Posted on August 2, 2013 by Prof. Grant Schofield
Saturated fat is bad for you…….really???
by Grant Schofield and Helen Kilding Addendum note from Grant: This post has generated an enormous amount of debate – see the comments section. Its interesting as the authors of this study came back into the debate early. Another study, this time it’s my colleagues much closer to home in New Zealand, and they received quite a bit of media space from it. The authors sought to estimate the potential impact on cardiovascular health of modifying dietary intake of saturated fat across the New Zealand population, and whether this would be appropriate… Read More
Posted on July 30, 2013 by Prof. Grant Schofield
What if I ate less?
What would happen if I ate less? Here’s a theoretical question from a reader. I’ve been mulling it over as it is really fundamental to what I am talking about. Here’s the question: Professor Schofield, I have a situation for you and I would love to hear how you respond. Given three identical 100-kg individuals (assume they are a model of a human that experiences no natural desires or whims to suppress or appease) who all burn kilocalories at a rate of exactly 2500 per day. Assigning letters ‘A’, ‘B’ and ‘C’ to… Read More
Posted on July 16, 2013 by Prof. Grant Schofield
Does carb burning age you?
Grant was out for his weekly hill ride with his old mate Stephen. Stephen was now in his nineties and Grant just about to turn 90. The day was sunny and warm. At halfway, they stopped and had a coffee and talked about their grandchildren, each showing off a bit to the other. On the last high hill Grant took off and lead out a sprint. It was all good until just as they hit the top, Grant felt a sudden pain in his chest and dropped dead. Stephen, after a lifetime… Read More
Posted on July 10, 2013 by Prof. Grant Schofield
The cause of obesity – opportunistic voracity?
OK, here’s some real evidence of why the science of nutrition and metabolism is in such a mess. It’s an email discussion between myself and Professor Boyd Swinburn about the role of insulin and other metabolic factors in overweight and obesity, including weight loss. It gets scientific and technical in places, but I think it’s an interesting debate to have. It’s also long (3000 words..). The reality is, we both (Boyd and I) want the same thing – a healthier and happier population – but differences in our beliefs around the underlying… Read More
Posted on July 8, 2013 by Prof. Grant Schofield
Do diabetes specialists have learning resistance?
The healthy diabetes plate is a peer-reviewed “evidence based guidelines for healthy eating for Type 2 diabetics”. Here’s my rant around what I consider to be a gaping hole in sensible logic. Here’s the biological logic: You have become metabolically dysregulated. In mainstream medicine, your doctor will call you “insulin resistant”. That means your body is having difficulty getting glucose out of your blood stream into your cells. Your body still needs to get rid of this glucose, so your pancreas produces more insulin to get the glucose into the cells. Chronically… Read More
Posted on July 5, 2013 by Prof. Grant Schofield
How ketogenic (low carb high fat) diets work
A really nice paper was just published by Paoli, Rubini, Volek and Grimaldi in the European Journal of Clinical Nutrition titled “Beyond weight loss: a review of the therapeutic uses of very-low-carbohydrate (ketogenic) diets” You won’t see a better review paper for summarizing the latest in how we think carbohydrate restriction affects various aspects of metabolic health; from weight loss to neurological issues to acne (yes acne!). A second excellent review article was also published in Nutrition Today by Volek (again!) and Phinney, the low carb gurus. This one is called “A… Read More
Posted on June 26, 2013 by Prof. Grant Schofield
TEDMED Peter Attia
Is the “obesity crisis” just a disguise for a deeper problem? Dr Peter Attia’s TEDMED talk is out. He articulates very nicely, in good conservative medical speak, just what the alternative insulin resistance hypothesis is, and why we get fat and sick. The more detailed hypothesis I have covered in “Why some people stay skinny and others get fat.” Well done Peter, we need to get this video out there, so please like it, pass on my blog, whatever to help with this. Peter writes the blog eatingacademy and is President and… Read More
Posted on June 22, 2013 by Prof. Grant Schofield
Why some people must restrict carbs
OK, I will start this by saying that this is a more academic piece about metabolic control in type 2 diabetics, and the ethics of feeding them low fat diets. It is a bit technical in places and deals directly with original research. Read on if you are interested! The key message is that in my opinion, when you are insulin resistant, really the first option you should consider is restricting carbs. I hear a lot about “it’s the processed carbs, not the starchy veges that are the problem”, that “vegetarian and… Read More
Posted on June 11, 2013 by Prof. Grant Schofield
Curing Type 2 Diabetes
I’m writing this post and getting these videos out there after a conversation with a diabetes nurse who was very happy to go around telling her diabetic patients, and anyone else who would listen, that “you can’t cure type 2 diabetes”. Really? No chance of completely reversing all the symptoms? First is an interview with Dr Jay Wortman by the Diet Doctor (one of my favorite bloggers in the LCHF field) The second is Dr Wortman’s film about curing diabetes in Canadian first nations’ people. It’s called “My Big Fat Diet“. It… Read More
Posted on April 13, 2013 by Prof. Grant Schofield
Why beans could make you fat…and cheese won’t
This post is about how different people react, metabolically, to different foods, especially carbohydrates. How you personally respond to dietary carbohydrate should help you make some decisions about what and how you eat. It gets scientific but the science is important. Several researchers have tried to quantify how we process different types of carbs. These include the glycemic index, the glycemic load and the less known insulin index. These are all really interesting and occasionally useful to tell an individual about how rapidly the carbs they consume are likely to be absorbed into… Read More
The Science of Human Potential 