The year 2011 has come to a close and before we welcome in 2012 (which I anticipate to be an AWESOME year for healthy low-carb living!) I think it’s important to look back on some of the best moments of the past twelve months. No, widespread acceptance of the high-fat, moderate protein, low-carb message has NOT taken place and we’re still many years away from that happening…although we’re inching closer to it becoming a reality each and every day. And while it can sometimes feel like nobody in the mainstream world of nutrition and health is really paying attention to the work so many of us are doing promoting livin’ la vida low-carb, along comes our first low-carb headline of 2011 I’ll highlight with 1. this June 2011 column by Dr. Oz where he mentions my famous trademark in the first paragraph–yeah baby, Dr. Oz knows who I am and the message I’m communicating to so many enthusiastic fans of the low-carb lifestyle on a daily basis! The low-carb message will not be denied.
By the way, as an aside (but a really interesting one), I received an e-mail invitation a couple of weeks ago from a producer at The Dr. Oz Show who wanted me to appear as a guest talking about food addiction. Awesome, they want somebody to articulate what it is like to have an addiction to food as I once did and then overcame it. NOPE! Unfortunately, what they wanted me to talk about was how it DOESN’T exist! Say what? Apparently they’re not reading my blog that closely because I wholeheartedly believe in the concept of food addiction, especially to carbohydrates which I had just blogged about regarding Jessica Biel that same week they contacted me. Needless to say, I turned them down because I’m not sacrificing what I truly believe in just to be on a popular national health television show watched by millions of television viewers. I do have a sense of integrity and ethics that would never allow me to make such a boneheaded decision no matter how alluring the offer. Plus, can you imagine how it would have been edited to make me look incredibly stupid? No thanks!
Anyway, back to 2011 and all of the support we saw in the mainstream press for low-carb living. WOW! When I wrote the “Top 10 Low-Carb Headlines Of 2010″ one year ago, I was thrilled by the increased positive attention being paid to this way of eating that so many of us love and adore for the incredible weight and health changes for the better it has made in us. But there were so many this year that I had to double that number to the Top 20 Low-Carb Headlines Of 2011! Incrementally, we are making a difference and I fully anticipate this kind of excellent coverage of support for saturated fat, promotion of real foods, the meteoric rise of the Paleo diet, the lack of scientific evidence for the low-fat diet, famous people turning to low-carb living, low-carb, high-fat food shortages because of increased demand, the effects of formerly incurable diseases being improved and reversed because of ketogenic diets, and so much more! It’s gonna be loads of fun to watch all of this unfold before our eyes in 2012, but let’s take a quick look back on the other 19 low-carb headlines of 2011:
2. Saturated fat: Not as bad as you think
While it’s not a perfect article by any means, it does articulate that you should be eating at least some saturated fat. This is a far cry from the don’t-you-dare-eat-saturated-fat-or-you’ll-die message we’ve been hearing from so-called health “experts” for decades. When an RD starts talking about keeping saturated fat in your diet, then you know a radical shift is beginning to take place in nutritional education (which makes sense now that this January 2010 study from Dr. Ronald Krauss has virtually vindicated saturated fat). Again, the column has it’s flaws telling people to limit their consumption of saturated fat, but now it’s not an all or nothing proposition anymore. And that’s a good healthy start.
3. USDA finds in favor of grass-fed cows
Because of overzealous vegan activists, red meat tends to be labeled as the bad guy in health for allegedly being a culprit in heart disease, obesity and cancer. And yet all of these studies examining “red meat” tend to focus on grain-fed cows and processed meats. But what about grass-fed cows? Do these same health issues that are oft-repeated in the media exist from meat that comes from humanely-treated, grass-eating cows provided by your local farmer? Well this story show we’ve got an unlikely ally in the real food debate–the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA). As much as we rail against them for their asinine Dietary Guidelines, the fact is they’ve got it right on this one. The environmental impact of grass-fed cows raised outdoors in a pasture field is minimal compared with factory farm-raised cattle. The sustainability factor of creating grass-fed meats and this newfound support from the USDA might make it become more mainstream in the years to come. Now if we could just get them to promote this real, whole food in the 2015 Dietary Guidelines in a few years.
4. Fad diet is thousands of years old
Paleo diets continued to make a strong showing in mainstream media coverage in 2011, including this one featuring a fellow diet and health blogger named Melissa Joulwan from “The Clothes Make The Girl” blog (you might recall I recently reviewed her new book called Well Fed). The column did a fabulous job of promoting what Paleo eating is–no grain, dairy, processed foods, sugar or legumes–and to eat like our hunter-gatherer ancestors. Melissa articulated some excellent points, including how she was scared to eat fat at first which is a very real fear of people beginning a high-fat, low-carb type of diet for the first time. Additionally, she explained how it’s not just sugar but foods that turn to sugar in the body that people need to be concerned about and that’s a solid message for people to be exposed to. This column was definitely one of the bright spots of 2011 for Paleo low-carb living!
5. Deadly cost of low-fat dieting
After years of getting a free pass as the holy grail of all nutritional plans despite the lack of evidence to support it as a sustainable way to manage weight and health, it seems the low-fat diet fad is finally nearing its end. You gotta love it when you hear British doctors stating that a low-fat diet “lacks vital vitamins and minerals” that lead to “long-term problems” with health. They add that they are concerned about the “dangerous” trend to eat low-fat and low-calorie rather than focusing on foods that will nourish their bodies. This message has been sorely needed for the past thirty years and suppose it is better late than never. I’d LOVE to see these same kind of warning bells being sound by American physicians and dietitians who are sick and tired of seeing the same old failed results of their low-fat diet advice! That day of reckoning will be here sooner rather than later as obesity, diabetes, heart disease, cancer and other chronic health issues persist.
6. The low-fat food myth and other fictions
It wasn’t a good year for conventional wisdom. This Australian newspaper takes a look at a lot of the bad dietary advice we’ve been given over the years and shares why it is dead wrong. Things like “eat low-fat foods,” “coconut oil is bad for you,” “eggs will increase your cholesterol,” and “red meat is bad for you.” Sure, there are some strange statements in the column (i.e. “We still need to eat carbohydrates”), but they push people towards the foods that are less bad for them. Again, it’s an excellent move in the direction of healthy high-fat, low-carb living.
7. Bikini Model Christine Teigen’s Top 5 Low-Carb Meals
I couldn’t have been happier to see this column featuring the favorite low-carb recipes of a swimsuit model named Chrissy Tiegen (who was named “Rookie of the Year” in the 2010 Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue). She’s a big-time fan of eating low-carb and not the low-fat version of it like so many in the entertainment/Hollywood arena tend to do. If you follow her Twitter feed, then you’ll see she’s a lover of meat and doesn’t take too kindly to vegans telling her what she can and can’t eat. LOVE THIS! My favorite low-carb recipe from her is the “Stuffed Red Bell Peppers”…but they all look incredible! See more of Chrissy’s recipes at her “So Delushious!” blog (I love the tag line of her blog: “Personal random ramblings from a girl who loves bacon and can’t be fat”). I’m working on getting her on my podcast for an interview in 2012.
8. Low-carb diet may help overweight girls beat obesity risk
As much as we hear about childhood obesity and trying to find a cure for it, low-carb diets have up until this point been all but rejected as too “extreme” to use in overweight kids. But this research found a reduced-carbohydrate diet produced great weight loss even when carb counts were as high as 43 percent of calories. Can you imagine how much better they’d do if carbohydrates were reduced even more? Getting adolescents off of the sugary, carbohydrate-rich junk and fast foods would make a huge difference in reducing obesity rates. Unfortunately, the simplistic message of “Let’s Move” promoted by well-meaning people like First Lady Michelle Obama just isn’t the answer.
9. Exceptional rise in butter consumption
After four decades of decline in butter sales in the Scandinavian country of Finland, butter sales actually INCREASED in 2011 thanks to the increased popularity of low-carb, high-fat (LCHF) diets taking place in that region of the world. People have stopped consuming margarine and going back to what their grandparents ate–real butter! Can you imagine how the American media would respond if butter consumption rose to an average of 7 pounds a year? I know I personally eat a lot more than that and wouldn’t touch margarine with a ten-foot pole. Could this trend come to the United States? I sure hope so!
10. Butter shortage in Norway as low-carb-crazed dieters devour country’s stockpile
Meanwhile, in neighboring Norway butter has become such a hot commodity that they’ve now run out of butter! Holy cow! Sales soared in October and November along with a reduction in production due to a wet summer and now their enthusiasm for LCHF has led to this rather precarious predicament. Enterprising marketers are attempting to sell butter there on the black market for around $13 which seems absurd to Americans where butter is plentiful. Again, could you imagine having a butter SHORTAGE in the United States? How wonderful would that be if it was because more people are eating low-carb, high-fat? Of course, there’s always coconut oil. If you missed comedian Stephen Colbert’s classic take on the Norway butter shortage, then click here and be prepared to laugh your head off! This is super exposure for our message.
11. Facebook top 2011 search for Google Sweden
After those last two stories, this one should come as no surprise. In Sweden where LCHF has become a household name thanks to the great work of pioneers there like Dr. Annika Dahlqvist and Dr. Andreas Eenfeldt (who will be a part of my special “Encore Week” best of 2011 podcasts next week on “The Livin’ La Vida Low-Carb Show”), one of the top Google searches there in 2011 was for low-carb, high-fat diets. WOO HOO! Congratulations to the enthusiastic LCHF bloggers and promoters of this way of eating there for making such a strong statement in the nutritional culture there. My dream is to see that happen in the United States taking the lead of our Swedish friends which is why I started my “Eat Like A Swede” blog this year. The closest thing we’re seeing is the exponential rise in Google searches for “Paleo Diet.” And that’s not such a bad thing either.
12. Are Low Carb Diets Bad for the Brain?
If you only read the headline, then you would think this column is anti-low-carb. But read closer…the conclusion is that eating low-carb ketogenic diets does NOT harm brain health. Of course, we knew that already since low-carb neurosurgeon Dr. Larry McCleary has said on my podcast that ketones are the preferred fuel for the brain. So why wouldn’t you eat low-carb, high-fat? DUH!
13. Low-carbohydrate diets look good for the prevention and treatment of cancer
One of the great people we have working on our side in the mainstream media is Dr. John Briffa in the UK (who will be joining us as a guest speaker on The Low-Carb Cruise in May 2012). Dr. Briffa is a physician who understands the purpose of carbohydrate-restriction and communicates key research that backs up this stance. This article is a fine example of such reporting as it relates to the relationship between low-carb diets and cancer.
14. Low-Carb, High-Protein Diet Slows Cancer Growth In Mice, Study Finds
Here’s yet another story on a study of low-carb diets and cancer looking at mice that was published in the June 14, 2011 issue of Cancer Research that confirms what Dr. Eugene Fine is showing in his RECHARGE trial at the Einstein College of Medicine. Reducing carbohydrates starves cancer cells and slows the growth of malignant tumors. I wrote about much of this research on cancer in my second book 21 Life Lessons From Livin’ La Vida Low-Carb.
15. Low-carb, high-fat diets add no arterial health risks to obese
That low-carb, high-fat Atkins diet is gonna clog your arteries! If I had a dime for every time I’ve heard this one uttered over the years, then I’d be a bazillionaire by now. But this useless bit of information couldn’t be more wrong according to two studies that came out of Johns Hopkins in 2011. They found no harmful vascular changes from eating this way and weight loss was more efficient than those who consumed the low-fat diet. The researcher Kerry Stewart noted that the “overemphasis on low-fat diets has likely contributed to the obesity epidemic in the United States by encouraging an overconsumption of foods high in carbohydrates.” Ya think?
16. Intermittent, Low-Carbohydrate Diets More Successful Than Standard Dieting, Study Finds
Although I’m not so sure about the intermittent aspect of eating a low-carb diet, it’s good to see that this on again, off again low-carb diet outperformed the low-calorie diets for weight loss and insulin control. They claim that eating low-carb twice weekly will give you these benefits, but what if people did it 6-7 days weekly? But in the spirit of incrementalism, I’d love it if people ate low-carb at least two times a week…it’s a start.
17. Modified Atkins Diet Shows Promise as Treatment for Epileptic Children in Indian Clinical Trial
I first shared about the work Dr. Eric Kossoff is doing with using a modified Atkins approach for treating epilepsy in Episode 367 of my podcast. The effectiveness of the ketogenic diet for children having seizures continues to manifest itself in studies like this one out of India. When we move the focus away from weight loss (which is a nice side effect of healthy high-fat, low-carb diets like Atkins) and on to the health improvements that happen from eating this way like on diseases like epilepsy, I think it becomes quite obvious that this isn’t some passing fad that’s harming our health as it is often mischaracterized by those who oppose it. These kind of stories have to make people second guess whether to believe all of the hyperbole they’ve been hearing about low-carb diets. It’s nothing but great exposure for the low-carb lifestyle in my eyes.
Well, gee, thanks for your permission for us to eat this way, American Diabetes Association (ADA)! Four years after making the proclamation that diabetics can consume a low-carb diet for weight loss for up to one year, they’re still harping on that message and bragging about how they’re the ONLY major health organization to show support for low-carb diets. And yet, they still only see low-carb as a weight loss tool and not as an actual therapy for treating diabetes. The great low-carb diabetes physician Dr. Mary Vernon is quoted in the column stating this position by the ADA is “not enough and it isn’t respectful enough of how effective this is as a change in patients”–especially those with Type 2 diabetes. While I’m glad the ADA promotes low-carb diets at all even if it is for weight loss, can you imagine how much more of an impact they would have on the actual blood sugar control of diabetics if they promoted this way of eating for treating their diabetes? But as we saw with the ADA’s refusal to publish Judy Barnes Baker’s low-carb cookbook, we’ve still got a long way to go.
19. Food Trends and Eating Habits in 2011
Can you believe what landed at #3? They proclaim that “low-carb diets rule” citing the top four “fasting rising” diets on Google are all low-carb ones. Granted, not all of them are high-fat, low-carb diets, but it’s good exposure for the message of carbohydrate restriction. If we can get people to eat low-carb first, then maybe they’ll end up on blogs like mine, listen to podcasts, participate in forums, etc. to learn why adding in dietary fat is a crucial part of their health equation. Incidentally, “gluten-free” was also a hot trend in food in 2011 and “backyard farming.” Real food, wheat-free, low-carb living is making waves!
20. Top 10 Weight-Loss Trends of 2011
And finally, look what hit the top of the top trends at Shape magazine in 2011–The Paleo Diet! Thanks to the tireless efforts of people like Robb Wolf, Dr. Loren Cordain, Nora Gedgaudas, and a whole bunch of new Paleo bloggers and cookbook authors, this new old trend is probably here to stay for many more years to come! And it coincides quite nicely with those of us who choose to eat high-fat, low-carb, too! Incidentally, CrossFit was also on this list which embraces the Paleo Diet as the nutritional plan of choice for those who engage in this intense exercise routine. Vitamin D also made the list which is a hot topic in the low-carb community with supplementation promoted by the likes of people like Dr. William Davis. Intermittent fasting landed on this weight loss trends of 2011 list too…yet another subset of the Paleo/low-carb blogosphere. The takeaway from all of this–yes, we’re helping get the message out to the people who need to hear it the most!
Did you think 2011 was a great year for low-carb? Tell me your thoughts and any significant headlines that you think I might have missed. Here’s hoping for lots more awesome press for livin’ la vida low-carb in 2012. Bring it!
