surprising -- article he recently wrote for the Huffington Post.
Before I tell you what he said, let me tell you why it's startling, and also why it's so important.
Weil has long been the champion of low-fat, vegetarian, soy-based diets -- as close as you can get to "conventional" wisdom when it comes to diet. Avoid meat, avoid saturated fat, lower your cholesterol, all the usual stuff.
So when I began reading the article, which begins with a discussion of a famous Arizona restaurant called Heart Attack Grill, where waitresses in nurses' uniforms serve up single, double, triple and quadruple "bypass burgers" stuffed with meat and dripping with cheese, and where the the motto "Taste Worth Dying For!" hangs prominently in the restaurant -- I expected the usual condemnation of meat, saturated fat and cholesterol.
What I, and the readers, got was something quite different.
The Heart Attack Grill's concept is that saturated fat in beef clogs arteries and hamburger meat is among the most heart-damaging foods we can consume. That, it appears, is a given. There's only one problem. And I'll let Weil tell it to you in his own words: "It's not true."
"The saturated fat ... in this menu won't kill you," he writes in the article. "It may even be the safest element of the meal."
It gets better.
"If you visit [the Grill]," Weil wrote, "I implore you to steer clear of the white-flour buns, the sugary sodas and the piles of 'Flatliner Fries' that accompany the burgers in the restaurants signature plates. This is precisely the sort of processed-carbohydate-intensive meal that ... is propelling the epidemic of obesity and diabetes in America."
Wow. Let that sit for a minute. America's most trusted doc, Mr. Vegetarian, Mr. High-Carb Low-Fat diet, is saying what? That we've been demonizing meat and saturated fat all this time and really, what's making us fat and sick is carbs? (Or at least the wrong kind of carbs?) Yup.
This is literally a "Nixon in China" moment. For those of you too young to remember, President Nixon was a rabid anti-communist with impeccable credentials in that area. Whatever people thought of him, no one on the planet ever accused him of being a tree-loving liberal or a friend of the communists. Yet Nixon was the man who opened the door to diplomatic relations with China.
Many people who lived through that time -- myself included -- believed that no one else could have done that. It was precisely because of Nixon's impeccable credentials as a patriot and American that he was able to reach out to "Red China" and pave the way to the resumption of diplomatic relations.
Dr. Andrew Weil coming to the realization that we've been wrongly demonizing saturated fat all this time, and that diets high in processed carbs are the real culprit in the health and obesity crisis, is a similar revelation.
Let me be clear -- Weil still has his problems with eating factory-farmed meat, as do I. These problems have to do not only with ethics and compassion, but also with health. It's hard to recommend mystery meat that's been shot full of antibiotics, steroids and hormones, and is loaded with inflammatory omega-6 fats.
Weil understands that factory-farmed meat and grass-fed meat are two completely different "animals," and that there may be a way to eat meat in an ethical way, and that in any case, it's not saturated fat and meat that's the problem in our diet.
Let me also be clear that Weil hasn't for a moment abandoned his belief, which I share, that we should be eating tons more vegetables and fruits. But really, has that ever been in question, even among the most partisan low-carb advocates? I don't think so.
I commend Dr. Weil. He may have come to this realization a bit later than some of my other colleagues, but the fact that he did -- and that he publicly proclaimed it in a widely-circulated article -- is worth shouting about.
Call me a wide-eyed optimist, but I'd like to think this terrific article is just one more nail in the coffin of the "saturated fat and cholesterol cause heart disease" idiocy that has consumed America and driven our eating habits since the '70s. Welcome aboard, Dr. Weil!
BOOYAH!!!! (I wrote that myself)
===============================================
You know Dr. Andrew Weil, right? The grandfatherly, kindly guy with the big beard who is the "face" of integrative medicine in America? The Harvard trained doctor, author of "Spontaneous Healing," editor-in-chief of the journal Integrative Medicine and the founder of the program in Integrative Medicine at the University of Arizona among dozens of other accomplishments.
Well, guess what? Dr. Weil has had an epiphany.
Or at least that's what it seems like based on a wonderful -- yet completely surprising -- article he recently wrote for the Huffington Post.
Before I tell you what he said, let me tell you why it's startling, and also why it's so important.
Weil has long been the champion of low-fat, vegetarian, soy-based diets -- as close as you can get to "conventional" wisdom when it comes to diet. Avoid meat, avoid saturated fat, lower your cholesterol, all the usual stuff.
So when I began reading the article, which begins with a discussion of a famous Arizona restaurant called Heart Attack Grill, where waitresses in nurses' uniforms serve up single, double, triple and quadruple "bypass burgers" stuffed with meat and dripping with cheese, and where the the motto "Taste Worth Dying For!" hangs prominently in the restaurant -- I expected the usual condemnation of meat, saturated fat and cholesterol.
What I, and the readers, got was something quite different.
The Heart Attack Grill's concept is that saturated fat in beef clogs arteries and hamburger meat is among the most heart-damaging foods we can consume. That, it appears, is a given. There's only one problem. And I'll let Weil tell it to you in his own words: "It's not true."
"The saturated fat ... in this menu won't kill you," he writes in the article. "It may even be the safest element of the meal."
It gets better.
"If you visit [the Grill]," Weil wrote, "I implore you to steer clear of the white-flour buns, the sugary sodas and the piles of 'Flatliner Fries' that accompany the burgers in the restaurants signature plates. This is precisely the sort of processed-carbohydate-intensive meal that ... is propelling the epidemic of obesity and diabetes in America."
Wow. Let that sit for a minute. America's most trusted doc, Mr. Vegetarian, Mr. High-Carb Low-Fat diet, is saying what? That we've been demonizing meat and saturated fat all this time and really, what's making us fat and sick is carbs? (Or at least the wrong kind of carbs?) Yup.
This is literally a "Nixon in China" moment. For those of you too young to remember, President Nixon was a rabid anti-communist with impeccable credentials in that area. Whatever people thought of him, no one on the planet ever accused him of being a tree-loving liberal or a friend of the communists. Yet Nixon was the man who opened the door to diplomatic relations with China.
Many people who lived through that time -- myself included -- believed that no one else could have done that. It was precisely because of Nixon's impeccable credentials as a patriot and American that he was able to reach out to "Red China" and pave the way to the resumption of diplomatic relations.
Dr. Andrew Weil coming to the realization that we've been wrongly demonizing saturated fat all this time, and that diets high in processed carbs are the real culprit in the health and obesity crisis, is a similar revelation.
Let me be clear -- Weil still has his problems with eating factory-farmed meat, as do I. These problems have to do not only with ethics and compassion, but also with health. It's hard to recommend mystery meat that's been shot full of antibiotics, steroids and hormones, and is loaded with inflammatory omega-6 fats.
Weil understands that factory-farmed meat and grass-fed meat are two completely different "animals," and that there may be a way to eat meat in an ethical way, and that in any case, it's not saturated fat and meat that's the problem in our diet.
Let me also be clear that Weil hasn't for a moment abandoned his belief, which I share, that we should be eating tons more vegetables and fruits. But really, has that ever been in question, even among the most partisan low-carb advocates? I don't think so.
I commend Dr. Weil. He may have come to this realization a bit later than some of my other colleagues, but the fact that he did -- and that he publicly proclaimed it in a widely-circulated article -- is worth shouting about.
Call me a wide-eyed optimist, but I'd like to think this terrific article is just one more nail in the coffin of the "saturated fat and cholesterol cause heart disease" idiocy that has consumed America and driven our eating habits since the '70s. Welcome aboard, Dr. Weil!
BOOYAH!!!! (I wrote that myself)
