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<\/a><\/p>\nSo now I want to share what I\u2019ve learnt with you all, even if just to consolidate it in my own brain. Can I concisely summarise 30 hours and many pages of notes into a few shortish posts?<\/p>\n
Some of the topics covered<\/h2>\n
A huge amount was covered, including:<\/p>\n
- \n
- Why we were led to believe fat, especially saturated fat, is dangerous<\/li>\n
- How keto and fasting tie in with ancestral eating<\/li>\n
- Different types of fasting, and how to choose the easiest for you<\/li>\n
- Different styles of keto eating<\/li>\n
- The benefits of each type<\/li>\n
- How they promote healthier weight and prevent metabolic syndrome<\/li>\n
- Tips for when and how to use these tools<\/li>\n
- How to make it easier than you might expect<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
One of the interesting things about this summit was how many of the presenters were doctors who have switched to using nutritional healing with their patients.<\/p>\n
Another surprise was how many were combining keto with diets that were largely plant based. So that blew apart the idea that high fat diets need to be high animal food diets.<\/p>\n
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<\/a>
\nToday I\u2019m just going to tackle the first point \u2013 why have we become so scared of fat? I\u2019ve got two words for you\u2026<\/p>\nAncel Keys<\/h2>\n
Now, I\u2019ve known for a long time about the Ancel Keys Seven Country Study, which supposedly proved that saturated fat caused heart disease. But up till now I thought he was hired by the vegetable oil manufacturers to prove how bad saturated fat was. It turns out, it was his own hypothesis, and once he had \u201cproved\u201d it, he went looking for sponsorship, and that contributed to the rise of the vegetable oil industry.<\/p>\n
OK, so what happened was, he had access to a database that showed how much saturated fat was produced in each country, and the prevalence of heart disease. He \u201ccherry picked\u201d seven countries, out of the many available, that had a correlation between the two. This was bad science for at least two reasons:<\/p>\n
- \n
- This was the amount of fat produced, not the amount eaten<\/li>\n
- He ignored the countries that disproved his hypothesis<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
Apparently he was a very dogmatic person, who truly believed he was right, and went all out to prove it. Tragically he was successful, over time, in persuading the general population, as well as those setting dietary guidelines, that he was right.<\/p>\n
On another note, he was also the inventor of the military K ration, so was also the inventor of the first modern processed food.<\/p>\n
The combination of these two factors was one of the biggest public health disasters of our time. For ongoing good health we need fresh, unprocessed whole foods, and we need loads of fat for building cell walls, hormones and neurotransmitters, and many other functions.<\/p>\n
The subsequent changes in the Western diet have created an epidemic of obesity and ill health.<\/p>\n
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<\/a>
\nThere has never been any proof that fat generally, or saturated fat specifically, is bad for health. Yes, there are some fats that are bad for us, but not the ones we think. For more about good vs bad fats, see a post I wrote 2 years ago here.<\/p>\nIn the next post (which is here)<\/a>, I’ll talk about how keto and fasting relate to how our ancestors ate. We\u2019ll also talk about different ways to fast, including a very easy starting point that everyone could do right away \u2013 spacing our meals better.<\/p>\n