In 1976, Nathan Pritikin published an article in the Journal of Applied Nutrition (Vol 28, number 3-4) titled “High Carbohydrate Diets: Maligned and Misunderstood.”

48 years later this article is still relevant, as the public is still deeply confused about nutrition. I’d say that the confusion is more profound than ever.

Current beliefs about nutrition often center around the following claims:

• Carbs are the cause of the obesity epidemic, as well as the root cause of diabetes and so-called “metabolic syndrome.”
• Low-fat diets, in vogue in the 70s and 80s, were unhealthy and we should instead seek to eat a lot of “good fats,” including oils.

In other words, carbs are bad, good fats are in, and everything we’ve heard about cholesterol and saturated fats is wrong.

Those claims are nothing new and go back all the way to the early days of “low-carb.” 

Those same ideas have been recycled over and over for at least a hundred years.

What Pritikin states in his 1976 articles is as accurate today as it was back then, except that now there’s even more evidence supporting it.

Here are some points made in the article that still resonate today:

* An optimal diet will free you of heart disease, but also of hypertension, angina, diabetes and other degenerative diseases. It’s the same diet for all of those conditions and not one special diet for each condition.

* The heart disease rate of Bantus in Africa is almost zero. They lived on a 10% fat diet.

* Natives of New Guinea had a diet of 10% fat and only 7% protein and had no heart disease (one case in 600). Their blood pressure also does not rise with age.

* Japanese who change their diet when they move abroad lose their immunity to disease that they had back home. Diet is the factor.

* Cholesterol levels considered “normal” by American standards cause heart disease. New Guinea natives had cholesterols around 100 mg/dl, the African Bantus of 90-120 mg/dl, and 150 mg/dl in Ecuador.

* The diet of populations free of heart disease is 80% carbohydrates.

* This diet, notwithstanding its carbohydrate content, reverses diabetes.

* In one study, glucose tolerance tests were performed on different groups of people. Their menu was modified only to change the fat content. The group taking in 80% sucrose and 5% fat (and we’re talking pure sugar) tested normal on a glucose tolerance test, but the second group with 65% fat and 20% glucose tested diabetic. Even after seven weeks on the 5% fat diet (and high sugar), glucose tolerance tests were normal.

* More studies confirmed the same phenomenon.

* With cholesterol levels of 140 mg/dl, only 1% of people would develop heart disease. With Cholesterol levels of 360 mg/dl, 73% would have artery closure by age 28!

* Cholesterol levels over 140 mg./dl and triglycerides over 75 mg. create atherosclerosis.

* A 10% fat diet doesn’t produce deficiencies in essential fatty acids. 0.1% of total calories are needed as linoleic acid to avoid deficiency. That’s 1/300th of an ounce.

* High-fat meals lower the oxygen-carrying capacity of the blood and can precipitate angina attacks. Drinking a glass of heavy cream can cause angina attacks in patients, and thickens the blood. The same number of calories and blood in a high-sugar drink cause no blood turbidity, no angina and ECG abnormalities in angina patients.

In light of this evidence, supported by even more recent scientific findings, why do we continue to hear that carbohydrates are the cause of our health problems, despite the fact that the healthiest populations on earth have thrived on high-carbohydrate diets?

Why are we exposed to the absurd, untested, and unproven theory—without a shred of evidence—that heart disease is caused by sugar and not by high cholesterol and saturated fat diets?

Why is there so much denialism about cholesterol and saturated fat, often relying on flawed studies sponsored by the egg or meat industry as evidence?

Frequently, low-fat diets face criticism, and studies are used to demonstrate that such a diet is less effective than a low-carb diet. However, upon closer examination of the evidence, it becomes clear that it’s an unfair comparison.

Low-fat diets are often defined as those containing 28% fat, when, in fact, a genuinely low-fat diet is composed of 10-15% fat and 75-80% carbohydrates. Such a diet has been successfully used to treat diabetes, heart disease, and hypertension, among other types of degenerative diseases.

I encourage you to read the article by Nathan Pritikin; after more than 40 years, everything in it still rings true! High Carb Diets Misunderstood