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It's not only what you don't know that can harm you; what you think you know and is completely wrong can destroy your health.
Introduction
I have discovered a factor that stops many people from losing weight or holds them back from good health. I used to have a lot of this factor in my own life. I have now eliminated much of it with significant benefit to my health. I hope this site will help you to do the same.
It is the Half-Truth factor, i.e. the holding of beliefs that have a basis in truth but have become distorted.
People pick up the half-truths, not from expert nutritionists, but from such sources as food advertising (much of it very misleading) and inaccurate magazine articles. I will give examples of these sources later.
Belief in half-truths can cause people to try to lose weight by methods that are almost guaranteed to cause food cravings. They lose weight initially, but eventually they lose the willpower battle, then the pounds pile back on.
Belief in one of the several current half-truths about fat can cause people to cut back on fat, but in so doing cut back too much (in fact a complete lack of fat in your food would cause you to die), or switch to the very types of fat that are the most harmful to their health.
Belief in one of the several current half-truths about carbohydrates can cause people to adopt eating patterns that condemn them to obesity or poor health.
A poor eating pattern can cause not only immediate problems (e.g. difficulty in losing weight, continually feeling tired, or poor skin) but can make more likely the development of health problems in the future, e.g. heart disease and diabetes. Casting out the half-truths can enable you to adopt a better eating pattern.
Obesity
Before looking at our first half-truth, I will mention an important fact about obesity since probably some who visit this site are interested in losing weight.
Obesity is not caused by greed. It is usually caused by lack of knowledge. Eating the wrong types of food can almost guarantee that you feel irresistible food cravings that will lead to obesity. It is not your fault - your body is trying to protect itself from serious harm by causing the cravings.
But armed with knowledge you can eat the right foods and, unless you are one of the unfortunate few with a metabolic disorder, can regain a healthy weight without feeling hungry.
Fat
Let us take as our first example some half-truths about fat, of which there are several that are widely believed.
The most prevalent is perhaps the one that can be summed up as "fat is bad for you".
It is not surprising that many people have picked up this half-truth. Almost every time I go to the supermarket, the loudspeakers advertise some foodstuff with a message that finishes with "and it's low in fat" or "it's fat free". Food packaging carries messages such as "97% fat free". There are many diet and cookery books whose title is centred on the "low fat" or "no fat" idea. From these sources people pick up the idea that "fat is bad for you".
And yet it is a dangerous half-truth.
To understand why, consider an analogy.
There are people who damage their health by drinking too much alcohol, or even kill themselves by it. My own daughter recently nursed someone as he died of liver failure caused by excessive alcohol consumption (she is a District Nurse).
Do we conclude that all liquids are bad for you and that therefore we should cut back on them?
Of course not, because we all see the fallacy of that argument.
We know that there are many types of liquid.
We know that there are liquids that will harm you even in tiny quantities, e.g. methylated spirits.
We know that there are liquids that are harmful if taken in excess, e.g. red wine.
We know that there are liquids that are good for you.
We know that there is one liquid (water) that is essential - a complete lack of water will kill you.
Exactly the same considerations apply to fat.
There are many types of fat.
There are fats that will harm you even in tiny quantities (e.g. the trans-fatty acids found in hydrogenated vegetable oil, which is used in many manufactured foods such as some brands of margarine).
There are fats that are harmful if taken in excess e.g. some types of saturated fat.
There are fats that are good for you. E.g. fat can help with the absorption of fat-soluble vitamins and can slow down the digestion of carbohydrates which, as we will see in Chapter 4, can be of benefit. Fats can be a useful source of calories, so that you do not need to get them all from carbohydrate and protein - we shall see later that a balance between the three sources is better. Monounsaturated fats (e.g. found in olive oil) can play these beneficial roles and seem not to have the harmful properties of some other fats. Saturated fats can play these roles too, but of course you must not have an excess.
Then there are fats that are essential - a complete lack of them would kill you. They are the omega 3 and omega 6 fats. In our typical western diet, the omega 3 fats are in short supply and most people would be healthier if they had more.
Do not jump to a false conclusion
I perceive a danger at this point of some readers thinking "well I never thought any of that anyway, I've always known that some fats are good and some are bad" and then thinking "I already knew that X" where X is one of the other commonly held half-truths about fat.
For example I have heard people say that "animal fat is bad, vegetable fat is ok", or "solid fat is bad, liquid fat (oil) is ok", or "saturated fat is bad, unsaturated fat is ok".
These are all dangerous half-truths.
E.g. "vegetable fat" is a phrase allowed in UK food labelling regulations for "partially hydrogenated vegetable oil" which is the very ingredient that contains the trans-fatty acids that are harmful even in tiny quantities. Belief in this half-truth might cause someone to switch from using lard (I mean here old-fashioned lard that has not been hydrogenated), which consists mostly of monounsaturated fat and saturated fat, to one of the blocks of white vegetable based fat that are made from the harmful partially hydrogenated vegetable oil.
Or consider "saturated fat is bad but unsaturated fat is ok". Well, firstly the trans-fatty acids (harmful even in tiny quantities) are unsaturated. Secondly, I have never seen claims that saturated fats are bad for you except when taken in too large quantities.
Or perhaps you thought of "polyunsaturated fats are ok". Well, some of them are, but definitely not all. The harmful trans-fatty acids are polyunsaturated.
Advertising
Much advertising is akin to car advertising that says "this car has improved safety because the big windows give better vision" but neglects to tell you that the brakes are unreliable. An example that springs to mind is margarine that is made from partially hydrogenated vegetable oil and is labelled "low in cholesterol".
This all sounds too complicated
The facts that you need to know to eat a healthy diet are not complicated. You do not need to understand all of the above.
What you do need to get from the above is the idea that much that is written in advertising and magazines is false or misleading. Also, some parts of the above may be relevant to dissuading you of particular half-truths that you have picked up.
Chapter 4 will give more guidance on fats. You will see that it is not complicated at all. What can be more difficult is unlearning any half-truths that you may have picked up.
You do not even need even to read all of this site to gain benefit from it. Even if you take away just one change in your eating pattern, e.g. changing from a brand of margarine that contains hydrogenated vegetable oil to one that doesn't, or perhaps to butter, then you will benefit. Of course, I hope that having done that you will return later to read more.
I do not expect you just to take my word for anything on this site. I will provide references so that you can read up on it yourself if you wish - not references to authors who profit by selling books, diet products or supplements but mostly references to work by reputable authorities and academic researchers.
"To lose weight, just take in less calories - that's all there is to it."
This one is not a half-truth. It is true. However, it is widely misunderstood.
If your calorie intake exceeds the rate at which you use energy you will put on weight. If your calorie intake is less than the rate at which you use energy you will lose weight.
You could perhaps simply eat the same that you do now but less of it. Or you could perhaps use a calorie counting book. Either way, if you cut the calories to be less than your energy expenditure you will lose weight. And if all that you care about is whether or not you lose weight, then that really is all that there is to it.
But I do not believe that losing weight is all that you care about.
For example, I believe that you would care a great deal if you found that your low calorie diet made you very hungry so that it took immense willpower to stick to it.
As illustration, suppose that I devised for you a (very unwise) low calorie diet with three meals per day consisting mainly of doughnuts and non-diet cola.
Those are both high calorie foods, yet it is easy to work out the amount of them that would give you (say) 1000 calories per day. It would not be a large quantity.
Provided that you stuck to the diet, and 1000 calories was less than your energy expenditure, you would lose weight. If the only thing that you care about is losing weight then that really is all that there is to it.
But I believe that on such a diet you would quickly come to care very much about something other than your weight loss. You would come to care about the intense hunger that such a diet would cause. It would take immense willpower to stick to it. The intense hunger is caused by the mechanism described in chapter *** and is related to the high rate at which the carbohydrates in those two foods are converted into glucose in your bloodstream.
The diet would not even be effective for losing weight except in the very short term - not because you would fail to lose weight while you were on it, but because almost certainly you would not stay on it for long - you would lose the willpower battle, abandon the diet, then up would go your weight again.
Most people care about other aspects too, such as whether their eating pattern gives them a feeling of energy, and whether it helps to protect them from disease. In fact a doughnut and cola diet would almost certainly be deficient in many nutrients, causing them to feel low and very likely suffer ill-health.
This idea that calories are all that there is to it is often quoted to me as a reason not to read sites or books like this. I hope that I have squashed that idea.
Note
You may have found this site by my giving you the URL so that you can watch as the site takes shape. There is much yet to be written. But you are welcome to visit and read as the site grows. I welcome feedback.
Peterre
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