Friday, April 9, 2010

Fat gets the blame again, part II

Two recent articles once again the reveal the bias toward dietary fat. In a Globe and Mail article, I learned something that surprised me:
India has the world's biggest sweet tooth. It consumes more sugar than any other country on the planet thanks to a healthy appetite for sweets, a widespread use of sugar in mainstay dishes and a taste for cavity-inducing chai (tea).
(I thought perhaps the U.S. was a larger consumer of sugar, but according to the Sugar Association Inc., sugar has been mostly replaced by HFCS, so one "can't blame sugar for obesity". That's an astonishing conclusion, since the two products are chemically similar! This is like a tobacco company saying, "Don't blame us for lung cancer, our competition has been outselling us by a wide margin!")

But back to India, where we learn from a report from the BBC that diabetes rates are out of control. Do you wonder what might be causing it?
Part of the blame falls on the adoption of a more Western lifestyle, involving fatty food and too little exercise.
That's right, diabetes, a disease of glucose (blood sugar) metabolism, is caused in part by dietary fat intake! Once again the evidence is right in front of their eyes and they can't make the connection.

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