The report by the SBU recommends that eliminating carb-rich food such as bread and potatoes will speed up weight loss quicker than a conventional low-fat diet. However, in the long-term there is little difference between how effective various diet plans are says the report.
"What was surprising about the research in our report is that we did not find any health risks associated with reducing your carbohydrate intake. Also, we were unable to establish just what types of fats you should eat," Jonas Lindblom, project director with SBU told The Local.
Lindblom added that if Swedes are concerned about their weight then they should "cut out the soda" and said the impression that the country is getting fatter may not be accurate.
"There is some evidence that the epidemic is evening out. In Sweden it is estimated that 14 per cent of the population are obese compared with one third in the USA."
The SBU report provided advice for a healthy diet for adults and children plus how to maintain a reduced weight. He said that quick-fix diets are generally not a long-term solution to maintaining your waistline.
"You shouldn't have too high expectations on a diet. In the long-run it doesn't really matter so much as inevitably the person's adherence to it changes and they can resume old habits.
"If you are worried about your weight then eliminating carbohydrates for a short period can help. The problem is that bread and pasta are very delicious," said Lindblom.
He added: "People need to pick the diet that suits them best and try and maintain a healthy lifestyle."
The new report did not study the popular 5:2 diet, which is generating a lot of media interest in Sweden, said Lindblom.
"The 5:2 diet is a way of leveling your energy intake over the long-term. As yet there have not been any studies on people using this system as it is a bit on the outside," he said.
The SBU is an independent national authority tasked by the government with assessing health care interventions and providing advice on which sort of treatments are most effective.
The authority's findings are also meant to impartial and scientifically reliable and serve as a basis for decision-making by policymakers, healthcare providers, and patients.
http://www.thelocal.se/20130923/50384
Dr. Eenfeldt also translated an article from a local Swedish newspaper covering the committee’s findings:
Butter, olive oil, heavy cream, and bacon are not harmful foods. Quite the opposite. Fat is the best thing for those who want to lose weight. And there are no connections between a high fat intake and cardiovascular disease.
On Monday, SBU, the Swedish Council on Health Technology Assessment, dropped a bombshell. After a two-year long inquiry, reviewing 16,000 studies, the report “Dietary Treatment for Obesity” upends the conventional dietary guidelines for obese or diabetic people.
For a long time, the health care system has given the public advice to avoid fat, saturated fat in particular, and calories. A low-carb diet (LCHF – Low Carb High Fat, is actually a Swedish “invention”) has been dismissed as harmful, a humbug and as being a fad diet lacking any scientific basis.
Instead, the health care system has urged diabetics to eat a lot of fruit (=sugar) and low-fat products with considerable amounts of sugar or artificial sweeteners, the latter a dangerous trigger for the sugar-addicted person.
This report turns the current concepts upside down and advocates a low-carbohydrate, high-fat diet, as the most effective weapon against obesity.
The expert committee consisted of ten physicians, and several of them were skeptics to low-carbohydrate diets at the beginning of the investigation. (Source.)
One of the committee members was Prof. Fredrik Nyström, from Linköping, Sweden – a long-time critic of the low-fat diet and a proponent of the benefits of saturated fat, from sources such as butter, full fat cream, and bacon. Some quotes from Prof. Nyström translated into English from Dr. Eenfeldt:
“I’ve been working with this for so long. It feels great to have this scientific report, and that the skepticism towards low-carb diets among my colleagues has disappeared during the course of the work. When all recent scientific studies are lined up the result is indisputable: our deep-seated fear of fat is completely unfounded. You don’t get fat from fatty foods, just as you don’t get atherosclerosis from calcium or turn green from green vegetables.”
Nyström has long advocated a greatly reduced intake of carbohydrate-rich foods high in sugar and starch, in order to achieve healthy levels of insulin, blood lipids and the good cholesterol. This means doing away with sugar, potatoes, pasta, rice, wheat flour, bread, and embracing olive oil, nuts, butter, full fat cream, oily fish and fattier meat cuts. “If you eat potatoes you might as well eat candy. Potatoes contain glucose units in a chain, which is converted to sugar in the GI tract. Such a diet causes blood sugar, and then the hormone insulin, to skyrocket.”
There are many mantras we have been taught to accept as truths:
“Calories are calories, no matter where they come from.”
“It’s all about the balance between calories in and calories out.”
“People are fat because they don’t move enough.”
“Breakfast is the most important meal of the day.”
“Of course these are not true. This kind of nonsense has people with weight problems feeling bad about themselves. As if it were all about their inferior character. For many people a greater intake of fat means that you’ll feel satiated, stay so longer, and have less of a need to eat every five minutes. On the other hand, you won’t feel satiated after drinking a Coke, or after eating almost fat free, low-fat fruit yogurt loaded with sugar. Sure, exercise is great in many ways, but what really affects weight is diet.” (Source.)
http://www.neogaf.co...ad.php?t=706635
http://healthimpactn...-fat-nutrition/
http://onlinelibrary...8B132AF9.d04t04
well look at that.
Edited by meitantei_conan, 30 October 2013 - 07:50 PM.
