Low (?) Diets

Fill in the blank

Today I’d like to take a moment to critique all the articles and studies that bash “Low (fill in the blank) Diets”.

What set me off today was an article published by a good nutritional oriented university bashing “Low Carb Diets” as dangerous.

“Professor Maciej Banach of the the European Society of Cardiology found that low carbohydrate diets are unsafe and should be avoided.”

Just because an article has lots of references to other studies doesn’t mean it’s good advice.

The problem is that most of these don’t define what “low” means. Also no distinction is made for the quality of any particular item. Was the milk from grass fed cows? Is the meat organic? Fruit picked fresh or shipped across the world? Are the carbohydrates from fruits and veggies or grains?

The SAD (Standard American Diet) is high in carbohydrates. I’m quite confident this is not healthy (for a number of reasons).

Personally I believe in a balanced diet. If we are talking macro nutrients then something like one third each of carbohydrates, fats and proteins. Generally in our modern world it’s really, really hard to eat “low carb”. Our world is full of carbohydrate containing foods (even items like “chicken nuggets” or “battered fish” – these are coated in carbohydrates).

So my very generic advice is: cut down on carbohydrates as much as you possibly can. It’s really unlikely that you’d actually be “too low”!

More specifically: do everything you can to avoid consuming grains.