MONEY SQUANDERED

For more than a decade the National Institute of Health in the United States has funded trials to the tune of $150 million in an attempt to discover if "lifestyle modification" can prevent metabolic syndrome, obesity, and adult onset diabetes.

All their trials have been based on conventional "wisdom" about weight control, most of which is inaccurate. At the moment the National Institute of Health in the United States is spending $200 million on a long trial which they have named "Look Ahead". According to psychologist John Foreyt, one of the trial's investigators, the goal of this research is to test a rather absurd hypothesis that "overweight diabetics will be healthier if they lose weight." This, we are told, is "the largest, most expensive trial ever funded by HIH for obesity outcome research".

Despite lavish sums of money being spent, such trials will never give us the information needed to affirm what savvy health practitioners and ordinary people know already, thanks to plain old commonsense and a bit of time spent digging for truth.

If ever you decide to take time out to plough through the voluminous research and declarations about obesity, its cause and its cure (a pass-time I would hardly recommend) you will discover certain conclusions which demand to be drawn:

1. Obesity is not a disorder caused by lack of exercise.
2. Obesity is not caused by overeating or lack of will power. It is a state of excess fat accumulation as a result of some, as yet officially unidentified, disequilibrium in the hormonal regulation of fat metabolism. This is the major issue which must be addressed to conquer the epidemic of chronic overweight.
   
3. Because of the effect they exert on insulin and blood sugar, refined carbohydrates, sugars and starches are undeniably the dietary culprits in the development of diabetes, coronary heart disease and obesity. They are also inevitable contributors to the other diseases of civilization, including cancer and Alzheimer's disease.
   
4. With the exception of chemically distorted oils and fats full of trans-fatty acids, traditional oils and fats such as olive oil, coconut oil and butter do not cause obesity.
   
5. Cereals, grains, and sugar-based carbohydrates do. They distort hormonal regulation and homeostasis, fostering obesity as a consequence of the way they disturb insulin balance. They engender insulin resistance syndrome, metabolic syndrome or Syndrome X.
   
6. Because carbohydrate foods such as these stimulate insulin secretion, they also increase hunger and diminish the energy available to the body to fuel good metabolic processes and for use during day-to-day life.