| Back in the 1970's, the world went health and | | | | The way our body extracts energy from food is |
| fitness crazy. Movies, TV shows and advertising | | | | as follows. All digestible foods, and this includes |
| were full of images of lithe young males and | | | | fats, proteins and carbohydrates, are digested |
| females jogging and roller skating. One of the first | | | | into a basic sugar called glucose. This glucose is |
| diets to emerge from this era was the low fat | | | | released into our blood stream and delivered |
| diet. What is really interesting though is looking | | | | directly to our cells. If for some reason our blood |
| back in hindsight at general news footage from | | | | sugar level gets too high, rather than waste this |
| this period and seeing how skinny people looked! If | | | | energy, our body releases a chemical called insulin |
| diets and dieting helped people lose weight, then | | | | that mops up this excess sugar and converts |
| why has obesity become such an epidemic? | | | | that into fat and deposits it around our body for |
| Some of the answer may lie in our societies' | | | | future use. An ingenious system that has helped |
| relatively recent obsession with deconstructing our | | | | humankind survive periods of feast and famine. |
| food into good and bad types and then | | | | The problem then with low fat and fat free foods |
| attempting to exclude the bad types from our | | | | is that the fat content is usually replaced with |
| diet. | | | | carbohydrate. This carbohydrate is typically of the |
| So let's look at the phenomenon of low fat and | | | | fast burning variety i.e. sugar. When this sugar is |
| fat free foods. These foods have been common | | | | eaten it is rapidly converted into glucose causing |
| place in our grocery stores and supermarkets for | | | | elevated blood sugar levels that result in fat being |
| years and there seems no slow down in the | | | | deposited. The irony in all this is that fat actually |
| number of low fat or fat free versions available. | | | | releases its energy much more slowly than these |
| Yet we are getting fatter. How can that be? Well | | | | fast burning carbohydrates and so doesn't tend to |
| the basic premise of a low fat diet is that if we | | | | encourage fat deposits. Of course some fats are |
| cut out fat from our diet, the fat from our bodies | | | | healthier for us than others. We recognize at quite |
| will disappear. Whilst this theory has a simple | | | | a deep level that it would be foolish to equate the |
| elegance, it is flawed and shows a very simplistic | | | | fat content of a handful of raw nuts with a dollop |
| understanding in how our body metabolizes food. | | | | of processed hydrogenated trans fats. |