Behind the Lines - August/September 2011

Wednesday, August 10, 2011

Some concepts for stories leap out at you. Others knock persistently at your side door. This month's cover story, "Winners and losers in the dietary wars," is in the latter category.  

The research behind this story was sparked by two items that caught our attention recently. A speaker at the 2011 London Swine Conference saw a dismal future ahead for the meat industry. "Generally accepted medical opinions are that we eat too much red meat," the speaker said. "Dr. Oz, one of the more recent Oprah protégés, has recommended that a good way to control your weight is to have meatless lunches."

A second genesis was a "Letter from Europe" column published in our June/July issue about Denmark imposing a saturated fat tax on meat and dairy products as a means of controlling obesity. "Whatever way we look at it," wrote columnist Norman Dunn, "farmers end up paying for the policy."

That set us looking at the price that Ontario's farmers have paid as dietary trends, scientific or otherwise, wax and wane. The cost has been substantial and is incalculable. Meat farmers took it in the teeth throughout the 1980s and '90s as government health agencies, doctors and food processors spoke out against fat. Farmers changed the animals they raised, and the way they raised them, to meet the demands of the time.

Yet, as award-winning science writer Gary Taubes notes, obesity levels among North Americans have continued to rise, as has the incidence of Type 2 Diabetes. In heavily-researched New York Times Magazine articles and two books on the subject, Taubes documents that current dietary trends are very much guided by government policy that was driven off the track of science many years ago by, guess what, politics.

The June 2011 Consumer Reports, which attempted to rate weight-loss diets, says, "It's clear that fat is not the all-round villain we've been taught it is. Several epidemiological studies have found that saturated fat doesn't seem to increase people's risk of cardiovascular disease or stroke."

The article continues: "A nutrition researcher, Frank B. Hu, M.D., of the Harvard School of Public Health, recently wrote that he believes refined carbohydrates are likely to cause even greater metabolic damage than saturated fat in a predominately sedentary and overweight population."

Where, we wonder would it leave our readers, if carbohydrate foods and especially sugar (including fructose from corn and fruit), replace fat as the villain in the next food fad? BF

ROBERT IRWIN & DON STONEMAN